Our Looming China Problem

By Jeffrey Hart | Wednesday, June 5, 1996

Early in May, Bob Dole delivered a withering indictment of President Clinton's foreign policy, with particular focus on China and the Pacific Basin. Dole's terms were: "weakness, indecision, double-talk and incoherence."

Now, in a major address to the Pacific Basin Economic Council, President Clinton undertook to reply to the Dole attack. In the foreground was Clinton's decision to renew Most Favored Nation Status for China in trade matters, which means for another year we will continue to treat China exactly the same as we do most other nations. Mr. Dole agrees with this MFN policy and will support it.

The President argued that the renewal is in the American interest. Mr. Dole agrees.

The President characterized his policy on China as "firmness and steadiness," and later in his address repeated those key words, "steady and firm."

There is where Dole differs.

In his 1992 campaign against President Bush, Clinton lambasted Bush for not tying MFN to improvement in China's ghastly human rights policies. Once in office, Clinton chose to shift, and award MFN, but threatened not to do so again unless China improved human rights, for example slave labor, concentration camps for dissidents, starving orphans to death, things like that.

So 1996 rolls around, and it's renewal time. China has not budged an inch. But now Clinton has renewed MFN again.

Of course, Clinton was under pressure from Democratic big contributors and from corporations with a stake in their China trade. But from the point of view of Beijing, Clinton must look like someone who can be rolled.

When he went on and on about human rights a year ago, he must have been bluffing. Calling his bluff, Beijing must conclude that it is, after all, pretty easy.

Now, human rights, as it happens, is not the only issue on which China is making its estimate of Clinton.

It has been selling dual-use technology to Pakistan and Iran that can be used to produce nuclear weapons. This is in flat violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. When asked about this, Beijing apparently lied flat-out that it did not know its factory had filled such orders. There is no indication that the factory has been penalized, and there certainly was no apology.

In response to massive Chinese piracy of U.S. software, videotapes and music, the administration has listed $3 billion in Chinese imports that will be embargoed. Negotiations are planned, and we shall see. If Beijing had expected "steadiness and firmness" would this piracy have happened in the first place?

Beijing is attempting to get into the World Trade Organization, despite violating all of its rules, and the U.S. is promising to block it until it is in compliance. Again, we shall see.

Again, there is the matter of Taiwan. In firing its rockets into international waters, conducting military maneuvers across the Taiwan Strait, and in fact carrying out a limited blockade of the island as shipping and airlines re-routed, Beijing was, legally, in a temporary state of war with Taiwan. We sailed two powerful carriers into the neighborhood but in fact did little, either diplomatically or militarily.

Mr. Dole in his list of particulars spoke of the 'incoherence' of the Clinton foreign policy.

From the facts listed above, one can easily conclude that China is itself pursuing a coherent policy, and that it is in the process of attempting to roll back the American presence and the American interest in the Pacific Basin area, establish a military and economic preponderance, and lay claim on its own terms to the trade and to the vast natural resources of the region, including the oil in the South China Sea.

In other words, China may well sense a strategic vacuum in the area and be pursuing a coordinated — not "incoherent" — policy of testing the reactions of Clinton. Based on his performance, China can push ahead with impunity.

But there is a deeper question about Clinton that follows from all of the above. That question concerns whether Clinton does or does not believe that "conflict" can exist, that things cannot always be soft-soaped and covered over with words.

Despite his language before the Pacific Basin Economic Association, and he did speak of "U.S. interests," he has never seemed eager to assert U.S. Interest or U.S. Power. He prefers "humanitarian" expeditions, as in Haiti (where things are not going well) and "peace keeping" operations, as in Bosnia (where things could not be more shaky) and "peace" in northern Ireland (bombs in London). Clinton prefers "multi-lateral" military expeditions, prefers U.N. auspices and the like.

But if the Chinese are serious about their aims in the Western Pacific, the chances are that they will laugh at all that.

It just could be 1936 again, when the Japanese occupied Manchuria and much of China and laid plans to move south and seize Indochina, Malaya, then-Dutch East Indies — and the oil, tin, rice, and rubber. They planned to set up an exclusive Japanese zone of military and economic domination in East Asia. By 1940 they had the military power to do so.

An impression of vacillation and weakness is the most dangerous signal Clinton could send Beijing.

The Chinese might re-assess him if he ordered built two more nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and began installing an anti-ballistic missile defense in the U.S.

Our Looming China Problem

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