Why Beijing and Belgrade see eye to eye

April 26, 1999

UNITED NATIONS -- During his recent trip to the United States and Canada, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji when not pushing for trade concessions, was voicing Beijing's opposition to the current NATO military operations in the Balkans. Ironically Beijing and Belgrade are birds of a feather when its comes to domestic ethnic problems, and thus see eye-to-eye with Serbia's view of the Kosovo crisis.

Though the Chinese communists and former Yugoslavia both bask in the heady days of the quaintly quirky nonaligned movement, the genuine bottom line for both Beijing and Belgrade remains high church realpolitik. In other words, neither the People's Republic of China nor the Yugoslav Federal Republic are willing to see any questioning of their artificial frontiers.

Premier Zhu in a candid interview in Canada's respected Globe & Mail stressed that he fears the precedent set for intervention in Tibet's affairs. He told the Toronto paper "Kosovo question is an ethnic problem which of course is an internal matter..questions like this exist in many countries, you in Canada have the question of Quebec, the United Kingdom has the Northern Ireland question, and for China there is the question of Tibet."

Fearing the " very bad precedent" for the use of force to solve ethnic questions, Premier Zhu added "people would wonder whether foreign powers should take military actions against Canada, the UK and China over ethnic issues of Quebec, Northern Ireland and Tibet." While mendaciously trying to make a moral equalivance case for China by putting Tibet on the plateau with both Quebec and Northern Ireland, the logic is clear.

China's Marxist Mandarins fear that erosion of Yugoslav sovereignty in Kosovo shakes brittle political faultlines in places like Tibet, East Turkestan and even Taiwan.

Enter Kosovo where the Serbs are systematically ethnically cleansing the Albanians from their ancestral homeland. The modus operendi is painfully evocative of similar Soviet ethnic cleansing and Russification of the Baltic states after WWII.

There's an eerie parallel with Cambodia too-the final act of emptying Kosovo recalls April 1975 when the Beijing backed Khmer Rouge regime was turning its rage on the people of Phnom Penh and clearing Cambodia's cities.

Naturally communist China's ongoing efforts in Tibet are well documented; the PRC attempts to eradicate Tibetan culture and crudely change the demography of the mountain land. Likewise in China's vast western Sinkiang region, there are separatist tremors too as Turkic Moslems chafe at the central government's control.

The Republic of China on Taiwan, though not posing any ethnic rift, remains a political thorn in the PRC's side. Beijing has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan "back to the motherland." Interestingly during Zhu's American visit he evoked the image of the U.S. Civil War and President Abraham Lincoln's decision to use military force against the Confederacy as a justification why the PRC will not renounce the use of force over a "separatist" Taiwan, this despite the fact that the Chinese communists have never ruled Taiwan for a single day.

This U.S. Civil War analogy, while superficially specious, clearly illustrates Beijing's political mindset; namely to attempt to forcibly integrate a democratic Taiwan into the People's Republic.

Even a year ago when the Kosovo crisis was building, tepid United Nations Security Council efforts to stop the crisis were blocked by Beijing even before Moscow came to the aid of its Serbian "little brothers." Yugoslav officials stressed smugly that Western efforts to thwart Serbia would be blocked by the "Great Wall of China," that referring to the PRC's Security Council veto.

That's why Washington kept the military operation in Kosovo from the Security Council and why any attempt to retool the ongoing NATO operation under an U.N. umbrella would fall prey to both Moscow and Beijing's diplomatic machinations. Fearing its own political faultlines, Beijing will hang tough with Belgrade.

John J. Metzler is a U.N. correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues who writes weekly for World Tribune.com.