As President George
W. Bush prepares for his November 19-21 trip to Beijing, he must
steel himself to the realities of an emerging global environment in
which the U.S. and China have very few common objectives and an
Asia that is increasingly coming under China's shadow. The
"constructive, cooperative, and candid" relationship with China
that the Bush Administration has sought since 2001 has proved
neither constructive nor cooperative. Nor has much candor been
forthcoming from the Chinese side.
President Bush
should keep expectations for his Beijing visit low; avoid Chinese
efforts to portray the visit as a U.S. endorsement of a Sino-U.S.
condominium in Asia; and indicate to the Chinese leadership that,
after five years of agnosticism on whether China's future will be a
net positive or a net negative for Asia-Pacific stability, the U.S.
is very near concluding that China is headed in the wrong
direction. Following his Beijing visit, the President should direct
his national security team to reassess America's response to
China's new geopolitical weight in Asia.
Before arriving in
Beijing, the President must make a realistic assessment of the
divergences in U.S. and Chinese strategic interests:
Democracy:
President Bush's strategic imperative of spreading democracy and
freedom around the world undermines the legitimacy of the Chinese
Communist Party, a "totalitarian" (not "authoritarian") party, that
maintains an absolute monopoly on status, absolute authority over
the economy, brutal internal security services, and an extremist
nationalist ideology. China's leaders see themselves as protectors
of fellow autocrats, most notably in North Korea, Burma, Iran,
Zimbabwe, Sudan, Cuba, and Uzbekistan, against reformist pressures
from the United States and other democracies. In addition, the
Party stunts Hong Kong's political reforms and relentlessly
isolates Taiwan in the international community, including vetoing a
Taiwanese representative at the November 2005 APEC summit in South
Korea. Moreover, Beijing is not shy about punishing countries that
displease it and is causing some Asian democracies, such as the
Philippines and Thailand, to reassess their relationships with
China and the U.S.
Military:
China's rapid military buildup is clearly aimed at challenging
America's ability to preserve peace and stability in the Western
Pacific. At its center is a growing and modern Chinese submarine
fleet designed not only to defend China's own sea lines of
communication, but to interfere with those of other potential
adversaries, including the U.S., Taiwan, and Japan. China's naval
strategy also focuses on U.S. aircraft carriers and tactics needed
to neutralize them not just along China's littoral, but into the
mid-Pacific as well.
Nonproliferation: A 2005 RAND Corp. study noted that after
15 years of continuous U.S. government engagement with Beijing on
the control of exports of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), their
technologies, and delivery systems, Beijing still fails to act like
a "'responsible major power' . . . especially as related to WMD
proliferation." There is no indication-beyond rhetoric-that China
takes nonproliferation goals seriously.
Taiwan: Nowhere in the world are American goals in
greater apparent conflict with Chinese goals than in the Taiwan
Strait. The United States has a profound strategic interest in
ensuring that Taiwan's vibrant democracy is not coerced into an
unwanted relationship with China by Beijing's relentless threats to
use force-threats made credible by its advanced air, naval, and
missile forces. Legislative gridlock in Taiwan has left
it unable to redress sufficiently the military balance in the
Strait-which is now shifting decisively toward Beijing-while all
Asia is waiting to see the outcome.
North
Korea: From the beginning of the North Korean nuclear crisis,
China's goal has been the survival and success of North Korea's
totalitarian regime, and so it pushes off the "ultimate goal of
denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula"-forever, if necessary. Chinese
President Hu Jintao has praised North Korea for how well it has
preserved the "purity" of Communist ideals. More astoundingly, a
top Chinese Politburo member declared in 2004 that North Korea's
"practical choices" were "fundamentally beneficial to the
protection of regional stability and world peace." The warmth of
Chinese President Hu Jintao's October 2005 visit to Pyongyang and
North Korea's subsequent intransigence in the November 2005 "Six
Party Talks" are more evidence that Beijing's North Korea stance is
in direct conflict with Washington's.
War on
Terror: Chinese strategists still consider "hegemony" (i.e.,
American policies) a threat equal to "terrorism" and have not
cooperated with the U.S. (or anyone else, apparently) in the war on
terror. China has dragged its feet even on the illicit trafficking
of "MANPADS" (shoulder-fired anti-air missiles that threaten civil
aircraft) despite lip-service that it "stands ready" to "further
explore" the issue. (In November 2005, two Chinese citizens were
indicted in Los Angeles for attempting to import 200 Chinese-made
MANPADS into the U.S.) In March 2005, the State Department issued a
list of Asian counterterrorism partners, including Taiwan; notably
China was absent. And although Chinese leaders permitted U.S.
Customs to post officers at ports in Shanghai and Shenzhen as part
of the "Container Security Initiative," they agreed grudgingly and
only after it was explained that failure to do so would hamper
customs clearances of Chinese vessels at U.S. ports.
Trade:
China regularly violates its bilateral and multilateral trade
obligations to gain mercantilist advantage over its trading
partners. For example: China subsidizes domestic industries via
state-owned bank loans to state enterprises that are never repaid;
Chinese ministries illegally use technical standards to force
foreign firms to transfer design and research to China; two-thirds
of all counterfeit goods sold globally (worth about $512 billion
annually) and 90 percent of pirated pharmaceuticals are from China;
90 percent of the software in China is pirated; and Chinese
businesses violate foreign patents with impunity. The Chinese
government willfully refuses to enforce its own intellectual
property rights laws. U.S. firms are desperate for relief but fear
Beijing because they cannot count on Washington to defend their
interests.
Energy:
China is now the world's second largest consumer of energy. Deputy
Secretary of State Robert Zoellick points out that "China is acting
as if it can somehow 'lock up' energy supplies around the world."
Indeed, China's systematic acquisition of petroleum and natural gas
reserves and its practice of routing all output to the Chinese
market support this view. In addition, Beijing's determination to
acquire the U.S. oil firm Unocal was apparent; the Chinese oil firm
that tendered the bid was clearly not acting in its own commercial
interest. In the end, Beijing apparently did not appreciate the
irony of its own prohibition against foreign control in China's
energy sector while complaining that U.S. energy firms are not open
to Chinese control.
Internet:
In an increasingly successful campaign to restrict freedom of
information, China is now seeking to put the Internet Corporation
for Applied Names and Numbers (ICANN) under United Nations control,
where it will be more amenable to Chinese influence. ICANN is
responsible for managing Internet domain names, addresses, and
routing indicators. The Chinese government's primary interest in
international Internet governance is to simplify its control of the
information its citizens can access, but the Internet also serves
useful internal security functions: monitoring citizens'
communications; locating citizens via mobile phone GPS systems; and
soon, the ability to cache-and retrieve as desired-anyone's
telephonic voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) conversations
without using wiretaps.
Human
Rights: The Congressional-Executive Commission on China says
the human rights environment in China seriously deteriorated over
the past year in several key areas, notably religious freedom,
freedom of expression, labor rights, rule of law, family planning,
democratic governance, and civil society. This was China's fourth
straight year of declines, which mirrored State Department human
rights assessments that China's human rights environment has been
in continuous decay since the Tiananmen crisis of June 1989. These
reports belie the general notion among some policymakers that
economic reforms and prosperity are "sufficient" conditions for
long-term improvement in civil and political rights. In the grip of
a disciplined and internally unchallenged totalitarian regime,
there is no hope that China will "democratize by itself" without
the moral pressure and technical encouragement from the world's
democracies.
Other
Issues: Even in less strategic issues, such as criminal law
enforcement, illegal logging, and HIV/AIDS prevention and
treatment, China continues to follow nontransparent policies and
practices that stymie U.S. initiatives. Only when one hits near
bottom of the list of U.S.-China policy issues will one find some
level of policy congruency. Avian flu, endangered species,
fisheries protection, global warming, and cultural and academic
exchanges are examples where bilateral policy cooperation has been
visible.
Conclusion
There are few
policy areas in which the U.S. and China share common strategic
goals. For the time being, the Administration should keep
expectations for U.S.-China relations low. In its November 2005
report, the Congressionally-mandated U.S.-China Commission put its
conclusion quite bluntly: "On balance, the trends in the U.S.-China
relationship have negative implications for our long-term national
economic and security interests."
As a result, the
Administration should:
- Manage
expectations for the visit with the American press: There
will be no breakthroughs and very little agreement on key issues. A
certain diplomatic vagueness is in order on the question of
re-inviting Chinese President Hu Jintao to visit Washington unless
significant progress is made on issues of importance to the
U.S.
- Begin to
educate the American public that, on balance, China's behavior
continues to trend in a negative direction despite U.S. attempts to
maintain cordial ties;
- Avoid Chinese
efforts to portray the visit as a U.S. endorsement of a Sino-U.S.
condominium in Asia. America's Asian partners are already
terrified of a declining U.S. presence and commitment in the
region,and fear Chinese hegemony.
- Initiate a
national security reassessment of China's new geopolitical
weight in Asia. The Administration must focus on desired outcomes
in Asia, not the process of accommodating China's political,
military, and trade threats.
- Reassure the
people of Taiwan that the survival and success of their
democracy-free from political, economic, or military coercion from
China-and the preservation of peace and stability in the Taiwan
Strait remain core American national interests in the Western
Pacific.
John J. Tkacik, Jr.,
is Senior Research Fellow in China Policy in the Asian Studies
Center at The Heritage Foundation.