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2 How to 'congage' with
China By John Feffer
The latest recruitment brochure from the
US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which
beckons the uninitiated to "be a part of a mission
that's larger than all of us", opens to reveal an
image of the red-roofed entrance to Beijing's
Forbidden City. From an oversized portrait on the
ancient wall, chairman Mao Zedong and his Mona
Lisa smile behold the vast granite expanse of
Tiananmen Square.
The Cold War is over,
and the Soviet Union is gone. The cloak-and-dagger
games of Berlin and Prague have been replaced by
business and tourism. But
China - land of ancient secrets, autocratic
leaders, and memories of suppressed uprisings -
still holds out the promise of world-historical
struggle that can help the CIA meet its
recruitment goals.
It's not difficult to
understand the CIA's interest in China. The
picture of Tiananmen Square and the walled-off
Forbidden City sums it up: size and mystery and
potential threat. It's an irresistible combination
for clandestine operations. The big mystery of
China has also transfixed pretty much everyone
else around the world, from chief executive
officers and filmmakers to language students and
ambitious politicians.
As the most
aggressive phase of US unilateralism subsides like
a feverish illness, a new "multipolar moment"
opens up before us. And China is the country most
poised to take advantage of the political
opportunity. When the United Nations needs
peacekeepers, it is turning increasingly to China,
which is now the 13th-largest contributor to UN
missions. When African countries need
infrastructure investment - from oil pipelines to
sports complexes - they invite in a Chinese
delegation. When the United States has needed its
chestnuts pulled out of the fire in North Korea,
it has solicited help from China. Indeed, through
trade and diplomacy, Beijing is giving Washington
a run for its money in every region of the world.
With China emerging as the new global
go-to guy, Foreign Policy in Focus decided to do
an assessment of this growing influence and its
impact on US foreign policy. We want to give some
sense of the size of China's global endeavor and
pierce some of the mystery surrounding its
motivations. And we intend to tackle the question
that has hung inside the Beltway ever since the
late US president Richard Nixon and his adviser
Henry Kissinger engineered their rapprochement of
the 1970s. Is China friend or foe? Or, as each US
administration since the Big Opening has
concluded, some improbable combination of the two?
The mysteries of 'congagement'
During the administration of US president
Bill Clinton, two views of China competed for
supremacy. The outsiders, who called themselves
the "Blue Team", touted China's growing military
threat: its desire to modernize its army, build a
"blue water" navy, and achieve strategic advantage
over Taiwan. They focused their wrath at what they
called the "Red Team" inside the administration,
which supported increasing engagement with China.
US trade with China grew sixfold in the
1990s, from US$20 billion to $120 billion. The
United States supported China's bid to enter the
World Trade Organization. Economic engagement with
Beijing was becoming less a choice than a
necessity.
George W Bush seemed to be the
Blue Team's dream candidate for the US presidency.
He was tough on communism, preferred to think of
China as a "strategic competitor" rather than the
Clinton administration's formulation of "strategic
partner", and supported missile defense over
China's opposition. Taking office, he pushed
through an arms package for Taiwan and seemed
about to make good on his pledge to do away with
"strategic ambiguity" in favor of a tilt toward
Taipei.
Candidates can talk tough about
China. But presidents tend to become rather
practical when they eye Beijing from their perch
in the Oval Office. Particularly after September
11, 2001, China became a strategic partner in deed
though not in name. On global terrorism, North
Korea's nuclear ambitions, and the imperative of
global economic growth, Washington and Beijing saw
largely eye to eye. The cynical might attribute
this shared vision to economics. From 2000 to
2005, US-China trade grew another 150% to nearly
$300 billion.
Still, the Bush
administration hasn't turned into a team of
panda-huggers. From Washington's perspective,
China remains the threat looming on the horizon.
The 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review talks of the
country's "potential to compete militarily with
the United States" even as it waxes optimistic
about China as a "partner in addressing common
security challenges".
Meanwhile, the
congressionally tasked commission on US-China
relations, in its most recent report, complained
last month that China had not yet become a
"responsible stakeholder" in the international
community. "While China is a global actor, its
sense of responsibility has not kept up with its
expanding power," argued commission chairman Larry
Wortzel.
The US government obviously
hasn't made up its collective mind about China.
Rather than choose between friend or foe,
