Houston Chronicle Interactive 5:52 PM 7/2/1997
This is another in the continuing series of articles that Kissinger, the former secretary of state, is writing for the Chronicle and other major newspapers.
By HENRY KISSINGER
In a recent visit to Beijing, I found improvement of the battered
Sino-American relations to be a key objective -- perhaps the key
foreign policy objective -- of the post-Deng leadership.
At the same time in the United States, the debate about granting normal trade status to China becomes more venomous with each passing year. The opponents of normal trade are already gearing up for next year. Some seek to punish China over human rights; others want to clip China's wings; many are seeking to use the China issue to restructure America's political parties. If they succeed, they will thrust America into at least political and economic war with the most populous country in the world, and one of the most dynamic. Such a confrontation is not called for by any realistic assessment of the national interest.
The Clinton administration has shown statesmanship in resisting these pressures, and it has been supported by every former president, secretary of state and national security adviser. But it has been extraordinarily timid in dealing with the demonization of China.
Seeking to placate every pressure group, it has basically accepted the objectives of its critics while asserting that it has a better way of achieving them. As a result, no positive agenda emerges. But the real challenge is to put the debate over trade behind us and to impart to our China policy a strategic dimension capable of generating broad bipartisan support.
I must inject a personal note. Many of us urging cooperation with China are being accused of doing so for commercial reasons. As chairman of an international consulting firm, I inevitably encounter clients who also do business in China, though they represent a very small part of our total income. Still, anyone who believes that my views are for sale and who is prepared to ignore nearly 40 years of my published views, long before any business was done in China by anybody, should stop reading now.
The post-Cold War world obliges America to conduct two different types of foreign policy simultaneously. In the North Atlantic and the Western Hemisphere, we are dealing with pluralistic democracies practicing market economics. They do not view each other as strategic rivals; war between them is inconceivable. In these regions, American policy can be based on a sense of community and shared moral values.
It is different in Asia. There, the nations -- many of continental size -- consider each other, at least in part, as strategic rivals. Many reject our commitment to political pluralism. No integrating institutions exist. Wars, while not likely, are not inconceivable. In Asia, at least for the next generation, peace will require the conscious and deliberate managing of a balance of power -- a task with which America has never felt comfortable.
That alone should cause the United States to be wary about unnecessarily treating China as a preordained adversary. For if we cannot cooperate with China, our options will shrink and the bargaining position of all other players in the region will improve. Any opponent of the United States will automatically find support in Beijing. Tensions will mount as problems in Korea and Cambodia become much more difficult to resolve.
Before embarking on so risky and irrevocable a course, it is necessary to define correctly the challenge being posed by China. China's growth, while spectacular, starts from the base of a far lower gross national product than ours, according to various estimates ranging from 10 percent to 25 percent. Thus, in absolute numbers, even if China continues to grow at the rate of 10 percent indefinitely -- an assumption for which there is no precedent -- it will, for the foreseeable future, barely match America's absolute growth of 2.5 percent to 3 percent. The relationship is even more one-sided in the military field. China is no military colossus bestriding Asia. We devote 3.5 percent of our GNP to defense; while the precise amount China spends is unclear, most experts believe it represents some 2 percent of the gross domestic product, or at most a tenth of our effort.
Moreover, unlike the Soviet Union, China faces strong neighbors. For at least the next decade, Japan will have a more formidable military establishment. Nor can planners in Beijing ignore the military capacities of India, Korea, Russia, Vietnam or Taiwan. Even China's rudimentary capability to attack the United States with intercontinental missiles cannot be used effectively. An American counterblow would leave China disarmed and defenseless in the face of neighbors it has historically feared. So long as we maintain our regional alliances and a significant military presence in the Western Pacific, the Asian balance of power is unlikely to be challenged.
Under present circumstances, confronting China will not rally the neighbors of China as the containment policy did those of the Soviet Union. During the Cold War, all of the Soviet Union's neighbors had felt threatened ideologically and militarily, and were eager to cooperate in containing it. China's neighbors either do not feel threatened or are reluctant to acknowledge it. Their probable reaction, of positioning themselves between China and America, will foster both nationalism and neutralism all over Asia. And no European nation except possibly the United Kingdom will support us. We will have succeeded in isolating ourselves. How will victory be defined in such a conflict?
What confrontation will produce is a no-win situation for both sides. For China, too, would suffer enormously in its rate of economic development, in its prospects for collaboration with the West and in increased vulnerability to potentially hostile neighbors.
The Asian power balance is in flux. China's growth, though larger than the others', is not occurring in a vacuum. For Japan, India, Indonesia, the nations of Southeast Asia and Korea are also increasing in economic strength and military power.
America should not sacrifice one of its chief diplomatic assets -- that we are, or could be, closer to each of the contenders in Asia than they are to one another. Hence we are in a position to advance our interests and protect the balance of power from a position of flexibility. Our obliviousness to this reality is reflected in the simultaneous pressures brought on Indonesia, the third most populous Asian country, and on Japan, the most economically advanced, by some of the same single-issue constituencies -- on human rights and trade -- urging confrontation with China. How do these groups imagine we can maintain an equilibrium in Asia amidst such incoherence?
As China emerges into great power status, adjustments in the Asian balance of power are inevitable. Disagreements are likely, but a permanent adversarial relationship is not foreordained. For the foreseeable future, China's challenge to America will be political and economic, not military.
We cannot prevent enhancement of Chinese influence arising from the process of economic growth -- though we should devise rewards and penalties to channel it into directions that serve our national interest. But we must resist the domination of Asia by any country, including China. If China should choose an adventurous path, we should honor existing defense commitments and take other measures to preserve the balance of power in Asia. But unless that begins to happen, we owe it to ourselves to seek to encourage the emerging giant into a cooperative approach.
In the months ahead, an exceptional opportunity exists for exploring the prospects of coexistence in the preparations for the Clinton-Jiang summit and, even more, at the summit itself.
For us, the key issues are trade, nonproliferation and human rights. Success in dealing with the first two items depends on the ability to establish equitable rules for trade and enforceable rules for preventing the spread of nuclear and missile technology. This would enable China to enter the World Trade Organization and to address American concerns about the spread of advanced technology into irresponsible hands.
Human rights have a legitimate, indeed inevitable, place on the Sino-American agenda. American concern on this subject reflects the kind of people we are. At the same time, the subject should be brought into a proper relationship with other objectives in our relations with China and with respect for China's many great historical achievements. In trying to encourage the pace of evolution, it is only fair to recognize that the system is much less rigid than when I first encountered it -- though it retains its uncompromising insistence on a monopoly of power.
For China, the potential flash points are Hong Kong and Taiwan. Americans are concerned that the autonomous status of Hong Kong represents a leap into the unknown. But to most Chinese, and not only supporters of Beijing, Hong Kong was always a symbol of a humiliating colonialism imposed on an impotent China 150 years ago. To them, Hong Kong's reversion to the mother country is a source of pride.
I take seriously the Chinese leaders' expressed commitment to Hong Kong's autonomy -- above all because it is so overwhelmingly in their self-interest. Hong Kong's economic collapse would wipe out China's single largest foreign currency earner and would strip the reversion of much of its symbolic significance; while the political collapse of the "one-country, two-system" policy would end all hopes of peaceful reunification with Taiwan.
Even with the best of intentions, there are, however, intangibles that can only be tested by the passage of time: (a) How will Chinese officials react on a day-to-day basis to a more open system with which they are unfamiliar, particularly with respect to the press and freedom of assembly? (b) Will it be possible to insulate Hong Kong's civil service from the different practices across the border? (c) Will the authorities and the opponents of the new institutions muster the self-restraint needed to operate Hong Kong's autonomous system without resorting to violence? (d) Will Taiwan see the practice of autonomy in Hong Kong as a challenge or as an opportunity?
On these issues, the United States can play a helpful role so long as it proceeds with some sensitivity. China has been told insistently by both administration officials and members of Congress that major breaches of the agreement will have a disastrous impact on American public opinion. The point has been made. Henceforth, the autonomy of 6 million Hong Kong residents is much more likely to benefit from workable Sino-American relations than from confrontation.
For more than two decades, Taiwan thrived and peace was maintained on the basis of principles laid down in the Shanghai Communique of 1972: American acknowledgment of one China; America's declared interest in a peaceful solution; and Taiwanese restraint in challenging this arrangement. All sides have an interest in maintaining this state of affairs, the precariousness of which was illustrated by the minicrisis in the Taiwan Straits in the spring of 1996. The principles of the Shanghai Communique need to be reaffirmed: America must stick to the spirit of the one-China policy; China must understand that America is serious about our interest in a peaceful solution; and Taiwan must recognize that America's interest in a peaceful solution does not give Taiwan license to rekindle the Chinese civil war.
The traditional agenda is no longer adequate, however. As China develops and America extends the range of its international concerns, the two countries will rub up against each other in such regions as Central Asia, the Middle East -- especially Iran -- and Korea. America's relations with Japan remain a source of concern in China even as the alliance with Japan must continue as a key element of American foreign policy.
The evolution of Russia affects both countries. Access to energy is bound to become a principal concern, placing special importance on the future of Central Asia. These issues should be part of a serious geopolitical discussion seeking to explore common ground.
The forthcoming exchange of visits between Presidents Clinton and Jiang Zemin must not be treated as public-relations exercises. Sino-American relations will either improve dramatically or decline dramatically.
Unless carefully and thoughtfully prepared, these meetings could, in the present atmosphere, easily backfire. Expectations must be realistic on both sides. And domestic pressure groups must temper their often valid concerns with an equal concern for the possibly unintended consequences of their actions. For what is at stake may be the prospects of peace in the next century.