The Grandest Wager in History
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America’s policy of engagement of China during the last quarter century has been enlightened, farsighted, and generous.
As well as extremely risky. Our approach may be the grandest wager in history. It can create a lasting period of peace, but it can also lead the world into troubled times.
The emergence of great powers is always accompanied by uncertainty and peril. Today, we are still haunted by the rise of Germany and Japan last century. America and the West have tried to avoid similar turbulence by easing China into the existing international system. Our hope is that engagement will lead, if not to a democratic China, then at least to a benign one.
So far, the results of continuous engagement have been encouraging. Beijing has reciprocated to overtures from the West by opening its doors to foreign investment and participating in international trade. Once an outlander that maintained only one ambassador abroad, China is now close to the heart of world affairs, networked into almost every multilateral organization and virtually every other country. And as the Chinese have been drawn into the international system, they have toned down their militant ideology. Once shrill, Beijing’s diplomacy is now deft, subtle, and patient. It is, says Marvin Ott of the National Defense University, “a thing of beauty.”
Not surprisingly, the Chinese have benefited from their beautiful diplomacy and new-found moderation. The time we live in is, according to most analysts, “China’s century.” Consequently, Beijing’s diplomats are beginning to see themselves as representatives of history’s next great power instead of its most undeserving victim.
The Chinese, however dominant they may expect to become, still say they will never seek hegemony or superpower status and, to their credit, talk peace and harmony. Officials still speak of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence—mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual nonaggression, noninterference in others’ internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence—as the bedrock of their foreign policy.
If the Chinese mention their emergence at all—and many in Beijing don’t like doing so—they use terms like “peaceful rise” or “peaceful development” to allay concerns about their growing clout. “We are trying to make as many friends as possible,” said Li Zhaoxing, China’s smiley foreign minister. “The more friends China has, the better.” If there is a discernable path, we can say the Chinese are on their way to becoming a constructive force.
But they are not one now. China’s moderate tone, however pleasing it may first sound, masks a foreign policy that is, in important respects, ugly. The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, for instance, are essentially a justification for the tolerance of not only totalitarianism and authoritarianism but also depravity and barbarism. The Chinese maintain good relations with, and are a primary backer of, Myanmar, Sudan, Zimbabwe, and North Korea.
Despite passionate and repeated denials, Beijing has not stopped playing “the proliferation card.” China, in violation of its arms control obligations, continues to send nuclear weapons technology, parts, and know how to Iran, for instance. Beijing has also been behind the transfer of Pakistan’s uranium weapons tech to North Korea. As much as we would like to think otherwise, the Chinese are willing to risk nuclear winter to get their own way in the world. They have been less worried about the danger of nuclear weapons than others, they have been more confident about controlling the consequences of proliferation, and they have been utterly ruthless.
Moreover, the Chinese continue to endanger their neighbors. Beijing threatens democratic Taiwan with invasion, presses outsized claims to surrounding seas, violates the territorial waters of others, and treats bordering nations with imperial disdain while meddling in their internal affairs. Its huge buildup of the People’s Liberation Army has been rapid and, worse, nontransparent. China, more than any other nation, seeks to change the existing global system for good—but not necessarily for the better.
“Nobody is sure how to deal with a rising China,” wrote New York Times reporter David Sanger earlier this month. Well, we had better figure this one out soon because Chinese supremo Hu Jintao is scheduled to arrive in Washington in a few days. He will want a 21-gun salute and all the other trappings normally reserved for world leaders. The question should not be whether his brief stopover will be described as a “state visit”—a matter of some dispute between diplomats in Beijing and Washington—but whether he should be coming in the first place.
There are, of course, many contentious and important matters to be discussed between the leaders of the world’s most populous state and its most powerful one, but Hu Jintao prefers not to engage America on any of them. He has consistently minimized substantive conversation with President Bush during previous meetings. He is perhaps the only head of state to turn down a Crawford visit—an appointment in Texas would have made substantive discussion unavoidable. His primary motive for the flight half way around the world seems to be participation in elaborately staged photo opportunities so that they can be replayed on China Central Television, the state broadcaster. Few things can more legitimize the rule of an insecure autocrat than the pageantry of a summit with the head of the world’s leading democracy. In an era when America’s avowed goal is to end tyranny, why are we helping to buttress Chairman Hu’s?
Hu’s desire to avoid discussion suggests that American engagement of China needs adjustment. If we can draw any conclusions from his continued reluctance to chat, it is that China fears there is more to lose than gain from a change in its relationship with the United States. Although diplomacy is not necessarily a zero-sum game, it usually becomes that when a challenger seeks to upset an existing global order. And that is precisely what China is doing today.
Beijing’s leaders constantly campaign for a “multipolar” world, which means they want America cut down to size so it is only one of many powers. We can’t blame the Chinese for trying to increase their influence at our expense, but their effort to generally push us aside makes their nation a “strategic competitor.” Washington is full of analysts who say that the United States shouldn’t call China an enemy because that will make it one—there is more than a measure of common sense in that general proposition—but Beijing has by its own words branded itself an adversary. Although the challenge may be “discreet,” it is nonetheless real.
As the Chinese denounce American “unilateralism,” they actively work to reduce Washington’s influence. China talks of an Asia seeking a “common cultural identity,” which is really a polite way of saying that Americans are outsiders and should leave.
Moreover, Beijing continually advocates the formation of Asian political and economic organizations that exclude the United States—and which the Chinese can dominate. These days, China complains of American involvement in Asia by talking obliquely of “strangulation” and “encirclement.” The new code words, if anything, betray a rising anti-Americanism. Beijing’s ambitions are by no means limited to its own region. China is seeking to create an anti-American alliance with Europe and displace the United States in the Pacific and Latin America.
China, in short, is unhappy with the world as it is. Even if one argues that Beijing’s attempts to undermine American influence are just power politics as usual, it is not possible to say that Chinese support for rogue states, its irresponsible behavior in Asia, and its dissemination of nuclear weapons technology can be justified under any circumstances. For better or worse, the country is not yet ready to resume its historic role as the dominant state in global politics.
China, unfortunately, may be approaching the limits of its ability to transform itself from an adversary of the international system to a “stakeholder” in it. “A liberal internationalist foreign policy is incompatible with China’s illiberal domestic order,” writes Minxin Pei of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. “Although an illiberal regime can occasionally demonstrate tactical brilliance in diplomacy, its execution of a constructive, long-term foreign policy will be undermined by the character flaws inherent in autocracies: insecurity, secrecy, intolerance and unpredictability.”
The optimistic say that an insecure, secretive, intolerant, and unpredictable China can continue to evolve its foreign policy for the better. If it does so, it will only be because the international community points—or shoves—the country in the right direction. As the past has shown, China will not become a constructive force until we act to make it one. We have, however, only reinforced the worst tendencies in the Communist Party’s authoritarian system by inadvertently creating a set of perverse incentives. The Chinese engage in bad behavior. We provide benefits in the hope they will change. So they continue their irresponsible conduct. We continue to reward them. In these circumstances, the Chinese have naturally become more assertive and less cooperative.
Hu Jintao exhibits less and less desire to engage us. So why should we feel more and more need to engage him? It is evident that the old approach toward China no longer works. If we do not pursue “correct” policies, to borrow Beijing’s Marxist-tainted lingo, our patience—perhaps better called complacency and indulgence—may end up creating the very thing we have sought to avoid—an aggressive Chinese state.
We need to see China clearly. We need to talk to the Chinese frankly in public. We need to stop condoning unacceptable conduct. We need, in short, an historic shift in our policy toward China.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of Nuclear Showdown: North Korea Takes On the World and The Coming Collapse of China, both published by Random House.
