World Tribune.com


A SENSE OF ASIA

U.S. taking harder line toward China — on all fronts


See the Sol Sanders Archive

By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Sol W. Sanders

June 9, 2005

Despite continued pressure to soften it from State, and perhaps CIA, holding up The Pentagon's annual review of the Chinese military [due in March], the Bush Administration's line appears to be hardening. The evidence is apparent on all fronts, economic, strategic and diplomatic.

True, Treasury has let up a bit on Beijing doing something about its undervalued currency. One reason: only an unrealistic whopping reevaluation would affect China's one quarter share of the 2004 U.S. balance of payments deficit [$163 billion]. The Fed's sainted Chairman Greenspan pointed out imports from China would move to other low wage producers. Perhaps even more important, the enormous wages differential between China [and even other Third World producers such as Mexico] is so great, a Chinese currency hike would not cut into them significantly.

Washington has stepped up verbal assault on other economic problems such as notorious Chinese intellectual property piracy. [An Indian IT executive, for example, said a bumper sticker floated in the honeymoon following Chinese Prime Minister Wen's visit touting an Indian software-Chinese hardware IT worldwide juggernaut is a non-starter. He said association with the 90 percent of China's software which is stolen would jeopardize India's outsourcing and investment relationship with the U.S., Europe, and Japan.] A trade association says Chinese theft for moviemakers, software companies and music labels alone was $2.5 billion last year. Secretary of Commerce Gutierrez maiden visit was unable to get even token “gift” concessions on this or on textile imports ballooning over last year's $10 billion after China's takeover of other producers' turf when the world textile cartel terminated.

These growing economic concerns increasingly are a backdrop for graver geopolitics. Word that North Korea is ready to come back to the six-power negotiating table, significantly came through bilateral liaison at the UN. It did not come through Beijing. There is an increasing consensus China either doesn't want to or cannot force Pyongyang's hand on the issue of weapons of mass destruction. If Pyongyang does end its year-long absence, it could well be because a new famine threatens and the ever so slowly tightening noose of Japan's Koizumi Administration on its second largest source of non-weapons proliferation income. Nor can it have escaped Pyongyang's attention anonymous Administration have said Washington might go to the UN Security Council with its WMD threat, calling Beijing's bluff to use it veto. In any case, returning to the table is no assurance Pyongyang is ready to give up its nuclear weapons stance. After all, that threat and missiles sales, and perhaps, later, the possibility of selling nukes is making a third-rate, bankrupt, barbarous, tinhorn dictatorship a world player.

In a speech to strategists gathered in Singapore, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld asked the big question. “Since no nation threatens China, one must wonder: Why this growing investment? Why these continuing large and expanding arms purchases? Why these continuing robust deployments?” Rumsfeld went on to talk about the failure of Chinese leadership to offer political participation to its people. That, he said, has proved in other parts of the world to be the only way to produce stable and friendly relations with other powers. But, in fact, Beijing has begun a new crackdown on dissidents and internet communications.

Critical to the relationship is the question of Taiwan, of course. Rumsfeld, as other Administration spokesmen, reiterated the U.S. position – slightly skewed in Sec. Powell's last visit to China when he hinted at American mediation. Washington takes no position except settlement without force. Beijing, of course, determinedly refuses to give up that option, setting up a missiles forest in its southern provinces aimed at Taiwan. Recent romancing between [democratic, unknown on the Mainland, of course] Taiwan opposition politicians by Beijing may have made President Chen's position [dependent on “independence” forces in his own party] more uncomfortable. But they have not altered the basic situation of a Taiwan investing and trading with the Mainland but threatened with destruction. Therefore Taiwan's parliament now faces a rejiggered $18.5 billion defense arms package which The Pentagon thinks is the minimum for insuring its defense credibility.

Beijing has taken note [as Pyongyang certainly has] of the continuing U.S. military forces East Asian redeployment, partially a function of Rumsfeld's post-Cold War “transformation”, the exigencies of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but also of the growing perception of the worrying China enigma. Essential to this array are results of Tokyo and Washington sitting down shortly for the nitty-gritty of strengthening Japanese-U.S. tactical cooperation under what is becoming, in fact, a more mutual defense treaty.

But there are, still, in Washington, two camps: those who believe China's rise as a world power can be “managed”, and those, who believe history [as Donald Kagan has said] give no evidence all the imponderables of such a complex situation can be known much less manipulated. If not, then – the argument of creating an aggressive China by anticipating it notwithstanding – there is nothing left but that old rule of thumb, prepare for the worst, hope for the best. That is increasingly the China line out of this Administration.

Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@comcast.net), is an Asian specialist with more than 25 years in the region, and a former correspondent for Business Week, U.S. News & World Report and United Press International. He writes weekly for World Tribune.com.

June 9, 2005

Print this Article Print this Article Email this article Email this article Subscribe to this Feature Free Headline Alerts


See current edition of

Return to World Tribune.com Front Cover
Your window on the world

Contact World Tribune.com at world@worldtribune.com