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Thursday, July 31, 2008

Establishing Trust with the Chinese

Longtime Washington and US government China policy analysts Richard C. Bush and Jeff Bader are out with an all-too Establishment piece that seems to live in its own dreamworld on US-China relations, calling on Obama and McCain to Tread Lightly On China:

The Beijing Olympics coincide with our party conventions heralding the countdown to November's presidential election. With the world's media spotlight on China and the United States, both presidential candidates will undoubtedly be tested by unforeseen developments.

Contenders Barack Obama and John McCain should avoid condemning China, and instead signal their intention to develop a personal relationship of trust with their Chinese counterpart soon after taking office. China's human rights are best advanced through discrete encouragement, not negative sound bites.

In three election campaigns — in 1980, 1992 and 2000 — future U.S. presidents announced their intention to dramatically toughen national policy toward China. In each instance, the United States then endured months or years of costly fumbling. Bill Clinton, for instance, set conditions for approving Most Favored Nation status for China. But when China didn't show sufficient improvements in human rights, the new president abandoned his policy after damaging U.S. credibility and Sino-American trust.

Since President Richard Nixon's historic visit to China in 1972, all subsequent chief executives have ultimately stayed the course with the People's Republic. The logic is simple: China has massive capacity to affect the world for better or worse. Cooperating with Beijing may challenge U.S. values, but the bond between nations improves global equanimity.

Presidential candidates should signal China's leaders that they value a constructive and cooperative relationship with China. Personal relationships of trust are highly valued. The Chinese will react negatively if a new president throws difficult issues on the table before establishing such trust.

Yes, it is 2008 and there really are American policy thinkers still asking that we treat China "like a Ming vase." Bush and Bader argue that when America gets tough with China, it results in policy failure, and instance the Clinton Administration failure on MFN. But the problem arises because China knows that because there are plenty of people working to undermine clear US policies on China, all it has to do is be patient and it can outlast any policy -- there is a whole class of American officials and analysts dedicated to explaining that it isn't China's fault and we should just understand China better -- just like this piece, whose position is that we should let Chinese reactions determine how we treat China -- in other words, hand off our China policy to the Chinese. The reality is that China does whatever it wants no matter how it is treated, and the only way to negotiate with Beijing is with a Really Big Stick. "Trust" in the China case cannot lie in personal relationships between leaders, but must be instantiated in routines of interaction between the two states.

In a moment we'll discuss why these two officials are so important, but I think once again it is time to bring out The Kitty Hawk Paragraph, to which I have added a few new events, and show how China treats its good friends and those who trust it:

Anyone who has observed China's relations with the outside world for any length of time has seen this pattern again and again. In the midst of negotiations with the Vatican, it consecrates two bishops for the state Church. In the midst of negotiations over the Olympic Torch coming to Taiwan, it denies a visa to the representative of the city of Kaohsiung to discuss the games to be held there in 2009. Arriving in India for negotiations, its ambassador announces a whole Indian state is part of China. Last year the Chinese government shut down an expat magazine in China that was widely considered the most sympathetic and supportive expat rag in that nation. After attending the ASEAN meeting in November where it has positive interactions with ASEAN members, it immediately goes out and holds war games in waters disputed by those nations, without informing them. With ally Ma Ying-jeou newly elected President of Taiwan and needing 3,000 tourists a day, what do they send him? 1,000. After many years of France helping China, emphasizing its 'special relationship' with China and demanding the Europe drop the post-Tiananmen ban on weapons sales to Beijing, who does China protest against during the Olympic Torch mess? France. And of course China gets the Olympics with promises to upgrade its rights situation, yet crackdowns on the internet and journalists intensify, while state security arrests double. Catch the pattern?

Particularly apropo is that last sentence, because China once again this week showed how effective the policy of "discreet encouragement" is: the IOC was Kitty Hawked by Beijing. The original agreement between the International Olympic Committee stipulated that Beijing must reporters in Beijing unrestricted internet access. And the IOC trusted Beijing....

The International Olympic Committee failed to press China to allow fully unfettered access to the Internet for the thousands of journalists arriving here to cover the Olympics, despite promising repeatedly that the foreign news media could “report freely” during the Games, Olympic officials acknowledged Wednesday.

Since the Olympic Village press center opened Friday, reporters have been unable to access scores of Web pages — among them those that discuss Tibetan issues, Taiwanese independence, the violent crackdown on the protests in Tiananmen Square and the Web sites of Amnesty International, the BBC’s Chinese-language news, Radio Free Asia and several Hong Kong newspapers known for their freewheeling political discourse.

The restrictions, which closely resemble the blocks that China places on the Internet for its citizens, undermine sweeping claims by Jacques Rogge, the International Olympic Committee president, that China had agreed to provide full Web access for foreign news media during the Games. Mr. Rogge has long argued that one of the main benefits of awarding the Games to Beijing was that the event would make China more open.

“For the first time, foreign media will be able to report freely and publish their work freely in China. There will be no censorship on the Internet,” Mr. Rogge told Agence France-Presse just two weeks ago.[MT: Sucka!]

......

Jonathan Watts, president of the Foreign Correspondents Club of China, said he was disappointed that Beijing had failed to honor its agreement to temporarily remove the firewall that prevented Chinese citizens from fully using the Internet.

“Obviously if reporters can’t access all the sites they want to see, they can’t do their jobs,” he said. “Unfortunately such restrictions are normal for reporters in China, but the Olympics were supposed to be different.”

As the NY Times report indicated, the fiasco was complete when US Senators, fresh from empowering the Bush Administration to spy on US citizens and curtail our liberties, introducing a resolution demanding that China not spy on its hotel guests even though those selfsame Senators have given the Bush Administration a green light on warrantless surveillance. There's a point where interaction with the stupidity, hypocrisy, and spinelessness of the US Congress transcends the bounds of ordinary human cognitive abilities and becomes almost like an ecstatic religious experience....

And Bush and Bader say we should tread lightly with China and cultivate trust. Perhaps President Obama can include President Hu in his guanxi network and send him a red envelope now and then, but trust? By all means let us cultivate trust, but let us do it with a large Pacific navy and fat airbases brimming with late model fighter aircraft, and an alliance system that includes all the nations around China.

The worst aspect of this letter is not that its advice is bad. It is that the letter writers, longtime Dems, are advisors to the Obama campaign. I have not condemned the Dems for their Taiwan and China stances because I have heard good things privately -- that new draft policy for the Dems calls for upgraded relations with Taiwan, and of course, as Randall Shriver said at his talk in Taipei earlier this month, both campaigns had asked the Bush Administration to unfreeze the arms sales to Taiwan. Those were hopeful signs. But an open and public call for policy like this is not a hopeful sign at all. It appears obvious, at least at this point, that US-China and US-Taiwan policy are going to be better off if McCain is elected. And that's sad, because the world needs Obama, and not McCain.

A few years ago there was a controversy over facilitated communication, where the mother of the autistic child holds its hand as it types on a keyboard or writes. Subsequent studies went on to show that in fact the autistic child's writing skills were the product of the facilitator, and not the child. For the center of the US political Establishment, US policy on China has become little more than a case of facilitated communication.

14 comments:

  1. China and America no longer have a common enemy, but a common opportunity," Kissinger said in a speech at the launch of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States.
    http://www.chinapost.com.tw/china/national%20news/2008/07/31/167918/Kissinger-institute.htm

    First Wolfowitz now Kissinger.. why at the Hell are those doom guys inside of Taiwan politics?
    Why is it that bad with tawanese indepence?

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  2. "By all means let us cultivate trust, but let us do it with a large Pacific navy and fat airbases brimming with late model fighter aircraft, and an alliance system that includes all the nations around China."

    Unfortunately, such a muscular exertion of force and containment is beyond the reach of the current United States and will be for as long as the economic recession continues.

    There comes a point when it may make more sense for nations around China to lean in their direction than in the direction of Washington.

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  3. I love your pictures but you seem to be losing your mind. A "holocaust"? One definition of "holocaust" may be "consumed by fire", but you know and we know you know what most people associate with the word.

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  4. This is exactly what worries me about Obama. When it comes to China and Taiwan, the problem is his lack of experience. Presidents who have less foreign policy experience rely on advisors more. And there are a hell of a lot of stupid advisors like this out there.

    Obama, hands down, would be better for the general reputation of the US at this moment. But McCain knows what kind of SOBs the Chinese can be. I know it is an extreme example, but he was held hostage by people who were supplied by the Chinese during the Vietnam War. That was 40 years ago, yes. But it is one reason that you can be sure that he will not tread lightly with the People's Republic.

    Clinton, Bush II, and all the more so Obama are all green compared to him. What the US needs when it comes to China is someone who is not afraid to tell them NO.

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  5. Readin, check your literary references, ok? Believe it or not, just because you don't get it doesn't mean I lost my senses. I clarified it, I hope.

    Michael

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  6. I am glad to see you state that the world needs Obama. But I don't see any evidence that McCain would be better for U.S.-China & U.S.-Taiwan relations. Certainly, it appears McCain will follow in the footsteps of Bush or at least appear to in order to secure the conservative vote. That being the case, existing arms policy is likely to remain the same.

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  7. I don't know if the world needs Obama, but rather they want an "Obama." An Obama of Change and New Politics. As we've all come to realize these past few weeks, Obama can try his best to talk of his change, but he's just another politician of the "old politics." What the world wants is too idealistic, and if Obama is elected, what the world gets is someone who claimed to be something that will turn out to be something he's not.

    I'm not the first one to make this connection, but Obama and Ma have a lot of similar traits, especially during campaigning. Just something to think about.

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  8. It's just great that the Chinese are playing business as usual during the olymics and not giving all these new-to-china jounalists any more slack than anyone else at any other time.

    I hope they all get chatting uncomfortable politics with the locals. Sure, there will be the Jean-Paul Sartre types who will see no evil but lots of jounalists will be flying home at the end of August understanding the scale of the problem.

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  9. The reality is that China does whatever it wants no matter how it is treated, and the only way to negotiate with Beijing is with a Really Big Stick.

    That's actually what US has been doing to other nations except China has a Big Stick, too. Just look what we have done to the countries south of us without a Big Stick. China and the US simply behave like what a "powerful" nation suppose to act. Unfortunately too many people on this blog are to idealistic and arrogant to see both sides, and how tiny Taiwan actually is in the grant scheme.

    What the world wants is too idealistic, and if Obama is elected, what the world gets is someone who claimed to be something that will turn out to be something he's not.

    As an American, all I want is an universal health care plan if Obama is elected. With projected majority in both senate and congress. Obama will be the president who create the Universal health care for the American people. That by itself is enough. What else could an average American asking? We already consume 25% of earth energy, more overall earth resource than anyone else, while only have 5% of earth population.

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  10. Remember, Bush II was going to be "good for Taiwan". Taiwanese groups all around the US rallied support for Bush who was going to confront China and support Taiwanese independence. He was going to increase Taiwan's international space. He was going to allow high level visits. He was going to sell more weapons. He was going to demand Taiwan's entry into the WHO (remember, he was a compassionate conservative). He was going to stand up to China on trade. He was going to take a hard line...because he knew what kind of SOBs the Chinese leadership are. He had a cabinet full of longtime China haters. The US congress was anti-China. Wolfowitz, Armatage, Pearle... all great supporters of Taiwan. A Taiwan supporter in the VP office.....and....

    The Bush administration has done more to waken American influence around the world, make alliances against future threats more remote. Softened the American resolve to enter any future military conflict in the near to medium term (and China knows this). Run up a huge deficit by waging a war on borrowed money (borrowed in large part from Chinese lenders). Eroded American commitment to democracy around the world (despite a war for "democracy" in Iraq). Bush has repeatedly capitulated to China for short term gains and taken only the most shallow of ideological positions. Every day in Iraq is an education for the Chinese in how to win an American war. Tactics, Psy-Ops, vulnerabilities. Iraq is a real live classroom at the Chinese war college. Bush has unnecessarily telegraphed what was best left hidden. Good for Taiwan?

    And this was the experienced team of China haters.

    Taiwanese Americans need to vote for what is good for America first. That is the US president's job. Work hard for American interests. A strong, confident USA is good for Taiwan. An economically sound USA is good for Taiwan. A USA that believes and acts according to its constitutional creed is good for Taiwan. An American president that is not selfish, racist or partial is good for Taiwan. An American president who can listen is good for Taiwan. These are some of the issues which you should consider as Americans.

    What's good for Taiwan? People who care about Taiwan, being in Taiwan, to discuss Taiwan with Taiwanese who vote. It is up to Taiwanese voters to choose what is good for Taiwan. If you are looking for any American president to work for the interests of Taiwan... then I suggest you contact David Chou in Hu Wei, so you can join his movement to make Taiwan a US state.

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  11. Personally, I think Kissinger should be publicly executed like a criminal that he is

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  12. --The Bush administration has done more to waken American influence around the world, make alliances against future threats more remote. --

    just to make it clear. it was 9/11 wich made new alliances for USa.

    Bushs goverment splited the europe into "new and old" Bushs goverment snubed and insulted japan, thailand, south-korea, phillipines and cuted a help for Taiwan.

    anyway McCain is an arrogant old ar,sehole who should play with own grandshildren and not go for the next presidente of Amexico. Obama is a looser with great idea but who lacks a knowledge of global development and fine feeling toward forign nations. Both of them will be just a pupet of shadow goverment in USA. maybe shadows are helpful to see clear but they should never make a job of the light.

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  13. .. but lots of jounalists will be flying home at the end of August understanding the scale of the problem.

    hmm. i am realy not sure about. Journalists are still people and people like to have a Stokholm syndrom.. if you know what i mean..

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  14. China's new Antimonopoly Law goes into effect today. This comprehensive antitrust makeover is celebrated in some quarters as a significant step in China's transition to a market economy.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/anu-bradford/chinese-antitrust-law-the_b_116422.html

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