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It has not been a good fortnight for Pandahuggers, those who believe “engagement” with “a rising China” can ease Beijing’s growing power into the international system without an explosion. China Hawks will take satisfaction, if not comfort, from events evidencing somewhere in the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy aggressive intent is manifest.
Beijing was quick, of course, to back away from the Ambassador’s forthright statement. Not much had been going on anyway in the torturous Beijing-New Delhi negotiations – except a further move by India to acknowledge Chinese sovereignty in Tibet and Beijing’s acceptance of India’s old suzerainty derived from British India in the Himalayan state of Sikhim; not much of a swap.
Apologists are quick to say Beijing anticipates a crisis with the eventual death of 71-year-old Dalai Lama presiding over a Tibetan government in exile in India since 1959. Thubten Gyatso has, much to the chagrin of many Tibetans, counseled peaceful, more recently even proposing autonomy rather than independence. With everything from 90 percent Han Chinese personnel in Tibetan Autonomous Region’s government and growing Chinese People’s Liberation Army forces with expanding armaments [missiles, probably nuclear weapons, looking down on the Indian Gangetic plain] and expanding railway and road transport, such a revolt would be the last gasp of the Tibetan civilization. But the Chinese do not want to take chances, and the ambassador was laying claim to the Towang Valley, traditionally the revolving door between India and Tibet [through which the Dalai Lama escaped].
Despite the vast expansion of China’s ‘blue water” navy with Russian purchases and surreptitious sales by American allies [this particular submarine is said to have German engines and Japanese computer platforms], Beijing still faces a formidable U.S. naval power in the Western Pacific. But again, the erosion during the Clinton years and the Bush Administration’s continued downsizing coupled with its ambitious defense of American interests in the Mideast, would have to be reversed if Ronald Reagan’s “trust and veruify” is to be standard for relations with China.[It would help if the characteristically vapid out of Honolulu military were less naïve. [Failure to track the submarine was ascribed to not implementing anti-submarine warfare tactics. Why not?]
So far, in a Washington where preoccupation with Islamofascist penetration of our defenses is the priority, spying for more disputable enemies may be an added burden. But it is clear it is one with its own high priority.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Treasury Henry Paulson is stoking up his mid-December mission to China to attempt to get some concessions on a host of economic issues. He has added the prestige of the chairman of the Federal Reserve. That is all to the good, perhaps. But the Pandahuggers’ argument democracy follows inevitably in the footsteps of economic development is not confirmed by history. Nor is a booming economic relationship necessarily a guarantee against conflict. [Please check the 1940 Japan-U.S. trade figures.]
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.