Bush, Hu to meet at crucial
crossroad By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - China's President Hu Jintao is
on his way to North Korea, where his task will be
to wrest a clear commitment for nuclear
disarmament from Kim Jong-il. This commitment
should be brought to Beijing on November 8, when
the next round of six-party talks is scheduled to
start. If the talks make the US happy, Hu will
have a clear sign of commitment and friendship to
show to United States President George W Bush, who
is due in Beijing around November 20.
However, this will not be the end of the
story, but just the beginning as the US and China
have a list of questions for each other, worries
that go beyond the historic issue of Taiwan, which
seems stable even if not resolved. As the shadow
of Taiwan fades
and
China's economy booms, a new pattern of
geopolitics in Asia is emerging and it is not
clear how China and the US will react to each
other.
China's main long-term question is
this: will America object if China, perhaps even a
democratic China, becomes richer and stronger than
America? In the US, many claim that the main point
of friction with China is ideological, and thus
they press for human rights, freedom and
democracy. In China, scholars and politicians
wonder what problems will remain and grow perhaps
starker if or when China becomes democratic.
Then, nationalist street protests would be
harder to control. If China installed a fervently
nationalist leadership, the US would be instilled
with a sense of fear and panic when the Chinese
economy threatened to overtake that of the US.
Such fears would likely be greater if existing
strong Chinese anti-Japanese sentiment were to
merge with anti-American fervor.
The
underlying question is this: what is US
geopolitics in Asia? In the 1970s, the divide was
clear: the US confronted the Soviet Union, and so
had to make a deal with China. But now and for the
next 10 or 20 years, what is the US agenda for
East Asia? If it is about geopolitical
confrontation with China, there is a paradox in
the fact that an undemocratic China can better
control public opinion and thus be less risky for
the US than a democratic China pushed into
confrontation by popular sentiment. Hence, the US
geopolitical agenda is crucial also to the
timetable of reforms in China.
On the
other hand, of course, there are many questions
from the US side. Yes, China historically has not
invaded other countries, but that is history; will
the future be like the past? In the past, China
was an isolated and isolationist country; it
developed along its rivers; it did not spread
around the globe in search of raw materials. Now
this is no longer true: China has a very active
diplomacy, it develops along the coast, and roams
the world for raw materials and industrial
products. In the future, will it expand abroad,
breaking the historical pattern? China now is
committed to peace, but what about the Chinese
rulers 20, 30 or 40 years from now, when the
youngsters who marched for the national cause will
have white hair and power?
Furthermore,
there is the military build up. China says it has
to grow militarily as well as economically and
politically. So, when China becomes the world's
leading economy, will it also strive to be the
leading military power? And how will such power be
used? At that point, it could be most dangerous if
China were not democratic, as dictatorships are
more prone to plunge into wars. But a democracy
driven by nationalist fervor would pose its own
major problems.
The experience of the
CNOOC-Chevron takeover fight over Unocal has left
a deep and lasting impression in Washington. Many
did not understand the purpose of the whole
exercise. Was China after US oil supplies? Was it
trying to corner the energy market and then
blackmail American consumers?
China can
say and argue and explain that no, this was not
the case, it was a business decision, and when we
saw the highly negative US reaction, we withdrew.
But the problem of how to handle the Chinese
thirst for energy remains. It impacts the American
market in two ways: 1) it pushes up energy prices
and thus manufacturing and consumer costs in
America; 2) it also pushes up manufacturing costs
in China and the prices of consumers goods
produced for the American market. The issue of
China's energy supply then is crucial for the rest
of the world, both developed and developing. The
US wants and needs to know what exactly is China's
stance in coping with the energy problem.
Then there is an issue that both China and
the US have an imperial history, China in the
past, the US more recently and at present. Empires
need allies or vassals who shoulder part of the
weight. China has no ally, no real friend and only
some unruly partial vassals, like Myanmar or North
Korea, which have no international standing and
are despised by the international community.
China needs real friends, allies,
countries with which to share its burdens. On the
other side there is America with many allies - and
also vassals. Is America thinking of having China
as an ally, a vassal, or what? And what is China's
basic thinking: does it want to be an empire again
and how? In its imperial past China had no allies,
only vassals, but now this is no longer enough. It
needs to have allies with equal standing. But
China has no tradition of that and does not really
know how to cope with it. How can it learn -
assuming it wants to learn? Can there be an
alliance on equal footing with America in the
future?
This brings in the fundamental
issue of Japan. China insists that Japan's leaders
have to stop visits to the Yasukuni shrine. But
Japan suspects that behind the demand there is a
hidden agenda: if Tokyo stops the visits it will
assent to China's primacy in East Asia. Is China
implying that Japan should bow down to China's
primacy in the region?
The position of the
US in this is very delicate. Although US Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in October canceled his
trip to Japan in implicit protest against Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni and
in response to difficulties over deciding the
future of the US Okinawa bases, the US can't
pressure Japan too much. If the US were to leave
Japan alone, and take a more neutral stand between
China and Japan, Tokyo would re-arm, posing an
even greater challenge to regional stability as it
would trigger further armament by China.
Behind this there is a broader question
between China and Japan. Yes, economic ties have
greatly improved. In the past several years
China's trade deficit with Japan helped to boost
Japanese economic performance and get the country
out of the doldrums. According to Chinese data, in
2002 total Sino-Japanese trade was US$101.9
billion, 16.4% of total Chinese trade, and China
had a deficit of US$5 billion. In 2003, total
trade was US$133.5 billion, 31% more than the
previous year, and the Chinese deficit went up to
US$14.7 billion.
But there is the
contentious issue of the gasfields around the
contested Senkaku islands, claimed by both China
and Japan. The contention is heated as both
countries are energy-starved. There is also the
clash over the route of the Russian pipeline in
Siberia, there is the Japanese worry about the
return of Taiwan to China, as 70% of Japanese
energy supply and 50% of food supply are shipped
past Taiwan. If the island returns to Chinese
control it would be as if China had its hands
around Japan's neck, according to concerned
Japanese.
Then there is an issue of
worldview and historical perspective. In Asia, it
is not clear that the Cold War is over. Vietnam is
united and is still "communist", "communist" China
is alive and well and wants to take over Taiwan.
One could argue that the Cold War continues in
Asia, or that it ended with different results than
in Europe, or that the Cold War in Asia was a
whole different story than in Europe, as America
befriended communist China in the 1970s.
Similarly, the history of World War II
remains somewhat unsettled. Ma Ling [1] says that
Japanese feel they have not lost the war to China
but to the US and Russia, and that they still look
down on China. One can push the argument further
back: was the Japanese invasion of East Asia in
the 1930s and the Japanese rule over Korea better
or worse than that of the Euro-Americans? Was the
Japanese victory over Russia in 1905 a matter of
pride for the entire "yellow" race? Was what Japan
did in Asia invasion or liberation from colonial
rule?
In many of his writings the
influential writer Wang Xiaodong speaks of the
Chinese sense of inferiority [2], while Japanese
authors like Shintaro Ishihara proclaim a new
sense of superiority that worries people in China
and Korea.
All of this makes it hard for
the US to simply step aside in Asia. It demands
greater US commitment in Asia, not less. But this
commitment can't simply take the form of
containment and of hedging China's rise.
New ideas, new frameworks, new talks, new
answers - and surely even more questions - need to
come out of the Bush visit to Beijing, for the
good of the bilateral relationship and the welfare
of the region.
Notes [1]
Ma Ling "Zhong-ri jianglai bi you yi zhan?",
September 2005, Mingbao monthly.
[2] See
for instance Wang Xiaodong "Chinese Nationalism
Under the Shadow of Globalization", a speech
delivered at the London School of Economics and
Political Science, February 7, 2005
Francesco Sisci, based in
Beijing, is Asia Editor for the daily La
Stampa.
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