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Fast
Growing Dangers in the China-US
Relationship
By JONATHAN
POWER
March 22, 2000
LONDON- How straightforward it used to be. For twenty
two years the U.S. did not recognize communist China.
Taiwan occupied the Chinese seat at the United Nations
and that was that. Then from the right, quite
unexpectedly, came Richard Nixon and turned everything on
its head. China was not only recognized and Taiwan
ejected from its seat, the American business and
journalistic communities were encouraged to fall in love
with all things Chinese. As the Russian journalist
Vladimir Pozner bitingly wrote at the time, "The
Americans found that the Chinese were courteous,
industrious, family-orientated, modest to the point of
being shy. They had the most wonderful and ancient
cultural tradition; they were wizards at ping pong; they
loved giant pandas. In less than a year public opinion
completely turned around. Everyone loved the so-recently
hated and feared China."
Thus it continued, more or less, until Tiananmen
Square when America's great strategic friend and pro
capitalist reformer Deng Xiaoping sent in the tanks and
murdered two thousand or more protesting students, armed
with nothing more than their bicycles. The Bush
administration, determined to keep the relationship on an
even keel whatever the cost, dispatched with unseemly
haste the president's National Security Advisor, Brent
Scowcroft, to reassure Beijing of Washington's solid,
enduring, relationship. But China had lost for all time
what it could not win back- the fawning attention of the
American press and the warm feelings of the American
people. Now Bill Clinton, when campaigning to unseat
Bush, charged that Bush was soft on China and promised,
if elected, that the age of conciliation would be
over.
But once in office it did not take long for Clinton to
fall into line with the Nixon legacy- even though the
main geopolitical reason for it- to balance the Soviet
Union- was no longer relevant.
Today, however, the line of continuity is beginning to
waiver. Part is business as usual in the Nixonian
tradition- as with Clinton's push for Congressional
approval for China's admittance to the World Trade
Organization. But part is, if still unclear and
uncertain, a sea-change in Washington's long-time
forbearance of Beijing's decision making. Secretary of
State Madeleine Albright has in effect admitted that
engagement with China has not brought about the promised
amelioration in human rights. The situation, says a
recent State Department report, if anything has worsened,
and now the U.S. is going to vote to condemn China at the
current meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission. The
indications are, however, that it will not push too hard
to line up sufficient European and Third World allies to
secure a victory with this vote, but nonetheless it marks
the end of a simpler era.
Meanwhile, since 1995, the U.S. Congress has been
enlisted in Taiwan's drive, led by the outgoing president
Lee Teng-hui, to overturn long-standing agreements
between Beijing and Washington. While the Administration
will continue to resist the move led by Senator Jesse
Helms to pass the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act which
would open the flood gates of arms sales to Taiwan, the
Administration itself has presided over a dramatic
increase in sales (although one that has diminished
sharply the last couple of years). We are a long way from
the 1982 Sino-U.S. communique of 1982- The U.S.
government has agreed, it said, that it "does not seek to
carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan,
[and] that its arms sales to Taiwan will not
exceed, either in quantitative or qualitative terms, the
level of those supplied in recent years since the
establishment of diplomatic relations between China and
the U.S., and that it intends to gradually reduce its
sales of arms to Taiwan."
China itself doesn't make the situation easier. Its
increasingly bellicose line towards Taiwan, growing in
volume since the day it won back Hong Kong; the
continuation of its provocative policy of being the only
country in the world whose nuclear missiles are aimed at
the U.S.; its sometimes aggressive attitude in the South
China Sea; and the apparent disregard for majority world
opinion on human rights, give Clinton and his successor
less and less room for flexibility.
The U.S.-China boat is now sailing through uncharted
waters. While nothing is clear nothing is certain, but
undoubtedly there is a risk of it disintegrating on the
rocks ahead.
The election result in Taiwan both makes the situation
more serious and more easy. It is more serious in that
the Taiwanese have made clear their own mind- They don't
want to be bullied by China. At the same time they have
given their votes to a leader who breaks with the old
order of the Kuomintang, who fought and lost to Mao
Zedong, in favour of a more indigenous and more
sophisticated Taiwanese political form.
In electing Chen Shui-bian as Taiwan's next president
they have elevated a man who says he wants to be a
peacemaker and not a trouble maker. He has already
promised not to declare independence unless China attacks
and has made it clear he is less inflexible than his
predecessor.
Beijing now has an interlocutor with whom they can do
business. But the bullying has to stop. That will lead
nowhere. For China the best that can be achieved is the
status quo ante- that is before President Lee made his
infamous remark about the relationship between the two
being "state-to-state".
A period of benign neglect of the Taiwan-China issue
would now serve all parties well. Beijing, for its part,
besides lowering its voice, needs to tone down its sense
of urgency about the need to discuss reunification, and
realize there is no point in gaining Taiwan if it loses
the world. Make no mistake, an invasion of Taiwan would
be widely interpreted as Tiananmen Square on a larger
scale. Washington's contribution must be to resist the
pressure to increase its arms sales and realize that its
selling policy in the first half of the 1990's helped
ratchet up Chinese anger. It does not exactly help
America's case that it clings like a limpet to its base
in Cuba at Guantanomo Bay.
In this exceedingly complex three way relationship,
clarity of vision is everything. While it is impossible
to wind back the clock to simpler days one thing needs to
be kept very clear: conflict will solve nothing. A
non-military solution is the only solution. All three
leaders must ensure they issue no ultimatums, deadlines
or conditions from which they could not subsequently
retreat. Grace is everything in the great issues of
realpolitik..
I can be reached by phone +44 385 351172 and e-mail:
JonatPower@aol.com
Copyright © 2000 By JONATHAN POWER
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