For so long we have maintained a stance of "friendliness" with China. Too fucking friendly. Trying so hard to appease them and look the other way when they invade, murder, torture and oppress others, so that we can share in their resources the same way we have done with Saudi Arabia. Did you know that American pharmaceutical companies can research and manufacture their products for a quarter of the price in China, and are actively seeking the means to do so? Did you know that the Bush administration has provided every incentive for American businesses to manufacture their products in China? Did you know that China maintains a communist and totalitarian government that demands absolute support from its citizens to this very day, tortures and murders its own people (not to mention plenty who are not Chinese and don't even reside on their soil) for various reasons, and that the American government allies itself with them despite our claim that we vehemently frown upon and actively combat such opposition to democracy? We may be friendly with them, but we ought never to forget how militant, focused and unwavering the Chinese government has been throughout history. I ride down the roads of America and see bumper stickers that say "Proud to be an American" and "God Bless America" and I think "too fucking proud." We are the classic example of a country too proud to recognize our weakness. Too proud to recognize that we may think ourselves the most enlightened, but realistically, we are just another country with another government, struggling to hold onto our position in the world, and insisting that we have some great advantage over others. Now we may have some advantage, but over China, we have very little aside from democracy. They have manpower, they have our interests (to which we add vulnerability every day with outsourcing), and they have an unfettered desire to conquer and occupy which, as a government, they've never been particularly timid about. The last of which we would be deeply unwise to underestimate. This is not a government that kneels to pressure or acquiesces to demands. And to think that we will always have the upper hand over them, is patently naive. We should be careful, lest we fall in the same manner as the great Roman empire, which sounds less farfetched with each passing day. Overconfidence is not a virtue. Exhibiting excessive confidence and arrogance while putting yourself in a position of vulnerability does not seem to be the best way to go about foreign relations.
Note: This entry has been modified by a more sober Maria. I wrote this last night when I was three sheets to the wind and if you think it sounds alarmist now, the previous version was hysterical. :o)
Unhelpful ChinaBy Dan Blumenthal
In contrast to its rejection of traditional U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the Bush administration has largely embraced the traditional approach to the People's Republic of China, the one it inherited from its predecessors. This policy, known as "engagement," is predicated on the belief that as Beijing grows more confident and influential on the global stage, it will act in ways that advance common Sino-American interests. But as China's behavior on key U.S. policies makes clear, while Beijing may speak the language of cooperation, it acts like a strategic competitor.
Consider China's interference in the delicate nuclear negotiations with Iran. The United States and the European Union have taken a "good cop, bad cop" approach to quashing Tehran's nuclear ambitions: The European Union has been offering economic inducements, while the United States has been threatening to refer the matter to the U.N. Security Council.
China, meanwhile, has worked to undermine both the U.S. stick and the E.U. carrot. During the final stages of E.U.-Iranian negotiations in early November, Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing flew to Tehran and announced that China would oppose any effort to haul the Iranian nuclear program before the United Nations.
Li no doubt wanted to secure the multibillion-dollar oil and gas agreement that China had just signed with the mullahs. The deal is reflective of burgeoning Sino-Iranian trade, which increased more than 50 percent last year and has undercut the impact of whatever incentives or sanctions the West might attempt to link to Tehran's disarmament.
A similar calculus of strategic and economic interests has guided China's policy toward Sudan, where Beijing also has extensive energy investments and, not coincidentally, continues to shield Khartoum from U.N. sanctions for its ongoing campaign of violence against the people of Darfur.
In both cases China has demonstrated that it is a more confident global actor, but, contrary to engagement theory, it has used this newfound strength -- and its permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council -- to frustrate U.S.-European objectives.
The spirit of obstructionism rules even in the case of North Korea. By any rational measure, the elimination of Kim Jong Il's nuclear arsenal should be a shared Sino-U.S. interest. Instead, Beijing acts as if the United States and North Korea are equally to blame for the standoff. Styling itself an "honest broker," the Chinese leadership has taken to calling for both sides to be "more flexible." And, when North Korean parliamentary head Kim Yong Nam visited Beijing in October, President Hu Jintao vowed to "enhance bilateral cooperation and coordination in regional and international affairs."Posted by Maria at December 7, 2004 05:35 PMOn Taiwan as well, Beijing is using its growing confidence and power to achieve ends at odds with U.S. interests. Washington has long insisted that it does not take a position on the final status of Taiwan -- independence, unification with China or some other arrangement to which the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait provide their assent. As muddled as this policy may sometimes be, one component has always been clear: The issue must be decided peacefully.
But it increasingly appears that Beijing does not believe in a peaceful resolution. Indeed, the only resolution that would satisfy China is to absorb Taiwan. Beijing is putting great effort and resources into a military buildup with one main goal in mind: coercing Taiwan into accepting unification on China's terms and deterring the United States from keeping its commitment to defend the island democracy.
From Tehran to Taipei, it is past time for U.S. policymakers to recognize that the traditional engagement policy with Beijing -- originally derived from the shared Sino-American interest during the Cold War in containing the Soviet Union -- has become a dangerous anachronism. The policy cedes all initiative to Beijing, which can always threaten worse behavior. Consequently, when China sets back transatlantic efforts to turn the screws on Iran, the United States looks the other way. On North Korea, Beijing earns plaudits in Washington even as it refuses to put any real pressure on Pyongyang. And, on Taiwan, Washington responds to Beijing's intensifying diplomatic pressure -- backed by real and growing military power -- by putting heat on the island's democratically elected leader.
An honest look at Sino-American relations reveals that it is precisely when the United States is not overly solicitous of Beijing that China acts in greater harmony with U.S. interests. It was after decisive U.S. action in Iraq that China pressured North Korea to the negotiating table. Similarly, Chinese flexibility on Taiwan has usually followed breakthroughs in arms sales to Taiwan.
Whether in the case of nuclear proliferation in Iran and North Korea, peace in the Taiwan Strait or human rights abuses in Darfur, U.S. interests will not be advanced by an engagement policy with Beijing that values the atmospherics of a good relationship above all else. A second Bush administration needs to develop a coherent approach to China that accounts for new strategic realities -- with the same iconoclastic spirit that guides its foreign policy elsewhere in the world.
The writer, a resident fellow in Asian studies at the American Enterprise Institute, was until recently the senior country director for China and Taiwan in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He will take questions at 1:30 p.m. today on www.washingtonpost.com.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
Someone referred me to your blog, I've read it somewhat regularly for a while (I've enjoyed it, thank you!), and I finally read your bio info, and one quote just really tickled me...
"When I was 13 years old I ran away from home for a week to see a Grateful Dead show in Sacramento, CA. I returned a slightly different person. My parents liked me better after that..."
If you've written about that and have posted it anywhere, I'd love to see it. My wife and I made it to a few Dead shows, circa 1992-1995, and the experiences definitely improved the quality of our lives. We took our kids to a few shows back then, and now they're quite well-adapted :)
Posted by: Greg at December 8, 2004 05:07 AMDefinitely agree that the US is losing a lot of power while still trying to hold onto their pride. China (and Europe) is growing powerful and exceeding while our country struggles to just keep afloat...all on borrowed money. History has proven that no super-power is permanent. Pretty soon, perhaps even in our lifetime, we'll be bowing down to another super power and I'll be thinking "oh how we had it coming" and I'm sure we'll still be seeing the patriotic bumper stickers of people trying to hang onto the victorious past...and probably lots of hateful spiteful ones too that berade the ones that over took us. Because that's how hateful we are...
And and and ...
I see it all unfolding. And we'll be together drinking screwdrivers and watching the ship go down.
Greg, I haven't really written about it on my blog, but now that you've requested it, I may just write up an account. Check back in a day or two and I may have one up.
Which Dead shows did you go to '92-'95? The last one I went to would have been their last show in Portland, Oregon. I believe it was 94, but it could have been 95...(memory is pretty bad) Before that I went to shows in Sacramento and Las Vegas. Anyways, I'll try to put something up about all that.
Thanks for reading!
Kathleen, screwdrivers! If the U.S. is brought to its proverbial knees, we could actually do away with the orange juice. I'll be throwing back shots of iceberg like there's no tomorrow and sqwawking "I told you so you proud motherfuckers!"
Posted by: Maria at December 8, 2004 12:00 PMAh, yes, China. One billion two hundred ninety eight million people who somehow don’t produce as much tea as India (how’s that for good ol’ U.S.Arrogance?). Still, clearly a force to be reckoned with. Tibet never had a chance.
What’s particularly interesting to me here-and-now is China’s burgeoning friendliness with the EU, or vice versa. Our European buddies get to maintain their ban on arms sales while at the same time making China their second largest trading partner. Now, to be realistic, any business would have to be foolish not to recognize marketing opportunities where one fifth of all folks happen to live. I’m not defending underhanded trade practices or suggesting abject laissez faire, for Chinese, European or American businesses, but hey, if I sold sneakers I’d probably want some ads written in Chinese. But I’d think twice before selling them new tanks. Trouble is, despite some considerably impressive economic reform in the last decade or so, China is still an ascriptive society governed by a political mindset of ‘survival or destruction’. Like the Chairman said, political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
(Side anecdote: I’ve never been there. But I have a friend who some years ago took a three month biking trip across China. She wrote of how much of rural China is still literally hard-wired with speakers in the streets, daily discharging party rhetoric. Yes, they have literacy up to ninety percent these days but they’re still told what to read.)
I don’t buy the new Chinese line of a ‘peaceful rise’. China’s new leadership knows only to well how to play the game – they studied it right here.
Frankly I’ll be pretty darn surprised if the US can maintain for another 60 or so years anything close to the hegemony held today. I mean, how long before someone else comes up with real global competition for Coke and cheeseburgers? But I think the real irony here is that if China were to become a humane, capitalist republic, as pols are so fond of propounding, that’s when we’d be in some serious competitive doo-doo.
Mmmm...drunken blogging.... ;)
Still a few things I think I'll object to, though. For one thing, China has not really been a communist country in a couple of decades, if by "communist" you take the technical definition of having a state-controlled, centrally planned economy, rather than the word's all too common use as a vaguely defined insult. There is certainly more and different state intervention in the economy than we are used to in Western countries, but it would be more accurate to describe it as "state capitalist," I think. It is certainly totalitarian, however.
Secondly, I'm not sure how useful the comparison to Saudi Arabia is...Saudi Arabia is a U.S. client state that depends largely on the U.S. for its continued existence, whereas China is quite capable of taking care of itself. The U.S. interest in Saudi Arabia is mainly about natural resources, and control of said resource as a means of exerting power over rivals in Europe and East Asia, whereas its interest in China is more purely economic, as a source of cheap labour and untapped and growing consumer markets. In fact, in Saudi Arabia the U.S. geopolitical and economic interests are largely convergent, whereas in China I think there is some conflict between more real politik folks who favour engagement and neocons like the American Enterprise Institute (which is the source of the piece you quote) who prefer a more confrontational relationship. I'm not sure what all of these difference mean in terms of comparing the two with respect to U.S. foreign policy, but I'd say the situations are certainly different.
More generally, I worry that a fear-based and demonizing reaction by progressives to China's burgeoning power and to the U.S. relationship to China is not necessarily very helpful. I found the phrase about China's "unfettered desire to conquer and occupy" particularly strange. I mean, all states since the emergence of the modern state as an institution have shown a tendency towards warfare and conquest, and China is no exception. I agree that Tibet should be freed. But it seems an odd characterization to come from a North American context, given that the number and geographical scope of foreign interventions by the U.S. over the last 50 years (direct military interventions, support for totalitarian regimes, CIA-sponsored overthrows of democratic governments, etc.) dwarfs anything China has been capable of. I think we need to be careful that our own urges for justice and liberation, here and everywhere, are not taken advantage of via selective information and other techniques of propaganda by our own elites to whip up anti-China sentiment. I think we (and I totally mean myself here, too, because I feel pretty ignorant about China's internal politics considering its growing importance in the world) need to make a more concerted effort to learn from and connect to progressive social movements within China (and not just the subset that might serve as media darlings when it is ideologically useful for North American elites to bash China).
As to the article's assertions about China's role with respect to North Korea, here is a somewhat more nuanced and detailed (if somewhat dated) article on the crisis.
Just some thoughts...
Posted by: Scott Neigh at December 10, 2004 11:47 PM