Commentary
America's China attitude is not a policy
By David Polhemus
Advertiser Editorial Writer
BEIJING — What kind of message is George W. Bush trying to send to China? It's a question that has Chinese and Americans alike here frankly baffled.
If Bush has some reason to offend China, then his performance ranks right up there with winning passage of his tax-cut program. But with the benefits of an improving U.S.-China relationship so obvious, why would he wish to jeopardize it?
Although he says he wants good relations with China, his actions speak louder. Let's quickly count the affronts that Bush has either initiated or intensified:
• Allowing the so-called transit of Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian, which in practice is tantamount to two state visits. Washington's commitment to a one-China policy precludes official visits for Taiwan officials.
• The full-on White House reception for the Dalai Lama, precisely on the 50th anniversary of the ill-fated treaty by which China "liberated" Tibet. The Clinton administration handled Taiwan officials and the Dalai Lama far more carefully.
• The generous offer of arms sales to Taiwan. Although Bush postponed a decision on Aegis weapons systems, he offered equipment that is both too advanced for Taiwan's military to operate and beyond its means — and which China considers offensive in nature.
• Bush's non-response to an invitation to visit Beijing for a state visit following the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leader's forum in Shanghai in October. It's not even crystal-clear that the Shanghai visit is still on.
• Bush's failure to discourage Congress from lobbying against China's passionate pursuit of the 2008 Olympics.
• Bush's widely condemned dumping of the Kyoto accord. (True, China remains a veritable environmental sewer, but its efforts to clean up its act, at least here in Beijing, are genuinely impressive.)
• His administration's persistent behind-the-scenes haggling on labor rights (an issue in which Bush has zero interest at home), which is delaying Chinese accession to the World Trade Organization. Beijing tells its people that such interference is designed to keep them poor.
• Bush isn't making any friends in China, either, on defense issues, on which Washington has little credibility here. Coloring everything that's happened since, the Chinese have never believed that the bombing of their embassy in Belgrade was an accident (some American businessmen here are are inclined to agree). He has resumed surveillance flights, which may be our "right," but which the Chinese regard as patently unfriendly. And he has pressed ahead with his plans for a national missile defense (NMD).
The Chinese simply don't believe him when he says NMD is aimed only at "rogue" nations. Indeed, if a system could be used successfully against one or two missiles launched from North Korea or Iraq, why couldn't it be enlarged a bit to checkmate China's 20 intercontinental ballistic missiles?
Shawn Xu, outspoken chief economist for a joint venture investment bank here, has no patience with Bush's NMD explanation: "Excuse me," he said, slapping his forehead, "but against whom? North Korea? Iraq? Are you joking? Give me a break.
"If you really are after China and Russia with this technology," he went on, "say so. It will push China and Russia closer to each other. If that's really what you want, then NMD will give you that."
Not to mention the likelihood of a nuclear arms race in Asia.
What's most mystifying about Bush's bluntly unfriendly opening to China is the offense it also gives to the corporate free-traders who paid big bucks to finance his campaign — the Motorolas, the IBMs, the GMs, which have invested billions here.
So what is Bush up to? He hasn't said, so we can only speculate. Here are a couple of schools of thought widely but privately mentioned by Americans, Europeans and Chinese in Beijing:
• He still hasn't assembled a full Asia team, without which his own woeful ignorance of the region is being highlighted. This school is confident that Bush will reverse course and seek good relations with China as soon as he begins receiving enlightened advice. Indeed, there's a theory that the last seven presidents set out in their early days in office to tie a knot in the tiger's tail, until reality inevitably sank in.
• He feels himself obligated in the early going to placate the extreme right wing of his party. There is an assemblage of congressional staffers and Defense bureaucrats who style themselves as the "Blue Team," whose goal apparently is to isolate China and prepare for what they see as inevitable war. What's not clear is how Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney, for whom these issues seem to represent an ideological component, relate to these jingoists.
What we're left with now in Beijing is an American Embassy uncomfortably saying that U.S. policy toward China hasn't changed — because they've received no instructions to that effect — when obviously Bush's approach, for the moment at least, is fundamentally different.
Likewise, the Chinese have reacted cautiously and with restraint as they wait to see which way the American wind is blowing, and why. They have reacted with words to what they see as affronts by Bush, when similar provocations in the past have resulted, for instance, in missiles being lobbed in the direction of Taiwan.
"We are very unsatisfied with the measures the United States has taken," said Lu Shumin, director for North American affairs in the national foreign ministry. "Chen's so-called transit in the United States, selling arms to Taiwan in large amounts — the largest in last 10 years — and the Dalai Lama visit —we don't see any benefit in the measures taken by the United States." They are "harming relations, hurting Chinese sentiment. This isn't in the long-range interest of the United States."
"Right now," mused an ex-pat American businessman, "the United States has a China attitude but not a China policy."
Advertiser editorial writer David Polhemus is currently traveling in Asia as a Jefferson Fellow from the East-West Center.
