BEIJING — China has contributed $1 million to help organize Sunday's election in Iraq, raising questions at home and abroad about how a country that supports balloting in another land can deny its citizens a chance to vote for their leaders.
As China gains a growing role on the global political and economic stage, it increasingly faces such twists of logic. So far, Chinese officials seem undeterred by the apparent contradiction.
"They behave as a normal power on the international scene, but keep a lid on everything at home at the same time, blocking websites and preventing free expression," said Jean-Philippe Beja, a China specialist at the Center for International Studies and Research in Paris. "Elections are all right in other countries, as long as they're not done at home. And it works. That's what's incredible. It's very cynical."
China is providing supplies to the Iraqi election effort through the United Nations in large part because it's an effective way to win recognition as a respected and responsible global player.
"We hope that this election will be helpful in safeguarding Iraq's sovereignty and integrity and independence," Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan said Thursday at a news briefing. "We also hope it will help Iraq form a widely based government that has great representation."
Elections bolster political legitimacy. By embracing this trend, China apparently hopes to better position itself in the mainstream of international discourse, advancing its bid to become a regional power with global influence.
A second part of Beijing's calculation is that this relatively small investment will score points with Washington.
China's own economic growth, a prerequisite for domestic stability, increasingly is dependant on U.S. markets and even on the stability that U.S. military forces bring to the region. Along the way, particularly after the Sept. 11 attacks, China also has been able to recast its measures to quash some domestic irritants, including a separatist movement in the western region of Xinjiang, as part of the Bush administration's war on international terrorism.
But even as China turns more to the West, its communist ideology admits of no direct link between elections and legitimacy.
Elections won't work in China because the masses aren't wealthy or well-educated enough to understand the issues, Chinese officials often argue. Elections are at odds with 5,000 years of Chinese history and, anyway, the country already has a democracy with socialist characteristics, they say.
