U.S. Policy Change Toward Beijing; Once valued as a stabilizing force in Asia, China now is seen by official Washington as a fomenter of fear and a disruptive force determined to change the political map

Insight on the News, July 8, 2003

Byline: Timothy W. Maier, INSIGHT

The People's Republic of China (PRC) is losing its hard-won image as a force for stability in Asia as key thinkers in and around the Bush administration are beginning to view it as a dangerous and often reckless power that is fomenting fear and instability. If this change sweeps through the government leadership like other recent paradigm shifts for instance, the quickly spreading view that Saudi Arabia no longer is a stable force in the Middle East but a corrupt and unpopular financier of terrorism Sino-American relations will be headed for the rocks. That's bad news for the Chinese Communist Party leadership and the U.S. and other companies that have built their fortunes on it.

The stakes are tremendous. Much of the U.S. economy now depends heavily on the Chinese status quo. The nature and aspirations of China's government could do to the region what the Soviet Union had done to many of its neighbors: combine subtle or actual threats and subversion with positive instruments of economics and diplomacy to intimidate or "Finlandize" the region into submission.

In practically every category from human rights to border disputes, weapons proliferation to terrorism, free navigation of the seas to control of satellite orbits in space official Washington sees the unelected Chinese government as being more of a problem than a solution. This view is gaining acceptance in part because of the work of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a bipartisan, congressionally chartered panel that issued its first report last year. It is preparing a follow-up under the chairmanship of former National Security Council official Roger W. Robinson (see "New Reports Detail the China Threat," Aug. 19, 2002).

Critics of the China skeptics say the PRC is militarily incapable of projecting its power and presents no short-term threat. A recent Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) study concludes, "The Chinese military is at least two decades behind the United States in terms of military technology and capability," and the advantage will "remain decisively in America's favor beyond the next 20 years" if U.S. military-acquisition and spending trends continue. However, even the CFR admits that its conclusions might be premature.

Military experts are paying attention. Richard Fisher, editor of the Jamestown Foundation's China Brief and an adjunct Asia scholar at the Center for Security Policy, credits the CFR report with addressing current and potential Chinese threats, but says the conclusions are premised on faulty assumptions about the risks of predicting what Beijing will do and the means by which the PRC obtains high-tech assets to modernize its forces.

Advances in military hardware and communications aren't the only keys to the PRC's growing arsenal. Beijing has invested considerably in psychological coercion of other countries, preying on the fears of its smaller neighbors, subverting some from within through business deals and payoffs, and offering the carrot of trade deals, favorable loans and military cooperation. Its economic policy of building and selling weapons of mass destruction to any customer with enough cash has an added benefit, in the eyes of the Chinese Communist Party, of threatening the interests of its enemies the United States and its European and Australasian allies, as well as emerging democratic rivals such as India. China has been a principal supplier of advanced technologies in communications, nuclear weapons and missiles for Iran, North Korea and the late Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq the triad President George W. Bush calls the "Axis of Evil."

At the same time, Beijing calls itself an ally in the fight against weapons proliferation and terrorism, but with less and less credibility. A recent closed-door meeting of sinologists and defense experts in Washington underscored the evolving shift. "What has China done as an ally in the war on terrorists?" one participant asked. The rest looked at each other around the table. No one could think of a thing.

"They support our position on Xinjiang," quipped a participant, prompting a round of head-shaking and chuckling. Xinjiang province, whose ethnically Turkic population has been seething with resentment and resistance against Beijing's political, cultural and ethnic controls, is the site of strong, underground, anticommunist activity. For decades the central government harshly has repressed the Turkic peoples of Xinjiang, much as it has the conquered peoples of Tibet. But because the Xinjiang population is mostly Muslim, Beijing has tried to justify its repression in the name of fighting al-Qaeda and its leader, Osama bin Laden. Incredibly, the U.S. State Department voiced support for the PRC's get-tough approach in Xinjiang, prompting the ironic quip.

The Chinese leadership has used its "partner" status in the world war on terrorism to crack down even further on religious, political and social movements. According to Al Santoli, editor of the American Foreign Policy Council's China Reform Monitor, "Beijing is using the war on terror as an excuse to imprison and execute political opponents and religious leaders," including underground Roman Catholic clergy, democracy activists and the outlawed Falun Gong spiritual movement.