China-U.S.: Not much hope for a Wen-win

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

When Prime Minister Wen Jiapao inaugurates WashingtonÕs first encounter with the new Beijing team on its home ground in early December, the menu is a list of tough issues Ñ Sec. of PowellÕs recent claim U.S.-China relations had not been better notwithstanding.

Topping problems is North KoreaÕs pursuit of weapons of mass destruction, featuring its two-pronged nuclear weapons program. Washington, faced with only bad options, is beholden to Beijing. China acted as intermediary with unpredictable Pyongyang to get agreement to seek a settlement among the interested parties, rather than North KoreaÕs earlier demand for a bilateral deal. Beijing cajoled [and perhaps pressured] Pyongyang into the nonproductive August meeting of the two Koreas, China, Japan, Russia, and the U.S. Another meeting is coming in mid-December.

Optimists believe Beijing has every reason to side with the U.S. against a nuclear-armed North Korea next door. Relations between the two have not always gone smoothly. ChinaÕs massive support for the North Korean economy, its fear of collapse of a bankrupt regime [living off selling missiles, its remittances from ethnic Koreans in Japan, and drug trafficking], and a flood of refugees fills out the ÒlogicÓ.

But this argument ignores close Chinese and North Korean military ties ø the latter apparently held at bay by Kim Jong IlÕs constant command reshuffling ø and BeijingÕs probable continuing technology transfers. Not only was China involved in early North KoreaÕs nuclear endeavors, but Beijing cannot have been ignorant of PakistanÕs swap of Pyongyang nuclear technology for missiles. The same North Korean missiles have been marketed in the Middle East by Overseas Chinese companies with ties to the Chinese PeopleÕs Liberation Army. And at the very moment Washington sought BeijingÕs help with Pyongyang, the Bush Administration blacklisted five Chinese companies violating ChinaÕs missiles nonproliferation agreements.

Nor are ChinaÕs public statements all that encouraging from WashingtonÕs point of view. North Korea, the Chinese have said publicly, have a legitimate demand, before it disarms, for guarantees from the U.S. for the regimeÕs survival The crucial question of policing a disarmament has to figure in this equation, too, what with new evidence hourly that the UN International Atomic Energy Agency has been less than an effective watchdog in Iran [no more than it had been even earlier in Iraq]. Does that mean China guarantees North KoreaÕs adherence to another version of the 1993 Clinton Administration agreement which committed Pyongyang to have end its nuclear weapons program? Meanwhile, Pyongyang apparently ploughs ahead, including the development of longer range missiles that could reach the U.S.

Wen is famous for his ability to compromise domestic squabbles and his pragmatic shifts in ideology. [The famous photograph of him alongside the ÒreformistÓ Prime Minister Zhao Zihang, smiling, crying and talking with the dissident students just before they were mowed down by tanks, almost cost him his career. He survived with the help of a confession that he was only doing his job as ZhaoÕs chief deputy, support of Li Peng, ZhaoÕs successor, Òbutcher of Tien An MienÓ -- and his old bridge partner Paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping.]

But Wen, with his chosen role as the junior partner in what appears to be a close partnership with President Hu Jintao, with his famous memory for statistics, will be facing a barrage of complaints on economic issues from the Bush Administration. In the coming election year, there is growing pressure for applying the brakes to the mushrooming U.S.-China trade, what could see ChinaÕs surplus go to $130 billion this year. The Administration has already slapped restrictions on imports of textiles and garments. There are American complaints against export subsidies, the grossly undervalued yuan, and flagrant violations of intellectual property. But with incipient inflation, a bloated construction boom, runaway regional development schemes, a banking structure weighed down with non performing debt, and gigantic but dubious projects [like the new proposed transfer of water from the south to the north which he earlier criticized], Wen may have a tin ear for WashingtonÕs protests.

Wen has his own indictments. After two years of relative quiet, Beijing has escalated its rhetoric in response to TaiwanÕs white hot presidential campaign. Both sides there are appealing to ÒnationalistÓ sympathies of the Taiwanese for a new constitution and extended franchise through referenda, a route Beijing sees as leading to formal independence ø a red line for Communist leadership. The Bush AdministrationÕs campaign to get Taiwan to pump up its defenses ø obviously preferable for Washington as a device to ward off any Mainland temptation to use force for ÒreunificationÓ than U.S.Õ promised intervention should Beijing attempt it ø is at the top of WenÕs agenda.

All in all, it doesnÕt look like Wen for all his vaunted technocratic abilities and managerial talents will make much of a dent in reducing the growing friction between China and the U.S..