Neither Friend Nor Foe
By Kent Harrington
After President Clinton's nine-day visit to China in June 1998, administration officials optimistically began describing our relationship with that nation as a "strategic partnership." Roughly one year later, our relations with China have plunged to a new low. In Washington, alleged nuclear espionage, acquisition of U.S. missile know-how, and illegal campaign donations top the list of Chinese transgressions. Beijing, meanwhile, insists that the U.S.-led NATO alliance's May 7 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was no accident.
Both countries have reacted predictably to recent events. Washington resounds with calls for sanctions and warnings about future conflicts with Beijing. Democrats and Republicans point fingers at each other over who's to blame for lost nuclear secrets. China's leaders mobilized crowds to lay siege to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in retaliation for the bombing of their embassy in Yugoslavia. They have revived diatribes against U.S. imperialism, postponed diplomatic talks, and canceled military visits.
As a result, the Clinton administration's China policy has entered a period of flux. A vote in Congress on Chinese entry into the World Trade Organization has been put off, and the administration instead has proposed yet another one-year renewal of China's most-favored- nation trade status. Administration foreign policy spokesmen have ceased all talk of a "strategic partnership." Predictions about the outcome of talks with China over trade, missile proliferation, and other issues have become less sanguine.
It's time for the United States to candidly reassess its relationship with China and develop a realistic agenda for engagement with Beijing. We need to re-examine which of our policies have worked and which have not, identify goals we share with the Chinese, and anticipate the challenges Beijing will pose to U.S. interests in the future.
Our goal should be to build a durable foundation for U.S.-China cooperation that can win bipartisan support, serve the objectives of our Asian allies as well as our own, and provide the basis for a candid dialogue with Beijing. Without such a foundation, the star-crossed events of 1999 will only repeat themselves, undermining our economic and security interests well into the 21st century.
U.S.-China relations have oscillated between amity and enmity for more than 100 years. During the past half-century alone, we went from embracing the Chinese Communists as allies in the war against Japan to con- fronting them as die-hard enemies after they seized power on the mainland. During the Nixon administration, China's growing fear of Moscow opened the door for a renewal of closer relations. For the next two decades, checking the Soviets was the bedrock of our relations with China. Our strategic competition with Moscow justified a de facto alliance with China. National security trumped other priorities. Notwithstanding domestic repression, Chinese arms sales in the Middle East, and the uncertain ambitions of new leaders in Beijing, we needed to ensure that China weighed in on our side in the struggle against the Soviet Union.
The joint anti-Soviet effort opened the door to economic ties and a far broader U.S.-China relationship. American perceptions of China changed dramatically: Who can forget Deng Xiaoping wearing a cowboy hat in Texas during his 1979 state visit to the United States? U.S. businesses began to focus on the enormous potential of Chinese markets, from which they had been cut off for some 30 years. The economic transformation of China in subsequent years has created a country that is more open and affords its people more freedom than the Maoist autocracy we aligned ourselves with in 1972. U.S. policies played an important role in this positive evolution.
The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 obviously marked a new chapter in U.S.-China relations. The prologue arguably was written two years earlier in Tiananmen Square. The brutal crushing of the 1989 democracy movement weakened American public support for closer relations with China. Since Tiananmen, China's senior leaders have strengthened their nation's internal security apparatus and continued to repress democracy activists. Their message is unambiguous: The Communist Party shall not be challenged.
Creating a Realistic Agenda
Our Cold War decision to base our relations with China on the imperative of national security has come at a price. Nearly a decade since the fall of the Soviet Union, we still lack a new, overarching basis for our relations with China that can win broad support here at home. The U.S.-China relationship today is a whole that is less than the sum of its parts. To create a coherent, realistic agenda for the U.S.-China relationship that can earn durable domestic support, we need to address the following issues:
Economic engagement
Since President Carter established diplomatic ties with Beijing in 1978, successive administrations have gotten one major point consistently right: Chinese economic reform and modernization is in both nations' interest.
China's leaders recognize that their legitimacy ultimately depends on improving the quality of life of the billion- plus Chinese. We have an obvious self-interest in trade and investment opportunities. Beyond that, we too have a stake in the Chinese leadership's ability to deliver on promises of a better life. The challenge of holding China together haunts Chinese leaders. The prospect of China fracturing internally or lashing out because of domestic economic turmoil should give us pause. The consequences for Asia's economy and security are clear.
We need to stabilize our economic relationship with China. The annual most-favored-nation voting ritual and our inconsistent approach to technology transfer neither influences Chinese political behavior nor effectively controls defense-related technology proliferation.
World Trade Organization
During talks in Washington last April over China's entry into the World Trade Organization, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji by many accounts offered the United States an extraordinary trade deal. Among other things, the Chinese offered to reduce tariffs and quotas on a wide range of industrial and agricultural goods; to liberalize rules governing foreign investment in Chinese firms; and to grant wider distribution and trading rights to foreign firms doing business in China. The United States, however, rejected the offer, and China broke off WTO negotiations after the bombing of its embassy in Yugoslavia.
Assuming that the trade deal remains on the table, the Clinton administration has a chance to regroup and regain the initiative on economic relations with China. Zhu's proposal was preceded by hard bargaining, and more tough negotiations lie ahead. Reviving the WTO bargain should be the centerpiece of any credible China policy in the short run.
Technology transfer
On technology transfer, the ball is squarely in the administration's court. Forty years of Cold War experience should give us the know-how to organize an effective, efficient inter-department review and enforcement process that both serves business needs and protects national security. It will take White House attention, resources, and political leadership to mobilize the right ideas and right people for the task.
Our Asian allies' concerns
China's growing power is provoking quiet concern among our allies. China's military modernization, its more assertive behavior regarding territorial disputes in the South China Sea, and its approach to Taiwan are producing anxiety. So, too, is China's vision of a diminished U.S. strategic role in Asia. In its first defense white paper, issued last year, China described U.S. military forward deployment in Asia and its involvement in Asian alliances and military blocs as a direct threat.
In addition, Chinese leaders have become increasingly critical of the U.S.-Japan alliance after all but endorsing it for the past 25 years. Their verbal attacks initially targeted U.S. encouragement of a more active Japanese security role in the region. Such talk provoked Beijing to allege that the United States was freeing Japan to project its military power abroad once again. More recently, China has suggested that Tokyo and Washington are forging a Cold War-style understanding to contain Beijing. In dealing with China on this issue, we should leave no doubt about the priority we accord our 50-year-long alliance with Tokyo and our intention to maintain its health and effectiveness.
Asian leaders view the U.S. presence in the region as the key to its security and stability. It is vital that the United States makes certain that both China and our allies understand our interest in an effective balance of power in Asia and in our own strategic access in the region.
Asia is home to several potential military flashpoints that might well involve U.S. forces: the Korean peninsula, Taiwan, and territorial disputes affecting major sea lines of communication. China plays an important role in these and other cases. Washington should talk frankly and constructively with Beijing about mutual efforts to resolve such problems. It also should explore greater sharing of military data and related "transparency" efforts to reduce regional tensions. But U.S. policymakers must leave no doubts about our commitments to protect historic partners and maintain our presence in Asia.
The Taiwan issue
Virtually all China experts agree that Beijing badly miscalculated the negative political effect of its saber-rattling in 1996 to intimidate pro-independence advocates in Taiwan's national elections. Unfortunately, that judgment apparently is not shared in Beijing. As widely reported in February, the Chinese deployed some 200 M-9 and M-11 missiles across the Taiwan straits earlier this year. Most analysts believe that Beijing is making it clear that Taiwan needs to think twice about its campaign to gain a place under the umbrella of a proposed missile defense system for the region.
There is no question that Beijing is worried about the effect of a theater missile defense system on pro-independence sentiment in Taiwan. But in truth, even the system's advocates acknowledge that it is unlikely to be deployed for at least another 10 years, if at all. It's far more likely that the recent Chinese missile deployment was made with an eye toward influencing Taiwan's presidential election next year.
Americans should be concerned about the potential effects of a reprise of the 1996 Taiwan crisis in the middle of our own presidential race. No one can predict how Beijing would perceive the implications of our presidential election or Taiwan's as they unfold. It goes without saying, therefore, that the United States should quickly open a quiet diplomatic dialogue with Beijing emphasizing the need for prudent behavior.
Chinese military intimidation of Taiwan's democracy is symptomatic of a far more fundamental problem for U.S. policy. Thirty years ago, the United States left it to the Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan straits to resolve the issue of reunification. The artful formulations in the Shanghai Communiqui -- the 1972 document that captured our understandings with Beijing on this matte found broad support at home and worked well abroad for nearly 20 years. But the rise of a democratic Taiwan has changed the issue of reunification for us and Beijing.
For the United States, the advent of a freely elected, democratic government on Taiwan makes any Chinese use of force more than a challenge to regional stability. Inevitably, that prospect compels us to address the core values of freedom, human rights, and political choice that the Clinton administration increasingly cites as the rationale for America's postColdWar engagement in the world. Reunification remains a question for the Chinese to decide. But how Americans see the risks and assess our interests if Taiwan is challenged -- however sensitive the subject may be among Chinese leaders -- must be part of any realistic discussion of China policy. Beijing's actions in 1996 put Taiwan on our agenda. If we hope to create a durable China policy, the maintenance of democracy in Taiwan must be on the table.
Kent Harrington is the president of Harrington Group LLC, a consulting firm specializing in strategic planning and international business development.