China's foreign policy revolves around two main issues: they want Taiwan back in the fold and they want to continue to develop into a new superpower, especially in the Asian theater. To continue to develop as a power center, the Chinese routinely attempt to blunt American influence in Asia. Of course, this effect is best seen in their efforts to strategically resist American power projection into the Taiwan issue.
The Chinese Military's Taiwan strategy has been strongly influenced on their belief that the American public has lost its will to accept casualties in the field. Because of this, the Chinese believe that a quick, forceful blow to the American facilities in Japan and elsewhere, causing significant American casualties, will cause the American public to lose their stomach for a Taiwan defense and force the administration to stay on the sidelines. Some analysts believe there is a good probability that China will move militarily to take Taiwan within the next five years.
I believe the WTC catastrophe has changed everything. American's are now much more willing to go to the wall and are in no mood to be trifled with. I believe the Chinese are very much less certain that they have a handle on how to effectively manage American responses to possible Chinese initiatives throughout Asia . The following article illustrates some of the uncertainty that has developed just this week in Chinese government circles.
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Chinese leaders would have to take a big gulp before endorsing American military strikes abroad. They are waiting nervously to see just how Washington chooses to retaliate, worried that an overly robust campaign could run up against Chinese strategic interests. "China is put in a very awkward situation," said Jin Canrong, an expert on American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
Waiting Nervously for Response
By ERIK ECKHOLM, NYTimes, SEP 16, 2001
BEIJING, Sept. 15 — In President Bush's declared epic battle between good and evil, China clearly hopes to be counted among the good guys.
Most people here reacted with horror and compassion to the deadly attacks in the United States, although some hotheads — especially some young men who write on the Internet — said the United States had it coming.
Once the magnitude of the crimes sank in here, the government's expressions of sympathy became less restrained and President Jiang Zemin, in a friendly phone call to President Bush, made a vague promise of support for a global attack on terrorism.
But Chinese leaders would have to take a big gulp before endorsing American military strikes abroad. They are waiting nervously to see just how Washington chooses to retaliate, worried that an overly robust campaign could run up against Chinese strategic interests.
"China is put in a very awkward situation," said Jin Canrong, an expert on American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
China's quest for modernization and global economic ties remains the top priority, Mr. Jin noted, and that means cultivating good relations with the United States and being counted as a friend during the current crisis.
China's leaders are also very much aware that their own country is a potential target of radical Islamic terror. There is already suspicion that small numbers of Uighur Muslim separatists in the western region of Xinjiang have received training or aid from the Taliban.
At the same time, China is fearful of America's global domination and might, and generically opposes virtually all military intervention in sovereign countries. That stance was reflected in the vehement opposition to NATO's air war in Yugoslavia.
From a geo-strategic stance, Mr. Jin noted, China cannot cheer any expansion of the American military presence in the vicinity of Central Asia, as would occur if American troops entered Afghanistan.
China's support would come easier if Washington made a serious stop at the United Nations before it struck. "It would be best if the United States seeks United Nations endorsement first," said Shen Dingli, deputy director of American studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. "The Chinese would certainly give their support."
But even if the United States and NATO retaliate without United Nations approval, Mr. Shen said, the Chinese government is not likely to play the kind of angry, obstructive role it did in the Kosovo conflict. "I don't think China will denounce the actions, as long as the United States presents good evidence linking its targets to the crime," Mr. Shen said.
China felt threatened by the Kosovo war because, in the eyes of strategists here, it was intervention into internal affairs on cloudy "humanitarian" grounds, and carried out without seeking United Nations approval to boot. Leaders here feared that a precedent was being set for future Western intervention in a conflict over Taiwan, or perhaps Tibet.
But the latest attacks on American soil present a different case, many intellectuals here say, in part because of the extreme nature of the provocation and in part because of the partial convergence of Chinese and American interests.
China's main approach to controlling the smoldering separatist movement in Xinjian, in addition to keeping a chokehold internally, has been to cultivate relations with bordering Muslim states like Kazakhstan, offering commerce and friendship in return for their control over Chinese Uighur exiles. In an apparent effort to repeat that strategy of co-optation, China has even developed modest commercial and political contacts with the Taliban, though it has not granted formal recognition.
Still, experts here say, Chinese leaders would not mind seeing the fall of a destabilizing group like the Taliban. But the leaders will never say this out loud, because this would run up against China's long-held principle of "noninterference" as well as to invite reprisals.
In lively interchanges on Web sites, some writers, mostly anonymous, have gloated at America's comeuppance and one military expert, a co-author of a hawkish book called "Unlimited War," Qiao Liang, said that while Tuesday's dead and injured were victims of terrorism, "they are also the sacrificial victims of the United States government's policies."
But many intellectuals have condemned those who, as one letter posted by a group of Beijing liberals put it, have "taken joy from suffering." The group of scholars and editors said the gleeful responses underscored the urgent need for a thorough overhaul of the systems of propaganda and censorship that have often bred anti-Americanism. |
