China: From World Revolution To Raw Pan-National Interest

By Hall Gardner 



U.S.-Chinese relations have once again dropped on a freefall after a Chinese F-8 jet tipped into a slow flying U.S. EP-3E Aries surveillance aircraft. The Chinese jet then crashed into the waters off Hainan island below. The U.S. surveillance plane, which landed safely on Hainan, was flying in international waters (around 62 miles out, way outside the 12 nautical mile territorial limits, established by the UN Law of the Sea Convention that China has signed, but it was well within 200 mile limits of the "exclusive economic zone" as claimed by China).

The EP-3E may have been searching for silent Kilo class submarines or else an advanced Chinese Type 093 submarines capable of deploying cruise missiles. In addition to checking for Chinese naval advances, the American spy plane may also have been checking out Chinese air defenses and the deployments of Russian made SA-300s, surface to air missiles roughly similar to the American Patriot missile system, which represent a rudimentary anti-ballistic missile system, as well as the growing capability of Chinese facilities for military space programs and signals intelligence on Hainan island, which is home to China's South Sea Fleet.(1).

The 21 men and 3 women crew have finally been returned safe and sound (as should have been expected) once the "hegemonic" United States had provided the proper "face saving" apologies for its violation of Chinese territorial state sovereignty. (U.S. State Department statements indicating that they were "sorry" for the loss of life of the pilot were re-interpreted by Beijing for its own domestic purposes as if the United States was sorry for "spying.")

On April 2 President George W. Bush demanded immediate access to the plane and asked that it be returned "without further tampering." Washington tried to argue that the plane somehow possessed "sovereign immunity"; Beijing, for its part, argued that the plane had violated China's sovereignty and that the blame "lies fully with the American side." The plane itself has not been returned as of this writing; both sides continued to express hard feelings over the incident despite the return of the American crewmen and women.

Chinese engineers and micro-electronics experts have accordingly scoured the plane from head to toe, and will attempt reverse engineer any equipment that may have been destroyed by its American crew. Much as was the case for the Stealth bomber downed over Serbia in the war "over" Kosovo, the technology loss for the United States could well represent a significant gain for China. The loss also seems to indicate that trumpeted American military-technological advances may only prove to be temporary.

The latter statement appears particularly true in regard to the revelations that China may have been obtaining top secrets related to the enhanced radiation "neutron bomb" (which was once dubbed the 'capitalist bomb' as its purpose is to kill people but leave property intact!) and thermonuclear weapons as reported in the declassified version of the Cox Report issued January 3, 1999:

The People's Republic of China (PRC) has stolen classified design information on the United States' most advanced thermonuclear weapons. These thefts of nuclear secrets from our national weapons laboratories enabled the PRC to design, develop, and successfully test modern strategic nuclear weapons sooner than would otherwise have been possible. The stolen U.S. nuclear secrets give the PRC design information on thermonuclear weapons on a par with our own. The PRC thefts from our National Laboratories began at least as early as the late 1970s, and significant secrets are known to have been stolen as recently as the mid-1990s. Such thefts almost certainly continue to the present.

While the stealing of the nuclear secrets by Beijing is significant, the United States itself is also to blame for spread of high military-technological capabilities to Beijing. In its efforts to play "the China card" against the Soviet Union since the 1970s, the United States broke Coordinating Committee (Co-Com) restrictions on the sale of sensitive technologies to Communist bloc countries. In fact, the United States was accused during the Cold War of initiating at least 80% of all COCOM violations, many in regard to the PRC. Sensitive technology has also included the sale of supercomputers to China that can help design and test nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles trajectories.

At roughly the same time that the American press was filled with revelations of Chinese theft of American nuclear secrets in 1999, Sino-American relations were further torn apart by the "accidental" bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, which, one can speculate, was probably providing electronic signals intelligence to the Serbian military, or other information related to NATO activities. Whether NATO knew precisely who was in building that it was attacking, however, is still open to question. Certainly China believes that the attack was not "accidental" but represented a punishment for assisting Serbia--and for its theft of American nuclear secrets. Popular protests in Mainland China against the NATO bombing that killed Chinese embassy personnel were, to a large extent, spontaneous and really did not need government prompting.

Having learned a lesson from Kosovo, the Bush administration then stepped very carefully when it opted to bomb positions south of Baghdad in January 2001 in its first military action at the advent of its administration. The air attacks on Iraq had thus been timed to prevent the strikes from hitting Chinese workers who had been installing underground fibre optics cables so as to improve Iraq's air defenses. Having struck the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during the war "over" Kosovo, Washington did not want to make the same mistake in regard to its bombing of Baghdad!

These above incidents and military actions are symptomatic of burgeoning tensions between China as a rising power, which is seeking to expand its hegemony over the Asian littoral, and over Taiwan in particular, and the United States, as it has begun to expand its outreach into central and eastern Europe for the first time in its history through NATO enlargement following the collapse of the Soviet Union. NATO enlargement into central Europe (and perhaps beyond) is taking place as Washington is concurrently attempting to "double contain" both Iraq and Iran, as well as uphold the post-World War II status quo in Asia--at the real risk of overstretching American defense capabilities. The collapse of the Soviet Union, the expansion of NATO, and the rise of China, are thus all symptomatic of a radical destabilizing change in the global and regional equilibrium with uncertain, and potentially dangerous, consequences.

Future issues that may further upset Sino-American relations include: A pending decision (expected by April 25) by the Bush administration to sell Taiwan a significant number of arms including submarines, anti-submarine patrol aircraft and weaponry, and Kidd-class destroyers that could serve as the precursors of the Aegis anti-missile defense system. The Bush administration could also decide to grant a transit visa to Chen Shui-bian, Taiwan's president, which upsets Beijing by the implication that the United States accepts Taiwan as an independent country. In June, the U.S. Congress will decide what "strings" it might attach to the renewal of China's normal trade relations status, which will affect its application for membership to the World Trade Organization (WTO). Then in July, the International Olympics committee will decide whether China should host the 2008 Olympic games.

Moreover, Chinese membership in the World Trade Organization is still up in the air. WTO talks had broken down (once again) in January-February 2001, exactly when China was expected to enter! China's membership bid had stalled over questions of subsidies for China's agricultural products and over questions in regard to the extent that it will open its protected insurance sector, among other issues. At the same time, that fact that annual bilateral Sino-American trade is worth more than $115 billion means that the United States may restrain any potential hardline opposition to China's WTO membership.

The Cold War

The burgeoning tensions between the United States and China also explode the myth of the "peace dividend" that was supposed to come from the "end of the Cold War." The outcome of the "end of the Cold War" was, in turn, supposed to lead to the "end of history." The Cold War may have ostensibly ended in Europe, but the horrors of ethnic cleansing in ex-Yugoslavia have already indicated that all may not be as calm as claimed. Moreover, new tensions between NATO, the EU and Russia are beginning to bubble onto the surface following the decision to enlarge NATO into former Soviet/Russian spheres of influence and security into central and eastern Europe. At the same time, despite some international policy successes, such as the transition of Cambodia to a relative independence after the UN deployment of peacekeeping forces in the early 1990s, the situation in Asia remains tense.

The Cold War has not at all yet ended in Asia: India and Pakistan are still at one another's throats, now publicly threatening each other with nuclear weapons; a divided Korea remains tense as the "sunshine policy" intended to bring North and South Korea together appears to have been put on hold; the Japanese and the Russians have not yet found a compromise over the Kuril islands (or northern territories); and the schism between the People's Republic of China and Taiwan has not been mended. In fact, it is not only the case that the Cold War has not ended in Asia, but World War II has not officially ended there either. There has been no peace treaty ending the war between the three major antagonists, Russia, Japan and China.

During the Cold War, there were at least three major crises in the Taiwan straits (1949-50; 1954-55; 1958-59). By the 1970s, however, U.S. policy toward China began to change as the Nixon-Carter-Reagan administrations sought to play the "China Card" against the Soviet Union. Then, toward the end of the Cold War, Beijing began to exert pressure upon the Spratly islands, which are located in the strategically-positioned and oil rich South China sea and on sea lines of communication to the Persian Gulf. As the Cold War came to an end, a new Sino-American crisis broke out following the 1989 Tiananmen Square repression. By 1996, China fired unarmed missiles into Taiwanese waters; in 1999 during the war "over" Kosovo, NATO "accidentally" bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade; then came the "accidental" crash between a Chinese fighter jet and a U.S. aerial reconnaissance plane this year.

The deeper roots of the Sino-American dispute are evidently a consequence of U.S. support for Chiang Kai-Chek against Mao Ze Dong, although American military intervention in 1900 rebellion of the "Boxer Rebellion" ("Fists of Righteous Harmony), just following its announcement of an 'Open Door' policy to counter European political-economic and imperialist rivalry in China, may still continue to rankle Chinese pan-nationalists. Yet the more immediate cause of contemporary tensions may be traced to the failure of the United States and China to resolve the status of Taiwan.

The first crisis began in 1949-50 after the Chiang Kai-Chek led one million of his followers to Taiwan. Chiang likewise moved large number of his troops to the islands of Quemoy and Matsu in order to remain in a position to ultimately re-conquer the Mainland. Initially the U.S supported Chiang against Mao, and even threatened the use of nuclear weapons against the latter; but by January 1950, President Harry Truman stated that the United Sates would not involve itself in the dispute in the Taiwan straits. It is possible that the United States, before the Korean War, may have had contingency plans to remove Chiang from power and transform Taiwan into a neutral state under a UN protectorate. Whatever its causes, the advent of the Korean War, however, effectively blocked any potential American moves against Chiang. The interposition of the 7th fleet in the Taiwan straits in 1950, after the Korean war broke out on 25 June 1950, was intended to prevent Mao from attacking the KMT; the U.S. fleet likewise kept Chiang from attacking the Communist mainland. The Straits were effectively neutralized; Taiwan became effectively "double-contained" under an American military protectorate.

In the second Taiwan straits crisis (August 1954- May 1955), Mao shelled Quemoy heavily after President Eisenhower lifted its naval blockade of Taiwan, thus permitting the possibility of a nationalist Koumintang attack on the Mainland after Chiang moved 54,000 troops to Quemoy and 15,000 to Matsu. Despite U.S. warnings, Mao then opted for an artillery bombardment of Quemoy. In September 1954, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff proposed the option of using tactical nuclear weapons to defend Taiwan, an option opposed by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and NATO foreign ministers in February 1955. By April 1955, in part due to lack of Soviet support for its actions (Moscow did not want to be dragged into a confrontation with Washington), China stopped its bombardments. Eleven U.S. airmen taken during the Korean War were released.

Between 1956-57, the United States began a build-up of Taiwanese military forces, including Matador missiles, with a range of up to 600 miles, capable of deploying nuclear or conventional warheads. By 1958, Mao once again began a heavy bombardment of Quemoy in July-August 1958, just following Khrushchev's visit. Here, Khrushchev most likely urged caution (despite later stating in a letter to President Eisenhower that Moscow would treat an American attack on China as an attack upon the Soviet Union itself). Mao's bombardment of Quemoy may have, in fact, been designed to prove Mao's independence from Soviet pressures. Moscow signaled that it would probably support China from a Taiwanese-American attack, but it would not support China's goal to "liberate" Taiwan if that meant conflict with the United States. The fact that Moscow was not entirely supportive of Chinese goals led China to opt for its own nuclear deterrent by 1964, after Moscow unilaterally abrogated its October 1957 agreement to provide China with nuclear capabilities and Khrushchev's decision to pull Russian technical advisors out of China. Here, Moscow's decision to drop its support for Beijing was intended to send a positive signal for closer relations with the United States, an action not picked up by Washington.

By 1964 Mao was declaring his support for world revolution and seeking to expand his irredentist claims against both "superpowers," the United States and Soviet Union. In addition to claiming Taiwan against the United States, Mao criticized Soviet repression in eastern Europe and Poland; he supported Yugoslav and Albanian independence, as well as West German and Japanese claims against Moscow. He also claimed not only the Trans-Amur territories but also Vladivostok and Sakhalin island. And finally he began to support pro-Chinese communist parties and other revolutionary movements, as rivals to pro-Soviet parties, in third world "liberation" movements.

Unlike Britain and France, Washington had avoided the question of recognizing Beijing diplomatically in 1949-50; it furthermore refused to accept Beijing onto the UN Security Council in 1950 as demanded by Moscow. It was not, however, until 1971 that Nixon and Kissinger simply swept Taipei off the UN Security Council and replaced it with Beijing. Not only was Taiwan swept off the UN Security Council, it was also swept out of the UN altogether to the consternation of the United States; thus the UN accepted Beijing as the sole legitimate government of China. It can be argued that this action, coupled with the U.S. failure to negotiate toughly over the issue Taiwan, represented the first appeasement of Mainland China that led Beijing to believe that it would ultimately be able to absorb Taiwan in the long term.

The Nixon-Kissinger administration secretly opened the door to China through Romania and Pakistan in a two pronged strategy: The first goal was to split China and Russia in regard to their support for Vietnam and provide a means so that the United States could pull out of Indochina (after bombing the Hanoi and the Ho Chi Minh "trail" to a pulp in the meantime). The second goal was to build-up China up as an "active strategic counter-weight" to the Soviet Union, in what became known as the "China card." (As the U.S. Ambassador to the UN at the time was George Bush Sr., Beijing has always seen the latter in a positive light and has assumed that son would follow in his father's illustrious footsteps.)

Nixon-Kissinger steps were then followed by the formal recognition of Beijing in 1978 by President Carter and his national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Here, the latter's haste to play the "China card" against the Soviet Union ignored the warnings of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff that Beijing should be asked to renounce the use of force in the Taiwan Strait before the United States should grant formal diplomatic recognition. Once again, U.S. failure to negotiate strongly over the Taiwan question was perceived by Beijing as an appeasement of its goals, although the U.S. did sign the 1979 Taiwan relations act that proclaimed American support for the peaceful reunification of Taiwan and China and pledged that the United States would help defend Taiwan in case of Chinese aggression. On the other hand, just one year after formal US recognition, Beijing began to flirt with Moscow in early 1979 in the effort to reduce tensions, that is, until the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Although Ronald Reagan came to power on a pro-Taiwan ticket, his administration soon backtracked on the question. As Washington proceeded to sell Taiwan $60 million worth of military parts in 1982, Beijing threatened a closer relationship with Moscow, following Leonid Brezhnev's 1981 Peace offensive and 1982 Tashkent address. The latter supported China's irredentist claims to Taiwan, and sought to deflect China away from its claims to Vladivostok and toward the Asian littoral. Fear of Soviet support for Chinese claims and China's refusal to play the game as an active strategic counterweight to the USSR, and of China's threat to downgrade relations with Washington if the US proceeded with the arms sale to Taiwan, led the Reagan administration to sign the Second Shanghai Agreement of August 1982. The latter pledged that U.S. military sales to Taiwan would not exceed the 1979 level in either qualitative or quantitative terms. For Beijing this meant that arms sales were to drop to zero after thirty or forty years. The United States contended that private transfers of arms were outside the parameters of the agreement.

Contrary to views at the time, the two communist powers would ultimately resolve the "three obstacles" to peace by reducing troops and weapons along the Sino-Soviet border, pulling pro-Soviet Vietnamese forces out of Cambodia, and removing Soviet troops out of Afghanistan in the period 1982-89. These goals would be achieved by Mikhail Gorbachev who would, in effect, tighten relations with China in an effort to cover Moscow's exposed eastern flank, at the same time that he pulled Soviet forces out of eastern Europe, leading to the dissolution of the Warsaw pact. At the time, Washington (falsely) hinted to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand its jurisdiction beyond Germany's borders.

The Post-Cold War: Renewed Confrontations

While the period from 1969-1987 represented an American "appeasement" of Chinese goals, the period after 1987 would represent a period of a new confrontation. In 1988-89 the United States accused China of supplying arms, missiles, or nuclear technology to Iran, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan (actions that took place prior to Tiananmen Square in 1989). American criticism of these arm sales was viewed as hypocritical by Beijing as Chinese sales were not near the magnitude of U.S., Soviet or even European sales. The United States, however, criticized Chinese weapons sales and nuclear technology supports as potentially destabilizing the regional balance of South Asia and Middle East. Moreover, in 1988 the Chinese and Vietnamese navies clashed in the Spratly islands, after China had captured the Paracel islands from Vietnam in 1976. China, Vietnam and Taiwan all claim the Spratly islands: As oil consumption continues to rise in the Far East, the possibility of conflict over the Spratly islands becomes increasingly possible.

Concurrently, the American Congress was highly critical of China's support for the genocidal Khmer Rouge; its nuclear modernization program; its forced abortion policy; its treatment of, and failure to release, political prisoners; as well as it repressive policy toward Tibet. Two major developments within Chinese society in the period 1988-89 (prior to the events on Tiananmen) then signaled the transformation of Beijing from support of "internationalism" to raw "pan-nationalism." The first was the December 1988 clash between Chinese students and African students at Hehei University in Nanjing that brought China worldwide notoriety in the international press as a "racist" country. The second was the brutal treatment of the Tibetan autonomy movement, after Chinese Premier Li Peng declared martial law in Tibet in March 1989 following Tibetan uprising. The Tibetan uprising represented a protest against the large influx of ethnic Chinese into the region, China's large-scale exploitation of Tibet's natural resources and dumping of nuclear waste in the region, restrictions on freedom of speech, religious persecution and torture of dissidents in the name of China's own brand of 'civilizing mission'.

The June 1989 Tiananman Square crackdown was, in part, based upon fears that the Chinese student movement, like the worker Solidarity movement in Poland whose growth helped to undermine Soviet legitimacy and resulted in Soviet disaggregation, would ultimately work to split China apart. The Chinese leadership feared that Taiwan, Tibet, and possibly Xinjiang province could seek independence. Rather than take the risks of a step-by-step reform, a minority faction of Deng Xiao Peng's Politburo opted to take the more dangerous political risks of repression. Zhao Ziyang and Li Peng, both lieutenants of Deng, faced off in a dangerous duel. The hardliner Li Peng won, placing the reformist supporter of "new authoritarianism," Zhao Ziyang, under house arrest.

Much as was predicted by Chinese Premier Li Peng, however, Japanese, European and American capital began to flow back into China despite the repression of the student democracy movement. At the same time, Moscow tried to take advantage of poor Sino-American relations and play its own version of the "China Card." Russian arms sales to China then led the United States to justify a major arms sale of F-16s to Taiwan in 1992. France also obtained a major arms contract with Taipei for the Mirage 2000-S resulting in a scandal involving then Foreign Minister Roland Dumas that has since plagued French domestic politics.

After some efforts to 'kiss and make-up,' tensions once again exploded between Washington and Beijing in 1995-1996 when China deployed 150,000 troops in Fujian province across the straits and fired nuclear capable, yet unarmed, missiles during military exercises into the vicinity of Taiwanese harbors disrupting major airline and shipping routes (and causing the Heng Seng stock index to drop 7.3%)--in an effort to intimidate Taiwan's pro-independence movement and elections in March 1996. Washington interposed the 7th fleet, sending two aircraft carrier battle groups into the region; the U.S. fleet thus patrolled the Straits for the first time since 1976. Despite Chinese efforts to prevent the pro-independence party from winning the elections, President Lee Teng-hui was elected as first directly elected president of Taiwan in March 1996.

Once again, the United States and China tried to mend fences, but failed. The United States took steps to enhance trade with China through the November 1999 Sino-US Agreement; yet, at the same time, the United States also began to criticize Beijing for its crackdown on the religious group, Falun Gong. Moreover, the U.S. Congress accused China of significant espionage activities and of stealing of American nuclear secrets, as previously discussed in this article. By 2001, at the same time as China failed to enter into the WTO, the new Bush administration asked a reluctant Beijing to investigate Chinese companies that had been violating the UN trade embargo on Iraq, following the January 2001 U.S.-UK bombing of military installations to the south of Baghdad.

In a nutshell, perceived efforts in the post-Cold war era by the United States to play China and Russia against each other have led the latter to take counter-steps and to play upon U.S.-European fears of a Sino-Russian alliance for their own mutual benefit--yet, at the same time, Beijing and Moscow still remain suspicious of each other's intentions. From this perspective, ever since Brezhnev's 1982 Tashkent address, Russia and China appear to be playing their own game vis-à-vis the Americans: Sino-Russian efforts to woo the Europeans, threats to forge a Sinoi-Russian strategic partnership, Russian high tech arms sales to China, combined with calls for the establishment of a "multipolar" world, represent efforts to counter American "unipolarity" or "hegemony."

China has accordingly sought to play the United States and EU (and Japan) against each other at the same time that it plays Russia against all three. The May 2000 EU-China Bilateral Accord, for example, was followed on 4 July 2000 by a number of Sino-Russian accords, including a reportedly $2-3 billion arms deal to assemble up to 200 Russian-designed Su-27s in China. China could also obtain new Russian-made destroyers, anti-ship missiles, plus air defense systems, and ultimately Su-30s. During the years 2000-05, China is expected to purchase an estimated $15 billion in manufactured items, or production licenses from Russia. A second phase from 2005-15 represents plans for the joint development and manufacture of munitions and weapons, including joint research and development of next generation aircraft, missiles, laser based and high tech weapons systems.

In the meantime, in counter reaction, the United States and Japan have been strengthening their bilateral alliance (Tokyo has been focusing on its naval capabilities in order to protect its shipping lanes to the Persian Gulf); Taiwan is seeking submarines, anti-submarine patrol aircraft and weaponry, and Kidd-class destroyers that could serve as the precursors of the Aegis anti-missile defense system.

Ideology and the Transformation of China's Image

During the period from Nixon to Reagan, China was suddenly transformed from the "bad" communist of the dark days of the Korean War and McCarthy period to the "good" communist of the 1970s. The "good" China of the 1970s was depicted as a wayward state that had formerly lost its direction but was now peacefully pursing a market-oriented economy and was on the way to establishing democratic-liberal society. (This often repeated theory represented an American view of China contorted through rose-colored glasses. It represented a peculiarly American vision, much like the Marxist conception of socialism in which socialist states would ultimately transform into pure communism and the state would magically wither away!)

As Nixon played ping-pong diplomacy with Mao in Beijing, youthful radicals in the United States and Europe went out of their way to state how they detested the Soviet bureaucratic system of socialism, but how they supported the Maoist and Chinese path. This positive image of China among left-wing intellectuals tended to be sustained until China's support for the genocidal Khmer Rouge became increasingly well known. Western ideological support (among intellectuals) for China subsequently waned, yet the American government still attempted to sustain China's positive image largely because it saw the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge as the tool to counter pro-Soviet Vietnam which had moved into Cambodia. By the time of Ronald Reagan, the Soviet Union became the "evil empire" (after the film, Star Wars) and former Maoist guerrillas, such the Angolan leader of UNITA, Jonas Savimbi, were suddenly transformed into "freedom fighters" As long as these movements were anti-Castro or anti-Soviet, all was OK!

Washington thus maintained the hope that China would remain a "passive strategic counterweight" against Moscow, at least until 1988, even if Beijing would no longer actively oppose the Soviet Union. By 1988-89, however, tensions between Moscow and Beijing had come to a near end with the apparent resolution of the three obstacles to Sino-Soviet peace: Soviet troops left Afghanistan; Vietnam left Cambodia; and both sides reduced troops and nuclear weaponry along the previously tense Sino-Soviet border. The 1981-82 Brezhnev Peace Offensive had achieved its goals. As the Soviet threat was minimized, China was then able to concentrate on expanding its interests in the Asian littoral and abroad, and was increasingly able to threaten Taiwan, and even more so following Soviet collapse.

Over the 1980s, the image of China would move in world perceptions from representing the alternative to Soviet communism and a liberator of the so-called "third world" to a state that was most concerned with supporting pan-Islamic movements. In his over-read and clichéd polemic, "The Clash of Civilizations?" Samuel Huntington argued that the formation of Sino-Islamic alliance had followed the historical shift from "clash between rival ideologies" to a "clash between civilizations." Here, however, there was no real truth to either myth. There was nothing "international" about crushing Tibet in 1950, nor about China's support for the Khmer rouge; nor has there really been any true "Sino-Islamic" connection. While China has, in the past, had strong relations with Pakistan and Iran, for example, and has assisted Pakistan's nuclear program, China has not been a consistent supporter of the differing states of the so-called "Islamic" world. Beijing has also had significant military-technological exchanges with Israel, and has been engaged in crushing Uighur separatist movements in Xinjiang province presently seen as supported by the Taliban in Afghanistan. (Uighurs are Sunni-Moslem).

As China moved into the 1990s and into the new millennium, China's image has consequently changed dramatically and is now best categorized as raw "pan-nationalism." This new image, however, is likewise problematic. The risk today is that American policy could once again "demonize" China's leadership (as was the case for the Soviet Union as the "evil empire" prior to Gorbachev, but even affecting American relations with Gorbachev's efforts to reform China). Making China into a potential enemy will make it impossible to deal with the PRC in a flexible manner. Another risk is a possible overreaction to the spy plane affair that might seek to cut China out of U.S permanent normal trading status or not permit Beijing to ultimately enter the World Trade Organization. Cutting off China's permanent normal trading status, or preventing it from indefinitely entering the WTO, could accelerate a backlash similar to that of Japan before World War II. As previously mentioned above, the fact that annual bilateral Sino-American trade is worth more than $115 billion may possibly mean that the United States may moderate any potential opposition to China's WTO membership, or at least water down any hard line options.

On the other hand, membership in the WTO may not necessarily deter China from seeking to unify with Taiwan by force. Beijing believes that its demands to unify with Taiwan are "just" as they parallel West German demands for unification with East Germany; Beijing thus strongly resents U.S. or EU efforts to block its goals! Beijing argues that it can intervene militarily in Taiwan if the latter (1) develops nuclear weapons, (2) forges an entente or alliance with Russia (3) is confronted with a major revolt or insurrection (4) declares independence; or (5) rejects reunification for a "long period of time." In essence, China's pan-national goals in unification with Taiwan appear to be: (1) prevent Taiwan from supporting or instigating new movements of secession on the mainland; (2) eliminate Taiwanese export competition; (3) assert control over the Spratly islands and other offshore oil reserves; (4) eliminate a potential strategic threat and be in a better position to defend China against potential rivals.

As advocated in my previous article in Geostrategiques No. 2, the United States now needs to draw Moscow into a NATO-EU-Russian-Japanese entente intended to draw Moscow away from its burgeoning military-technological support of China and to pressure China in accepting a resolution of the Taiwan question upon a confederal basis of "one nation, two states, plus several systems" as a diplomatic variant on the "one China policy." Such a diplomatic approach should provide Taiwan with significant political-economic autonomy and military independence. While the two sides could engage in joint ventures and common tax policies for example, the People's Liberation Army would not be permitted to set foot on Taiwan. Such an approach may get the two sides to the bargaining table, but not without real difficulties!

A clash between the United States and China is a real possibility. It will not, however, be a clash of civilizations, but one of raw geopolitical interests. To prevent such a clash, both sides need to reassess their policies and presently defined "vital interests" and then engage in a deep and thorough dialogue and negotiation process so as to prevent future "accidents" and misunderstandings that may be used as a pretext for war.

HOME

HOME