Emerging China requires closer attention from U.S.
By Rep. Ed Case Office of Rep. Ed Case
I returned Tuesday from 10 days in the People's Republic of China, one of 12 members of a bipartisan Congressional delegation led by my Small Business Committee chair and friend, Donald Manzullo, R-Ill.
We not only represented our country in Round VII of the U.S.-China Interparliamentary Exchange, through which members of Congress and our National People's Congress counterparts trade views, but also sought to understand a country rapidly emerging into superpower status.
Our travels took us from Beijing, the government seat; to multiethnic Yunnan Province; to industrial ricebowl Chengdu; to haunting roof-of-the-world Tibet; to go-go Shanghai.
We met with senior leaders of the omnipresent Chinese Communist Party in their walled compound of Zhongnanhai, the NPC in the Great Hall of the People at Tiananmen Square, and provincial leadership, enduring highly scripted statements on hot-button issues like Taiwan, trade, military escalation and human rights.
But beyond this formalistic officialdom, we had remarkably frank interchanges on what is really driving each of our countries. We also interacted candidly and without government interference with China's grassroots, from street vendors to university students, soldiers, Buddhist monks, farmers and large-business owners and their workers.
We benefited tremendously from the collective knowledge of our own in-country foreign service professionals. And I had productive meetings with Bo Wu, Hawai'i's representative in China, as well as our consuls general in Beijing, Shanghai and Chengdu, on Hawai'i-specific challenges such as visa hurdles for local tourism.
I certainly took away a better understanding of modern-day China, but there is much more for all of us to learn. Here are some observations:
Yet China faces tremendous internal challenges. While some are getting very rich and hundreds of millions are better off than in the past, well over half of its population still lives in great poverty.
There are many papers and television shows, but the content is clearly government-influenced (for example, constant Japan-bashing). People can associate but, without government permission, not formally. The deal: Do what you want as long as you don't challenge government control.
And do all of this without risking any fights with us, at least not yet.
In this rapidly changing and often conflicting and confusing milieu, how should we deal with China? A good start would be to balance our federal budget. Our crushing deficit is being financed by loans from China, our fastest growing creditor, giving it unnecessary economic and political leverage.
Smart, fair trade should be our goal, drawing China into mutual international agreements and requiring intellectual property and other protections.
On human rights and freedoms, we can't "make" China do what we want overnight, but we should continue to highlight outright abuses and to facilitate the flow of information to China's people that will lead them to their own conclusions.
Militarily, President Reagan's maxim, "trust but verify," sums it up, and clearly we must maintain an adequate deterrent capability in the Asia-Pacific region, highlighting Hawai'i's role. Overall, our actions and decisions must be fair, firm, realistic, duly respectful and, above all, consistent and with the same long-term view as China follows.
China is a work in progress, the future of which is anything but predestined. As it emerges, it will be either a constructive or destructive force for our world. The relationships we develop and decisions we make with respect to China must be among our very highest national priorities.
Ed Case represents Hawai'i in Congress from the 2nd District (Rural O'ahu and Neighbor Islands). He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.
Congressman Ed Case meets in Beijing with Tang Jiaxuan, state councilor of China, a position comparable to a post in the United States between the president and secretary of state.
