The Geopolitical Roots of US-China Relations

["ÁÎ×Ó¹â HenryC.K.Liu ¹ù¤l¥ú" <hliu@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

The Geopolitical Roots of US-China Relations
by
Henry C.K. Liu


A new era in US-China relations began when Nixon went to China in 1972.
But the strategic opening for a US-China rapprochement dated back to
March, 1969 when Sino-Soviet border clashes at Zhenbao Island provided
physical evidence of a long brewing Sino-Soviet split.  Only 5 years
earlier, in 1964, anticipating an imminent Chinese nuclear test, the
Johnson Administration had considered, and then rejected, unilateral
preemptive strike against Chinese nuclear installations.  It
nevertheless secretly explored "joint action with the Soviet Government"
toward the same objective.  But Soviet preoccupation with internal power
struggle at that time prevented the Kremlin from responding to the US
initiative, despite Soviet belief that the US would side with the USSR
in the event of a Sino-Soviet open conflict. China had been vocal for
sometime in its opposition to both US and Soviet forms of imperialism.

Nixon's geopolitical strategy aimed to perpetuate a central role for the
US in world affairs by forging new relations not just with China, but
also with the USSR, both being major adversaries of the US.  Yet the
USSR was the main target, and China was a "card" in US-Soviet
"détente".  The central theme of this strategy of triangular diplomacy
involved a new determination at the height of the Cold War that world
communism was not politically monolithic.  Thus "détente" with the USSR
and a "linked strategy" involving nuclear arms control and economic
relationships would be important tools for containing bilateral nuclear
confrontation, with minimum political risk to the US and potentially
high profits for US business.  Also, traditional Euro-centric
preoccupation in US foreign policy presupposed the USSR as the prime
adversary.

In this context, ending a historical adversary relationship with China
that began in 1949 had been motivated solely by the need for US leverage
against the USSR.  While Kissinger no doubt sought an opening to PRC as
a near term objective to generate pressure on North Vietnam toward a
settlement of the Vietnam War, the grand design was to play the China
card in US overture to the USSR.  On more than one occasion since coming
to office in 1969, the Nixon Administration signaled its intention to
end the Vietnam War with or without the participation of China.

Thus US-China rapprochement aimed to skirt rather than resolve
fundamental conflicts in the separate national interests of the US and
China.  The most critical of these conflicts are:
1) The Taiwan issue, an internal Chinese affair into which the US has
firmly interjected itself as a historical legacy of the Korea War;
2) Ideological mismatch between communism and capitalism that anchors
Chinese opposition to US neo-imperialism in the Third World,
particularly in Asia, and US hostility towards a socialist China;
3) Potential conflict between rising Chinese power, regardless of
ideology, and US dominance in Asia.
Of the above three, Taiwan was and remains the most central and
problematic.  The unresolved Taiwan issue occupied top billing in all
three joint communiqués signed over the next decade and continues to be
the key issue that threatens US-China relations.  A resolution of the
Taiwan problem is prerequisite to any resolution to the other two
conflicts.

For the US, US-China rapprochement was a geopolitical expediency in
containing Soviet expansionism in a Cold War context, which few in US
policy circles had anticipated ending in the foreseeable future, if
ever. Advances in US-China relations prior to the end of the Cold War
were directly related to progress in US-Soviet "détente".  Yet progress
in "détente" also increased the incentive and prospect of Soviet
pre-emptive military action against China. This prospect in turn was
deterred by US warnings to the USSR about determined US response against
such attacks.  The prospect of imminent Sino-Soviet military
confrontation enables the fundamental bilateral differences between the
US and China to be put aside temporarily in an overriding geopolitical
context in which a strong and independent China was considered to be in
the US national interest.

This de-emphasis of bilateral differences was enshrined in Shanghai
Communiqué of 1972 which states:
"There are essential differences between China and the United States in
their social systems and foreign policies. However, the two sides agreed
that countries, regardless of their social systems, should conduct their
relations on the principles of respect for the sovereignty and
territorial integrity of all states, non-aggression against other
states, non-interference in the internal affairs of other states,
equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence. International
disputes should be settled on this basis, without resorting to the use
or threat of force. The United States and the People?s Republic of China
are prepared to apply these principles to their mutual relations."

Kissinger's geopolitical concept of international order required an
independent and strong China to prevent Soviet expansionism from
isolating the US into an unwitting garrison state: "Fortress America",
as the US had done twice in this century that resulted in two world
wars.  After Congressional defeat in 1999 of the Comprehensive Test Ban
Treaty, the Clinton foreign policy team picked up again briefly the same
warning against US isolationism.

Nixon was convinced that after the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), China
was no longer an ideological threat to the US and that the need to
isolate China as an enticing model from international forums would be
overshadowed by its opportunity as a huge, needed market for Western
capitalism.  US-China rapprochement and US warning against preemptive
Soviet attack on China were also viewed as necessary to relieve other
countries in Asia from concerns about "détente" turning into a bilateral
superpower global condominium, with a US-Soviet "cabal" against China as
a centerpiece.

Thus, the late Cold War warming of US-China relations had been primarily
externally motivated.  John Hay's "Open Door Policy", designed against
European powers partitioning China into spheres of influence in the 19th
century, remained tacitly fundamental in US policy towards China with
regard to Soviet intentions in late 20th century.  It is to US interest
to neutralize any prospect of a China being dominated by a European
power, such as the USSR.
In short, US policy towards China has merely been a bargaining chip in
US geopolitical grand design in the Cold War.

Declassified US documents have revealed that Nixon secretly made
specific concessions on the question of Taiwan to Beijing beyond the
text of the Shanghai Communiqué of February 28, 1972.
Nixon pledged to "actively work toward" and complete "full
normalization" of US-PRC diplomatic relations by 1976.  He also promised
not to support any Taiwan military action against the Mainland or any
Taiwan independence movement and to prevent Japan or any other third
country from moving in on Taiwan as US presence was reduced.

The establishment of Liaison Offices in both capitals in 1973 were
accomplished only by Kissinger misrepresenting Zhou Enlai's position
that China had no plans "at this moment" to liberate Taiwan by force as
having "no intention".  US-China relations thus were built from the
start on a purposeful ambiguity on unresolved differences over the issue
of Taiwan.  It appears that the bilateral WTO agreement managed to reach
its dramatic conclusion in November 1999 also on the basis of similar
ambiguities.  They are classic examples of "share the same bed with
different dreams" in geopolitics and geo-economics.

According to a declassified top-secret US memo of a conversation held on
February 18, 1973 in Zhongnanhai with Chairman Mao, Kissinger said to
Mao: "Our interest in trade with China is not commercial.  It is to
establish a relationship that is necessary for the political relations
we both have."  Mao accepted this candid confession as accurate.

Thus it is not surprising that with the fall of the USSR, US-China
relations, devoid of its geopolitical underpin, have floundered
aimlessly over the past decade.  This relationship had begun at the
outset of the 1970s out of a common strategic concern with Soviet
expansionism based on geopolitical principles that have been altered
with the dissolution of the USSR.

"Strategic dialogue", which later after diplomatic normalization in 1979
was upgraded to "strategic cooperation", was the fuel for US-China
rapprochement.  A downplaying of ideological, political, cultural and
socio-economic differences between the two countries led to a policy of
mutual tolerance and false expectations.  National differences were
patched over in order to pursue larger interests in global geopolitical
cooperation.

This geopolitical priority also entailed delicate compromises on the
issue of Taiwan.  These compromises centered on American acknowledgment
and non-challenge, and later recognition, of the principle that there is
only one China and that Taiwan is part of China, a common position held
by both Taipei and Beijing.

The Shanghai Communiqués of 1972 states:
"The two sides reviewed the long-standing serious disputes between China
and the United States.
The Chinese side reaffirmed its position:
The Taiwan question is the crucial question obstructing the
normalization of relations between China and the United States;
The Government of the People?s Republic of China is the sole legal
government of China;
Taiwan is a province of China which has long been returned to the
motherland;
The liberation of Taiwan is China?s internal affair in which no other
country has the right to interfere; and all U.S. forces and military
installations must be withdrawn from Taiwan.
The Chinese Government firmly opposes any activities which aim at the
creation of "one China, one Taiwan" "one China two governments", "two
Chinas", an "independent Taiwan" or advocate that "the status of Taiwan
remains to be determined."

The U.S. side declared:
The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the
Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part
of China.
The United States Government does not challenge that position.
It reaffirms its interest in a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan
question by the Chinese themselves.
With this prospect in mind, it affirms the ultimate objective of the
withdrawal of all U.S. forces and military installations from Taiwan. In
the meantime, it will progressively reduce its forces and military
installations on Taiwan as the tension in the area diminishes."

The Shanghai Communiqué of 1972 marked the end of U.S. policies of
hostile containment towards China and reached an initial compromise on
the Taiwan issue, modifying US interference since the Korea War in the
unfinished Chinese civil war.  It expressed US expectation and hopes
that the Chinese parties concerned on either side of the Strait would
work out a peaceful solution.

The political fall of the Nixon Administration as a result of Watergate
de-railed "détente".  Some would observed that the causal effect was
reverse.  A weakened White House permitted Democrat Senator Henry
Jackson, the anti-Soviet Boeing senator, to interject human rights as an
issue in US foreign policy in connection with "détente" and to extract
an increased US defense budget as a condition for nuclear arms control
agreements.  The linkage of human rights to the trade offensive in US
foreign policy was treated with equal contempt by both Brezhnev and
Kissinger.  The Jackson-Vanik Amendment: linking Most
Favored Nation trading status (MFN) to Soviet convergence towards US
ideological values, was originally aimed solely at Soviet emigration
policies.  It has since been transplanted to haunt US-China relations
and to threaten US-China trade annually for more than two decades.  The
repeal of annual conditional renewal of Normal Trading Relations (NTR,
renamed from MFN) has become the key to US opposition to Chinese
accession to WTO membership.

Despite Nixon's secret promise in 1972 to Zhou Enlai of full
normalization by 1976, after Nixon's resignation in 1973, the unresolved
Taiwan issue led to a cooling of US-China relations with the brief
re-emergence of Deng Xiaoping as interlocutor during Zhou's terminal
illness.  This cooling was due mostly to Chinese aversion to progress in
US-Soviet "détente" at china's expense.

Subsequently, Beijing rejected an US offer of formal diplomatic
recognition that was linked to a continuation of US military presence on
Taiwan.  Mao's had repeatedly declared that normalization could only
take place after a complete US break with Taiwan.

On "détente", instead of the US lobbying China to accept its view that
"détente" reduced Soviet threat on China, China began warning the US
that "détente" would lead to greater Soviet threat to the US.

US-China relations stagnated on account of the deaths of Zhou Enlai and
Mao Zedong in 1976 and of preoccupation with the post Watergate US
presidential election.  "Détente" was also rapidly losing currency
because of the Ford campaign's need to counter relentless attacks on it
from the Republican right, represented by primary hopeful Ronald
Reagan.  The failure of both Nixon and Ford to live up to the promised
schedule of normalization by settling the Taiwan issue caused the
disappointed and insecure post-Mao Chinese leadership to slow down
progress in other areas of US-China relations.  Kissinger then offered
China military technology transfer through US allies and anti-Soviet
intelligence cooporation as a compensatory inducement.  Ford approved
the first sale of American advanced computers for oil exploration that
also had military dual use.  These arrangements led to trails of Chinese
activities that later could be construed as illicit by the US in a
different political environment.

Carter and Brzezinski basically followed the Nixon Ford Kissinger
geopolitical strategy on China, but they put increased emphasis on
anti-Soviet cooperation between the US and China, Carter's purported
concern for universal human rights notwithstanding.  Kissinger's
preoccupation with "détente" was replaced by Brzezinski's hawkish
attitude toward the "polar bear".  Two months before the announcement of
US recognition of Beijing on December 15, 1998, Carter even yielded to
China's objection to pending US normalization of relations with Vietnam,
against which China would be involved with an unsuccessful border war
with US acquiescence and secret satellite intelligence support three
months later, in February 1979, two weeks after Deng Xiaoping's
triumphant US tour, causing Vietnam to enter into an alliance with the
USSR.  US recognition of Vietnam would be delayed until 1995, 17 years
later.

The Normalization Communiqué of 1978 signed by Carter two year beyond
the secret Nixon deadline states:
"The United States of America recognizes the Government of the People?s
Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China. Within this
context, the people of the United States will maintain cultural,
commercial, and other unofficial relations with the people of Taiwan."

In the normalization communiqué of 1978, the "One China; Taiwan is part
of China" principle was still presented only as a unilateral Chinese
position, though buttressed by US recognition of the Government of the
People?s Republic of China as the sole legal Government of China, a
parallel step up from "acknowledgment" of a Chinese position.  It traded
form for substance in U.S. relations with Taiwan so that the United
States--within the context of recognizing one China and Taiwan as part
of China--would be able to maintain economic, cultural, and other
unofficial ties with the people of Taiwan.  With the exception of
military sales, it is essentially the Japanese model which China had
adopted and demanded as a fundamental condition for normalization with
all countries.

The Recognition Communiqué contains the one China formula most often
quoted:
"The Government of the United States of America acknowledges the Chinese
position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China."
Some American policy analysts have argued that this is a unilateral
statement of acknowledgement of a Chinese position; it is not a treaty.
Nor has the United States formally accepted the Chinese position that
Taiwan is a part of China.  The US-ROC Mutual Defense Treaty became
legally defunct after the US de-recognized the ROC and broke diplomatic
relations with Taiwan, but military relations continued, sanctified by
the newly adopted Taiwan Relations Act, with the force of US law.

The Chinese "open to outside" policy and domestic reform toward a
"socialist market economy" weakened the ideological basis for refuting
capitalistic Taiwan's legitimacy by admitting that the Taiwan economic
model is ideologically acceptable, at least within some parts of China.
In fact, over the past two decades, the Taiwan economic system has taken
on the unofficial role of a model for the Mainland.

Thus China's domestic economic policy exerted a heavy price on China's
reunification campaign in particular and foreign policy in general.

In the August 27, 1982 Communiqué signed by Reagan, the second item
states:
"The question of United States arms sales to Taiwan was not settled in
the course of negotiations between the two countries on establishing
diplomatic relations. The two sides held differing positions, and the
Chinese side stated that it would raise the issue again following
normalization. Recognizing that this issue would seriously hamper the
development of United States-China relations, they have held further
discussions on it, during and since the meetings between President
Ronald Reagan and Premier Zhao Ziyang and between Secretary of State
Alexander M. Haig, Jr. and Vice Premier and Foreign Minister Huang Hua
in October 1981."
It also contained a clause:
"the United States Government states that it does not seek to carry out
a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to
Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms,
the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of
diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it
intends gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a
period of time, to a final resolution. China acknowledged that U.S. arms
sales to Taiwan would continue, and the U.S. agreed to cap the quality
of those arms sales and to reduce them step by step, leading over time
to a final resolution of the dispute."

The last of the three communiqués in fact arrested the forward momentum
of the previous two on moving toward a mutually satisfactory resolution
of the Taiwan issue.
With the disappearance of its geopolitical underpin after the fall of
the Berlin Wall in November 1989, 5 months after the Tiananmen events,
the formula of gradual US disengagement from Taiwan reversed direction.
China's long-standing refusal to categorically rule out the use of force
for the reunification of Taiwan became the disingenuous pretext of US
step-up arms sale and military assistance to Taiwan, despite Chinese
explanation that sovereignty demanded the right to use force and Lincoln
had done the same in the US Civil War. Besides, it is one of Mao's
paradoxical dictum: the option of force enhances the prospect of peacful
reunification.

Reagan, leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party and
fervent supporter of Taiwan, went to Taiwan in April, 1978 as part of
his second quest for the Republican nomination. After Ford's defeat by
Carter in 1976, Reagan, who had lost the nomination to Ford, became the
standard bearer of a Republican Party increasingly dominated by the
right wing and the legacy of the old pro-Taiwan China lobby, in
preparation for the 1980 election. On regular occasions, Reagan publicly
called for re-establishment of "official" relations with Taiwan, much to
Beijing distress.

Aides led by former Ambassador George Bush managed to convince Reagan to
moderate his extremist stand on Taiwan during the 1980 campaign.
Reversing the policy of previous adminstrations, the bureaucratic
dynamics of the Reagan White House challenged the geopolitical
importance of China and was more reluctant than the State and Defense
Departments, as well as the CIA, in avoiding ideological confrontation
with Beijing and in making pragmatic concessions on the Taiwan issue,
paticularly in the area of arms sales, for larger geopolitical purposes.

Secretary of State Haig's attempt to offer to sell arms to both Beijing
and Taiwan was rejected by both Beijing and the Reagan White House.
Frantically trying to prevent a possible rupture in US-China relations,
Haig, the outsider in the Reagan Administration, then proposed to Reagan
a US statement to the effect of acknowledging a future date when arms
sales to Taiwan would end.  Haig's resignation caused in no small way by
his disagreement over China policy with Reagan personally, left China
without support at high level within the Reagan administration.  Yet the
Haig proposal, though modified by Reagan personally, received support
from the US arms industry, and it formed the basis of the Communiqué of
August 27, 1982.  However, in a secret memo, Reagan unilaterally
formalized the condition of maintaining military balance between the
Strait as the defining basis for the escalating levels of arms sales to
Taiwan.  It was a fundamental shift from the Nixon Ford Kissinger
approach of gradual reduction.

Meanwhile, a new breed of US policy planners were beginning to advance
the view that geopolitically China needs the US more than the US needs
China.  These planners, led by Paul Wolfowitz (who now plays a key role
in GW Bush's Campaign 2000), argued that US policy of the past decade
had exaggerated the significant of China in global geopolitics and that
China's importance was limited to Asia in the foreseeable future.  They
argued that past US concessions to China were unnecessary and that China
had no real options but to accept US terms.  This line of thinking
narrowed the gap between the anti-Soviet hawks and the pro-Taiwan right
in US domestic politics over China policy, a gap that Kissinger
exploited in favor of Beijing a decade earlier.  Empirically, China had
shown itself an ineffective military factor in the China-Vietnam
conflict in 1979, while Reagan's new military built-up in the early 80s,
particularly with Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), was beginning to
bolster US confidence in facing USSR threats technologically without any
help from China.

George Shultz (who introduced GW Bush's first foreign policy campaign
speech in November 1999), replacing Haig as Secretary of State in 1982,
embraced this new thinking about China with cool determination.  In
addition, Shultz replaced China with Japan as the primary focus of US
policy in Asia.  He saw friction between the US and China as inevitable
in the long run, not because of historical conditions relating to
Taiwan, but because of fundamental differences between the two social
systems and national intersts.  In the Shultz vision, the newly
prosperous Asian Tigers, including Taiwan, led by a "democratic" and
capitalistic, and above all docile, Japan, should no longer be treated
as American client states in the Cold War, but as important Asian
elements in the new American world order of globalization.  This was
part of a global strategy to bankrupt the socialist economies with a
high tech, star wars arms race.  This pan-Asian faction of the US policy
establishment gained ascendance in the Reagan Administration, at the
expense of the pro-China geopolitical strategists.  This faction worked
to ensure arms sales to Taiwan without regard for Chinese opposition or
US-China bilateral agreements.  They began promoting the term Greater
China to dilute the geopolitical importance of Beijing. Many Chinese
officials, slow to grasp its policy implications, began using that term
as well.

Nevertheless, the Reagan Administration during 1983 and 1988 managed to
forged broad relations with China on US terms despite of its hard-line
China policy in the new pan-Asian context.  This is because Chinese
domestic policies under Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang had been
uncompromisingly pro-Western in general and pro-American in particular.
Hu even declared that chopsticks were less modern than forks.  The
policies of these two Chinese leaders provided the empirical proof that
substantiated Shultz's new theory of a China without anti-US policy
alternatives.  China, by its own behavior, appeared to need the US more
than the US needed China.  In particular, China appeared addicted to
American capital and markets and seduced by American capitalist ideology
and culture.  It continued to look to the US for dual-use technology and
weapon systems while accepting trade terms that were essentially
neo-colonial, exploiting China's excessively low labor cost and
non-policies of environmental neglect.  By 1985, after the Reagan
Administration, at the urging of the US military-industrial complex,
relaxed control of high tech export to China, US arms sales to China
reached $5 billion.

Many US analysts considered this period the golden years of US-China
relations, under the reign of a sworn anti-Communist US president.
While the anti-China Reagan Administration was gradually relaxing trade
restrictions, former pro-China US officials were busy brokering military
sales from the private sector to China at handsome profit.  China,
hoping to influence US policy by financially rewarding its "friends",
unwittingly played into the new US policy offensive of good cops/bad
cops, and verified the new US proposition that anti-China politics
actually improved US-China trade.  During this period, in contrast to
the "agree to disagree" and "live and let live" approach of the Shanghai

Communiqué, a new American notion that trade will change the Chinese
political system began to take shape.  Reagan, the world's most
prominent living anti-Communist, even referred to China as the
"so-called communist country" after his China trip in April, 1984, the
title year of the famous anticommunist novel by George Orwell which
warned that communism would take over the whole world by 1984.
"Peaceful evolution" then became US strategy on China, contradicting the
fundamental basis of the Shanghai communiqué of non interference and
co-existence.  Winston Lord, Reagon's Ambassador to Beijing, parted
company with his mentor, Kissinger, to become the most fervent advocate
of peaceful evolution and human rights as prerequisites for progress in
US-China relations.  Around the world, China lost its revolutionary
image and the support of leftist forces everywhere which were
experiencing general decline at any rate.

In 1982, Thatcher's ill-fated attempt to perpetuate British colonial
rule over Hong Kong ended with Deng Xiaoping applying the "One Country;
Two Systems" formula to a Sino-Brtitish Joint Declaration for the return
of HK to Chinese sovereignty.  That formula had been originally
fashioned as a solution to the Taiwan problem as a Chinese internal
affair.
Subsequently, Deng directly approached Washington for acceptance of the
same formula for solving the Taiwan problem. The Reagan Administration
summarily turned the idea down as a non-starter.  Nevertheless, the OCTS
formula became official Chinese policy for the reunification of Taiwan,
with wholesale Chinese compromise on HK in deference to its implication
on Taiwan.  More ominously, Beijing's overture opened the way for US
interference on the future of Hong Kong, which up to that point
Washington had been officially neutral in a bilateral problem between
China and the UK involving the redress of historical colonialism. The
issue of Hong Kong was thus transformed from one of righteous
termination of British colonialism to official Chinese acceptance of
colonial institutions for 50 more years.  Moreover, the issue of Hong
Kong prompted Congress to adopt the Hong Kong Relations Act which
provides a legal basis in US law for self-righteous US monitoring  on
Chinese acceptance of Western democracy and capitalism in Hong Kong and,
by extension, within Chinese territory.

In the fall of 1985, anti-Japanese student demonstrations broke out in
China.  These demonstration, officially inspired by the 50th anniversary
of Japanese invasion of Manchuria, had complex undertones, not the least
involving the new US policy tilt toward Japan at the expense of China.
Domestic political opposition to Hu Yaobang's reform policies, which
included close cooperation with Japan, exploited the student
demonstrations for its own purposes.  To preserve the reform momentum,
Hu Yaobang was forced to resigned as Party Secretary and replaced by
Zhao Ziyang.  Li Peng, while supporting economic reform within socialist
ideological limits, emerged as the leader of the movement against
bourgeois liberalism and "peaceful evolution".

American business was delighted by the anti-Japanese development in
China since it had been growing apprehensive about Japanese competition
operating under a more supportive Japanese government policy than
Washington's ideological policy which was out of sync with US business
interests.  In his first China trip as Secretary of State, Shultz had
told American business executives in Shanghai that if they did not like
US policy on China, they should move to Japan or Europe, an advice that
many US transnational corporations followed by conducting China trade
through their European subsidiaries.

Politically, the Reagan Administration also welcomed the re-emergence of
anti-Japanese sentiment in China, as Sino-Japanese friction would
strengthen US separate bilateral dealings with both China and Japan.  In
contrast to Nixon's China card strategy against the USSR, Reagan was
playing the Japan card against China.

Regionally, China at first saw the US-Japan defense alliance as an
insurance against incipient Japanese militarism.  After Vietnam, the
Nixon Doctrine, born of painful lessons from deploying US troops in
Asia, ordained the provision of US military assistance to regional Asian
powers to enable them to police their immediate areas, with an aim of
relieving the US of the need to play global policeman with its own
troops in distant locations, particularly Asia.

G.W. Bush's first Campaign 2000 speech on foreign policy echoed elements
of the Nixon Doctrine.
The younger Bush declared in November 1999: "We must show American power
and purpose and strong support for our Asian friends and allies; for
democratic South Korea across the Yellow Sea; for democratic Japan and
the Philippines across the China Seas; for democratic Thailand and
Australia.  This means keeping our pledge to deter aggression against
the Republic of Korea and strengthening security ties with Japan. This
means expanding theater missile defenses among our allies. And this
means honoring our promises to the people of Taiwan. We do not deny
there is one China, but we deny the right of Beijing to impose their
rule on a free people. As I have said before, we will help Taiwan defend
itself."
Geographically, across the Yellow Sea and across the China Seas
pinpoints China as the potential enemy.
Bush did not mention the need to honor promises made to Beijing by three
previous presidents.  Yet he did not say the US will defend Taiwan, only
it will help Taiwan defend itself.  The distinction is subtle but
important.  It confirms the principle of the Nixon Doctrine.

Throughout the 1980s, the CIA purchased arms from China for the
Moujeheddins in their war against the Soviet Union.  The Afghan War was
the beginning of US-China military cooperation, a policy advocated by US
right wing Republican Senators Orrin Hatch and Gordon Humphrey, Defense
Secretary Casper Weinberger, and carried out by State Dept. Intelligence
Head Morton Abramovitz and Pentagon's Micheal Pillsbury. But subsequent
Chinese sale of Silk Worm and CSS-2 missile systems to opponent Middle
East countries, including Iran and Saudi Arabia, led Reagan to impose on
October 24, 1987 the first of a series of restrictions on high tech
export to China.  For Chinese restraint on missile sales, the Reagan
administration approved export license that permitted US commercial
satellites to be launch by Chinese rockets.  These restrictions were at
first used as leverage to induce Chinese geopolitical cooperation on
non-proliferation, rather than as the later anti-China strategy with
China itself as a direct target.  Nevertheless, the export of a new
generation of Chinese solid fuel missiles known as M-9 (375 miles range)
and M-11 (180 miles range) became a central concern for the Bush and
Clinton administrations. From the Chinese perspective, Chinese arms
sales to the Mid East is not unrelated to US arms sales to Taiwan.  The
US had no business objecting to Chinese arms exports while it sold arms
to Taiwan.

Within weeks of becoming president, Bush's made an ill-prepared trip to
China as part of his attendance of the state funeral of the Emperor of
Japan in February 1989.  Bush had hoped for close working relations with
"his old friend" Deng Xiaoping. This hope was dampened by Ambassador
Winston Lord's controversial handling of the invitation of dissident
Fang Lizhi to the presidential banquet at the Great Wall Hotel on Bush's
second night in Beijing. Bush had never forgotten the awkward position
Kissinger and Lord put him in 1972 over Beijing's admission to the UN
while he was US Ambassador to the UN.  Bush had been left out of the
loop to futilely defend Taiwan's membership in the UN while Kissinger
was making a deal with Beijing to support PRC's replacement of Taiwan at
the world organization.  Now Bush saw Lord's bungling as another
deliberate sabotage of the Bush presidency.
The subsequent publicity and recrimination between the Embassy under
Lord in Beijing and the Bush White House over the Fang Lizhi incident
brought Lord's career in Republican adminstrations to an abrupt end. But
it marked the beginning of human rights as the overriding obstacle in
US-China relations.

As Washington searched for a proper response to the visit to China by
Gorbachev who was expected to reduce Sino-Soviet friction, the 1989
Tiananmen situation developed and culminated in the June 4 incident.

The Chinese leadership's handling of Tiananmen was necessary to prevent
China from potential chaos and civil war.  What ever its domestic
implication, Tiananmen altered US-China relations fundamentally.
Because of the presence of Western live television, Tiananmen unfolded
as a global media spectacle.  The complexities of counterrevolutionary
politics were overwhelmed by simplistic images that climaxed in unarmed
students defying and eventually crashed by military forces.  China
suffered a major defeat in a propaganda war on live television.
The widely televised images forged a strange coalition of the left and
the right in US domestic politics into a new anti-China and
anticommunist alliance.  The subtle government to government
relationship of the past two decades lost ground to a new dynamic of
moralistic Congressional hostility based on wide public support.

The Bush Administration was put on the defensive by Tiananmen on its
attempt to put back on track a China policy already derailed by Reagan.
To ward off more damaging Congress action to punish China over
Tiananmen, Bush moved to suspend all high level government contacts and
imposed economic sanctions, including a freeze of World Bank finance for
China. At the same time, he arranged two secret trips within 6 months by
National Security Advisor Snowcroft to salvage the two-decade-old
relationship. Congressional opposition, led by Speaker Mitchell and
wealthy Congresswoman Pelosi of California, crystallized into partisan
policy over the Bush veto of the Pelosi Bill to grant blanket visa
extension after Tiananmen to Chinese students in America.  Ironically,
the Pelosi student bill prevented the return of China's brightest who
might eventually bring about a better understanding between the two
difference social systems in their home land.  Moreover, the Chinese
students unwittingly became, for a brief but critical period, an
articulate anti-communist lobby in American politics whose members saw
the demise of communism in China as vindication of their accidental
personal fate of political emigration.  Supported by Winston Lord, the
reincarnated human right champion, the new post Tiananmen anti-China
lobby took on bipartisan tones, while US policy on China lost its
bipartisan backing.

Since November 1990, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent
collapse of communist governments in Eastern Europe, which vindicated
the Chinese leadership's calculation of its decision on Tiananmen, had
vacated Washington's geopolitical basis for tolerance towards socialist
China .

In 1990, the Bush administration was trying to find a new, non-Cold War
rationale for preserving close bilateral ties to China.  Bush tried in
one press conference the Kissinger theme of China as a counterweight to
the growing power of an increasing unruly Japan with whom the US was
having economic and trade friction.  On February 7, 1990, Engleburger,
Undersecretary of State, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee made a landmark admission that the two-decade-old Cold War
basis for strong US-China relations was not longer a dominant or
controlling factor.  In its place Eagleburger identified cooperation in
international problems, such as non-proliferation, as the new rationale.

Eagleburger conceded that the anti-Soviet basis of US China policy to be
no longer operative. Yet he claimed that China's strategic value to US
objective in international problems such as proliferation of weapons of
mass destruction and environmental pollution had not declined.

The paradox of this new policy was that it became a message to China
that non-cooperation in non-proliferation could be a way to make the US
take China more seriously, including on the issue of arms sales to
Taiwan.  There was also much wishful expectation in misguided US circles
that the post-Tianamen Chinese leadership would be transitional and that
the US could adopt a holding mode while waiting for the dust to settle.
In the mean time, other hot spots around the globe, such as the Mid East
and the Gulf, were keeping the Administration fully occupied.   Later,
it was hoped, the US could deal with a new generation of Chinese
leaders.

The CIA, embarrassed by its lapse in predicting the collapse of
communism in Europe, became compensatorily speculative about the
precarious future of Chinese communism.  Lord testified in ongress along
the line he wrote in Foreign Affairs: "The current discredited regime is
clearly a transitional one."  He was right when he predicted in early
1990 in testimony before Congress that within three years, there would
be a "more moderate, humane government in Beijing," although he was
wrong to assume that it would be a different Chinese government.

The granting of Most Favored Nation status to China became the focus of
congressional opposition to the White House's policy towards China and
annual conditional renewal was adopted.  At the same time, the
opposition by US labor against Chinese low-price imports pushed the
Democrats towards seeing its anti-China posture as an tactic in the 1992
election.  Besides human rights and anti prison labor activists, all
kinds of other groups wanted their pounds of flesh. With the support of
Senator Moynihan, Tibetan separatists succeded in adding a Tibetian
clause in 1991. Senator Biden added the condition of non-proliferation.
Eevn the Voice of America got on the list to demand a halt to its
anticommunist broadcasts.

China's decision to let dissident Fang Lizhi go to America brought about
a reciprocal release by Bush of World Bank loans and Japanese credit,
resulting in a 40% increase of Japanese import to China in 1991.

The Iraqi/Gulf War in November 1991 and China's vote in the UN Security
Council provided the basis for Bush to receive Foreign Minister Qian
Qichen in the White House, breaking the ban on high level contact.
Nevertheless, the following year, China indicated its intention to
comply with the guidelines of the Missile Technology Control Regime
(MTCR).

In the summer of 1992, with Bush's geopolitical China policy under
attack from Clinton, election politics forced Bush to reverse a
decade-old policy of reducing arms sale to Taiwan by announcing the sale

of 150 F-16 fighters to Taiwan.  The sale meant jobs for General
Dynamics, the planes' manufacturer in Texas, Bush's home state.  The
sale was a direct violation of the 1982 Communiqué that "arms sales to
Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms,
the level of those supplied in recent years".

China protested the sale.  Qian warned it was a "serious incident" and
held Washington accountable for "serious consequences". But China took
no visible action, for fear of hampering Bush's chances for re-election.

Then China shipped M-11 missiles to Pakastan on the ground that their
range fell below MTCR guidelines.  In the final weeks of the Bush
Administration, US Trade Representative Carla Hills was sent to Taiwan,
a first for cabinet rank officials since normalization, in direct
violation of the no official contact with Taiwan.

James Lilley, soon after completing his tour as Bush's ambassador to
Beijing in May, 1991, drawing from his past connection to Taiwan,
challenged the basic underpin of US-China relations.  He attacked
Chinese sovereignty over Taiwan as "anachronistic" and declared the
three Communiqués outdated.  Lilley's views stimulated in the minds of a
sizable segment of the US policy establishment the need to review US
policy on China.

Lilley was a political mentor of Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan's president, for
whom he had engineered US support as early as the 80s.  Writing in the
NY Times in July 1999, Lilley practically claimed credit for tutoring Le

Teng-hui on the provocative ?Two States? doctrine in defining Taiwan's
relations to the Mainland.  The doctrine has been denounced by China as
a move toward Taiwan independence.

Clinton campaigned from the Democratic left against Bush for "coddling
the Butchers of Beijing", while Ross Perot attacked Bush with similar
polemics on the right as a Reform Party candidate.  China became a focus
issue in partisan and presidential politics with a bitterness not seen
since the Truman era.

After winning the election, the Clinton China team, led by Warren
Christopher and Winston Lord in the first term, was single-minded about
human rights and democracy for China, while the administration was
generally focused on domestic issues.  In his confirmation hearing,
Christopher even formally declared US policy to be seeking to facilitate
"peaceful evolution" in China from communism to democracy, a direct
violation of the Shanghai Communique of non-interference in domestic
affairs.  Winston Lord, as Assistant Secretary for East Asia and the
Pacific, went even further and advocated a policy of linking human
rights progress in China to US restraint on Taiwan.  Clinton and Anthony
Lake reintroduced morality in US foreign policy and adopted what some
critics have labeled as moral imperialism. Strategic ambiguity over the
defense of Taiwan was escalated into legal, political and moral
imperatives.

On May 28, 1993, Clinton signed an executive order on conditional MFN as
a compromise to head off new legislation by Mitchell and Pelosi. Even
the US business community saw human rights conditionality as a tool for
opening Chinese markets.  American companies would lobby against MFN
conditionality only if they were promised lucrative deals. In 1993, US
companies obtained 6,700 contracts from China. 1993 was also the year
when Chinese export of M-11 missiles to Pakistan led the US to invoke
sanctions under MTCR, but the opposition from California high tech
companies, such as Hughes which had contract with China to launch
communication satellites.  Meanwhile, Wall Street pushed the "rule of
law", "transparency" and open markets as being in China's own economic
interest.

But the Pentagon wanted for a less confrontational policy toward China.
The US military needed China's cooperation in its objective of
preventing a nuclear North Korea.  It wanted high level military
exchanges with China to moderate Chines export of arms.  Above all, the
Pentagon wanted to restart military cooperation with China to minimize
the prospect of an eventual war with the largest country in the world, a
nightmare scenario for US planners.  After the Yinhe fiasco in which the

CIA accusation a Chinese container ship of carrying chemical weapon
material to Iran was proved false to the whole world through open
inspection with Saudi Arabia as an intermediary, the Clinton
Administration finally conducted a review of its single-dimension
confrontational China policy.

On September 25, 1993, with US-China tension was at an all time high,
Anthony Lake summoned Ambassador Li Daoyue to inform him of the Clinton
Administration new approach to China, generally described as
constructive engagement.  Under this policy the US will again engage
China on all level on a broad range of areas.  Clinton would meet with
Jiang Zemin in Seattle in November at the OPEC conference.

China sees the United States as having explicitly violated all
commitments implicit in the three Communiqués on the issue of Taiwan.
The Tainanmen incident in 1989 and subsequent events, including Taiwan's
move toward democracy,  provided the US with a basis to set aside
earlier agreements to overlook differences in ideology in the interest
of strategic cooperation.  The US has visibly replaced geopolitcally
induced tolerance with strident criticism of Chinese political culture,
particularly human rights practices, and Chinese society in general.
Ideological confrontation is revived and intensified as the US openly
practices what China views as moral imperialism.

In mid 1988, Winston Lord, Ambassador to China in the Reagan
Administration since late 1985, began giving talks to Chinese students
at Beijing University and Fudan University in Shanghai.  This marked a
departure from accepted formats of US-China relationship which since
1972, has been exclusively government to government.  These talks
signaled the beginning of an ideological offensive.

At the same time, Taiwan has begun to withdraw from the one common basis
with Beijing: that it was part of China and that reunification of China
was an natural fate which time and dialogue should bring about. After
Tiananmen, the United States abandoned all effort of the previous decade
to integrate China into global institutions and adopted punitive
isolation of China.  In the period of rapid growth of global
multilateral institutions, such as GATT, it was ironic that these
institutions were being built without the participation of a fifth of
the world's population.  The Wassenaar Arrangement, the Australia Group,
the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), and the Nuclear Suppliers
Group were all organized without China and they subsequently became
obstacles to improvements in US-China relations. Nationally, China
refuses to be bound by rules that it not only did not participate in
crafting, but also can be interpreted as anti Chinese. These
multilateral regimes cannot work in the long run because they exclude
one of the principal actors they were designed to affect.

The lack of a strategic framework, the ambiguity of past understandings,
a rebirth of US ideological intolerance and new Taiwan adventurism in
quest for separatist status have resulted in a near collapse of mutual
confidence and trust between the US and China.  Chinese effort to deal
with the Taiwan issue as an internal affair was consistently challenged
by the United States, both through bilateral treaty and via US domestic
law, in violation of the spirit of the three joint communiqués.

Lee Teng-hui was permitted to come to the US as result of the White
House overruling the Secreatary of State, yielding to a contentious
Congress. China had no option but to interpret the move as a gross
violation of the spirit of the three Communiqués when even the Secretary
of State so advised the President.

Increasingly, the US permitted de facto erosion of its official
acknowledgments and tacit understanding with China over the Taiwan
issue.  Under unofficial US support, a major offensive had been launched

by Taiwan against the status quo, upsetting the modus vivendi which had
preserved peace in the Taiwan Strait.  That offensive culminated in the
provocative "Two States" doctrine.  China's response has been erratic
amid internal debate whether US policy on Taiwan was merely inept or
deliberate.  Chinese indecision further encouraged Taiwan
aggressiveness.
Meanwhile, waves of anti-China hysteria began sweeping across the US
political landscape, fanned by a largely hostile press, with the
Congress holding accusatory hearings on alleged Chinese misbehavior,
such as illegal campaign contributions, nuclear espionage, prison labor,
coercive population control, trafficking of human organs, religious
persecution, even geoploitical designs on the Panama Canal.  Capping
this pattern of hostility was the inexplicable bombing of the Chinese
Embassy in Belgrade in May 1999.

Despite unjustified pro-American wishful thinking in some quarter in the
Chinese leadership, China is forced by these events to acquiesce to its
belief that military preparedness is the best hope for a peaceful
reunification of Taiwan.  This trend may end in a rejection of the
previous modus vivendi of flexibility and herald a rigid demand for an
uncompromising solution for Taiwan within a set time frame.

Meanwhile, Beijing has also signaled to Taiwan that previously
non-negotiable issues can now be negotiated in the context of Chinese
internal affair.

Taiwan has exploited the rise in US moral imperialism to cement US
commitment to defend a "democratic" and capitalistic Taiwan in the event
that its actions should provoke military conflict with the mainland.
Officially, there is no such US commitment, but Taipei banks on rising
American hegemony to carry out Taiwan's private pursuit of objectives
that the US may not officially endorse, but tacitly also does not
disprove.

The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA), Public Law 96-8 of April 10, 1979, as a
counterweight to normalization with Beijing, is a US law.  As such, it
has a legal authority exceeding the three Communiqués.  The TRA
establishes a continuing relationship between the United States and
Taiwan on an unofficial basis to "preserve and promote extensive close
and friendly commercial, cultural and other relations." It also states
that the United States considers "any effort to determine the future of
Taiwan by other than peaceful means including boycotts and embargoes is
a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of
grave concern to the United States."  The pending Taiwan Enhanced
Security Act (TESA), passed on February 1, 2000 by a bipartisan veto
proved vote of 341 to 70 in the house, which legitimizes increased US
military assistance and sales to Taiwan, threatens to rupture US-China
relations.

China can reasonably calculate that the United States will not intervene
directly in the Taiwan Strait or come to Taiwan's assistance in the
event of conflict, if such intervention involves risks of heavy losses
of American lives.
Despite the TRA, and the pending TESA, the United States is still
legally prevented from intervening in Chinese internal affairs.  Only
extremists in the US will dispute that Taiwan is a Chinese internal
affairs matter.
American performance in Iraq, Bosnia, Somalia and Kosovo have
demonstrated a lack of ultimate resolve for risking American lives in
distant conflicts.
While Taiwan is a vital interest of China and China has explicitly
stated it is willing to sacrifice millions of lives and even entire
cities to reunify, it is not such an interest for the United States. Nor
is the United States prepared to make comparable sacrifices over such
issue.
Chinese strategy thus should aim at deterring US intervention on Taiwan
by making clear that such intervention would entail exceedingly high
cost in terms of American lives.  China should not initiate any
preemptive hostility against US forces, as history has shown that a
Pearl Harbor attack served only to consolidate US resolve for total
war.  But China will have to leave no doubt about the prospect of high
US casualty in a limited Strait war to avoid any miscalculation of the
part of the US.

Strategically, the US has yet to understand that lack of progress in
reunification is preventing domestic Chinese politics to meet China's
developmental needs, by distorting China's national priorities and in
its allocation of scarce resources toward military expenditure.   A
run-away escalation of the Taiwan issue will radicalize Chines politics
that can have long-term spillover effects on the stability of the whole
region.  It complicates or may even derail Sino-Japanese relations.

US calculation on military intervention on Taiwan rests on strategic
consequences. The United States has no intrinsic strategic interest in
Taiwan except diplomatic credibility that may affect US strategic
defense commitment to Japan.  US policy on Taiwan, disguised as defense
for democracy and capitalism, is really held hostage to the traditional
Japanese view on the importance of Taiwan for Japanese security.  Taiwan

is the only pro-Japanese territory in Asia and it will be its first
objective in future expansion into Asia.  If the United States should
define Taiwan in terms of Japanese security interest, as TMD implies,
and subsequently fail to defend that very strategic interests, Japanese
rearmament may well result. On the other hand, if Taiwan moves toward
independence, it will spark Japanese ambition toward it, not to mention
immediate Chinese action.  Thus the optimum solution may well be an
early accommodation with China so that the return of Taiwan to China may
be viewed by Japan as a neutral development in terms of Japanese
security interest.

US intervention in any conflict over Taiwan will involve US bases in
Japan. That will force Japan to choose between a hostile relationship
with China and the existing US-Japan alliance and its strategic interest
in Taiwan.  How Japan will choose is by no mean clear or predictable.
Japan has been trying to shift gradually from its economic dependence on
the US, with whom contentious trade disputes have been intensifying and
resolution appearing more remote over time, by developing alternative
markets in Asia and Europe.  Japan cannot escape concluding that the
Asian financial crisis of 1997 had been caused if not engineered by
US-led globalization and that Japan has been a collateral victim while
the US has been a happy beneficiary.  The immediate threat to Japan
during the Cold War had been the USSR, the disappearance of which has
changed the basis of the US-Japan defense alliance.  Japanese security
issue with North Korea and China may in fact be simpler to solve with
reduced US presence.  Both the left and the right in Japanese politics
oppose the US-Japan defense alliance.
The left does not wish to see Japan dragged into a war in Asia merely to
defend US interests, while the right opposes the defense treaty as an
insulting obstacle to Japan's sovereign right to rearm.  Just as the
nature of NATO has changed after the Cold War, the US-Japan defense
alliance faces a very uncertain future.  Taiwan may well be the focus
for Japan to address its future security options.
It is imperative that China should reach an understanding with Japan
independent of US positions over Taiwan.

The United States, Japan and China have a common interest to manage the
Taiwan issue to prevent a destructive unraveling of Asian-Pacific
strategic balance, resulting an unending confrontation between the US
and China, like the situation with Cuba, Iran, Iraq or worse, and/or the
break down in the U.S.-Japan alliance, and/or a re-emergence of hostile
regional rivalry between Japan and China.

The US insistence on molding China in its own image as a condition for
constructive relationship is foolhardy.  Yet, US leadership has been
timid in leading public opinion away from demonizing China.
Deep-rooted American antagonism toward China have forced all US
administrations since 1949 to bypass normal diplomatic and institutional
channel in their dealings with China, at times with an energetic White
House even cutting out the State and Defense Departments, let alone
Congress and the press.  This style of foreign policy unfortunately
leaves US policy on China devoid of broad-based support or even
understanding.  Thus China policy has been allowed to fall victim to the
peculiar dynamics of US domestic politics.  Many US analysts criticize
Chine rightly for being inept in its handling of the US Congress.  Yet
the responsibility for nurturing this faulty Chinese perspective traces
back in no small way to an arrogant White House.

US attempts to defuse rising Chinese national capabilities through its
support for separatist forces will not succeed, because China will
resist such development at all cost.
A policy of fragmentation or dismemberment of China, by encouraging its
breakup into independent regions and provinces, is a contradiction in
logic.  A weak China that can be dismembered is a threat to everyone, so
a policy of fragmentation to reduce a so-call China threat is not only
unnecessary, but it will in fact bring about undesirable chaos that will
threaten regional or even global stability.  In fact, a policy of
fragmentation would be a guarantee to ignite precisely the kind of
Chinese supernationalism that its enemies are interested in avoiding.
The "Open Door" Policy of John Hays worked out that logic a century ago.

New China's national purpose is one of redressing a century of national
victimization under Western imperialism.  Until the current order of
residual imperialist exploitation is redressed, no Chinese government
can accept the status quo and expect to stay in power.  China's national
interests lies in a rightful fulfillment of Chinese "manifest destiny"
to balance its rich traditional culture with modern scientific
technology.  It involves a renaissance of Chinese culture and societal
values in the socialist vision of Da Tong (¤j¦P), or general harmony. It
involves the justifiable recovery of territories under the age of
Western imperialism, notably in the South China Sea and Taiwan, as well
as to the North, including the eventual peaceful reintegration of Outer
Mongolia.  China by natural right is entitled to major power status and
deserves the acknowledgment of that status by all.  It seeks to expand
its rightful influence in international institutions and forums that
make decisions economically and strategically for the region and the
world.  China's destiny is being fueled by a revival of popular
nationalism and renewed confidence in its splendid cultural heritage.
Any government that does not respond to these national aims cannot
govern China for long.  Any foreign government that does not acknowledge
this Chinese destiny cannot hope for good relations with China.

As a dynamo for redress, China should be fully cooperative in
progressive international multilateral regimes. It should seek peaceful
bilateral relationships of mutual respect and benefit.
China also faces difficult structural problems domestically.  China will
need to find a the proper balance between universal modernization and
the preservation of its rich heritage, between interaction with a
changing world order and defending its national interest.  China is the
most advanced nation ideologically and it is ironic that it must scale
back its advanced ideological state in order to achieve material
progress.  The challenge facing China is to not loose its advanced
ideology merely to regain semi-colonial status.

China, by abandoning its revolutionary leadership in seeking major
changes in the international system, forfeits its greatest strength.
The 21st century will see the emergence of a new world order forged by
irresistible popular progressive forces.  It will challenge the
legitimacy of residual institutions born of a bygone imperialistic age,
from the United Nations to the World Bank.  It will herald revolutionary
changes throughout the world led by technological breakthroughs.
China, in its effort to counter Western demonization, no longer seeks to
reform international institutions, but merely to expand its role within
them, just as a claimant to major power status might be expected to do,
often sounding like a conservative government.   Alas, China in its
quest for establishment acceptance, risks losing the respect and
admiration of the progressive forces of the world.

A new US policy of containment of China will be counterproductive. Such
a policy will unnecessarily creating a hostile China and force it again
into the role of a garrison state.  No Asian government would again
support such a US policy. Yet, Clinton's the policy of "comprehensive
engagement" is based on a dubious objective: changing China through
"peaceful evolution".  That policy requires the militarization of the
peace, by using trade as an ideological weapon of moral imperialism.  It
purports to change China in America's image by engaging it with trade.
In the end, neither trade nor peace will be served by this policy.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union marked the transition of a bipolar
world into a multipolar world.  In the bipolar political world, trade
was primarily a Western regime. The world was a sphere of contention
between the two superpowers that did not trade between them and their
respective block members.  Aid from each superpower was the exclusive
tool of ideological competition and economic development in the non
aligned world.

In a multipolar world, trade has become global, replacing aid as the
recognized tool of economic development. American policy planners see
world trade and globalization as a vehicle to a new world order under
U.S. tutelage in which market fundamentalism, financial capitalism and
Western democratic principles rule.  China sees foreign trade as a means
to achieving world power status along mercantilist paths.  These two
separate and different objectives will inevitably clash.  The U.S. sees
bilateral trade as a privilege to be granted to countries which
subscribe to American values and in concert with American national
interests.  China sees bilateral trade with richer nations as a moral
obligation of rich nations to equalize historical economic injustice.

Security threats faced by China in a multi-polar world have not
diminished.  The main threat has shifted  now to the form of ethnic
separatism, mainly orchestrated by U.S. interest in the name of
individual freedom, human rights and democracy.  Increasingly, China
recognizes economic development as a key tool in combating ethnic
separatism.  Historically, a prosperous China attracts fringe ethnic
group to join the center for obvious benefits, and a poor center feeds
centrifugal forces toward separatism.

Successive US administrations have recognized that US policies on China
and Taiwan are based on the three Communiqués : Shanghai Communiqué of
1972, the Recognition Communiqué of 1978, and the August 17, 1982,
Communiqué.
The Taiwan Relations Act, the original draft by the Administration
having been bolstered with a legal guarantee of future arms sales to
Taiwan, was passed by veto-proved margin by both houses of Congress.
The language on the defense of Taiwan contradicts US positions declared
in the three communiqués.
The TRA mandates in a legal framework a much closer security
relationship with Taiwan and with its people than is contemplated by the
three Communiqués.
Putting obstacles in the path of peaceful reunification of China will
not serve US interest in the long run.

Allowing historical conditions of Taiwan to hamper a constructive
relationship between China and the US is to lose the future in pursuit
of the past.

For China to pursue a course of domestic economic development and adopt
a policy of promoting peace and stability, the Taiwan issue has been to
settled first.