Page 2 of 2 How to 'congage' with
China By John Feffer
Washington prefers both, a combination of
containment and engagement, or "congagement". As a
friend who keeps the US economy afloat and as a
foe that justifies full-spectrum military
spending, China is useful to the United States.
Never before has a rival for US power held
Americans in quite such a tight clinch nor
attracted their attention quite so alluringly.
Inside the dynamo China's
foreign policy of persuading friends and
influencing
enemies is a triumph of
realism. Whether at the UN, in its relationship
with its neighbors, or in new partnerships with
faraway countries, China has used quiet diplomacy,
respect for sovereignty, and lots of hard currency
to acquire access and resources. It hasn't thrown
its weight around.
"China always regards
itself as a weak, small, less powerful country,"
Chinese Ambassador to the UN Wang Guangya told
journalist James Traub. "My feeling is that for
the next 30 years, China will remain like this.
China likes to punch underweight, as you put it."
China's new foreign policy is a dramatic
change from the days of the Cultural Revolution
and even from 10 years ago when, for instance,
Beijing largely watched from the sidelines as the
United States and North Korea danced perilously
close to war. These changes result in part from a
shift in what Chinese communists used to call the
"correlation of forces". The collapse of the
Soviet Union, the intensification of
globalization, and the failure of the United
States, after the horrors of Somalia, Rwanda and
Bosnia, to support a viable multilateral security
system have all added up to a fundamentally
different international environment.
For a
country of 1.3 billion people, China moved
surprisingly quickly to take advantage of the new
opportunities. It patched up relations with
Russia, provided a quiet counterweight to US
hegemony at the UN, grabbed the tail of
globalization, and then leaped aboard, and adopted
a multilateral approach that contrasted sharply
not only with its earlier foreign-policy instincts
but also with growing US unilateralism. China has
become the strong silent type that plays off the
brash US cowboy. It's an image that goes over well
with global audiences. In international polls,
perceptions of China's influence in the world are
significantly more positive than attitudes toward
the United States.
The changes in China's
foreign policy reflect the dynamism within Chinese
society. Rapid economic growth has unleashed a
demand for energy inputs and external markets for
Chinese goods. For all the talk of the perils of
rising Chinese consumption patterns, the US
government has been complaining about the
opposite: the Chinese save too much. Many of the
goods produced in Chinese factories, then, have to
find consumers elsewhere. The spendthrift United
States willingly absorbs a range of made-to-order
products, from Mardi Gras beads to US flags, and
Washington's $200 billion trade imbalance with
Beijing is larger than its gap with any other
country.
This economic dynamism has taken
place within a political structure still dominated
by the Chinese Communist Party. The Chinese
development model - compared with the neo-liberal
transitions in Eastern Europe or, more tragically,
Russia - relies heavily on the state and the
presumed stability provided by centralized
political control.
Of course, China is no
longer the Leninist state of the 1970s. Direct
village elections began in 1988 and now reach 75%
of the population. A comparatively radical rehaul
of the legal system - the creation of a new
regulatory apparatus, the 200-fold increase in the
number of lawyers from 1981 to 1998, a reform of
the judiciary - has pushed China in the direction
of rule of law. An emerging civil society of
non-governmental organizations is tackling
economic and environmental issues. The Chinese
have even welcomed the US Republican Party to
contribute to the political-reform process.
China has not become one vast New England
town meeting. Crackdowns on dissidents, problems
in the judicial system, and pervasive corruption
represent more than mere growing pains. The
one-party state remains unassailable. The lack of
independent trade unions or a real social safety
net exposes a large portion of the population to
the often very cold wind of economic reform.
Millions of workers, peasants, retirees, NIMBY
(not in my back yard) activists, and others have
taken to the streets and clashed, sometimes
violently, with police.
In 2004, for
example, 3.7 million people participated in 74,000
protests. That number rose to 84,000 protests in
2005. Albert Keidel of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace argues that protesters are by
and large not seeking regime change or
Western-style democracy, simply fair compensation
for their farmland, fair wages for their work, or
a fair taxation system.
Enlarging the
economy has been China's answer to so many of its
internal problems, from polarizing wealth to
disgruntled farmers. Economic growth depends on a
stable security environment - avoiding a war on
the Korean Peninsula, for instance, or in the
South China Sea.
It also pushes China to
make as many valuable allies as possible,
regardless of their human-rights records, their
governing ideology, or their anti-Chinese history.
If you ignore our problems, China promises, we
will ignore yours.
John Feffer
is the co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus at
the International Relations Center.
