Yet Presidents–even those whose backgrounds, like Clinton’s, would make them highly sympathetic to these attitudes–are obliged to strike a balance between competing interests. For them, agreements like the one in last week’s joint statement–the reduction of the threat on nuclear proliferation, cooperation on Korea, the Gulf and the Middle East–represent moral values defining the American commitment to peace. This is why President Clinton has done well to courageously resist pressures–especially from the media–to turn the summit into a one-issue meeting on human rights.
The human rights activists have raised many valid concerns which Chinese leaders would be wise not to ignore. But no president can base China policy on confrontation until he has made every effort to explore the possibilities of cooperation. We should have learned in Vietnam that national frustration can transform a crusade for democracy into an assault on the inadequacy of America’s moral concern for peace (often by the same people). A deliberate policy of isolating and weakening China–which is what the protesters and much of the TV media seem to be demanding–would be a fateful enterprise.
For a country such as ours, projected into international affairs to meet the ideological and strategic challenge of the Cold War, the temptation to place China into the slot vacated by the Soviet Union is great. But such an attitude ignores contemporary Chinese realities. The Soviet leaders considered themselves revolutionaries at the core of a world Communist ideology. Chinese leaders eschew ideology and crusades in favor of equilibrium and mutual benefit. The Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal represented a potential mortal threat to the United States; China will not have any comparable capability for several generations, if then. The Soviet Union bordered on weak countries which it could blackmail with overwhelming conventional forces. China’s neighbors are anything but weak. Until well into the 21st century, Japan is likely to have a more formidable military establishment than China. Nor can planners in Beijing ignore the military capacities of India, Korea, Russia, Vietnam or Taiwan–each of which today has a more modern air force than China. To forestall a coalition of hostile neighbors is, for the next generation, likely to be the basis of Chinese foreign policy and incentive toward cooperative relations with the United States.
To treat China as a foreordained adversary is to misunderstand the specific circumstances of Asia. In the North Atlantic and Western Hemisphere, pluralistic democracies practicing market economics do not view each other as strategic rivals; war between them is inconceivable. But in Asia, nations of continental size consider each other, at least in part, as strategic rivals. Neither political pluralism nor integrating regional institutions exist. Wars, while not likely, are not inconceivable.
The Soviet Union challenged us to establish a balance of power built around American military strength. In Asia, at least for the next generation, peace will require conscious and deliberate calibration of a balance of power that already largely exists between the major powers–with U.S. power in reserve against hegemonial threats. The Chinese challenge is less to create than to manage a balance of power–a task with which the United States has never felt comfortable.
Far easier to treat China as an Asian Soviet Union, hence as a congenital enemy. But history should teach us that this is a siren call to a vast and exhausting enterprise. China has always dealt with foreign dangers with extraordinary tenacity. It has survived 5,000 years of turbulent history by making patience its weapon and time its ally. A policy of deliberate confrontation with China would not have a simple outcome or a clearly definable objective. For even were China to collapse after a struggle certain to be long and painful, this would usher in a new crisis as China’s neighbors rushed in to secure the spoils–as the European powers and Japan did in the 19th and 20th centuries. And America’s permanent interest in preventing hegemony in Asia would then oblige us to seek another balance, as the United States did–instinctively–when it developed the ““open door’’ policy in the early part of this century.
Nixon’s opening to China in 1971 was designed to prevent global hegemony by the Soviet Union. The United States would react similarly to attempts by any country to dominate Asia, including China. The United States would surely honor existing defense commitments and take whatever other measures might be necessary to preserve the balance of power in Asia. But we must not invite such a confrontation on the basis of false historical analogies or be driven to it by domestic politics.
A Soviet-type challenge from China is improbable in the foreseeable future. Estimates of its current GDP range from 25 percent (IMF estimate) to 34 percent (World Bank estimate) of America’s. Thus, in absolute numbers, even if China continues to grow at the rate of 10 percent indefinitely–an assumption for which there is no precedent–it will, for the foreseeable future, barely match America’s absolute growth.
Nor is China a military colossus bestriding Asia. We devote 3.5 percent of our GDP to defense; while the precise amount China spends is unclear, the Institute of Strategic Studies estimates it at 5.7 percent of a much smaller GDP (and far less than Japan’s). Provided America pursues a sensible defense posture, China poses no near-term military threat.
The Asian power balance is in flux. Japan is returning to a more assertive foreign policy; Korea may become unified and, even if it does not, will achieve economic capacity comparable to that of the major European states; Russia’s evolution, though uncertain, appears to be based on traditional Russian nationalism; India will become a great power, projecting its influence into Southeast Asia which has, in turn, until the recent crisis, nearly equaled China’s rate of economic growth.
For the foreseeable future, a policy of confronting China would not rally its neighbors, as the Cold War containment policy did those of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, all of the Soviet Union’s neighbors felt threatened ideologically and militarily and were eager to cooperate in containing it. China’s neighbors either do not feel threatened or are reluctant to acknowledge it. Their probable reaction would be to position themselves between China and the United States, fostering both nationalism and neutralism all over Asia. And no European nation except possibly the United Kingdom would support us. China, too, would suffer enormously in its rate of economic development, prospects for collaboration with the West, and vulnerability to its historic nightmare of being encircled by hostile neighbors. Thus both sides have an interest in a dialogue designed to stabilize the situation and promote progress in Asia. The goals will be far from identical; they will contain elements of rivalry. But these should be stabilized by consultations and by pressures that stop short of strategic confrontations–except as a last resort.
FOR THE FORESEEABLE FUTURE, CHINA’S CHALLENGE TO the United States will be political and economic, not military. We cannot prevent enhancement of Chinese influence arising from its economic growth–though we should strive to channel it into directions that serve our national interest and the peace of Asia. With the disappearance of the Soviet threat, the unifying element of a shared danger has disappeared from Sino-American relations. But there is a common, albeit more intangible, interest. China and the United States must not drift into conflict through ill-considered policies in which the conceivable gains bear no relationship to the probable losses–much as the nations of Europe did when they propelled themselves into the First World War. China must understand the values on which America is built and the importance Americans attach to them; America must respect the legacies of an ancient civilization and its memories, which do not present Western hectoring in an inevitably benign light.
Thus the importance of the Clinton-Jiang summit resides above all in Clinton’s commitment to base the Sino-American relationship on the entire range of American interests and not only a single issue. This produced agreement on a ““constructive strategic partnership’’ which will allow for cooperation in areas of common interest and frank discussion–as at the summit–where there is disagreement. In addition, there were concrete accomplishments:
The agreement not to share nuclear technology with Iran or to supply unsafeguarded nuclear facilities in any country.
The understanding that both sides would work to maintain peace and stability in Korea by fostering Four Power talks, and the stress on the joint concern for peace and stability in the Middle East, the Gulf and Southeast Asia.
The drastic reduction in Chinese tariffs.
The agreement on maritime safety, to reduce accidents and miscalculations.
There was even a ray of light with respect to the impacted problem of Taiwan. The United States reaffirmed the commitment of six presidents to a one-China policy. And China may have moved a step toward meeting the equally long-standing American concern for a peaceful solution of the conflict. In the past, Chinese leaders have generally taken the position that this is entirely an internal matter. On this visit, Jiang made at least two moves in our direction: he asserted that China would pursue a peaceful solution so long as foreign powers did not intervene; and he proposed a renunciation of hostilities in the Taiwan Straits. Diplomatic specialists–especially those committed to confrontation–will no doubt point out that those phrases could well be empty depending on how ““foreign intervention’’ and ““end of hostilities’’ are defined. They should be intensively explored in the consultative process established at the summit.
The degree of the challenge to Clinton will depend largely on how the human rights issue debate evolves in America. Important issues were raised in that regard. But they were sometimes pressed to a point that threatened other important objectives and advanced with a self-righteousness destructive of the dialogue the issue requires. Some White House aides played into this mood by putting out the word that the President was dismayed because Jiang did not announce the release of some dissidents upon his arrival. But that sort of gesture is least likely to come at a summit, when both sides are in part playing to domestic constituencies, and might well prove demeaning to both sides as a kind of trade in hostages. A far better test will be Chinese actions in the months ahead, when they can be undertaken as an expression of China’s own decisions, not of foreign pressures.
Similarly, the refrain of Congressional leaders that they could not ““help’’ China unless it changed its domestic practices weakened their own, often valid, case. For it implied that Jiang had come as a supplicant, that there was no American national interest in close relations with China, and that we were bestowing a kind of favor by inviting the Chinese President. Nothing more likely to undermine Chinese commitment to a collaborative effort is imaginable.
The American approach to summits has been to oscillate between euphoria and depression, between the belief that good personal relations spell an end of all tensions and that a failure to end all disputes means that they cannot be resolved. Neither of these attitudes is justified by the Clinton-Jiang summit. An important first step has been taken; what happens now depends on the ability of the two leaders to infuse the relationship with the courage and imagination that has taken them this far.
