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SPEAKING
FREELY
Treat China with caution
By Alim A Seytoff
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing.
WASHINGTON - Half a century ago when World
War II was over and every other country was tired
of the war's unprecedented devastation and was
busy concentrating on peace, Mao Zedong's Red
Armies swarmed into East Turkestan (known as
Xinjiang) and Tibet, and occupied these two
states, killing hundreds of thousands of
indigenous people. Such killing, though not on the
same scale, continues today in China with no end
in sight.
Thus I was not bemused at all by
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's recent
comments that China was a country "we hope and
pray enters the civilized world in an orderly
way". This is not just his personal hope and
prayer. This is the hope and prayer of all those
Uighur, Tibetan, and Chinese people who have been
suffering under China's authoritarian rule since
1949.
Although China should be considered
as a civilized country, the Chinese government has
never ruled this country in a civilized manner
acceptable to many of its people. According to
Amnesty International, the Chinese government
executes more people every year than rest of the
world combined. The Chinese people deserve
democracy, human rights, and religious freedom.
But the leaders in Beijing have neither given them
such things nor do they appear to intend to do so
in the future. In fact, the Chinese government is
not behaving the way this great nation should,
both at home and abroad. A regime that often acts
against the wishes of its people and does not
respect its citizens' human rights and religious
freedom in the 21st century, but is bent on ruling
them with the power that comes from the barrel of
the gun, does not deserve respect at home or
abroad.
The US administration of President
George W Bush is rightly concerned with the rise
of China and its military strength because nobody
is sure now whether the Chinese government will
become a responsible power or partner. Or, as
Rumsfeld put it, whether China "enters the
civilized world in an orderly way" in regard to
many urgent international issues, or becomes a
destabilizer to challenge the United States, as
did the former Soviet Union.
It is highly
likely that China will challenge the US since it
has never given up the option of using force to
occupy Taiwan (if it moves to declare
independence), a de facto democratic state that
the US is bound to protect by law. In addition,
China is buying advanced Russian Sukhoi fighter
jets, Sovromenny cruisers and nuclear submarines
for what some analysts say is the bold purpose of
fighting against US aircraft battle groups in the
Asia-Pacific region. The recent menacing
statements by Chinese leadership directed toward
Taiwan and indirectly to the US, and its
short-range ballistic missile buildup across the
Taiwan Strait, is a sign that China sooner or
later may decide to use force against Taiwan, and
the US should it come to its rescue. Thus far,
China is the only country that is planning to
militarily take on the United States since the end
of the Cold War in 1991.
Apparently, the
European Union is not going to help defuse the
intensifying situation across the Taiwan Strait;
it intends to lift the arms embargo imposed
against the Chinese government for killing
pro-democracy students in Tiananmen Square in June
1989. With the advanced weapons and military
technology China acquires from EU, it will
certainly accelerate China's military ambitions
and capability to use force to resolve the Taiwan
issue, whether or not the United States is going
to be involved. The Chinese leadership knows that
if it can persuade Washington that it is too
costly for the US to protect Taiwan, the US may
consider not getting involved if China attacks
Taiwan. By lifting the arms embargo, the EU will
help China to raise the cost of war for both
Taiwan and the United States. It is unclear why
the EU has decided to choose China, a rising
belligerent, at the cost of its most reliable
long-term ally during World War II and the Cold
War.
At the moment, I am bemused why the
US needs China's help to disarm North Korea of its
nuclear arms and nuclear program - these were
developed with China's help in the first place.
Seeking its own long-term interests, China
pretends to be on the side of disarming this rogue
state by brokering the six-party talks on North
Korea's disarmament. (These involve both Koreas,
China, Japan, Russia and the US). In fact, China
is responsible for North Korea having nuclear
weapons. It was China that persuaded the
administration of former president Bill Clinton to
help North Korea to develop nuclear facilities for
"peaceful use". The result is a nuclear-armed
North Korea that can threaten South Korea, Japan,
and the United States. As long as North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il is not a threat to China,
Beijing will continue to use North Korea to create
more headaches for US allies in the Asia-Pacific.
The Bush administration was correct in its
early days when it designated China as a
"strategic competitor", rather than employing the
mistaken designation of "strategic partner" used
by the previous Clinton administration. As a
matter of fact, China has never been a strategic
partner of the United States but an emerging
strategic competitor, and a potential rival, in
East Asia and the Pacific region. President Bush
foresaw China's long-term ambitions to dominate
this region and push the US out of it. This is
progressively manifested by China's annual
double-digit military budget increase, and
documented by the Central Intelligence Agency's
recent assessment of China's growing military
power.
Although the September 11, 2001,
terrorist attacks shifted the Bush administration
focus from China's long-term ambitions to focus on
global terrorism and Iraq, it is time now to
refocus on China's military power. Some analysts
argue that China offered the US its support in the
global "war on terrorism". But the reality is that
China hijacked the US war on global terrorism and
began to demonize as "terrorists" the Uighur
dissidents in what many Uighur residents call East
Turkestan (known as the Xinjiang region in China
and elsewhere) as "terrorists" since they are
Muslims.
The annual report issued by the
US State Department last week says, "The [Chinese]
government used the international war on terror as
a pretext for cracking down harshly on suspected
Uighur separatists expressing peaceful political
dissent and on independent Muslim religious
leaders." Amnesty International has confirmed that
China increased the pace of arbitrary detention,
arrest, and execution of Uighur dissidents who
peacefully opposed its hard-line policies in East
Turkestan (Xinjiang) since September 11, 2001.
Such persecution of the Uighur people by the
Chinese government still continues in the name of
the global "war on terrorism".
There are
three truths about China's future ambitions: 1)
China will become a more and more formidable
threat to US national interests and its allies in
the Asia-Pacific region;
2) China will continue
to deny democracy, human rights, and religious
freedom, against the wishes of its people;
3)
China will continue to hijack the global "war on
terrorism" to further persecute the Uighur and
Tibetan peoples and all those who dare to stand in
Beijing's way, like the one man who stood in front
of a column of tanks in Beijing in July 1989,
during the Tiananmen crackdown. It is China's
imperial ambition to unite Taiwan with the
mainland, by force if necessary, and to dominate
East Asia.
The Bush administration has
foreseen and recognized these truths, so it is
treating the Chinese government with caution while
treating the Chinese people with respect and
understanding, hoping to move this authoritarian
regime toward democracy. Realizing that the
Chinese government will not give up its military
ambitions toward Taiwan and East Asia, the US
administration should be ready to contain and
confront China if necessary in order to deter
Beijing from destabilizing the peace achieved in
this region since the end of World War II.
Alim A Seytoff is general
secretary of the Uyghur American Association in
Washington, DC.
(Copyright 2005 Alim A
Seytoff)
Speaking Freely is an Asia
Times Online feature that allows guest writers to
have their say. Please click here if you are
interested in contributing. |
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