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World Tibet Network News Tuesday, June 3, 1997

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4. Realism about China

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U.S. News: Editorial, June 9, 1997 issue
BY MORTIMER B. ZUCKERMAN / EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

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Is a China on the rise a country of promise or peril? A more powerful China
will not be easy to deal with. It still carries the baggage of historical
grievances and suspicion of foreign motives that is a legacy of a colonial
era marked by humiliation. For China's leaders, "freedom" has historically
meant its independence as a nation, not individual rights.

Do America's interests lie in trying to restrain China's rise, by cutting
back on trade relations, warning about its military power, and confronting
China in other ways? Or do we serve ourselves--and the world--best by
strengthening our engagement with China, in the belief that its intentions
are still flexible and that to treat China as an enemy will surely make it
one?

In making this choice, we should realize that China, despite its potential
and size, is too weak militarily to disrupt the Asian balance of power--and
will remain weak well into the 21st century. Yes, in 20 years it will be
stronger. But the important issue is not absolute but relative military
strength. As China's power grows, so will that of its neighbors, whose forces
already substantially outnumber China's military in both quantity and
quality.

Clear improvement. Perspective is crucial in all our assessments of China.
Although its economy is growing rapidly, it starts from an extremely low
base: A 10 percent growth in China's GDP is roughly equal to a 1 percent
growth in ours. Although human-rights abuses persist, the situation is
vastly improved from the terror of the Cultural Revolution period. The
difference is we know more about today's problems because of China's greater
openness. Yes, China continues to suppress political dissent. But it has
allowed dramatically more personal freedoms, more open debate, even the
right to sue the government. People are largely free to find their own jobs,
choose their careers, share opinions with their neighbors, move around the
country, and do almost anything other than directly challenge the government.
All evidence suggests that the average Chinese person sees life as becoming
better and freer; surely the Chinese people's views should count for
something.

In foreign policy, China's record is not that of a fundamentally hostile
power. It wants to join international organizations, not oppose them. It has
worked to prevent warfare in Korea and Cambodia. It has achieved peaceful
agreements with Russia, India, Burma, Vietnam, and Thailand in the last year.
Its historic concern is with security and territorial integrity, not
expansion. America has placed too much stress on the areas of disagreement
with China: human rights, orphanages, Tibet, Taiwan, missile sales. We have
let ourselves be cast, in China's eyes, as the impediment to China's
rise to its proper role. We opposed China's bid for the Olympic Games, as
well as its entry into the World Trade Organization; we overlooked the threat
to the one-China policy in permitting Taiwan's president to visit Cornell
University, after giving clear signals that he would not get a visa; we seem
always on the verge of applying sanctions.

A continued or escalated confrontation would not only accelerate China's
military expenditures and increase the likelihood of military conflict. It
would also strengthen China's hard-liners and weaken those who seek an
opening to the West. It would retard the natural process by which economic
growth would lead to preferences for law and due process, eventually building
the institutions of democracy.

If China's historic caution changes--if it seeks military hegemony or tries
to expel the United States from Asia--then surely we must resist. But we must
know the difference between influence and hegemony. We must be careful not to
bring about what we claim to fear.

We have a stake in human rights for China, as we do in every country of the
world. But American policy has been most successful when we have brought
that interest into balance with other objectives--as we do in dealing with
Mexico, or with Russia, which inflicted incomparably greater casualties in
Chechnya than China did at Tiananmen. Surely we can distinguish a rising
power from one that seeks dominance and fashion our policies accordingly.

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Articles in this Issue:

1. Dalai Lama: "Rebirth Outside Tibet"
2. Marchers' Private Audience with His Holiness The Dalai Lama May 25, 1997
3. Tenzing Norgay's grandson also atop Mount Everest
4. Realism about China

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