CHINA-U.S.: Ties Warmer, But Focus on Asia May Blur
By Tim Shorrock
WASHINGTON, Nov 19 — U.S.-China ties have improved dramatically since the events of Sep. 11, but Washington's single-minded focus on the 'war against terrorism' and its new emphasis on "homeland defense" is likely to draw the Bush administration away from key issues in Asia, says a former U.S. defense official and analysts here.
"There's a very real prospect of the United States spending much less time thinking and worrying and strategically minding the store when it comes to Asia," said Kurt Campbell, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asian and Pacific Affairs in the Clinton administration.
Campbell, now senior vice president at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the shift away from Asia should be a matter of concern for U.S. allies in the region.
"There really is a sense already of not very much high-level attention being paid to Asia, he said. "That will likely be a much more significant development than people realise."
But the focus on terrorism and what U.S. policymakers and pundits like to call "asymmetric threats" coincides with a major shift in U.S.-Chinese relations, away from the deep tensions of recent years over Taiwan, human rights, weapons proliferation and other sensitive issues, and toward a new era of cooperation and diplomatic engagement, said Jia Qingguo, a professor at the School of International Studies at Beijing University who is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution.
The attacks on New York City and Washington on Sep. 11 changed the foreign policy landscape and persuaded U.S. and Chinese leaders to scrap or minimise previous differences to cooperate in the war against terrorism, Jia said at a forum on China organised by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation.
In the days following the attacks, Chinese leaders acted forcefully to condemn the acts of terrorism and make clear their determination to work with Washington to prevent future incidents.
The Chinese response included a 1.6 billion dollar purchase of Boeing aircraft when Boeing's prospects were very bad, the sharing of intelligence about Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network suspected of masterminding the Sep. 11 attacks, and the use of the Shanghai meeting of the Asia- Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) in October, which Bush attended, to further the anti-terrorist cause.
"China has done all this without conditions, to show that the government really wants to help," Jia added.
The Bush administration has responded by dropping references to China as a "strategic competitor", a term used by the President and his national security team to differentiate their approach to Beijing from the Clinton administration.
At the APEC meeting, where Bush met Chinese President Jiang Zemin, Bush referred to China as a "great power" and emphasised the U.S. desire to shape a constructive relationship with Beijing.
"This was a contrast with his former statements," said Jia. "U.S.-China relations are far better since Sep. 11. But the important question is, will the U.S.-China cooperation last?"
That will depend in large part on how the United States treats China as it moves through a political and economic transformation accelerated by its membership in the World Trade Organisation this month.
Over the past decade, as China has moved from a centrally planned economy to one dominated by market forces, U.S. policymakers have grown uncomfortable as they perceived little accompanying change on the political front, said Jia.
With U.S. China-watchers, in government and the private sector, concerned about China challenging U.S. supremacy, pushing for internal change in China became a top policy priority.
That could be seen in the hard-line stance toward China by conservative Republicans, including many officials in the Bush administration, as well as hostility from liberal groups, such as U.S. organised labour, which strongly opposed China's entry into the WTO.
"The U.S. effort to change China threatened to undermine the very political legitimacy of the Chinese government," which strongly resisted the pressure and insisted that Washington respect its sovereignty, Jia said.
Tensions were exacerbated by the Bush administration's support for a missile defense system designed to counter China's small arsenal of ballistic missiles and finally came to a head over the spy plane incident near Hainan Island in April this year.
In Jia's view, the Sep.11 attacks and China's willingness to cooperate in the fight against terrorism showed the Bush administration that the real threats against U.S. security came not from China but from terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.
Now that China is willing to cooperate in the fight against those groups, the Bush administration appears to have dropped its view of Beijing as an implacable future enemy, he said.
But the new attitude toward China will only last if the United States stops trying to force internal change in China, Jia asserted.
"As long as the United States is not focused on imposing changes in China, as long as the United States does not treat China an an enemy, the two countries will find room to manage their relationship in a more constructive way," he said. "And this is what has been happening in the last two months."
Campbell agreed with Jia's thesis, adding that the shift toward China represents a major change from the Bush administration's earlier foreign policy focus on the dangers from rising powers such as China.
"There was a real sense in the foreign policy community that rising powers was where the action was, that inevitably China and the United States were destined to come to loggerheads and be absolutely at odds. That was a much more dominant view than people like to acknowledge publicly," he added.
The shift has immediate implications for Taiwan, Campbell said. "One hopes that Taiwan will not do something in this timeframe that is inappropriate or will trigger something not in our interests," he said. "The most important thing for the Bush administration to do is make quite clear to friends in Beijing and Taiwan this is no time to mess around."
David Shambaugh, a professor of political science at George Washington University, said the events of Sep.11 have clearly strengthened the hands of the moderate internationalists versus the hawkish unilateralists in the Bush administration.
But he noted that many problems remain in U.S.-China relations, including Taiwan, missile defense, the role of Japan in East Asian security and human rights. "I don't think we should delude ourselves that we will have smooth sailing far into the future," he said. (IPS/2001)
