2006 - "Hedging" China

 April 11, 2006

 

“Hedging” China

 

By John J. Tkacik, Jr.

 

According to the Central Intelligence Agency, China is already the world’s second largest economy.

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  And according to the Secretary of State and the Director of National Intelligence, respectively, China is now rising as a new “military superpower” and “peer competitor” to the United States in the Asia-Pacific region.

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  By itself, the rise of a new power in Asia need not be alarming, but the specter of a superpower that works counter to the interests of freedom, free trade and global stability is now a reality. On the eve of the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao, it is time for America to reexamine its China strategy and its stake in the Pacific.

 

To the credit of the Bush Administration, it seems ready to face the challenge of a rising China.  The recent “National Security Strategy of the United States” states explicitly that America’s new “strategy seeks to encourage China to make the right strategic choices for its people, while we hedge against other possibilities.”

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  Significantly, the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defense Review, issued February 6, 2006, also warns that U.S. must "hedge against the possibility that a major or emerging power could choose a hostile path in the future,"

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undoubtedly, again referring to China.      

 

 

While “hedging” against China as a new superpower is prudent choice, the Administration’s task now is to develop and implement sound policies that protect and advance American interests.

 

A New Strategic Environment in Asia:  The grand organizing principle that cemented the US-China relationship for two decades from 1972 to 1992 was the "Soviet Threat".

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  But the Soviet threat has been dead and buried for fourteen years, and so too is the entire logic of U.S.-China strategic partnership.  Instead, China seeks to reclaim its ancient place as the preeminent power in Asia – and in the process, to displace the United States.

 

Although thus far, Beijing has prudently avoided head-on collisions with United States policies, an examination of China’s strategic unhelpfulness at virtually every level of engagement with the United States, from the war on terror to proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and even in the control of counterfeit currency, is disturbing. 

 

The tectonic shift of Beijing’s strategic distrust of Washington came into the open after the terror attacks on the United States of September 11, 2001.  At the Chinese Communist Party’s 16th Congress in November of 2002, Party leaders not only reiterated that they “oppose hegemonism and power politics” (i.e., the United States) and will “boost world multipolarization” (i.e., opposing America’s role as the sole superpower), but also equated “terrorism” and American “hegemonism” as equal threats.

[6]

 

It is not surprising that the Chinese Communist Party seeks to challenge the United States’s position as the predominant power.  It would be an ideological priority if purely for the sake of regime legitimacy.  In 1992, the Chinese Communist Party’s “paramount leader” Deng Xiaoping reshaped the Party’s core ideology into one extolling “comprehensive national strength” in place of the Maoist doctrine of the “universal truth” [pubian zhenli] of communism.

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  Communism as a “universal truth” was exposed as a fraud with the collapse of the USSR, and China’s leaders were perforce obliged to redefine “socialism with Chinese characteristics” as anything which “increased comprehensive national strength.”  As long as the Communist Party progresses in making China a great nation, it needs no popular legitimization – those who oppose the regime are no longer “counterrevolutionaries”, they are simply traitors.  The success Deng’s ideological metamorphosis of early 1992 was due in no small part to his ability to convince the People’s Liberation Army that China’s “increasing comprehensive national strength” would provide the military with a modern industrial base to support rapid modernization.

[8]

  Today, after dumping communism and adopting the “socialist market economy” – in reality a mercantilist structure designed to maximize profit at the expense of China’s trading partners – China's is the fifth largest economy in the world in nominal gross domestic product and in "purchasing power parity" terms is second only to the United States.

[9]

  But China’s growth is not limited to its economy.

 

Military Challenge to the U.S. in Asia: With the Soviet threat gone, the United States immediately set about reaping a “peace dividend,” with defense expenditures dropping over ten percent, from $298 billion in fiscal year 1992 down to $268 billion in fiscal year 1997.

[10]

 In the same period, Chinese defense spending sustained annual double-digit increases. The Pentagon estimates total defense-related expenditures in 2004 to be between $50 and $70 billion, and as high as $90 billion in 2005, ranking China third in nominal dollar defense spending after the United States and Russia.

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 On March 6, 2006, China announced another 15 percent increase in military spending, on top of 13 percent in 2005.

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One rapidly growing cost-center for Beijing’s military budget is ballistic missiles.  Short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) production has doubled since 2002, from 50 per year to over 100 by 2006,

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and it is likely that China’s entire missile program has seen similar growth in every class.  China’s military spends billions each year to field growing numbers of medium- and intercontinental-range missiles as well as new classes of submarine launched strategic nuclear missiles.

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  There is no doubt China’s primary ICBM target is the United States.  Its recent military exercises with Russia which included drills with carrier-busting supersonic cruise missiles (although no country in the region, save the U.S., has aircraft carriers) also raise considerable doubt as to China’s peaceful intentions in the region and especially its benevolence toward the United States. 

 

Perhaps the most unsettling facet of China’s naval development is the emergence of a robust and technically-advanced submarine fleet in the Pacific.  In addition to four modern Russian Kilo-class submarines already deployed with the Chinese navy, China has on order eight more.  China has also increased production—to 2.5 boats per year—of the new, formidable Song-class diesel-electric submarine, and is testing a new diesel-electric that the defense intelligence community has designated the “Yuan.” The Yuan is heavily inspired by Russian designs, including anechoic tile coatings and a super-quiet seven-blade screw. The addition of “air-independent propulsion,” which permits a submarine to operate underwater for up to 30 days on battery power, will make the Song and Yuan submarines virtually inaudible to existing U.S. surveillance networks—and even to U.S. subs. By 2025, Chinese attack submarines could easily outnumber U.S. submarines in the Pacific by five to one.  Several Chinese nuclear ballistic missile submarines will prowl America’s Western littoral, each closely tailed by two U.S. attack submarines that should have better things to do.

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American intelligence analysts and academic researchers are unanimous in their assessment that China’s submarine strategy aims at neutralizing America’s carrier-centered naval strength in the Pacific.

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China’s military modernization since 1996 has been incredibly rapid, outpacing the wildest estimates of the entire U.S. intelligence community.

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  Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and others point out that “China's defense expenditures are much higher than Chinese officials have publicly admitted. It is estimated that China's is the third-largest military budget in the world, and now the largest in Asia.”  Rumsfeld himself mused openly, "since no nation threatens China, one wonders: why this growing [military] investment?"

[18]

  Although the Administration prefers to evince agnosticism on China’s intentions, the Pentagon sees China’s strategic goal as “developing on the world stage as a regional power, but its emergence also has global implications . . . China can also choose, or find itself upon, a pathway along which China would emerge to exert dominant influence in an expanding sphere. The future of a rising China is not yet set immutably on one course or another.”

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What does China intend to do with its new military might?  Certainly, it intends to subdue democratic Taiwan with relentless threats of war – designed as much to cow the United States, now distracted in the Middle East, as to intimidate Taiwan’s people.  Some analysts see China’s forced ‘unification’ with Taiwan, not as an end in itself, but as key to developing a military power-projection capability in the Western Pacific.  They cite a senior Chinese military theorist who sees Taiwan as of “far reaching significance to breaking international forces’ blockade against China’s maritime security. . . . Only when we break this blockade shall we be able to talk about China’s rise. . . . [T]o rise suddenly, China must pass through oceans and go out of the oceans in its future development.”

[20]

 

 

Responsible Stakeholder?  A powerful military nation that wants to “pass through oceans in its future development” need not be a destabilizing force if it acts like a “responsible stakeholder” in the international rules-based order.  But in virtually every issue sector, China’s behavior is that of an outlier. 

 

In a September 2005 speech, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick asked, “For the United States and the world, the essential question is – how will China use its influence?”  To answer that question, he said, “we need to urge China to become a responsible stakeholder in that system.”

[21]

  American disappointment in China’s trade, financial, diplomatic, proliferation, human rights and Taiwan policies are reflected in the poignant question mark in the title of Zoellick’s speech: “Whither China - From Membership to Responsibility?”

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Serial Proliferator: For several decades, one of Beijing’s most unsettling habits has been its insouciant approach to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, their technologies, components and materials.

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As former Undersecretary of State John Bolton described the problem in 2005, the Chinese government displays a deliberate lack of attention to “the continuing problem of business-as-usual proliferation by Chinese companies.”

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  In the considered opinion of the U.S. Department of State, China remains a "serial proliferator." A senior State Department official “who asked not to be identified” said in an April interview with the State Department’s Bureau of Public Diplomacy that from January 2001 through April 2005 the State Department had sanctioned foreign companies 115 times over export-controlled shipments and that 80 of those sanctions were aimed at Chinese companies. The official stated “You can see that the great majority of entities we sanction are Chinese entities," he said, "and that's because the great majority of the supply to proliferation programs that we see is from Chinese entities.”

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  (In stark contrast to China’s behavior, Secretary Bolton noted that Taiwan's 2003 interdiction of dangerous precursor chemicals destined for North Korea's chemical weapons program was an example of a U.S. success against proliferation.

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)

 

Iran Nuclear Program:  Beijing has courted Iran for over fifteen years and Chinese exports of nuclear technology, chemical weapons precursors and guided missiles continue to agitate Washington even now.  Beijing’s policies appear grounded in a strategic calculation that an alignment with Iran is in Chinese interests.  In April 2002, shortly after President Bush labeled Iran as a member of the “Axis of Evil”, Chinese President Jiang Zemin visited Teheran and, if the Iranian press is to be believed, conveyed a message that China and Iran hope to “prevent domination of a superpower on the entire world.”  The Iranian press said “the two countries believe that for as long as a united and a comprehensive definition of ‘terrorism’ is not offered which can be endorsed by the international organizations, no state can attack other countries under the pretext of fighting terrorism and on the basis of its own definition of the term.”  The Iranian press said “some political observers” saw the “visit of China's president to Iran in the new century . . . as the undeclared coalition of the two sides against America.”

[27]

  In Teheran, Jiang declared that China’s policy was “to oppose American deployments in Central Asia and the Middle East.”  He also pledged that “one of China’s most important diplomatic missions is to strengthen unity and cooperation with developing countries and to avoid having developing countries become the targets of American military attacks.”

[28]

 

In 2003, the Central Intelligence Agency reported that “Chinese entities are continuing work on a zirconium production facility at Esfahan that will enable Iran to produce cladding for reactor fuel.”  Although Iran was a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and was required to accept International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards on its production of zirconium fuel cladding, Iran made no moves to do so and China exerted no influence to the contrary.

[29]

  Indeed, China continues to be one of Iran’s major weapons suppliers and continues to support Iran’s nuclear power program.  And, by ignoring overwhelming evidence that has persuaded Germany, France and Britain (the “EU-3” which have been the primary negotiators with Iran on the weapons issue), China lends tacit support to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

 

In November 2004, one senior Iranian official commented publicly that Chinese Foreign Ministry officials had assured him that Beijing “wants Iran's nuclear program handled by the IAEA,” which has no enforcement power, not by the United Nations Security Council.

[30]

  On August 10, 2005, the very day that Iran broke IAEA seals at a uranium plant, China's UN ambassador, Wang Guangya, told reporters “I think it is up to [the IAEA in] Vienna to come up with a solution. I think it is not up to the Security Council,” and added “the Council has too many things on the table. Why should we have more?”

 

Within a few weeks, China had persuaded Russia to oppose a UN Security Council referral, and from September through December, continued to resist even the blandishments of European leaders “at the highest levels.”

[31]

 

 

Russia and China successfully delayed action on Iran until January 10, 2006, when Iran finally removed seals from its remaining nuclear enrichment laboratories. Only then were US diplomats finally able to persuade these two holdouts to join the U.S., Britain, Germany and France in sending “separate notes” to Iran asking Teheran to halt its nuclear fuel research.  Whether China or Russia was truly alarmed by the Iranian move, or simply wanted to appear concerned, is unclear.  But the day before Iran removed the IAEA seals, the Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister met with the Chinese Foreign Minister in Beijing to brief him “about the views and considerations of the Iranian side.”  As one Washington commentator put it, “in other words, Tehran cleared its action with Beijing.”

[32]

  This might explain why China defeated efforts to send a joint statement to Iran and also managed to water down language in the final “separate notes.”  Said one western diplomat, “technically, China is being difficult, but with Russia on board it would be hard for China to be the only spoiler."

[33]

 

It now seems that even if Russia is to join the Germans, British, French and Americans, China still seems likely to continue its protection of Iran.  Interestingly, on February 17, China separately entered talks with Iran on terms of an October 2004 “memorandum of understanding” for a 30-year/$100 billion oil and gas supply contract --  the details of which were never settled (including a big detail -- the form of compensation the Chinese would get for their investment).  These details are all being dealt with now -- under somewhat hurried circumstances.

[34]

  This would seem to be an ideal time for the Chinese to use their leverage with the terms of the MOU in order to get Iranian compliance with its international nuclear obligations.  But this is highly unlikely.

 

As of March 25, 2006, China (joined by Russia) maintained that Iran had a right under international law to a small cascade of uranium enrichment centrifuges “for research purposes” and declined to proceed with any discussion of sanctions against Iran for its persistent violations of its obligations as a signatory to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty.  But the China-Russia stance cannot be justified.  Said one British representative at the IAEA, "If you can do one centrifuge, you can do 164 [and] if you can do 164, you probably can do many more . . . If you can do enrichment up to 7%, you can do 80%. If you can do 80%, you can produce a bomb."

[35]

  IAEA Director General Mohammed ElBaradei conceded on March 28 that the IAEA was “not in a position today to say that (Iran's nuclear) program is exclusively for peaceful purposes,” leaving the door open for the UN Security Council to levy “Chapter Seven” sanctions against Iran as a “threat to the peace”, but China and Russia continued to object.

[36]

 

There is every prospect that China will threaten to veto any UN sanctions on Iran, and without sanctions, Iran has no incentive to negotiate the dismantlement of its nuclear weapons program.  China now cheerfully serves as Iran’s primary diplomatic protector, most recently in the Iranian nuclear crisis.  As a matter of principle, Beijing’s stance is to support “nuclear power” for all countries, but the Chinese are finding themselves in a fast-dwindling minority of countries that continue to support Iran.  China assumes the presidency of the U.N. Security Council in April, and will be in a stronger position then to stymie efforts to slow Iran’s weapons program.

 

North Korea Proliferation, Spying, and Nuclear Weapons: Washington should not be surprised by China’s lack of interest in deterring the Iranian nuclear weapons program.  Its behavior mirrors its policies toward North Korea.  China’s “sincere desire that the Korean Peninsula be denuclearized” is coupled with its resolute refusal to say specifically that the “northern” half of the Korean Peninsula must dismantle its nuclear weapons program (the U.S. and South Korea denuclearized the southern half in 1991).  This could be because China is perfectly happy with a nuclear armed North.  A nuclear-armed North Korea complicates U.S. and Japanese strategic planning, especially if, in the event of serious hostilities with the United States in the Taiwan Strait, or a sudden Chinese encroachment on Japanese-administered island waters in the East China Sea, a devastating terrorist-smuggled or missile-delivered nuclear detonation in either country cannot be reliably traced back to China. 

 

China’s decades of robust technical assistance and provision of specialized equipment and materials to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program is well known.

[37]

  But China’s complicity in Pakistan’s aid to North Korea is rarely commented upon.  Revelations in 2005 that nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan had transferred uranium isotope centrifuges to North Korea support the CIA’s contention that Khan sold North Korea “the complete package” from raw uranium hexafluoride to the centrifuges needed to enrich it into nuclear bomb fuel. In view of the fact that Khan also sold Chinese nuclear weapons blueprints to Libya he most certainly paid the same favor to North Korea, as well.

[38]

All these materials were shipped to North Korea by air across Chinese airspace by Pakistani military aircraft which reportedly refueled at Chinese air bases.

[39]

 As late as March 2003, U.S. intelligence reportedly tracked a cargo ship carrying ten “Scud” SRBM’s from North Korea to Pakistan “possibly in return for Islamabad’s nuclear technology”, which “was refueled at a PRC port” before proceeding on to Pakistan.

[40]

It is impossible, then, to avoid the conclusion that China at least acquiesced in the transfer, if it did not facilitate it outright.

 

Washington policy-makers must ask themselves why, despite North Korea’s absolute economic and security dependence on China, China’s three years of involvement in multi-party talks on North Korea’s nuclear ambitions have resulted in no progress.  Indeed, the situation has worsened. In February 2005, Pyongyang removed irradiated fuel cores from its Yongbyon reactor and thus far apparently has fashioned a number of fissile plutonium cores for between six and ten nuclear weapons.

[41]

  Since 2002, The United States has sanctioned Chinese companies for providing North Korea with tributyl phosphate, an acid solvent used in the extraction of uranium and plutonium salts from nuclear reactor effluents – most recently in April 2004, incongruously just one month before the U.S. State Department recommended that China be admitted to the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, an informal international nonproliferation organization.

[42]

  In 2003, at U.S. insistence, China interdicted one such shipment but there is no indication that China has made any effort to enforce its export controls on North Korea.

[43]

  It is the opinion of at least the arms control experts at the U.S. State Department that China enforces its rules “only under the imminent threat, or in response to the actual imposition, of sanctions” and that China’s failure to respond is not so much an “inability” to enforce its export regulations as an “unwillingness” to do so.

[44]

 

 

This may explain why, when North Korea admitted on February 10, 2005, that it already had nuclear weapons, China’s reaction was agnostic. “We are still researching the situation,” it announced, and China continues to say that it is uncertain whether Pyongyang has a nuclear device. Moreover, China’s steadfast insistence that the Six Party Talks are the “only” way to address the situation means that North Korea will keep its nuclear weapons indefinitely.  And China's insistence that North Korea has a "right" under international law to continue building nuclear reactors for "peaceful purposes" reflects a decision by President Hu Jintao himself that China will not support an effective inspection regime to verify a Pyongyang denuclearization agreement -- in the highly unlikely event that Pyongyang ever makes one.

[45]

 

And then there is the delicate issue of China’s collusion in North Korean intelligence operations against Japan and evidence that the North Korean spyships are welcome at Chinese naval bases.  In 2002, Tokyo’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper quoted several government officials as saying that Tokyo has obtained U.S. satellite photos showing a vessel identical to a North Korean spy ship that had fired on a Japanese coast guard cutter in 2001 calling at a Chinese military port.  Japanese officials cited by Asahi believed the ship at the Chinese naval berth was either the one that was sunk or a very similar one that left North Korea around the same time.

[46]

  North Korean regional clandestine operations and global money-laundering operations are routinely based in China’s special administrative region of Macau.

[47]

 

 

Testing the US-Japan Alliance: China’s violent anti-Japanese campaigns of March and April 2005 were clearly organized by the Beijing regime and were far-less the product of “popular outrage” than the regime had claimed.  Several web-sites that urged demonstrations against Japan on April 9 reportedly were unaware of the source of the information about the events.

[48]

 The New York Times reported that Chinese police supplied stones for pitching at the windows of the Japanese embassy and Japanese firms, and busses to bring protesters to and from the embassy.

[49]

 

 

Moreover, China’s increasing naval presence in waters adjacent to Japan’s exclusive economic zone around the Senkaku islands and Beijing’s steadfast refusal to delineate EEZ boundaries (claiming the entire area as sovereign Chinese waters) is cause for concern.  In April 2005, at the height of the anti-Japanese rioting in China, the Chinese navy sent a flotilla into the area led by two of China’s most modern Russian-built Sovremennyy destroyers to the edge of Japanese waters in an attempt to intimidate a Japanese oil exploration vessel.

[50]

  In September, a second Chinese flotilla risked a confrontation when a Chinese Sovremennyy locked its fire-control radar on a Japanese naval P-3 aircraft sent to monitor the Chinese ships.  China’s new naval aggressiveness in Japanese territorial waters seems animated by an urge to demonstrate China’s emerging naval predominance over Japan in Asia, and not-incidentally, to test the limits of the U.S.-Japan mutual Security Treaty.

[51]

  In view of this, it would be prudent for Washington to consider the likelihood that the Chinese government would incite future violent demonstrations or similar nationalistic excesses against United States support for Taiwan’s democracy.

 

Obstruction in Central Asia: China has attempted (with varying degrees of success) to stymie US coalition forces supply support in Afghanistan.  China pressured its Central Asian alliance partners in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization into demanding that the U.S. set a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan’s border areas and as early as May 2002 – immediately after then-Chinese Vice President Hu Jintao visited Washington – China pressured Kazakhstan to deny basing assistance to U.S. forces supporting the Afghan campaign.

[52]

  China’s lack of enthusiasm in participating in the Global War on Terror has been remarked upon by a number of U.S. officials.

[53]

  One reason for China’s disinterest is ideological.  Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin has cautioned against “unreserved support for the war on terror” lest it aid the United States in its quest for hegemony.

[54]

 

Support for Oppression: While China is clearly a rising “military superpower”, it clearly is not a “responsible stakeholder.”  Dr. Condoleezza Rice wrote in Foreign Affairs six years ago, “China is not a ‘status quo’ power but one that would like to alter Asia’s balance of power in its own favor.”

[55]

  In order to alter the Asian balance, indeed the global balance, away from freedom, China intends to establish itself as the major patron of illiberal regimes and to insulate them against American human rights pressures  – pressures that are the most effective instrument in undermining the legitimacy of dictatorships.  The Beijing regime views constant harassment from the Western democracies on human rights issues as undermining its own legitimacy, and to the extent that it can defend despotisms around the world as “exploring a road to development suited to their national conditions”

[56]

it can claim that China’s lack of civil and political rights is suited to China’s “national conditions.” 

 

Is China’s support of murderous regimes (e.g., Sudan, Zimbabwe, Burma, Uzbekistan, and North Korea), rogue states (e.g., Iran and Syria), and other unsavory characters (e.g., Cuba and Venezuela) perfectly innocent?  At the very least, it has to be disappointing to American leaders who yearn for a China that acts as a “responsible stakeholder”.   But China’s behavior is not altogether innocent.  U.S. policy-makers must also scratch their heads in puzzlement at China’s insistence on supplying the new leftist Bolivian government of President Evo Morales, democratically-elected as it may be, with “man-portable air-defense” missiles (MANPADS).

[57]

  What does Beijing expect the Morales government to do with MANPADS if the government has abandoned the battle against cocaine smugglers? 

 

Human Rights:  A cornerstone of regime legitimacy in China is the absolute authority of the ruling communist party to serve as the “vanguard of the proletariat.”  This vanguard reveals to the masses “Marxism, which is the most complete and disciplined scientific system and revolutionary thought,” “Leninism”, “Mao Zedong Thought” and “Deng Xiaoping Theory” – which all rate similarly as absolutist facets of “universal truth.”

[58]

  Because the Communist Party is the repository of this “truth” there is no need for representative democracy separate from the “leadership of the Communist Party.”  Not surprisingly, no facet of life may exist legally in China separate from the Communist Party’s guidance or sponsorship.

[59]

 

The absolute authority of the party/state over social interaction suggests that China’s system of governance remains properly classified as “totalitarian” rather than “authoritarian.”

[60]

  Consequently, constant harping from the United States, Japan, the European Union, and other Western democracies about China’s lack of civil and political rights is a direct attack on the legitimacy of the communist party’s rule in China. 

 

For this reason, China has demanded that the European Union drop its 1989 arms embargo on China, an embargo that was levied in response to the brutal suppression of the democratic movement in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.  China’s continued poor human rights record was a major factor in persuading the European Union not to lift its military arms embargo on China.  As EU commissioner for external relations Benita Ferrero-Waldner said in June 2005, “lifting the embargo will of course be easier if the climate is right,” and added “above all, we need to help persuade our public opinion China is making concrete steps to improve human rights.”

[61]

  In March 2006, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s special envoy for human rights Gunther Nooke, slammed former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder’s China policies saying “[Schroeder] destroyed Germany’s reputation in the area of human rights... we cannot give China and Russia the impression that human rights do not play a role for us [anymore].”  Nooke bemoaned the fact that “one can’t travel to Beijing every year and be happy about the speed at which decisions are made in dictatorships” to improve human rights.

[62]

 

Despite international concern for human rights in China, the post-Tiananmen Beijing regime remains, and in all probability will continue to be, a counter-liberal force encouraging despotism and undermining democracy in its own country as well as in Asia and across the globe.  Unfortunately, there isn't the slightest evidence that the Chinese Communist Party is moving toward a democratic future.

[63]

  To the contrary, present evidence is overwhelming that the Beijing regime is in fact returning to its old totalitarian ways rather than evolving away from them – primarily in an attempt to shore up the regime’s legitimacy.

[64]

 

Chinese leaders cynically release political prisoners in advance of important visits to the United States and the upcoming visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to Washington is no exception.

[65]

  The first prisoner released, however, had completed his sentence and had suffered mental illness as a result of torture in prison.  Another was released 24 days before his sentence was completed, while a co-defendant remained imprisoned.

[66]

   A New York Times employee who was jailed in September 2004 and who has been the subject of myriad American diplomatic representations to the Chinese government, was found innocent of charges of “leaking state secrets” on March 17, 2006 – but has yet to be released.

[67]

 

Counterfeit Currency:  China has not exerted much effort to cooperate in international criminal law enforcement either.  Indeed, until recently, North Korean counterfeiting operations laundered much of their product in the Chinese Special Administrative Region of Macau.  But when the United States Treasury Department imposed strict financial sanctions on Banco Delta Asia, North Korea’s money-laundering bank located in Macau, the North Koreans reportedly moved their accounts to Chinese state-owned banks in the Zhuhai Special Economic Zone adjacent to Macau.

[68]

 

 

U.S. law enforcement officials are frustrated by a Justice Department decision, apparently for diplomatic reasons, not to publicly name North Korea and China as the sources for counterfeit currency and other goods – indictments of defendants in an August 2005 counterfeiting case referred to source countries only by numbers.

[69]

  In September 2005, several Chinese nationals were charged with trafficking in high-quality North Korean “supernote”counterfeits of American $100 bills, and in October 2005, the U.S. formally accused a radical leftist Irish citizen of procurement of “supernotes” directly from North Korean officials.

[70]

 

 

According to “top secret” U.S. intelligence reporting, the Irishman had been introduced to his North Korean counterfeit currency contact in 1997 by a Chinese Communist Party official, Ms. Cai Xiaobing, while visiting Beijing.

[71]

As early as 1994, U.S. Secret Service investigators had tracked the chief of the North Korean counterfeiting ring back into China where, according to press reports, “the trail went cold”, a further indication of a lack of Chinese police cooperation.

[72]

 

Nor is it altogether clear that China has reciprocated many U.S. efforts to enhance law enforcement cooperation.  FBI Director Robert Mueller visited Beijing in April 2004 to discuss cooperation, but the syntax of his comments on Chinese cooperation was exclusively in the “future conditional” tense.  He stressed “we must work cooperatively”, “we’ve got to work together,” and said “we had discussions with regards to the necessity of strongly enforcing [intellectual property rights] laws.”  He concluded by saying he hoped his visit “will enable us to build our relationships in the future.”

[73]

  Later, in a press conference in Hong Kong, Director Mueller said “we have wanted to build on that cooperation and also build the relationships of trust that are so essential to the swift exchange of intelligence.”

[74]

  These are not the words of someone who was happy with the existing state of affairs in US-China law enforcement cooperation.

 

This not for Washington’s lack of trying.  U.S. police agencies have cooperated closely with Chinese police nab criminals in the U.S. and return stolen goods and money.

[75]

  The FBI gave U.S.-based training to Chinese “security personnel” to prepare them for the 2008 Olympic Games’ security.

[76]

 

Across the spectrum of national interests, there are few issues in which Washington can accurately say China is cooperating as a “responsible stakeholder.”  In most areas, Beijing works subtly (and not-so-subtly) to counter to U.S. interests. Washington policy-makers should come to terms with the clear negative direction of Chinese policies.  They would be well-advised to abjure their habitual protestations of agnosticism when faced with this new, rising and clearly troublesome peer competitor, and they must begin to craft strategies that address its challenge.

 

What the Administration and Congress should do. 

 

“Hedging” against China as a new “military superpower” is a prudent posture – but it remains, as yet, a slogan and not a strategy. The Administration’s task now is to insist that its foreign policy bureaucracy internalize the urgency of the China challenge as it makes Asia policy. 

 

Advance political and human rights in China.  Reforms in China will not evolve naturally.  It can only come with strong international pressure.  U.S. policy must include a vocal public diplomacy campaign to discredit the abysmal political and human rights policies of the communist regime.  President Reagan’s visits to Moscow in the 1980’s, which included meetings with real dissidents, should serve as an example.  Moreover, Taiwan should be held up as an example of a successful Chinese democracy.

 

Protect Asia’s democracies.  Public diplomacy in the form of Presidential and Cabinet-level speeches that reassert America’s intention to remain in Asia is a strategic imperative.  A reaffirmation of America’s commitment to Asian democracies would buttress relations in the region.  While slogans are not a substitute for policy, authoritative speeches and public statements give coherence to policy.

 

Strengthen ties with Japan and India.  Both Japan and India, two of the world’s most populous democracies and leading economic powers in Asia, are natural partners of the United States in managing China’s rise.   There is room for an expanded strategic dialogue between New Delhi, Tokyo and Washington on China.  

 

Deepen the strategic dialogue with Europe.  Formal regular strategic consultations with America’s European allies on China will help advance the challenges of Chinese proliferation, trade and human rights. 

 

Downgrade the strategic dialogue with China.   While the State Department had downgraded the “strategic dialogues” with Japan and Australia to the under-secretary level, it launched a new deputy-level “Senior Dialogue” with China in 2005.  Thus far, this “senior dialogue” has proved fruitless.   It should be downgraded or terminated until the Chinese begin to show evidence of progress on becoming a “responsible stakeholder.”

 

Resist China’s campaign to isolate democratic Taiwan.  U.S. embassies should exert global diplomatic and political pressures to prevent democratic Taiwan from being bullied and isolated by communist China in the international community.  This means vigorous U.S. support for Taiwan’s meaningful and independent participation in international organization such as the World Health Organization, the informal counter-proliferation regimes (such as the Australia Group, the Nuclear Suppliers Group, the Wassenaar Arrangement, and the Missile Technology Control Regime).  Opening talks with Taiwan on a U.S.-Taiwan free trade agreement would help Taiwan resist being absorbed into China’s economy by default.

 

Support Ally Japan against Chinese pressures.  Japan is America’s most important strategic ally in the Pacific.  No matter how much Beijing beseeches Washington to act as a “go-between” in China’s constant hectoring of Japan over the history of the last century, Washington must refuse.  China’s only aim is to drive a wedge between the U.S. and its allies in Asia.  Instead, Washington should advise China to come to terms with the Communist Party’s own bloody history in China before presuming to lecture Japan.    

 

Restate America’s position on the Senkakus and other Japanese islands.  A restatement of the U.S.-Japan Mutual Security Treaty position that the Senkaku Islands are “administered by Japan” and hence within the treaty’s ambit would help deter China from aggressive action in those waters.  It is essential that Washington and Tokyo also consider naval and air scenarios for a Chinese crisis-confrontation over the islands.  China’s behavior indicates it is probing the limits of U.S. support for Japan in the islands.

 

Confront Beijing’s subtle but substantial support for North Korean and Iranian nuclear weapons programs.  Public statements of disappointment over China’s support for North Korea and Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions would help clear the air and deny China international public opinion leverage.  So long as the U.S. pretends that China is “helping”, China can claim to be an “honest broker” between the U.S. and nuclear pariahs.

Maintain military pre-eminence in the Pacific.    The Defense Department is already  increasing its naval and air presence in the Western Pacific –  despite the pressures on U.S. ground forces in the Middle East and Central Asia. To support this effort,  Congress must appropriate  additional resources to bolster  America’s power-projection, especially its submarine force, in the Western Pacific. 

 

Conclusion

 

The trend-lines of Beijing’s behavior in the international order point too much in the wrong direction to permit anyone to say China will ever act as a “responsible stakeholder” without considerable pressure.  Unless Chinese leaders see that there are serious consequences to their policies, they can have no incentive to moderate them.  That American leaders now openly talk of “hedging” China should give pause to their Chinese counterparts.  But unless talk of “hedging” is accompanied by action, China will hear it as more bluff and bluster.  And if China is allowed to successfully call American bluffs and bluster, its power and influence in Asia will only strengthen and America’s will diminish.  The predictable result will be a Twenty-first Century Asia under China’s sway, and Asian democracy subject to China’s gentle protection.