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	July 23, 1999	atimes.com

China

From engagement to containment?
By Uwe Parpart
Editor, Asia Times Online

Suppose you were an enlightened Chinese policymaker sitting in Beijing watching the world out there on the peripheries of the Middle Kingdom - meaning the rest of the world - and asked yourself: What are those guys up to? Over the past six months or so, what would you have observed and what conclusions would you - quite rationally - have drawn?

Here's the picture:
1. NATO, not recently a great concern, starts a war on Yugoslavia - a rather distant sort of place not amounting to much since Tito, old friend of Chou En-lai, died. But the war is said to be about human rights; so, better watch it. And whose human rights? Those of ethnic rebels clamoring for independence. So, better watch a bit more closely.

2. A U.S. delegation is coming to Beijing to talk about trade. They want concessions on different issues so WTO membership can be attained. Okay, let's give Clinton some talking points with the dinosaurs in Congress. He seems to mean well and the PM is going to Washington soon. Would be a good occasion to clinch a deal. In any case, would be useful to open markets up some more to put pressure on those state enterprises writing nothing but red ink.

3. What's that? We spied on Los Alamos to get the latest U.S. nuclear secrets? An ethnic Chinese did it? Well, maybe; but it's an old story. Why does The New York Times bring it up now? Anyway, we don't have the money to arm ourselves to the teeth like the Soviets did. And where did THAT get them, after all?!

4. Oh, the Americans want some more trade concessions. Let them have 'em and get it over with - and have a good Washington signing party when the PM gets there.

5. Hey, wait a minute. All those concessions and no deal? What's going on? Sure isn't going to make life any easier with our own dinosaurs.

6. What exactly is this fellow Cohen doing in Tokyo? Ballistic missile defense? Will it cover Taiwan? Sure will - bloody hell! That'll make the generals happy.

7. And now the Filipinos are going to sign a new defense treaty with the Americans? Who's the big enemy against whom they need big brother's help? Us, from the looks of it, with the Spratly islands claims and what not.

8. Never mind the Filipinos. But the Japanese are starting to shoot at North Korean vessels and those new Japanese-American defense guidelines sure are vague enough to allow them to intervene pretty much anywhere in our neighborhood. Defense? - Yeah, that was NATO's purpose, and now see what's happening. The Philippines, Japan, what next? NATO East?

9. What?! They didn't know where our Belgrade embassy was? Old maps? They must be able to see the flag from all those satellites up there. This is really stretching it now, guys. Enough's enough.

10. And then that 900-page spying report, NOW of all times. And of course they don't spy on us.

11. Did you see that report from Jakarta about those State Department guys trying to help cobble together a viable anti-Golkar coalition. Looks like it might work, too. Didn't someone say a stable Indonesia was the best guarantee to block our influence in Southeast Asia? . . .

Even younger Chinese policymakers don't talk such jive. But if you sit there in Beijing, look at what's been happening and think of who, in all those cases, played the lead role in making it happen - well, it's not all that far-fetched to imagine that someone in Washington is talking engagement even as the movement of the hands and the feet signals: ''Block and contain China."

What's the true explanation? Our own favorite one for a while and the one we're still leaning toward is that the dinosaurs in Washington had a few lucky breaks going their way (mainly the spying bit) and are making the most of it while Clinton is looking the other way - or, actually is looking toward elections next year and doesn't want to saddle his buddy Al Gore with a ''soft on China'' image. Meanwhile the dinosaurs in Beijing see their own chance to reverse or at any rate slow down the Jiang/Zhu economic and political liberalization drive.

But there's a nagging sense that this explanation falls short.

Clinton, after all, has almost served his two terms and now really has to worry only about his legacy. And realization of strategic engagement of (and with) China would come very high on the type of list that counts in history. Gore will have to walk in Gore's own shoes. So, why turn down the golden opportunity of the Zhu April U.S. visit and refuse to sign on to China's WTO entry on a few minor points?

It's only in light of that signal failure that most of the other issues - spying, the embassy bombing, the new East Asian defense arrangements - have come, full scale, to signify containment in Chinese eyes.

We offer a hypothesis, gleaned mainly from the ever more pessimistic assessments on the Chinese economy coming out of Wall Street, Washington think tanks and, most recently, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

There is a line of thinking, not yet formally established but rapidly gaining ground, that China is far worse off economically and financially than any official statistics would show. And there is the related line that only a China that had gone through the kind of wrenching crisis that has hit the rest of East Asia for the past two years would truly open up, removing the final hindrances to the free flow of capital throughout the region that represents the key American strategic interest. Meanwhile, of course, and while an expected China crisis plays out, it is the better part of caution and wisdom to see to it that the place is properly contained so nothing untoward will happen.

What, to our mind, adds credence to this hypothesis of cautious containment taking over from engagement is the Russian precedent. Russia, we have little doubt, is now being hung out to dry and left to twist slowly in the wind, to use a Nixon White House phrase. Regarding China, that's not a done deal yet. Much will depend on the extent to which Jiang and Zhu will manage the economy and the fiercer opposition that they now encounter. In a similar situation some years back, grand old man Deng Xiaoping took his famous southern tour and assured survival and stepped-up reforms. Unfortunately, Jiang and Zhu do not have Deng's standing and political wherewithal.

As of this writing, Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov is in Beijing to prepare the next informal Yeltsin/Jiang summit. The Chinese and Russian assessments of the Kosovo situation are ''identical,'' said the Chinese foreign ministry in advance of the Ivanov trip. ''An Anglo-Saxon club,'' said Russian diplomats accompanying Ivanov, is out to set the world agenda. There'll be plenty of conspiracy talk at the Beijing get-together.

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