Page 2 of 2 China: Barking up the
wrong tree By
Benjamin A Shobert
way into the hands of
the Chinese through seemingly innocent market
acquisitions.
At their base, each of the
10 key recommendations is crafted around the idea
that China is currently not a "responsible
stakeholder" (p 1) within international systems of
governance. For those who might wonder about the
context of this, a more exhaustive quotation from
the same section is helpful: "It is the
commission's judgment that,
while China's influence is growing as its wealth
and power increase, and there remain many reasons
to hope that China might in some future day stand
as a pillar of the international community, its
behavior as yet is far from meeting that standard.
Indeed, many of the trends of the past year raise
serious doubts whether China is yet willing or
prepared to play such a role" (pp 1-2).
Slightly further into the report, the USCC
clarifies that responsible nations "abide by the
rules - both the letter and the spirit of
agreements into which they enter ... [they]
participate in international resource markets in
ways that do not distort or destabilize those
markets or deny other states access to natural
resources, especially energy ... [they] contribute
to international security, good governance,
transparency, and accountability" (p 22). It is
impossible to read this part of the report without
having the fleeting thought that perhaps these
standards are ideals upon which every country
fails, and that unrestrained self-interest is at
the core of many such failures.
Lest the
good portions of the USCC report be overlooked, it
should be said that the same section equates being
a responsible stakeholder to policies that
"advance their own domestic development in ways
that support international norms on issues such as
political rights, press freedom, religious
freedom, government transparency, controlling
corruption, and labor rights" (p 22).
While the USCC report seems to acknowledge
that the US must accept a strategy of appeasement
on basic questions of human rights within China,
with an understanding that they must mature to a
stage where the country can develop systems to
advance and protect these rights, when China's
military or economic growth places similar US
interests at risk, the same nuance is difficult to
find.
Unless the West can find a sense of
balance on the question of China, the tone of the
USCC report may be a portent of a future where
China becomes exactly what everyone fears: a
regional military power dedicated to furthering
its own expansionist strategy absent any
consideration of how such policies impact its
neighbors and willing to overcome resistance
through the use of force.
It would seem
prudent to choose consciously both tone and
content with the idea in mind of meeting China's
policymakers where they are, emphasizing the
positive changes they have already made, and
carefully picking those concerns to publicize
those we believe represent the key ideological
underpinnings to the next stage of China's
development.
This would be easier if we
could discriminate in assigning blame toward what
issues and policies are really reliant on China
and which allow the US to hide its own
inadequacies and insecurities. In the final
section of the report reserved for personal
comments from the commissioners, William Reinsch
seems to see past much of the USCC's weakness when
he writes that "the report once again treats China
as an economic and security threat in everything
but name, implying a number of apocalyptic
outcomes - to our manufacturing base, our economy
generally, to Taiwan, to our role in the Pacific -
if we don't get busy countering their actions. In
doing so, the commission once again demonstrates
its gift for making the complex far too simple.
Everything bad happening to America is not China's
fault, and even if China takes actions the
commission favors, such as revaluing its currency,
our problems will largely remain" (p 216).
Analysis like the USCC report that focuses
predominantly on China's failure is rightly going
to be interpreted as hostile; to overlook an
appreciation of where China is coming from, and
the changes it has already made, runs the risk of
making China a scapegoat for America's woes
instead of a catalyst for changes Americans must
make. Of the many overstatements within this
report, this is perhaps the foundational one.
