A SENSE OF ASIA
Wanted [desperately]: A China strategy
See the Sol Sanders Archive
By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
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Monday, October 23, 2006
It’s unlikely Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice got much surcease from her Beijing conversations to elicit China’s help in persuading North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.
The results have little to do with Rice’s diplomatic talents but much to do with the nature of China’s regime’s leadership. Although there is intelligent gossip President Hu Jintao has consolidated his hold on the Party and the military, he is beset with domestic problems preventing strong executive initiatives.
For, in diplomatic parlance, Beijing is conflicted on Korea: it condescends, in Chinese imperial tradition, toward the Korean regime. But the alliance is a weapon in international politics. It fears collapse; a reunited Korea, a major regional force, would not assure present close profitable economic ties and political accommodation with South Korea would continue. And its military have old ties with Pyongyang’s military. Nor, truth be known, is it a stretch to believe Bejing directly profited monetarily and politically from Pyongyang’s weapons proliferation. [Currently Chinese government firms are under U.S. sanctions for doing exactly what Washington fears North Korea might do with weapons of mass destruction.]
That much common sense, so to speak, tells us. For the rest, China is increasingly at the center of a host of high priority foreign policy problems. The question is whether the U.S. has a strategy for dealing with “a rising China”. The evidence to outsiders is that it does not; the Chinese interface with the U.S. is being dealt with piecemeal by too many cooks, and as far as can be told, not very effectively.
First and foremost, is North Korea. China now, with Japanese, American and Australian financial sanctions, becomes Pyongyang’s only lifetime supplying energy and food. If Pyongyang is to be brought to heel with economic pressure, China must act. And U.S. policy must find a way to force Beijing to act.
China is accumulating enormous, unprecedented foreign exchange reserves, at an ever increasing rate, through subsidies for its currency and exporters, threatening the world’s financial structure. It refuses to modify policies but must be persuaded to do so – and quickly before the world faces a Chinese financial collapse.
Beijing is lying about an accelerating arms buildup with long-range weapons against an undesignated [at least publicly] enemy, incomprehensible to its neighbors and the U.S. An estimate of Beijing intent must be made and clearly labeled publicly as such.
China is obstructionist in international diplomacy, not only in the UN Security Council, but in its courtship of pariah nations whose only affinity seems to be their antagonism to the U.S. – from Sudan to Castro’s Cuba to Chavez’ Venezuela to Burma. It must be countered.
Beijing refuses to renounce the possibility of force to reach an accommodation with 25 million Chinese on Taiwan who have built an otherwise stable democratic regime, but threatens them with a growing missile battery on the Mainland. After finally understanding its bellicosity was counterproductive, it has reversed field and should be forcefully encouraged to go further.
As with the Soviets over decades of confrontation, there is great danger American policymakers – and our learned academics – indulge in “mirror-imaging”. That is the ability to ascribe to others – the Freudians used to call it “projection” on a personal level -- one’s own motivations.
The tendency is to believe the Chinese, with their grand traditions and their enormously demonstrated commercial talents, know what they are doing if we only understood it. That may not be the case; both Hu and his sidekick, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, are bureaucratic hacks, survivors of the monstrous Maoist nightmare. There is a good deal of academic tut-tuting about making room for China so Germany’s troubled entry into great power status in the 19th and 20th century should not be repeated. But are the Chinese really ready to settle for that?
China has had the full cooperation of the industrial world – granted, for mutual gain – in virtually unlimited transfers of technology and capital to build its new economy. But not even admission to the World Trade Organization, one of the rites of passage, has led the Chinese to adjust their monetary policies, establish a commercial code, or protect intellectual properties.
Is there any reason to believe Chinese leadership can handle the economic effects of their benighted policy better than more experienced Western bankers in similar situations were unable to? Will growing industrial and rural discontent in China be better handled than in China’s past?
The history of miscalculations of foreign military development is legion – from Weimar to Iraq So far, outsiders have underestimated Chinese abilities in nuclear devices, in missiles, and in space travel. Might we also be wrong about intent?
What is called for is formulation of a new overall strategy to deal with Beijing in a rapidly changing international environment. That would not be easy in Washington, notorious for being a one-crisis city [at the moment Iraq] city. But it’s time.
Sol W. Sanders, (solsanders@cox.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 and East-Asia-Intel.com.
Monday, October 23, 2006
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