Living With China
Mini Teaser: When applied to China, terms such as "adversary" and "partnet" obscure more than they clarify. A blueprint for American policy rejects both.
Eurasian politics have replaced European politics as the central
arena of world affairs. Once European wars became evidently
threatening to America, there was no choice for America but to inject
itself into European politics in order to prevent new conflicts from
erupting or a hostile European hegemony from emerging. Thus America's
engagement in world affairs was precipitated during the twentieth
century by European politics. Today, it is the interplay of several
Eurasian powers that is critical to global stability. Accordingly,
America's policy must be transcontinental in its design, with
specific bilateral Eurasian relationships woven together into a
strategically coherent whole.
It is in this larger Eurasian context that U.S.-China relations must
be managed and their importance correctly assessed. Dealing with
China should rank as one of Washington's four most important
international relationships, alongside Europe, Japan and Russia. The
U.S.-China relationship is both consequential and catalytic, beyond
its intrinsic bilateral importance. Unlike some other major bilateral
relationships that are either particularly beneficial or threatening
only to the parties directly involved (America and Mexico, for
example), the U.S.-China relationship impacts significantly on the
security and policies of other states, and it can affect the overall
balance of power in Eurasia.
More specifically, peace in Northeast and Southeast Asia remains
dependent to a significant degree on the state of the U.S.-China
relationship. That relationship also has enormous implications for
U.S.-Japan relations and Japan's definition--for better or worse--of
its political and military role in Asia. Last but not least, China's
orientation is likely to influence the extent to which Russia
eventually concludes that its national interests would best be served
by a closer connection with an Atlanticist Europe; or whether it is
tempted instead by some sort of an alliance with an anti-American
China.
For China, it should be hastily added, the U.S.-China relationship is
also of top-rank importance, alongside its relations with Japan, with
Russia and with India. In fact, for China the Beijing-Washington
interaction is indisputably the most important of the four. It is
central to China's future development and well-being. A breakdown in
the relationship would prompt a dramatic decline in China's access to
foreign capital and technology. Chinese leaders must carefully take
into account that centrally decisive reality whenever they are
tempted to pursue a more assertive policy on behalf of their national
grievances (such as Taiwan) or more ambitious global aspirations
(such as seeking to replace American "hegemony" with "multipolarity").
In essence, then, in the complex American-Chinese equation, Beijing
should be prudent lest its larger ambitions collide with its more
immediate interests, while Washington must be careful lest its
strategic Eurasian interests are jeopardized by tactical missteps in
its handling of China.
It follows that the United States, in defining its longer term China
policy and in responding to the more immediate policy dilemmas, must
have a clearly formulated view of what China is, and is not. There
is, unfortunately, enormous confusion in America on that very
subject. Allegedly informed writings regarding China often tend to be
quite muddled, occasionally even verging toward the hysterical
extremes. As a result, the image of a malignant China as the
inevitably anti-American great power of the 2020s competes in the
American public discourse with glimpses of a benign China gently
transformed by U.S. investors into an immense Hong Kong. Currently,
there is no realistic consensus either among the public or in the
Congress regarding China.
In recent years, inconsistency has also characterized the attitude of
the U.S. government. It is unfortunately the case that the Clinton
administration has been guilty of "vacillation and about-faces on
China, often in response to popular and congressional pressure", that
the President himself was "not willing to protect U.S.-China
relations from tampering by Congress", and that "some in Congress
would destroy the relationship if given the opportunity to do so."
The presidential mishandling in late spring 1999 of the World Trade
Organization (WTO) negotiations with the Chinese and the persisting
inclination of Congress to grandstand on the China issue validate
that indictment.
In addition, public perception of China tends to be defined by
spectacular symbols that allegedly encapsulate the essence of today's
and tomorrow's China. Thus, for many Americans Tiananmen Square and
Tibet have come to reflect the central reality of enduring communist
oppression and of intensifying national chauvinism. For others, the
Chinese economic "miracle", dramatized by the skyscrapers of
Shanghai, and by China's growing free-market openness to the world
through the Internet, travel, and foreign investment, symbolizes a
transforming nation that is progressively shedding its communist
veneer. Which China, then, is the real China, and with which China
will America clash or cohabit in the years to come?
Having digested much of the available literature on Chinese
political, economic and military prospects, and having dealt with the
Chinese for almost a quarter of a century, I believe that the point
of departure toward an answer has to be the recognition of an obvious
but fundamental reality: China is too big to be ignored, too old to
be slighted, too weak to be appeased, and too ambitious to be taken
for granted. A major and ancient civilization--encompassing 20
percent of the world's population organized in a historically unique
continuity as a single nation-state, and driven simultaneously by a
sense of national grievance over perceived (and, in many cases, real)
humiliations over the last two centuries, but also by growing and
even arrogant self-confidence--China is already a major regional
player, though not strong enough to contest at this time either
America's global primacy or even its preponderance in the Far Eastern
region.
China's military strength, both current and likely over the next
decade or so, will not be capable of posing a serious threat to the
United States itself, unless China's leaders were to opt for national
suicide. The Chinese nuclear force has primarily a deterrent
capability. The Chinese military build-up has been steady but neither
massive nor rapid, nor technologically very impressive. It is also
true, however, that China is capable of imposing on America
unacceptable costs in the event that a local conflict in the Far East
engages vital Chinese interests but only peripheral American ones. In
this sense, China's military power is already regionally significant,
and it is growing.
Nonetheless, unlike the former Soviet Union, the People's Republic of
China (PRC) is not capable of posing a universal ideological
challenge to the United States, especially as its communist system is
increasingly evolving into oligarchical nationalist statism with
inherently more limited international appeal. It is noteworthy that
China is not involved in any significant international revolutionary
activities, while its controversial arms exports are driven either by
commercial or bilateral state interests. (As such, they are not very
different from those of France or Israel, with the latter actually
exporting weapons technology to China.)
Moreover, in recent years China's international conduct has been
relatively restrained. China did not exercise its veto to halt
UN-sanctioned military actions against Iraq over Kuwait. Nor did it
block the Security Council's approval of the international
protectorate in Kosovo. It approved the deployment of UN peacekeepers
in East Timor, and--unlike India in the case of Goa, or Indonesia
when it seized East Timor--it peacefully re-acquired Hong Kong and
more recently Macau. China also acted responsibly during the Asian
financial crisis of 1998, for which it was internationally applauded.
Last but not least, its current efforts to gain membership of the
WTO, whatever the merits or demerits of China's negotiating stance,
signal the PRC's growing interest in global multilateral cooperation.
Internal Contradictions
The picture becomes more mixed when the domestic scene in China is
scrutinized and when current Chinese views of the United States are
taken into account. China is basically unfinished business. Its
communist revolution has run out of steam. Its post-communist
reformation has been partially successful, particularly at the
urban-industrial-commercial levels, but this has required major
doctrinal concessions and compromises. The result is that the Chinese
system is a hybrid, with strong residues of communist dogmatism in
the industrial sectors and in the state bureaucracy coexisting
uneasily with dynamic, capitalist entrepreneurship driven by foreign
investment. China's future systemic orientation is thus yet to be
fully defined, but it is already evident that the cohabitation within
it of communism and commercialism is inherently contradictory.
The trajectories of China's economic change and of its political
evolution are thus parting. At some point, the distance between them
will become too wide to sustain. Something, then, will have to give.
Moreover, the existing political elite--itself not so young--will
soon be replaced by a generation that came to political maturity
neither during the Great Leap Forward nor during the Cultural
Revolution, both epiphenomena of communist doctrinal exuberance. The
emerging political elite matured during Deng Xiaoping's pragmatic
upheaval in the Chinese economy, and hence may be more inclined to
correct the political trajectory of China's evolution, bringing it
closer to the economic trajectory.
The issue of human rights is thus likely to become more acute as the
political regime seeks one way or another to close the gap between
itself and its evolving socioeconomic context. The constraints on
personal political liberty, the denial of religious freedom, and the
suppression of minorities--most notably in Tibet--cannot be sustained
in a setting of growing social and economic pluralism. The recent
efforts to suppress the Falun Gong movement testify to the regime's
sense of ideological and political vulnerability. Accordingly, the
issue of freedom is bound to become both more critical and more
difficult for the existing regime to manage. Indeed, it is almost
safe to predict that in the near future--probably within the coming
decade--China will experience a serious political crisis.
In any case, whatever its political prospects, China will not be
emerging as a global power in the foreseeable future. If that term is
to have any real meaning, it must imply cutting-edge superiority of a
truly global military capability, significant international financial
and economic influence, a clear-cut technological lead, and an
appealing social lifestyle--all of which must combine to create
worldwide political clout. Even in the most unlikely circumstance of
continued rapid economic growth, China will not be top-ranked in any
of these domains for many decades to come. What is more, its backward
and debilitated social infrastructure, combined with the per capita
poverty of its enormous population, represents a staggering liability.
One should note here that some of the current scare-mongering
regarding the alleged inevitability of China's emergence as a
dominant world power is reminiscent of earlier hysteria regarding
Japan's supposedly predestined ascendancy to superpower status. That
hysteria was similarly driven by mechanical projections of economic
growth rates, without taking into account other complex
considerations or unexpected contingencies. The Japanese purchase of
Rockefeller Plaza became at one point the symbol of the paranoiac,
one-dimensional glimpse into Japan's future.
Be that as it may, China's unsettled domestic scene is likely to
reinforce an inherently ambivalent and occasionally antagonistic
attitude toward the United States. Though Chinese leaders recognize
that they need a stable and even cooperative relationship with the
United States if their country isto continue developing, China is no
longer America's strategic partner against a threatening Soviet
Union. It became so after the Shanghai breakthrough of 1972 and, even
more so, after the normalization of relations in 1980, which
dramatically transformed a three decade-long adversarial relationship
into a decade of strategic cooperation. Today, with the Soviet Union
gone, China is neither America's adversary nor its strategic partner.
It could become an antagonist, however, if either China so chooses or
America so prompts.
Accentuating the Negative
Currently, Chinese policy toward the United States is a combination
of functional cooperation in areas of specific interest and of a
generally adverse definition of America's world role. The latter has
prompted Chinese diplomatic initiatives designed to undercut U.S.
global leadership. Chinese policy toward Russia is ostentatiously
friendly on the rhetorical level, with frequent references to "a
strategic partnership." Such is also the case (perhaps not
surprisingly) with Sino-French relations, with both sides proclaiming
(as, for example, during the October 1999 Paris summit between
Presidents Chirac and Jiang) their passionate fidelity to the concept
of global "multipolarity"--not a very subtle slam at the disliked
American "hegemony."
Indeed, the word "hegemony" has become the favorite Chinese term for
defining America's current world role. Chinese public pronouncements
and professional journals that deal with international affairs
regularly denounce the United States as an overreaching, dominant,
arrogant and interventionist power, increasingly reliant on the use
of force, and potentially tempted to intervene even in China's
internal affairs.
The NATO action in Kosovo precipitated especially a massive
outpouring of Chinese allegations that America has embraced the
concept of interventionism at the expense of respect for traditional
national sovereignty, with dire implications for China. As one
alarmed Chinese expert put it:
Suppose serious anti-Communist Party or anti-government domestic
turbulence erupts in China which cannot be quickly brought under
control, and, at the same time, the international community commonly
joins the anti-China stream. In this case, the hegemonists (perhaps
jointly with their allied nations) could launch a military invasion
of China.
The above was neither an extreme nor an isolated assertion. Such
charges have been accompanied by growing concern that the United
States is accelerating and intensifying its efforts to construct an
anti-Chinese coalition in the Far East, embracing what is represented
as a dangerously rearming Japan, South Korea and also Taiwan, a
coalition "that resembles a small NATO of East Asia." American,
Japanese and South Korean discussions of possible collaboration
against theater missile attacks have intensified these Chinese
suspicions. Occasional American and Taiwanese press speculation that
Taiwan might be included in such a collective effort has also further
aggravated the Chinese, who see it as additional evidence that the
United States is increasingly inclined to make permanent the current
separation of Taiwan from China.
Perhaps the most striking example of the current Chinese inclination
to stress the negative dimensions of the U.S.-China relationship is
the attempt to provide a deeper intellectual or cultural
rationalization for the seemingly intensifying antagonism. The
Chinese-owned Hong Kong daily, Ta Kung Pao, published a major
editorial entitled "On the Cultural Roots of Sino-U.S. Conflict" in
September 1999, advancing the thesis that "the conflict between
Chinese and American civilizations is at a deeper level one between
sacred and secular lifestyles." Amazingly for a nominally communist
regime, it is China that is said to represent the former: "Chinese
civilization has always stressed an integration of heaven with man."
This identity is said to contrast sharply with "the consumerist and
hedonist mode of behavior that grew out of American Civilization",
making Americans "look down on Oriental Civilization, holding that it
is backward and ignorant." The policy inference that was drawn from
the foregoing was stark: "in China-U.S. relations, it will be
absolutely impossible to permanently resolve conflicts of political
views in areas such as human rights, democracy, and freedom."
To be sure, the foregoing views are in part instrumental, for they
are also meant to serve the current Chinese efforts to put America on
the ideological defensive. They do not define for Beijing the overall
character of the U.S.-China relationship. Since China seeks to reduce
the scope of America's global preponderance (and its resulting
leverage on China), it needs some sort of a doctrinal legitimation
for controlled antagonism; yet China also wants to retain for itself,
for obvious reasons of domestic self-interest, the vital benefits of
collaboration with America. Striking a balance between the two is not
easy, especially given the fact that China's communist leaders have
not found an effective substitute for their previous Marxist
world-view. That central reality imposes a severe restraint on
Chinese anti-American proclivities.
Hence, U.S.-China military links are being preserved, economic ties
enhanced and political relations kept relatively congenial--even
while "multipolarity" is hailed and "hegemony" condemned in joint
declarations with Moscow, Paris and whoever else cares to join. The
result is a confused amalgam, involving communist terminology and
Chinese nationalist sentiments. That mishmash reflects the ambivalent
position in which the Chinese leadership finds itself both at home
and at large, given the unresolved ambiguities of Chinese domestic
and foreign policy.
Doubtless, China's leaders, generally intelligent and hardheaded,
sense that inherent ambiguity. They must realize that Paris, rhetoric
aside, will not join in some fanciful Beijing-Moscow-Paris
anti-American coalition. They have to know that Russia does not have
much to offer to China, except perhaps some technologically not very
advanced military equipment. Ultimately, they have to understand--and
their conduct reflects that they do--that at this historical juncture
the relationship with the United States is central to China's future.
Outright hostility is simply not in China's interest.
The foregoing points toward a further observation. China today, in
relationship to the wider international system, is neither the
militarist Japan of the 1930s nor the ideologically and strategically
threatening Soviet Union of the 1950s-70s. Though all analogies, by
definition, are partially misleading, there are some important
parallels between China's current situation and imperial Germany's
circa 1890. At that time, German policy was in flux, while Germany
itself was a rising power. Like today's China, Germany's ambitions
were driven by a resentment of a perceived lack of recognition and
respect (in the case of Germany, especially on the part of a haughty
British Empire, and in the case of today's China, on the part of an
arrogant America), by fears of encirclement by a confining and
increasingly antagonistic coalition, by rising nationalistic
ambitions on the part of its predominantly young population, and by
the resulting desire to precipitate a significant rearrangement in
the global pecking order.
One will never know with any certainty whether the European war of
1914, a quarter of a century later, could have been avoided by wiser
policy in the 1890s. Similarly, one cannot be certain about which
direction China will head over the next quarter of a century.
However, already at this stage it should be self-evident which
prospect is to be avoided. For America, that requires a strategically
clearheaded management of the sensitive issue of Taiwan and, even
more so, of the longer range task of fitting China into a wider and
more stable Eurasian equilibrium.
The Taiwan Question
For America, Taiwan is a problem; China is the challenge. Taiwan
complicates U.S.-China relations, but it is U.S.-China relations that
will determine in large measure the degree of stability or instability
in the Far East and, more generally, in Eurasia. Admittedly, how the
Taiwan issue is handled will influence--and in some circumstances
could even determine--the evolution of U.S.-China relations. But,
except for its impact on those relations, the status of Taiwan itself
is not a central international concern.
Still, it is important to take both history and strategy into account
when addressing the sensitive and volatile issue of Taiwan's
relationship with the mainland. That issue is a direct legacy of
China's civil war. It is also an unresolved legacy, for Taiwan's
separate existence reminds that neither side involved in the civil
war succeeded in totally eliminating the other. Though one side won
by gaining control over the mainland, and thus over the vast majority
of the Chinese population, the losing side still preserved itself not
only as a political entity but also as a potential political
alternative, even though entrenched on a relatively small island
inhabited by only 2 percent of China's people.
That Taiwan succeeded in preserving its independence from the side
that emerged victorious in the Chinese civil war has been due mainly
to the United States. America, though indirectly, continued to be
involved in that war even after its termination on the mainland in
1949. It both protected and bolstered Taiwan. Episodic military
clashes in the Taiwan Strait occurred until the de facto suspension
of the civil war in the 1970s--a suspension attained by direct
U.S.-China talks initiated under President Nixon and later formalized
through the normalization of U.S.-China relations under President
Carter. The resulting arrangement was genuinely creative, for it
enabled the winning side to acquiesce to the de facto partition of
China as the transitional outcome of the civil war without accepting
it as a permanent de jure reality.
That sensible accommodation was made possible by the acceptance on
both sides of the intricate formula whereby (1) the United States
acknowledged that in the view both of the mainland and of Taiwan
there is only one China; and (2) the United States affirmed that it
expects the issue of reunification to be resolved peacefully (and
that U.S. national interest would be engaged if it should be
otherwise); whereas (3) the Chinese reiterated that reunification is
an internal Chinese matter, to be attained by whatever means China
deems appropriate, though their preference is also for a peaceful
resolution.
Once that hurdle had been traversed it followed that the officially
recognized government of China had to be the one that governs 98
percent of the Chinese people. And it also followed that Taiwan could
not be recognized as a separate "sovereign" state, though the United
States could maintain practical and functional ties with it. Such
ties were then formally legislated by the U.S. Congress in the
"Taiwan Relations Act" of 1980, which regularized U.S. relations with
Taiwan without defining it as a sovereign state. In effect, the
outcome of the great bargain preserved the formal unity of China
while practically respecting the current reality of a separate status
for Taiwan.
That arrangement has proven to be a blessing for Taiwan, while
simultaneously permitting the development of extensive U.S.-China
ties. Taiwan's resulting prosperity hardly needs documenting. It has
blossomed both as an economic miracle and as a democracy in the more
secure setting of abated Sino-American tensions, of continued U.S.
arms sales, and of the openly proclaimed U.S. stake in a peaceful
Taiwan Strait. Taiwan's success has also provided stunning and
encouraging evidence for the proposition that democracy and Chinese
culture are compatible, an example that has significant long-term
implications for the future evolution of mainland China.
Taiwan has not only prospered economically and flowered politically
but has become a respected and active participant in various
international organizations. For example, it is a full member of the
Asian Development Bank, APEC and the Central American Bank for
Economic Integration, and is currently seeking access to the WTO. It
maintains regular economic, technological and cultural ties with more
than 140 states with which it does not have formal diplomatic
relations.
An even more impressive testimonial to the benefits accruing from the
U.S.-China normalization of relations has been the actual
pacification of the Taiwan Strait. In contrast to the sporadic
clashes that used to occur prior to normalization, there has been a
massive flow of capital and people across the hitherto separating
water. These socioeconomic ties, in turn, have permitted the
emergence of an informal but serious dialogue between representatives
of the respective authorities.
Lee's Unilateralism
That informal accommodation was jeopardized in the second half of
1999 by the unilateral redefinition of Taiwan's relationship to the
mainland, abruptly launched by the Taiwanese authorities. In a highly
publicized interview, President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan suddenly
abandoned the "One China" formula, redefining the Taiwan-mainland
relationship as involving "state-to-state relations." The import of
the new formulation was self-evident: one China was brusquely
redefined as two separate states. Moreover, Lee in a subsequent
statement insisted that the inhabitants of Taiwan have acquired a
"fresh national identity based on the New Taiwanese consciousness."
Lee's initiative was launched without any prior consultations with
the United States. It was immediately followed, however, by
stepped-up efforts by Taiwanese supporters in the United States,
encouraged by a well-financed Taiwan lobby, to induce the U.S.
government, through congressional pressure, to take a stand in
support of Taiwanese "sovereignty." Various supporters of Taiwan also
launched a public campaign alleging a growing Chinese military threat
to Taiwan, urging particularly the Republican presidential candidates
to support the so-called "Taiwan Security Enhancement Act",
introduced earlier in the year in the U.S. Congress. That proposed
act aimed at nothing less than the de facto revival of the 1955
Mutual Defense Treaty with the Republic of China (terminated
following the U.S. recognition of the People's Republic of China),
with its specific and non-discretionary provisions designed to
restore Taiwan as a U.S. military ally against China.
It should be noted that these alarmist pressure tactics disregarded
the fact that the PRC currently lacks, and in the foreseeable future
will not have, the airlift and sealift capability to effect a
successful 120-mile, cross-strait amphibious invasion. One need only
recall the enormous difficulty of the Normandy landings in 1944
across the narrower English channel, in spite of overwhelming allied
air and naval supremacy as well as the relative weakness of the
German forces. In contrast, the Taiwanese ground forces that would be
resisting any landing communist forces are relatively better armed
and more mobile. Taiwan also has the means to contest PRC efforts to
assert air and naval superiority in the Taiwan Strait.
It is also noteworthy that the U.S. secretary of defense, in an
assessment issued in February 1999, concluded that only "by 2005, the
PLA [People's Liberation Army] will possess the capability to attack
Taiwan with air and missile strikes which would degrade key military
facilities and damage the island's economic infrastructure." Even
then, the acquisition of such a capability would not mean that the
PRC could execute an effective invasion. One must also take into
account Taiwan's capacity to retaliate effectively by striking or
mining China's major ports, thereby cutting China's trade links with
the entire world.
In any case, whatever may have been Mr. Lee's motives in publicly
venting the formula of "state-to-state relations", there was no
pressing security need for his unilateral initiative. Hence the
question: cui bono? Since the Taiwanese leadership had to know that
it would complicate U.S.-China relations and generate new tensions in
the Taiwan Strait, one has to assume that the initiative was taken
(at least in part) on the calculation that any U.S.-China military
confrontation, even if provoked by Taiwan, would work to Taiwan's
political advantage.
For the United States, acquiescence to the new formulation and
passage of the proposed "Taiwan Security Enhancement Act" would mean
that Taiwan has been granted nothing short of a carte blanche to
redefine its status as it wishes, with the United States obligated to
defend the island, come what may. It would amount to a de facto
unconditional guarantee of U.S. protection for whatever provocative
step Taiwan might take, including even a formal secession from China,
and thus it would be a repudiation of prior U.S.-China undertakings.
It is also important to note that in any ensuing hostilities in the
Taiwan Strait, the United States would find itself altogether
isolated internationally.
For China, the proposed U.S. legislation would signal America's
re-engagement in the Chinese civil war, while Beijing's acquiescence
to the new "state-to-state" formulation would mean the formal
acceptance of the permanent partition of China. Neither is a
palatable choice for Beijing. It would also mean that, in the eyes of
the Chinese, the grand bargain with the United States had been
exploited by Washington, first to consolidate Taiwan, and then to
transform a separatist Taiwan into a permanent U.S. protectorate. No
current Chinese leader could accept such an outcome and normal
relations between the United States and the PRC would thereby be
jeopardized.
The Clinton administration was, therefore, fully justified in repudiating the new Taiwanese formula and in reassuring Beijing that previous U.S.-China understandings remained in force. For some time to come, Washington will have no choice but to navigate carefully between the risk inherent in any unconditional assurances to Taiwan's security and the obligation to discourage any Chinese attempt at coercive unification. Perhaps an additional bilateral Washington-Beijing clarification regarding Taiwan might be helpful if it were to involve a clear-cut Chinese commitment (expressed, naturally, as a unilateral Chinese decision) never to use force in order to achieve national unity, matched by a simultaneous--and similarly "independent"--U. S. commitment to terminate all arms sales to Taiwan if it should formally declare itself to have seceded from China. However, even then, the U.S.-China relationship would still remain vulnerable to disruption because of the unresolved and always sensitive issue of Taiwan's future. That is why it is unlikely that either side would be willing to exchange such mutual assurances.
Democracy: The Essential Condition
ULTIMATELY, the issue of Taiwan will be determined primarily by what happens in China itself. A China that fails to evolve politically, or that flounders socially--not to speak of a China that regresses ideologically--will not attract Taiwan. Nor will it intimidate Taiwan, for the United States will continue to have a tangible national interest in the prevention of warfare in the Taiwan Strait. It follows that Taiwan will, and should, continue to have prudently measured access to the necessary U.S. military wherewithal for self-defense.
In contrast, a successfully developing and progressively democratizing China may eventually be able to reach some practical arrangement with Taiwan. It might do so by enlarging the "one country, two systems" formula (currently applied to Hong Kong) to "one country, several systems."
The "one country, two systems" formula was unveiled, with considerable publicity, by Deng Xiaoping during my meeting with him in Beijing in 1984. It was explicitly designed to accommodate Taiwan. In 1997, during a visit to Taiwan, I used the phrase "one country, several systems", having in mind--in addition to China--Hong Kong, Macau and perhaps eventually Taiwan. In an interview with the London Times (October 18, 1999), President Jiang tantalizingly observed, in speaking of "the main objectives for China by the middle of the next century", that, "We will ultimately resolve the question of Taiwan and accomplish the great cause of national reunification by adhering to the policy of 'peaceful reunification and one country, two systems' after the successful return of Hong Kong and Macao." (The italicized passages [my emphasis] clearly hint at historical patience.)
At this stage, it is not possible to be more precise, but Taiwanese spokesmen are generally correct in postulating that China's democratization is the practical precondition for any arrangement that may approximate (and eventually become) reunification. It thus follows that the real strategic challenge for the United States--more important than the issue of Taiwan--pertains to China's evolution, both in its domestic politics and especially with regard to the global mindset of its ruling elite.
That evolution can be subtly influenced from the outside, even if a democratic transformation of China cannot be so imposed. Positive change in China will come, in the main, from socioeconomic pressures, unleashed (in part, unintentionally) by the ruling elite's otherwise rational economic reforms. Their cumulative effect, especially because of modern mass communications, is inherently incompatible with enduring political repression. In that context, the cause of human rights can be, and should be, deliberately supported from the outside, even at the cost of some friction with China's rulers.
China, however, is not America's client state. Nor does it pose a global ideological challenge like the former Soviet Union, in which case it was useful to put that country on the defensive by making human rights into a major issue. Indeed, a policy of sustained ideological confrontation with China is more likely to delay desired changes by stimulating more overt regressive reactions from an increasingly insecure political elite. Given the ongoing changes within China, including its evident trend toward more openness to the world, the promotion of human rights in the country is likely to be more effective if pursued with deliberate indirection.
For example, extensive programs to assist the Chinese in embracing the rule of law are bound to have a significant democratizing impact. Indeed, as the negative experience of post-Soviet Russia shows, loud emphasis on electoral democracy can prove to be self-deceptive. In contrast, the institutionalized spread of the rule of law can create enduring foundations for genuine democratization while enhancing the prospects for a functioning market economy. Since the ruling elite finds the latter to be in its interest, the propagation of the rule of law is both politically easier and in the long run more effective.
Similarly, the development of functional assistance to local officials, who in increasing numbers are subject to election, should be a major focus of an enlightened but not strident program on behalf of human rights. The stronger and more democratic the local government, the weaker the central controls. Yet here, too, the top political elite is susceptible to seductive co-optation since it realizes that an effective local government is necessary for successful modernization. Human rights can thus be piggy-backed onto China's own domestic ambitions. The U.S. Congress would be well-advised to bear the above strictures in mind, while providing more support for various non-governmental organizations engaged in helping the Chinese to develop a genuine civil society.
The matter of Tibet is more intractable, especially since a strategy of indirection is not responsive to the more immediate grievances of the Tibetan people. Hence, on this issue a public stance of disapproval is unavoidable. At some point, the Chinese government may conclude that the costs to China's reputation are too high, and that some creative application of the "one country, several systems" formula would provide a more constructive solution to what is clearly a major violation of established international norms for the treatment of ethnic minorities. Direct talks with the Dalai Lama would represent a significant step in the right direction, and continued U.S. support for the Tibetan people is thus in order.
The Japan Factor
EFFECTIVE management of these delicate issues is more likely if the United States sustains a policy that progressively enhances the Chinese stake in a peacefulNortheast Asia and in a constructive Chinese role in a stable Eurasian power equilibrium. Only in that larger context can the salience of the Taiwan issue eventually be subsumed and the formula of a democratic and prosperous China as one country with several systems" become reality. Moreover, just as the United States could not have conducted a successful policy toward the Soviet Union without simultaneously calibrating most carefully its relations with Europe, so American policy toward China must also be, almost by definition, a triangular policy, shaped with Japan very much in mind.
China is especially sensitive to anything pertaining to Japan and its changing international role. China views Japan both as a historic rival and as an extension of U.S. power. The character and scope of the U.S.-Japan alliance is hence a matter of the utmost importance to Beijing. And, not surprisingly, the Japanese are similarly preoccupied with China and its relationship with the United States. Particularly striking was the observation by Democratic Party of Japan President Yukio Hatoyama that, "We should make more efforts to reinforce China's confidence in Japan because we are not certain what the future holds for U.S.-China relations." Hatoyama added: "It cannot completely be ruled out that Washington and Beijing will not compete with each other over hegemony. Thus, it is potentially somewhat dangerous to consider it safe to always side with the United States." It is no exaggeration to say that whether Japan remains primarily allied with America, or instead arms itself and acts largely on its own in Asi a, will be predominantly determined by how well or badly the United States handles its relations with China.
The consequences of this triangular reality cut two ways. For China, the key implication is that Beijing would be wise to exercise self-restraint in its anti-American "hegemony" campaign. It could backfire badly for China. Overheated Chinese rhetoric about an anti-American coalition with Russia (and perhaps also with India) might prompt even stronger pressures in America on behalf of an anti-Chinese, U.S.-led alliance embracing not only Japan and South Korea but even Taiwan. Some in America might also advocate a strategic counter toward India, on the grounds that India is wary of China and that it shares America's democratic credentials. The Chinese should also be aware that latent but ingrown anti-Chinese sentiments, once given the opportunity, could quickly come to dominate Japanese politics.
In fact, anti-Chinese sentiments in Japan, especially in its foreign policy establishment, are visibly on the rise. In the words of Nobuo Miyamato, the Director of the Nomura Research Council,
even though a joint declaration by Japan and China talks about a 'friendly and cooperative partnership', Japan and China will not be able to extricate themselves from a relationship of political and strategic competition for the next 50-100 years.
Open Sino-American hostility would most likely spur an intense arms race between Japan and China, to the detriment of both the stability of, and the American position in, the Far East. Though neither America nor Japan can exclude the possibility that China may, indeed, become a threat--and hence their alliance is also a form of insurance--it is neither in America's nor in Japan's interest to precipitate that threat. Hence an anti-Chinese alliance with a rearmed Japan should be America's last, and not first, strategic option.
Accordingly, for America the key implication is that the United States has to be very deliberate in balancing the inevitable readjustment in U.S.-Japan defense cooperation, pointing toward an enhanced international security role for Japan, with the imperative of sensitivity for Chinese concerns. The Chinese are convinced that Japan is irrevocably committed to significant remilitarization and that its sharp edge is pointed at China. The Chinese press very deliberately plays up any Japanese statements that can be construed as anti-Chinese. Thus even the most authoritative Chinese newspaper went into paroxysms of anger when the newly elected governor of Tokyo, Ishihara Shintaro--known also for his attacks on the United States--referred to Taiwan as Japan's "peripheral state." The United States, therefore, must be especially careful to make certain that a more militarily powerful Japan is fully integrated into a larger cooperative security system in Northeast Asia and is not poised primarily as America's anti-Chinese ally.
It follows also that increasing U.S.-Japan security cooperation in the Far East should be designed in a manner that does not mimic NATO's originally overt focus on the Soviet Union's aggressive intentions. For the present, China does not have the capacity for genuinely serious regional aggression. Accordingly, ongoing U.S.-Japan-South Korea defense planning as well as joint exercises should avoid an overtly anti-Chinese cast. In addition, China should be included, as much as possible, in the emerging multilateral dialogue regarding regional security. It has taken years, and much American effort, to precipitate serious three-way U.S.-Japan-South Korea military discussions. Some four-way U.S.-Japan-China-South Korea defense consultations have also been initiated, and these may become gradually more formal. The key point to bear in mind here is that regional security in Northeast Asia is not a zero-sum game; how China is treated might well become a self-fulfilling prophesy.
The politically sensitive issue of Theater Missile Defense (TMD) is very germane to the above comments. Handled well, a TMD system could be regionally stabilizing; handled badly, it could spark intense U.S.-China hostility while setting off in Japan a polarizing and destabilizing debate over Japan's relations with the United States and with China. Accordingly, two important precautions are in order. The first is that no regional U.S.-Japan-South Korea TMD should include Taiwan either formally or through direct deployment. Taiwan can be de facto covered by a TMD located on U.S. naval platforms, thereby avoiding the Chinese charge that the United States is reverting by the back door to a formal defense arrangement with Taiwan. Secondly, consultations with the Chinese regarding any eventual missile system should be held on the same basis as proposed to Russia. There is no compelling reason to treat China differently.
More generally, it is also important to make the utmost effort to stimulate a comprehensive strategic dialogue with China regarding not only the security of Northeast Asia but of Eurasia more generally. Whenever possible, it should be a triangular dialogue, involving also the Japanese. Appropriate subjects should include the future of Russia (a topic rarely discussed in depth with the Chinese--yet of vital importance to China, given its far larger population, rapidly growing economy, and the emptiness of the neighboring Russian Far East), the status of the Central Asian states (with their energy resources being of great interest to both China and Japan), stability in Southeast Asia, and the unstable relationship between nuclear-armed India and Pakistan. Developing and institutionalizing such a dialogue, and especially making it truly trilateral, will require a major effort and much time, but promoting it should be viewed as a high U.S. strategic priority.
A three-way strategic dialogue could in turn pave the way for a broader Eurasian security forum, spanning America, Europe, Russia, China and Japan. The west of the Eurasian continent is already highly organized through NATO and the EU, and these integrated structures overlap with Eurasia's volatile "middle zone through the fifty-four member Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which includes Russia and the Central Asian states. In the east, institutionalized security cooperation involves only the formal U.S.-Japan and U.S.-South Korea treaties as well as the informal Japan-South Korea consultations. China is not formally engaged, and there is no equivalent to the loosely cooperative OSCE. At the very least, a serious five-way strategic dialogue might prompt the redefinition of the letter E in OSCE from "European" to "Eurasian" through the inclusion in an expanded and redefined OSCE of a dozen or so Asian states.
Dealing China In
THE TASK OF assimilating China into a wider Eurasian equilibrium has to be pursued on other fronts as well. In addition to shaping a more sustained triangular relationship with China and Japan, China's accession to the WTO and the regularization of normal trade relations between the United States and China would be significant steps in the gradual integration of China into the world economy. Much the same applies to the question of China's inclusion in the G-8 (which I have been advocating for more than three years). The G-8 summit has become a hybrid, neither a forum for the democracies nor a conclave of the most advanced economies. That dual formula was compromised by the politically expedient decision to include Russia, hardly an advanced economy and questionably a democracy. Similar political expediency, therefore, should dictate the inclusion of the economically much more dynamic China, with the G-9 thereby becoming a more genuine global power forum. That would propitiate China's quest for status while also enhancing its stake in the emerging global system.
In some respects, China's international behavior is already no worse, and may be even better, than India's. New Delhi over the years backed various forms of Soviet aggression, went to war with its neighbors more often than China, flaunted its disregard for nuclear non-proliferation, used force to resolve some colonial legacies such as Goa, has been careless of human rights in Kashmir, and has proved no less obstreperous than China in the WTO negotiations. Yet no leading presidential candidate in America has labeled India as America's major "competitor", as was the case with China in late 1999. Obviously, India's democratic credentials give its external ambitions a more benign cast, but the comparison with India--like China a very poor, developing, but also politically aspiring power--should help to place in perspective the somewhat overheated fears of China.
Still, it is important to reiterate that China is unlikely to become America's strategic partner again in the manner that it was during the decade starting with the late 1970s. The most that can reasonably be expected, barring a serious domestic or international crisis, is that China will gradually become an increasingly cooperative player in the international "game", in which the major participants play according to shared rules even while each keeps his own score. As a major regional player, China will occasionally collide with the United States, but it is also likely to find that its long-run interests are better served by observing common standards. China may thus become neither a formal ally nor a declared enemy of America but an important participant in the evolving international system, increasingly meeting and grudgingly accepting more and more of that system's conventions.
Such an internationally more cooperative China will have an important geostrategic effect on Eurasia. Given Russia's evident fears of China's larger economy and population, such a China will be much more likely to push Moscow toward the Atlanticist Europe than a China that is antagonistic toward the United States. At the same time, such a China will reinforce Japan's stake in a stable alliance with America without frightening Tokyo either into rapid rearmament or into divisive tensions with the United States.
It follows that the central strategic task of U.S. policy toward China should be nothing less than the attainment of a fundamental, truly historic shift in the mindset of the Chinese elite: to view China no longer as the self-isolated Middle Kingdom, or as the Celestial Empire, or as the aggrieved victim, or as the world's revolutionary center--but, more prosaically, as a vested partner in Eurasian stability and as a key player in the global system.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former national security adviser to the president, is author of The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (Basic Books, 1997).
Essay Types: Essay