Chinese puzzles

National Review, Oct 13, 1997 by Peter W. Rodman

A visitor who remembers the China of the 1970s and 1980s is easily dazzled by the physical changes in Peking. Maos China practiced economic "self-reliance, that is, a particularly stultifying form of Communist autarky. Maos Peking was a grim, poor, and sleepy town, with spare socialist architecture, no traffic on the wide and dusty boulevards except trucks and a few official cars, a million bicyclists, and nearly the entire population (except small children) dressed in drab, Mao-suited Orwellian uniformity. Deng Xiaopings Peking, after 18 years of 10 per cent annual growth and economic opening to the West, is a booming capital with an efficient new highway and road system, ubiquitous construction of hotels and office buildings, neon signs, traffic jams of cars and taxis (as well as bicycles), a mushrooming of small businesses, and a well-dressed (Western-style) population. In short, Peking today looks like a modern city. The route to and from the airport used to be a quiet, narrow tree-lined road; now its a six-lane toll highway.

Capitalism is clearly flourishing. Indeed, it is flourishing beyond both Chinese and American intentions. The Ministry of State Security, at American urging, has finally launched a crackdown against piracy of intellectual property. Yet in an open-air market within spitting distance of the American Embassy, this writer was accosted by no fewer than five different Chinese murmuring "CD -ROM, "CD - ROM, in a conspiratorial tone that suggested a certain lack of confidence in the intellectual-property-rights status of the product. Perhaps the Ministry of State Security (and the American Embassy) need to take another look.

On the surface, an American visitor to Peking gets an impression of a China eager to improve relations with the United States. Official Chinese, in the governmental and military leadership and in the key think-tanks (which all have some official affiliation), are in a mood to reassure. Within the past year, the Chinese government has become alarmed at the anti-China sentiment building in the United States, and the word has clearly gone out that an effort must be made to allay this. China is no threat, a visitor is repeatedly told; China will remain a poor developing country into the middle of the next century. China has no ambitions to dominate East Asia and the Pacific; on the contrary, it is acutely conscious of the interest it shares with the United States and others in a peaceful and prosperous region. Dengs theme of interdependence has replaced Maos doctrine of "class struggle. Aside from the contentious issue of Taiwan, China sees its strategic interests paralleling ours. Its military buildup is defensive and slow, and we are told that China will never match the firepower of Japan, let alone the United States. The human-rights situation is said to be steadily improving (a Tiananmen "could never happen again, I was told flatly by a senior official). China hopes the summit visit of its president, Jiang Zemin, to Washington in October will put cooperation back on track.

Chinese think-tankers admit that the topic of "America in decline was hot a few years ago (about when it was hot in the United States, after Paul Kennedy). This could only have whetted nationalist aspirations. Chinese scholars still spend time thinking about it, though most of them are powerfully impressed by Americas economic performance today (especially compared to that of the Europeans and Japanese). Americas great technological dynamism comes not only from its resource base but also from its vigorous research and innovation, which, a Chinese senior official acknowledged, are not depletable. America is expected to remain the worlds pre-eminent economic and technological power for the next fifty years at least.

The real problems in the relationship, of course, are not so visible on a quick visit to Peking. There is no longer a common Soviet threat to unite the two countries; since Tiananmen in 1989, the domestic constituency in the United States in support of the relationship has unraveled, and the Chinese leadership has come to fear Western democratic ideas as a threat to the survival of the regime; and now China is emerging as a potential superpower in its own right. China and America are suspended somewhere between cooperation and rivalry.

Despite the reassurances, Chinas military buildup in fact is clearly directed at U.S. vulnerabilities in the form of anti-ship missiles, air-to-air missiles, and wake-homing torpedoes that could do serious damage to U.S. forces in the near term. Chinas ace military strategists are zeroing in on the weaknesses even of our future electronic-war capabilities. (Theyre eagerly studying anti-satellite and anti-stealth techniques and working on how to conduct "crippling attacks on the information systems of an opponent.)

The U.S. and Chinese militaries have exchange programs, but there is not full reciprocity. Many Chinese officers come to the U.S. and study American military history and doctrine; few U.S. officers are able (or permitted) to do the same in China. Even the physical location of the Chinese Ministry of National Defense is kept secret; foreign visitors are received at a pleasant guest house nowhere near the real headquarters. (Chinese military leaders in Washington are welcomed in the Pentagon and are shown many other facilities.) Transparency this is not.