Clinton's strained swan
song in China By Peter Lee
US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham
Clinton recently paid what is expected to be her
final official visit to Beijing. She received a
stern reception from Chinese officialdom,
including the official media, and also suffered
what appears to have been a personal rebuke.
Clinton's press entourage was abuzz
concerning the cancellation of a meeting with
Chinese president-in-waiting Xi Jinping.
Of course, it is possible that the excuses
that circulated through the press corps - that Xi
had a scheduling conflict and/or a bad
back - were the truth. Xi
also canceled a meeting with the prime minister of
Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong. [1] However, the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) may have decided
that Clinton's last visit was the final and most
appropriate opportunity to administer a snub - and
a message.
Per her position as secretary
of state, Clinton is entitled to meet with her
opposite number in Beijing, Foreign Minister Yang
Jiechi. However, because of a variety of
circumstances both historical (the importance of
the relationship between the United States and
China, Clinton's special status as spouse of a
former US president) and immediate (the fraught
current state of Sino-US relations, the fact that
this is probably Clinton's last official visit to
China), she also met with President Hu Jintao and
Premier Wen Jiabao.
From an official
perspective, there are no grounds for Clinton to
feel snubbed on this trip, and also from an
official perspective, there are no grounds for
Clinton to meet with Xi Jinping. After all,
Clinton and her team are on the way out,
regardless of whether President Barack Obama wins
re-election or is replaced in the White House by
Mitt Romney.
Xi Jinping, on the other
hand, is not yet in the office of president of
China. That is still Hu Jintao's job. Perhaps Hu
did not take pleasure in the idea that the United
States was going around him to cultivate relations
with Xi before Hu had vacated his presidential
chair.
Possibly, the Chinese leadership
also felt that Clinton wanted to meet with Xi to
pad her Rolodex so she can claim that she has
guanxi to burn with the new generation of
China's leaders as she embarks on her
post-secretary of state career as politician,
pundit, think-tank leader, and/or corporate
adviser.
If so, the CCP could have used
cancellation of the meeting with Xi to send a
message (to paraphrase the immortal smackdown of
Dan Quayle by the late US senator Lloyd Bentsen
during a vice-presidential debate many years ago):
"I knew Henry Kissinger ... And, Secretary
Clinton, you are no Henry Kissinger."
Actually, Xi Jinping does know Henry
Kissinger (who is, by the way, still alive) and
has met him more than once. Xi met with Kissinger
and a host of other retired US State Department
worthies during his trip to the United States in
February. But he also met with him one-on-one in
Beijing several weeks before his trip to send the
message that China was ready to "seize the day,
seize the hour", to promote bilateral ties. [2]
The CCP leadership value Kissinger as the
symbol, custodian and advocate of a US-China
relationship that is special.
When
relations between the Chinese leadership and
President Obama teetered into the deep freeze
after the disastrous Copenhagen climate summit
(which featured China's furious negotiator
screaming and waving his finger at Obama for what
Beijing perceived to be the cynical US decision to
use it as a scapegoat for the collapse of the
talks), China publicized a meeting between
then-vice-president Li Keqiang (the title that Xi
holds now, by the way) and Kissinger in Beijing to
demonstrate that China wanted to continue
relations in a spirit of positive engagement. [3]
However, Obama decided for political,
economic, moral and geo-strategic reasons (and
perhaps also because of his unsatisfying personal
interactions with the Chinese leadership cadre)
that he had to deal with Beijing from a position
of greater regional strength and eschew immediate
accommodation.
The rest is history,
specifically the strategic pivot to Asia, executed
by Clinton.
China's relationship with the
United States is now special only in the sense
that it is especially awkward and difficult. The
closest Beijing probably has to a US champion of a
special relationship with China today is Robert
Zoellick, the ex-head of the World Bank who now
serves as an adviser to Mitt Romney.
From
Beijing's perspective, the pivot has done little
other than make trouble for China, specifically by
emboldening US allies in the region to make
trouble over maritime issues.
Both Vietnam
and the Philippines passed maritime laws to
formalize their challenges to Chinese claims to
rocks and shoals in the South China Sea. The
Japanese government, goaded by Tokyo governor and
sinophobic hothead Shintaro Ishihara, is taking
steps to buy the Senkakus from their private
owner.
The United States danced around the
issue of whether or not it would back up security
guarantees with the Philippines and Japan on
island issues in a rather equivocal manner.
And Washington further upped the ante by
promoting the line that the South China Sea
disputes should be addressed in negotiations
between Beijing and the various claimants
collectively through the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations, instead of through bilateral talks
between China and its smaller adversaries.
This situation pleases fans of
interminable multilateral jaw-jaw, although a case
can be made that the best way actually to settle
claims is for Beijing to cut joint development
deals with its neighbors one-by-one to unlock in a
reasonably timely manner the immense riches we are
told lurk below these miserable islands.
In the run-up to Clinton's visit - and a
spate of ugly demonstrations (not suppressed with
notable vigor by the Chinese government) and
incidents such as the snatching of the flag from
the Japanese ambassador's official vehicle on one
of the Beijing ring roads (presumably a thuggish
one-off by a Chinese citizen) - the government
clearly took the tack that it was time to tell the
United States that enough was enough and it was
time for Washington back up its rhetoric as
guarantor of security in China's neighboring seas
by reining in its overenthusiastic allies in
Hanoi, Manila and Tokyo.
Xinhua laid out
the case in a story datelined from Washington:
Many of the US actions so far have
been counterproductive to promoting peace and
stability in the Asia-Pacific, as indicated by
the fact that the security situation in the
region has been worsening, rather than
improving, mainly due to the recent escalation
of the territorial disputes in the East China
Sea and the South China Sea.
Washington,
which claims not to take sides in the disputes,
is partly blamed for fueling the tensions
because it has apparently emboldened certain
relevant parties to make provocations against
China in order to achieve undeserved territorial
gains ...
Washington owes Beijing a
thorough, convincing explanation of the true
intentions of its pivot policy, especially on
issues related to China's vital or core
interests. And the United States also needs to
take concrete steps to prove that it is
returning to Asia as a peacemaker, instead of a
troublemaker. [4]
Clinton's visit was
marked by a blizzard of articles in the official
media on this theme:
"China urges US to work for peace in
South China Sea" [5] "Washington needs to
take concrete steps to promote China-US ties"
[6] "US owes China convincing explanation of
true intentions of its Asia Pivot policy"
[7] "Commentary: US should refrain from
sending wrong signals over South China Sea" [8]
That is all Xinhua, starting to sound
a lot like nationalist head-knocker Global Times.
Global Times, well, sounded just like Global
Times:
"No winners in containment
strategies" [9] "Hillary reinforces US-China
mistrust" [10]
Beijing has a right to
wonder whether US infatuation with the pivot - and
poking China in the eye - is matched with a
responsible stewardship of its real security
responsibilities in East Asia.
For the
Chinese leadership, the true indicator of the
sincerity and utility of the US security role in
East Asia is probably the amount of influence
Washington can bring to bear on Tokyo on its
military and security agenda in general and on the
symbolic issue of the Senkakus.
There is
one compelling reason for Beijing to acquiesce to
the continued US military presence in East Asia:
That is if the United States can forestall the
emergence of Japan as an independent,
nuclear-capable regional military and security
actor.
Thanks to US support of its demands
for a closed nuclear-fuel cycle and an otherwise
unnecessary space program, Japan has the reserves
of weapon-grade plutonium and the
ballistic-missile delivery systems to become a
major nuclear weapons power virtually overnight.
In an interesting analysis, The Associated Press
reviewed the evidence that Iran has perhaps
studied and copied the Japanese strategy of
positioning itself as a nuclear-weapons threshold
state - one without nuclear weapons but with the
resources to weaponize its nuclear capabilities
rapidly if needed.
By forestalling a
nuclear-tinged regional arms race and keeping the
Japan Self-Defense Forces preoccupied with
self-defense instead of power projection, the
United States delivers a real and significant
security and economic benefit to China, and to
East Asia in general. [11]
But the
elevation of the Senkakus to a political, cultural
and security fetish is helping change that.
So far, Japan's national governments,
thanks to US suasion, incentives, and the security
provided by the presence of US forces, have kept
the military genie in the bottle.
Currently, the government of Prime
Minister Yoshihiko Noda has conducted its
demeaning competition with Ishihara to purchase
the Senkakus with a combination of restraint,
frustration and disgust that the Chinese
leadership probably finds very gratifying -
despite its public fulminations.
However,
past results are no guarantee of future
performance.
If Tokyo slips the leash or,
even worse, decides that it can yank America's
chain in the style of the Israeli government by
forcing the US to support Japan and its objectives
in the region through deliberate escalation of
tensions, the perceived utility and value of the
US military role in East Asia will be
significantly compromised in China's eyes.
In May, The Wall Street Journal reported
on the relatively extreme security views of
Shintaro Ishihara, the Tokyo governor who began
the whole Senkaku-purchase brouhaha:
Japan must guard itself from China's
expansionary ambitions, which, Mr Ishihara said,
are now turned outward after conquering Mongolia
and the Uighur people and decimating Tibet ...
"China has declared it would break into someone
else's home. It's time we make sure doors are
properly locked on our islands," he said.
"Before we know it, Japan could become the sixth
star on China's national flag. I really don't
want that to happen" ...
Throughout the
speech, Mr Ishihara referred to China as
"Shina", the name normally associated with the
era of Japanese occupation of China.
[12]
Ishihara also advocated beefed-up
Japanese military spending justified in part
because the US is "unreliable" at least on the
issue of the Senkakus.
It would be
comforting to dismiss Ishihara as an aging, racist
crackpot. However, as Japan's wartime generation
and mindset fade away, political pressure for the
country to assume the role of an armed world power
with its own security policy - and stand up to
China - is growing.
And Ishihara has gone
the extra mile in passing on his xenophobic legacy
to the next generation, via his son Nobuteru.
One theory is that Ishihara ginned up the
Senkaku purchase to advance the political fortunes
of Nobuteru, who is secretary general of the
opposition Liberal Democratic Party and has an
extremely good chance of becoming Japan's next
prime minister if the requisite amount of
intra-party and inter-party skulduggery can be
brought to bear. [13]
The prospect that
the Japanese government and foreign and military
policy may soon be in the hands of a group of
China-bashing reactionaries - and the US
government in the hands of China-bashing
neo-liberals or neo-conservatives indifferent to
Chinese anxieties - is not a recipe for Chinese
restraint.
The harsh official Chinese
rhetoric concerning the pivot is perhaps more than
a farewell rebuke to Secretary Clinton. It should
be regarded as an effort to cut through the
China-bashing clutter of the US presidential
campaign with a strident and unambiguous
declaration of Beijing's concern that infatuation
with the pivot has caused the United States to
lose its focus on the critical regional priority
of encouraging restraint among all its allies, but
most of all Japan.
Fans of the pivot - and
advisers to whatever president takes the oath of
office in Washington early next year - may wish to
start thinking about the worst case if China's new
leadership thinks it has to escalate to
confrontation sooner rather than later so it can
either force US Asian policy on to a track more
favorable to China or start crowding US military
power out of the region before it's too late.
One piece of advice: If a crisis erupts -
and the United States genuinely wants to resolve
it - maybe it is better not to send Hillary
Clinton to Beijing.
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