The Bush administration’s China policy must be part of a larger Asian strategy that keeps America fully engaged, maintains the region’s strength and dynamism in an era of globalization, and encourages China’s own constructive engagement in the region. This would provide both the best prospect for encouraging China’s internal reform and external cooperation and for creating the conditions to cope with the consequences should China ultimately seek to confront the United States across the region.
POLICY BRIEF #72
The new administration is making clear that it seeks to make China less central to America’s Asia policy, shifting increasing attention to Japan. This approach will very likely prove to be more nuanced than fundamental. Both the Japanese and Chinese relationships have long required and will continue to demand a great deal of attention. No administration can downplay either without quickly producing problems that bring that country back centrally onto America’s agenda.
Unfortunately, nearly a dozen years after the Tiananmen Square massacre, too much of the discussion in America about U.S.-China relations remains emotional, deeply enmeshed in domestic politics, and misleadingly simplistic. Many critics do not appreciate the fundamental reality that an effective approach to China vastly reduces the costs to the United States of pursuing its vital regional interests in Asia. Every country in that region looks at America’s China policy as a key test of the American wisdom and staying power in Asia.
China’s America policy is by no means wholly benign, and the United States should, therefore, adopt a hard-nosed view of its own interests. The key question is how best to pursue those interests. For nearly thirty years, Republican and Democratic administrations—despite disagreements on many particulars—have based their overall policy on six strategic judgements, or premises. The Bush administration should address those premises and, if it accepts them, develop its particular policy mix based on the imperatives of this underlying strategic framework.
America’s China Policy: Six Premises
America has long sought a modernizing, reform-minded China that acts cooperatively with the United States and behaves constructively both in the region and globally. The following six core premises have undergirded the effort to advance this outcome:
Premise #1: The United States and Asia benefit from the type of stability that comes from China’s meeting the needs and demands of its people. Major governmental breakdown in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would produce tragedy at home and severe problems for the region and the United States.
China has been one of the most rapidly changing societies in the world over the past two decades. Yet the country faces massive social, economic, and political challenges that genuinely threaten its overall stability. All of these problems will worsen during the next few years as China deals with the twin tasks of implementing accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and managing its political succession. The premise that avoiding massive Chinese political breakdown is in America’s interest is not an endorsement of the status quo in China. In fact, China must rapidly reform its political system to make it more diverse, responsive, and efficient if it is to avoid major political instability in the coming period of extraordinarily rapid change. That is why it is important for America to work with Beijing and to constantly prod China’s leaders to adopt the liberalizing reforms they have resisted and which are crucial to the future success of the country.
