From 'one China' policy to many China policies
Mixed messages on Taiwan coming out of Washington are bewildering officials and observers in Beijing
By LEON HADAR
IN WASHINGTON
UPON entering the White House in early 2001, President George W Bush and his aides dismissed ex-president Bill Clinton's policy of 'strategic partnership' with China and suggested that they would replace what they criticised as an incoherent and ineffective approach to dealing with China with a more sophisticated strategy.
Bravado: what should trouble the Americans most is that Taiwan's President Chen and other pro-independence leaders seem to believe that the US would be willing to risk a military confrontation with China in order to defend their right to self-determination
On one level, when it came to the geo-economic agenda, the Bushies pledged to the free traders and to their pals in the business community that they would continue engaging the Chinese and expand the trade and investment relationship with the emerging economic power.
In fact, they backed Clinton's efforts to establish normal trade relations with the Chinese and the plan to get them into the World Trade Organization (WTO). So it was not surprising that some in the Chinese leadership had hoped that the Sino-American relationship under Bush the Son would look very much the way it did under Bush the Elder, and that Bush II, like Bush I, would play down differences over political issues like human rights and Taiwan, so as to make Corporate America happy.
But on another level, as they focused on the geo-strategic relationship between the two powers, the Bushies promoted a very aggressive approach, regarding China as a 'strategic competitor'.
In fact, the neo-conservative intellectuals who dominated decision-making in the Pentagon and the vice-president's office referred to the new post-Cold War strategic threat to American global interests and advocated not only the strengthening of military ties with Taiwan, but the formation of an American-led coalition to 'contain' China that would include Japan and South Korea.
At the same time, the same neo-conservatives, dedicated as they were to the promotion of American-style democracy worldwide, and the members of the powerful Christian Right called on Bush to regard Taiwan as a democratic bastion under threat from Communist China, and to demand that China improve its human rights conduct, especially when it came to rights of religious minorities.
It was difficult from the outset to juggle these two competing strategies of encouraging Americans to make money in China while warning them that the same China was also a threat to their security and values.
Contradictions
So on one hand there were the television images of a major Sino-American diplomatic confrontation after the collision between the US surveillance plane and a Chinese fighter jet in April 2001, recalling the kind of tensions that existed between the US and the former Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.
But then the US was also providing incentives for the American high-tech and aerospace industries to sell their products to China and establish a presence there, and help the Chinese to acquire the same kind of technology that would provide it with an edge for the next military confrontation.
Even more confusing was the Bushies' approach to the Taiwan issue. They insisted that they continued to be committed to the thirty-year-old 'one China' policy, which assumed that Taiwan would not take steps towards achieving independence.
But then, under the pressure of the neo-conservative ideologues, Bush - during the first months of his administration - gave a seemingly unconditional pledge to defend Taiwan from attack by mainland China, going significantly further than his predecessors had done by stating that America would 'do whatever it takes to help Taiwan defend herself'.
Bush followed that assurance by approving the largest arms sale package to Taiwan in nearly a decade. Moreover, his administration has encouraged high-profile visits by Taiwanese leaders to the United States.
A leading neocon, Deputy Secretary of Defence Paul Wolfowitz, even met 'informally' with Taiwan's defence minister during a 2002 conference. This highest-level meeting between a US and Taiwanese official since the US switched its diplomatic recognition from the island to the mainland in 1979 took place after 9/11 and against the backdrop of American efforts to secure Beijing's help to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis.
Many observers at that time were speculating that the Bushies were reversing their earlier strong support for Taiwan. Indeed, that Washington was now willing to accommodate Beijing became evident in December 2003 during a visit by Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao to the White House, when Bush publicly criticised the leader of Taiwan for seeking to change the political status of the island unilaterally.
Hence, you cannot blame officials and observers in Beijing for having been a little perplexed by the mixed messages coming out of Washington on Taiwan. At best, Bush's policy seems to be incoherent.
At worst, the American policy seems to reflect a cynical strategy: Let's not make too much noise on Taiwan as long as we need the Chinese on North Korea and the war on terrorism, while whispering to the Taiwanese: 'Hey, don't worry, guys. We're still on your side.'
The bottom line from the Chinese perspective is that American military support for Taiwan is not making Taiwan feel secure enough to move towards accommodation with China (as the Americans contend), but, instead, it is being used by the leadership of President Chen Shui-bian in Taipei as a way of moving away from China and towards political independence.
What should trouble the Americans more than anything else is that Taiwan's pro-independence leaders seem to believe that, indeed, the US would be willing to risk a military confrontation with China in order to defend their right to self-determination.
That kind of wishful thinking may explain why Taiwan has been reducing its military spending at a time when it is adopting a more confrontational approach towards China. It is betting that if push came to shove, the Americans would bail them out.
But if the Bushies have failed to advance a sound geo-strategic policy towards China, they have certainly also not succeeded in promoting a viable geo-economic agenda. Recall that at the end of the Clinton presidency, the conventional wisdom in Washington was that China was the huge and expanding 'emerging market' that would provide the American economy with new opportunities for trade and investment, and therefore growth.
At the conclusion of President Bush's first term in office, China is now perceived by American lawmakers and pundits as a major threat to American economic security, with its vast labour force supposedly sucking in America's industrial jobs (while India is having the same effect on America's service jobs) and its huge consumer market being allowed to dictate terms to American companies.
And let us not forget how China's so-called 'undervalued' currency is being blamed by members of Congress for the loss of American manufacturing jobs and the expanding US trade deficit with China.
China bashers
Instead of trying to challenge the arguments raised by the growing China-is-our-new-economic-rival crowd in Washington by highlighting the economic rewards that Americans are deriving from their growing engagement with Washington - the supply of cheap manufactured goods that keep consumer prices down; a major export market; an underwriter of the US trade deficit - the Bushies have chosen to join the China bashers by attacking the Chinese currency and trade policies and by threatening Beijing with economic sanctions.
Indeed, by pressing the Chinese to accommodate US economic interests, Bush and his aides seem to be playing into the hands of those critics in the Democratic camp - including the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate, John Kerry - who have blamed the Bushies for appeasing the Chinese on trade and foreign exchange issues.
In fact, last month's agreement reached in Washington between Chinese and American officials on measures to address problems facing US companies doing business in China, including movie piracy and restrictions on direct import of goods, should be seen as part of an effort by the Bushies to demonstrate that it is 'doing something' to placate critics of Chinese trade policies.
But such moves are not a substitute for an assertive strategy that celebrates Sino-American economic engagement instead of treating it as a problem or even a threat to American interests.
Hence, the Bush administration's China policy, unlike that of its predecessor, seems to be a policy maze of smoke and looking-glass mirrors, where nothing is what it seems to be. The only good thing that you could say about it is that it is perhaps less confusing and costly than the Bushies' Iraq policy.
The writer is BT's Washington correspondent
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