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A SENSE OF ASIA

Will Condi, like Colin, insist that all is well in Beijing?


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By Sol Sanders
SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Sol W. Sanders

March 16, 2005

Although State Dept. briefers were having none of it, U.S.-China relations are heading into crisis forcing a reevaluation coming out of Sec. of State Condoleezza Rice's visit.

You can assume not only no one wants a crisis but no more the accompanying angst in drawing the now inevitable hard-nosed bottom line. With its hands full with Iraq and the Moslem world, recalcitrant European allies, a budding Latin American democratic and strategic meltdown, etc., etc., State continues to mouth former Sec. Powell's clichés about U.S.-China relations never having been better.

The truth is either Chinese leadership bungling or its growing hubris – or both – is throwing salt into every East Asian wound. Their erratic foreign policy moves [driving the Japanese into the American embrace, undoing Hong Kong self-government and prosperity, drunken sailor oil politics, etc.] come natural to two mediocre Communist apparatchiks who never ventured outside their country or into international politics until they came to power.

With U.S buying five times what China buys from America, China’s leaders might be forgiven for their growing overconfidence. They are, after all, economic determinists [who probably do not remember U.S.-Japan trade boomed in 1940]. And perhaps they remember Marx said come the revolution, the capitalists on the way to the gallows would haggle over the price of the rope they were selling their executioners.

Nothing epitomizes the problem more than the silly dance called China’s Anti-Secession Law. Silly because it apparently started off as a counter to the U.S. Taiwan Relations Act. That Congressional initiative obligated the US. to prevent force dictating the relationship between Taiwan and the Mainland. A lot of water has gone under the bridge since 1979. Not least was President Clinton’s 1996 dispatch of two aircraft carrier groups when Beijing launched missiles in a counterproductive effort to swing Taiwan’s election.

Early in his first administration, Bush reinforced the American commitment by removing “strategic ambiguity”, saying the U.S. would do whatever were necessary to prevent a military takeover of Taiwan. The Anti-Secession Law caper apparently began as a stunt – “Nyeh! nyeh! neyh! We have our Taiwan Relations Act too!” It might have been effective with those ready to put the best face on Beijing’s moves. But the National Political Congress is a Communist Party appendage, not an elected legislature, its “laws” a part of a fictitious legal system unable to disguise Communist Party dictatorship’s whims.

It would have been just one more instance of false equivalence claimed by the regime’s apologists had it not come amidst a welter of other events. Not only had Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian pulled back from his Party’s independence wing after he failed to win a parliamentary majority last fall. But Bush had taken the unusual [and typically W non-diplomatic] step of warning him against “provocations” during a public meeting with China’s President Hu Jintao during Hu’s 2002 Washington visit. Before and since Washington repeatedly reiterated its opposition to formal independence for Taiwan, its commitment to “One China”. [In fact, Powell almost fell over the edge in a Shanghai TV interview during his farewell visit when he said U.S. policy included "a reunification that all parties are seeking" and had to backtrack.]

But Beijing chose [or blundered on?] to push through an ambiguous threat. Prime Minister Wen Jiabao said it is no war law. But it contains no timeline, no new proposals, no basis for negotiation.

Simultaneously the NPC “approved” a 12.6 percent defense budget increase, “permitting” the government to spend $29.5 billion in 2005. [Pentagon sources estimate the highly camouflaged military expenditures are several times greater.] Beijing is pressing for lifting the already leaky EU arms embargo which along with increasing Russian purchases could reverse the present balance over the Strait. Hu took over chairmanship of the Communist Party Central Military Affairs chairmanship from ex-president Jiang, making him directly responsible for the military. A battery of missiles is still being augmented on the Mainland opposite Taiwan. And Beijing refused tentative Taipei proposals for new “confidence building” measures.

La Contessa’s announced purpose in visiting Beijing is to move forward the North Korean nuclear weapons solution. But despite, again, cooing noises from Foggy Bottom, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing in an in-your-teeth press conference, said the problem is the U.S., not North Korea, China would not squeeze its aid lifeline to to Pyongyang.

Beijing’s much heralded sponsorship of the six-party talks is irrelevant if Beijing’s position is more demands for concessions to a rogue regime which has violated all previous agreements. And that seems to be the basic Chinese line despite wishful thinking about Chinese “nuances” at Foggy Bottom.

In the early days of the Bush II Administration – that distant past before 9/11 – the President talked of replacing the Clinton Administration’s failed China strategy of “strategic partnership” [and massive transfers of technology] with “strategic competition”. Rather than warm cooing assurances of mutual interests, that could be a start for Condi’s new bottom line.

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.

March 16, 2005

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