Asia Times: Sino-US relations: The sweet and the sour


	February 16, 2002	atimes.com

China

Sino-US relations: The sweet and the sour
By Francesco Sisci

BEIJING - Does every issue come down to classification, to applying the correct labels? This problem has troubled philosophers everywhere and every place, and has made the fortunes of anthropologists. How then do we classify the relationship between China and the United States?

In a book recently published in China, History of Chinese Thought, Ge Zhaoguang argues that one of the greatest shocks to Chinese intellectuals in the 19th century was the reclassification of their knowledge. Previously knowledge had been divided into four categories: classics, history, masters and collections (jing, shi, zi, ji). The new categories were literature, history, philosophy, politics, economics and law. The effects of this reclassification went beyond the mere re-sorting of labels in the library index. It was a deep restructuring of the vision of reality.

The spirit of something, the many implications, that in any sophisticated discourse is the essence of the communication, can fail to come forth clearly. This difficulty can be seen almost every day in the clashes between China and the current champion of the West, the United States.

The authoritative columnist William Safire of the even more authoritative New York Times on February 14 described the Chinese "sweet and sour sauce" President George W Bush is going to dish out to his hosts in Beijing on February 21.

"The sweet: (1) Isn't it great how we share an interest in stopping terrorists in South Asia, and maybe your agents in North Korea can pinpoint nuclear sites that our eyes in the sky cannot see. (2) China's interests and ours coincide in averting a war between India and your nuclear client, Pakistan. (3) Tell North Korea, a danger to Asian stability, that you won't come to its rescue as your grandfathers did if our bombers must de-proliferate its nukes. (4) US investment and markets can alleviate your coming world trade unemployment pains, once you stop using slave labor and make contracts enforceable with honest judges.

"The sour: (1) I meant what I said about doing whatever's necessary about helping Taiwan defend itself, and you see how I do what I say. (2) Why don't you see the Dalai Lama and make life bearable for Buddhists in Tibet? It's in China's self-interest to stop persecuting Catholics and Protestants in the south, and torturing the Falungong everywhere. (3) You'll never root out debilitating corruption while you refuse to free the media, and you'll fail to educate your Fifth Generation by shutting down free Internet access."

Despite the Chinese appreciation of sweet and sour, this message, as summarized and classified by Safire, appears straightforward to the American public, but it is mind-boggling to the Chinese.

Leaving the "sweet" aside for now, let's look at the "sour" part of Safire's summary and ask: Where is the US national interest in this sour stuff? What is America going to gain from China letting the raving Falungong run free in Tiananmen Square, or from fighting the corruption of Chinese officials?

After millennia of tricks and plots and conspiracies that by far dwarf our notorious Western Macchiavelli, the Chinese are suspicious by nature, and thus look for precise interests. If they fail to find them, they assume this means that they are hidden and possibly too dirty to be stated clearly.

So, China wonders, what is the American interest with Taiwan, and the freedom of religion? China suspects that forces who want to keep it poor and backward seek to use these issues to keep China under pressure. The US wants to dominate the world, and has global interests that it does not want blocked by China's growth.

Furthermore, in China as in any other place of the world, opinions are divided. Some believe that a win-win solution with the US can be achieved, that China can grow and its growth will benefit the US as well. The present Chinese leaders belong to this group. But others think the US-China relation is zero-sum game: in the end, China's growth must damage the US. In the US and in the rest of the world there is the same division of opinion.

History is full of examples both of win-win solutions and zero-sum games. A win-win solution is that existing between Britain and the US. Over the past century, world hegemony has passed from Britain to the US without making Britain less rich. Can the same take place between China and the US? In principle it is possible, but first there must be much more mutual understanding.

It is important for both sides to make their national interests clear. In 1999, at the height of the crisis after the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Beijing suspected a US conspiracy. The story goes that the US argument that such a conspiracy was not possible went along these lines: As a result of the bombing, China was for the first time drawn into the heart of a European conflict. This new Chinese involvement in Europe was contrary to the national interests of the US. Therefore there was no way the American administration would have concocted a plot to bomb the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. The Chinese reportedly were convinced by the argument, which helped ease bilateral tension. So by stating its national interests clearly, the US was able to tone down the crisis.

China for its part has to understand that US policy is always two-sided - there are good intentions and there are national interests, one on top of the other, one grafted into the other. The United States' ideological struggle against communism was the essence of the geopolitical struggle against a gigantic Russia.

But good intentions are important and just as authentic. The US public is sincerely concerned about the arrest of scholars, the exile of the Dalai Lama, the crackdown on religious groups and the freedom of Taiwanese people. Progress on all these fronts will pull the rug from under the feet of the hawks on both sides who want to use these issues to forward their belief in a zero sum game with China. For their part, the hawks in China can argue that no progress will satisfy these people.

But China fails to understand fully that US public opinion is not so much concerned about single issues, the capture of this or that monk, but about the attitude of the Chinese government. This attitude so far has been very defensive, secretive, uncooperative and has given rise to the worst suspicions. Therefore China must improve its attitude, be more forthcoming and transparent on all issues. It is a question of public relations.

On the US side, Washington must understand that at the end of the day the Chinese people do not want to invade anyone or dominate the world: they just want to be better off, to have a better life one day, like the one enjoyed by American citizens. (Almost everybody in China dreams of a job and house in the US, but it'd be still better if everybody spoke Chinese, had Chinese manners and ate Chinese food.)

Whatever mistakes it has made, the Chinese government is working to this end: to make China, and the Chinese people, richer. China wants to be an Asian power, stronger than it is now, but also to help other countries around it to become rich and strong.

For now, however, China is weak and wants to understand the motives and interests of America. Does America want to be first? Fine, but what is its long-term interest in the region? What does it want to do? Answers to these questions could help the Chinese determine their behavior.

But possibly the US itself is not very clear about what those answers are, and anyway, its aims might change with the administration. This keeps China on its toes and makes it nervous, which causes mistakes and blunders. Above all else the issue of Taiwan, with its many shades of color, feeds on this ambiguity. The ambiguity is bilateral and dates back to the time when Jimmy Carter and Deng Xiaoping normalized relations between the US and China.

Still, economic ties are binding Taiwan and the mainland more closely than ever. As well, continued cooperation between China and the US against terrorism could help the two sides build mutual confidence. This will be very important because of another fact about the US that escapes China's notice: the experience of World War II.

During that conflict, the US initially tried to accommodate, in order to avoid war, both Hitler's Germany and Tojo's Japan. That turned out to be a mistake. If the US had gone to war earlier, fewer people would have died. China must prove to the US beyond reasonable doubt that it is not, and will not become, Hitler's Germany or Tojo's Japan.

This may be obvious to many people inside and outside China but it is less obvious to the world audience still haunted by the horrible pictures of tanks rolling against unarmed students in Tiananmen or cops bludgeoning elderly Falungong followers.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell was right in his testimony last week before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when he outlined the Bush administration's engagement policy. "A candid, constructive and cooperative relationship is what we are building with China. Candid where we disagree; constructive where we can see some daylight; and cooperative where we have common regional, global or economic interests."

Dispensing with inflammatory rhetoric and threats could truly bring the US and China together, and in practical terms achieve the interests of both countries - China's wish for investment from the US, and the US hope for more cooperation from China.

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