Toasting the world (or not)

China’s Silent Army: The Pioneers, Traders, Fixers and Workers Who Are Remaking the World in Beijing’s Image. By Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araújo. Translated by Catherine Mansfield. Crown; 350 pages; $26. Buy from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk

China Goes Global: The Partial Power. By David Shambaugh. Oxford University Press; 409 pages; $29.95 and £20. Buy from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk

A CHANGING China has long been a mirror in which visitors can see their expectations and their own character reflected. Glass-half-full people argue that hundreds of millions have been lifted out of poverty and millions are now being empowered by their use of the internet and their increased spending power. The less positive point out that human rights are routinely abused, freedom of speech is restricted and corruption endemic. Both are right. It just depends where you look and what you want to see.

The same, it turns out, is true of China’s engagement with the world, according to two new books. In “China’s Silent Army” Juan Pablo Cardenal and Heriberto Araújo, both Spanish journalists, claim that China is at the height of its expansion across the world and that its long-term vocation is global. The world, they argue, faces a slow but steady conquest that is already laying the foundations for the new world order of the 21st century: “a world under China’s leadership”.

The two reporters set out to show, in a highly readable fashion, the growing Chinese impact on every corner of the globe. From the gasfields of Turkmenistan to the bazaars of Dubai and the mines of Congo, they find Chinese workers trying to extract what they can from foreign customers and the earth’s crust. The arrival of goods and people from China is changing how business is done. Chinese traders have taken over the main thoroughfare of the Senegalese capital, Dakar, which is now known as Boulevard Mao. They are plundering Burma’s forests and jade mines. “The Chinese overseas community is like a giant Masonic lodge,” complains one Argentinian. “We feel like we’re living in a Chinese colony,” adds a Peruvian miner, whose mine (and town) were bought by a state-owned Chinese company.

Certainly there is plenty to complain about. Many Chinese companies bring their own workers to Africa, or treat local workers badly when they do hire them. Environmental damage is widespread. The unaccountability of Chinese companies at home is extended abroad as they team up with rapacious local elites.

This is an important summary of some of the worst Chinese behaviour around the world, but hyperbole weakens its argument. The authors claim that all the jobs created, infrastructure built and cheap goods provided are “undoubtedly eclipsed by its approach to labour conditions”, ignoring the fact that Chinese investment brings positive change as well as problems. They indicate that the “Chinese miracle” at home has been a miracle mainly for political elites, a claim that is easy to disprove simply by walking around any Chinese city. Most improbably, they claim that the world is becoming “sinicised”.

“China Goes Global” tells the other side of the story. The author, David Shambaugh, a China specialist at George Washington University, says it is wrong even to suggest that the world is, or will be, “under China’s leadership”. The country is not nearly as powerful as people think, he argues. Its footprint is “broad, but not deep”. Mr Shambaugh takes issue with the idea that China is trying to lock up international mineral production and provides statistics to back up his argument. “Buy up, yes,” he writes. “Lock up, no.” Chinese companies’ share of global mining investments was less than 6% of global transactions in 2010. Few Chinese mergers and acquisitions abroad have been successful, and China’s overseas direct investment is on a par with Denmark’s.

The author goes on to look at the country’s global security and cultural presence. He concludes that China has either not tried (in the case of a military presence), or has tried and failed (in pushing its soft power) to expand its influence globally. He believes the notion that China will rule the world to be “profoundly overstated and incorrect”. And he adds that the nation has a “very long way to go before it becomes—if it ever becomes—a true global power”.

Mr Shambaugh also investigates China’s global economic expansion. Exports, he says, are still dominated by low-end consumer products and there is almost no Chinese brand recognition. “Merely having a global presence does not equal having global power,” he writes. Chinese people and companies may have gone global, but China is not influencing world affairs beyond the realm of trade and the energy markets. It is not influential in addressing and solving global problems because its leaders are too busy trying to address domestic problems. The fact that China does not really have a civil society of its own means it is less likely to engage in civil society abroad. It is a narrowly self-interested power that ventures overseas to support its own economic growth and little else.

The author admits that he was surprised by his findings. He had expected to come to a very different conclusion. However, in one example after another he provides solid quantitative evidence for his argument. “China Goes Global” is a fascinating and scholarly challenge to the received wisdom about China’s rise, and an important critique of the accepted narrative of Chinese expansionism.