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Dragon Lady Rice tackles
China
By Antoaneta Bezlova
BEIJING - Chinese analysts had already
sized up Condoleezza Rice before she made her
first official visit to China this week as US
secretary of state.
They said the senior
US official was a wen guan or "scholar" and
likened her to one who commanded knowledge of the
Far East and had a pragmatic approach at the same
time - qualities seen as favorable to
understanding Beijing's regional ambitions.
Comparisons were made to Rice's advantage
over her predecessor Colin Powell, a former army
commander who has often been described in
traditional Chinese bureaucratic language as a
wu guan or "military official". Powell,
these analysts said, knew first hand about the
balance of power in the region but lacked insight
into the intricacies of Chinese politics.
"There is always the concern that as a
Russia expert, Condoleezza Rice might allow
certain Cold War thinking to influence her
judgment," said an editorial in the official
Beijing News. "But also as a person with profound
knowledge of Russia and the Far East, Rice would
know that once a giant country with a long history
'awakens', there is an enormous energy to be
released and the prospects of its development are
stunning."
Chinese experts also held hopes
that if Washington wanted Beijing to influence
North Korea to get back to nuclear disarmament
talks, then the White House might give a tacit nod
to China's newly enacted law allowing force to be
used against Taiwan - should it move decisively
toward independence from the mainland.
"It is a
normal quid pro quo," said Wang Xuedong, an
international relations expert at Zhongshan
University. "If US officials think we are not
exerting enough pressure on Pyongyang to
negotiate, then they should consider Beijing's
demands that Washington stop expressing support
for Taiwan and stop interfering in China's
internal affairs."
During her two-day
visit to Beijing that ended on Monday, Rice left
little doubt that she intended to use her unique
knowledge to further US strategic interests in
Asia. Emphasizing on every occasion that the US
recognizes China as a rising force in global
politics, she made it abundantly clear that
Washington intended to keep China's military power
in check.
Throughout her trip, Rice's
unambiguous message was that in the face of
China's ascendance, Washington would support
efforts by its ally Japan to exercise more
influence in the world.
Speaking in Tokyo,
she appealed to all US allies in the region to
stand together and create a political environment
that would induce China to eventually embrace
democracy.
And again, the US secretary of
state spoke in opposition to the European Union's
plans to lift its arms embargo on China and warned
of the need to counter a new Chinese threat
against Taiwan.
On Sunday, while in
Beijing, she bluntly told the European Union not
to meddle with the balance of power in Asia. "It
is the US, not Europe, that has defended the
Pacific," she declared.
Rice's remarks
might have been nothing new to Chinese officials,
but their hard-edged conservative resonance left
many experts flabbergasted. They had expected
Rice's trip to be something of an "exploratory"
visit to gauge China's views and were unprepared
when the US state secretary actually held forth.
Wang Jisi, who researches North American
issues at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences,
attributed Rice's unyielding attitude to recent
favorable developments in the Middle East that
seem to lend support to the US cause of attacking
Iraq in order to to promote democracy in the
region.
Others, such as Wang Xuedong,
reasoned that unlike the European Union, which
sees China these days primarily as a trade
partner, Washington would always view Beijing as a
potential competitor.
US officials are
concerned that the EU is considering transfers of
valuable weapons technology to China just when
Beijing has indicated its hostile intentions
toward Taiwan.
In an outburst of patriotic
fervor, China's parliament last week approved an
Anti-Secession Law that asserts Chinese
sovereignty over Taiwan and authorizes military
attack should the island's leaders cross the line
on independence.
China's parliament also
approved a 12.6% increase in military spending
this year. People's Liberation Army leaders told
the legislators they intended to reduce the army
by 200,000 men to devote more of its budget to
improving high-tech armaments.
Rice was
explicit on both developments. She publicly
denounced the Anti-Secession Law as an unwelcome
development: "Because anything that is unilateral,
that increases tensions - which clearly the
Anti-Secession Law did - is not good. China and
Taiwan are not going to be able to solve this
alone. They are going to eventually need each
other to resolve this," she said in Beijing.
Addressing China's military buildup, she
said the European Union "should do nothing to
contribute to a circumstance in which Chinese
military modernization draws on European
technology".
"There are concerns about the
rise of Chinese military spending, and potentially
Chinese military power and its increasing
sophistication," she said before departing from
South Korea to China.
Ripple effects of the
United States' implacable opposition to ending the arms
embargo on China were beginning to be felt this
week. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw
betrayed his country's unease on Sunday when he
said the unanimous approval of the Anti-Secession
Law by the Chinese parliament had "created quite a
difficult political environment".
"Politically there are problems and these
problems have actually got more difficult, not
least because there hasn't been much movement by
China in respect of human rights," Straw was
quoted as saying.
(Inter Press
Service) |
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