Beijing's New Internationalism; As an increasingly powerful China involves itself with the world, its devotion to absolute sovereignty is starting to evolve.

Byline: Orville Schell (Schell is the incoming director of the Asia Society's new Center on U.S.-China Relations.)

In many respects Hu Jintao's recent dash through africa--he traveled to eight countries in over a week, signing trade deals, forgiving debt, extending loans and securing rights to natural resources--looked like business as usual for Beijing. For years, China has courted new business partners and tried to gain access to oil and other raw materials around the world while scrupulously avoiding controversial issues such as human rights and good governance. Beijing has long stuck to a strict, 19th-century view of sovereignty, which holds that whatever a government does at home is no one else's business. Its mantra has been reciprocal "noninterference." "We never impose on other countries our values ... and we do not accept other countries imposing their values on us," declared Deputy Foreign Minister Zhai Jun last November.

This model has seemed good for business--Chinese trade with Africa skyrocketed from $10.6 billion in 2000 to $40 billion last year (for perspective, U.S.-Africa trade is now about $60.6 billion). The don't-ask, don't-tell approach held special appeal for regimes of dubious character. Sudan's strongman, Omar al-Bashir, must have been cheered by Hu's stop in Khartoum on February 2, when he gave the dictator a $13 million interest-free loan for a new palace and forgave a $70 million debt. Hu also called on other nations "to respect the sovereignty of Sudan"--the genocide in Darfur notwithstanding.

But China's unsavory partners should take note: Beijing may soon start phasing out such rhetoric. As an increasingly powerful China involves itself more and more with the complex global marketplace and political scene, the ground is shifting under its feet, and China's dedication to absolute sovereignty may be starting to evolve.

The key to this change is respect: the one commodity Beijing seems to crave more than any other. Respect in the modern world does not come simply from international aid or trade. It also stems from an assessment of a nation's willingness to yield certain sovereign prerogatives in the interests of becoming a better global citizen.

During the heyday of Mao Zedong's fevered collectivization of Chinese agriculture in the 1950s, the Great Leader once said that he thought he could see the first tender "green shoots" of communism emerging. Today the "green shoots" of a very ...