Sunday, April 8, 2001
THE COLLISION of an American intelligence plane with a Chinese jet fighter over the South China Sea a week ago has become a striking and alarming metaphor for an impending collision between the United States and China unless some way is found to turn these two giants aside.
The Chinese seek to restore the Middle Kingdom
in which China assumes hegemony over Asia.
In that ancient concept, China sits in the
center of the world surrounded by vassals.
Beyond are the barbarians, the
United States and the West.
By Richard Halloran
Star-BulletinDavid Shambaugh, a specialist on China at George Washington University in Washington, laid much of the responsibility on Beijing, writing: "The most recent crisis in Chinese-American relations is escalating tensions with every passing hour and threatens to spiral the relationship out of control if not appropriately handled by the Chinese side."
Usually considered a moderate in his assessments of China, Shambaugh minced few words: "The Chinese government has obfuscated, has been accusatory and caustic in its official statements, and threatens to deepen the crisis by dragging it out and not acting cooperatively."
That was echoed by a Chinese scholar at Fudan University in Shanghai, Shen Dingli, who told the Washington Post: "U.S.-China relations risk falling into a crisis. I cannot stress how sensitive the situation is right now."
An Australian specialist on China, Bates Gill of the Brookings Institution in Washington, was also quoted by the Washington Post: "This episode should be a wake-up call to all involved."
He said: "Conflict with China is not inevitable but in the absence of active efforts to manage contentious differences, minor incidents will quickly escalate to larger crises."
Even the details of the collision reflected the rising animosity between China and America. Wang Wei, the unfortunate pilot of the Chinese fighter, had run at American aircraft so often that he was known by sight and name. This time, he evidently miscalculated, bumping into the lumbering U.S. turboprop, and spiraling into the sea. Although his parachute was seen to open, the ensuing Chinese search-and-rescue team was unable to find him.
THE STRICKEN U.S. aircraft limped into an emergency landing on the Chinese island of Hainan, where the 24 Americans on board are still being held.Longer range, this mounting conflict between Washington and Beijing is swiftly turning into an old-fashioned clash of empire. Ideology, politics and economics, as influential as those elements are, have been subsumed into a raw struggle for power.
At issue: An Asia dominated by China or an Asia of independent nations functioning in a balance of power in which the United States is the first among equals.
Over time, Beijing's strategic objectives seem increasingly obvious. The Chinese seek to restore the Middle Kingdom in which China assumes, in the buzz word of the day, hegemony over Asia. In that ancient concept, China sits in the center of the world, surrounded by vassal states. Beyond that are the outer barbarians, today meaning the United States and the West.
Few students of Asia expect to see Chinese armies march across borders, although China has invaded Vietnam and India in recent years. Rather, China appears to be in quest of enough political, economic and military power to require every capital in Asia, from Tokyo to Karachi, to obtain Beijing's approval before making decisions of any significance.
The main obstacle to asserting that dominance, in Chinese eyes, is the United States, its allies and its military power projected into the western Pacific.
The Clinton administration vacillated like a willow in the wind in China policy. President Bush has suggested that he would be firm in his approach, but has so far not articulated a strategy for dealing with China.
THE PERCEPTION of China as an adversary has spread across political lines. A senior Pentagon official in the Clinton administration, Kurt Campbell, said recently: "China has taken a leading role in seeking to undermine the U.S. position in Asia." Campbell is now director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.Similarly, the director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, told Congress recently that China's drive for recognition as a great power was "one of the toughest challenges we face."
A conservative, Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, has contended: "China is engaged in a determined effort to accelerate what it perceives to have been the United States' waning influence in East Asia over the past decade and to assume the role of regional overseer."
In that context, Beijing's demands for resolving the dispute over who caused the collision and the fate of 21 American men and three women in its crew are easy to understand. China seeks to humiliate the United States by holding the crew captive until President Bush admits that America was responsible for the collision, apologizes, compensates China for the loss of its jet fighter and pilot, and promises to keep U.S. intelligence planes away from China.
President Bush has expressed regret over the pilot's death but has ruled out anything else and has told the Chinese that the crew and plane must be returned forthwith. To go further would be to arouse the wrath of a majority of the Congress and the public, not to say losing face before American allies in Asia.
A former U.S. ambassador to China, Winston Lord, told the Associated Press: "The longer they hold onto the crew, the more the pressure is going to build up on the president. I don't think we've quite crossed the line into a crisis, but every day and every development gets us a lot closer to it."
Even so, no matter how or when this dispute is resolved, this episode will be just one more in a Chinese campaign to inflict the United States with its famed water torture, trying drop by drop, incident by incident to erode U.S. resolve to remain a power in Asia.
It is not, as some American pundits have speculated, a test of President Bush so soon after he came to office. The president's ability to handle the crisis is being tested, of course, but this episode is only the latest in a long string of jabs.
WITHIN THE PAST five years, China has threaten to go to war with the United States over Taiwan, the island off the coast of China over which it claims sovereignty. In one instance, Chinese military leaders asserted that China would fire nuclear-armed missiles at an American city if the United States intervened in the defense of Taiwan. A white paper has officially declared America to be enemy No. 1 of China.
China has missed few opportunities to be belligerent with Japan, which successive American governments have proclaimed the linchpin of U.S. security in Asia. In Southeast Asia, Chinese leaders and diplomats have vigorously cultivated governments and sought to diminish American influence. China has sold weapons to foes of the United States after agreeing not to do so.
After the United States accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, tens of thousands of Chinese took to the streets to denounce America despite a swift apology. News reports from China last week said the Chinese Internet was laced with vitriolic denunciations of the United States. (Please see related article, Star-Bulletin, April 8, 2001, page B21.) [Not online.]
Chinese contempt for the United States has been displayed in the seeming impunity with which American citizens or residents have been detained in China. Gao Zhan, a Chinese scholar at American University in Washington, is but the latest.
In calculating a response to all this, a well-regarded specialist on China, June Teufel Dreyer of the University of Miami, cautioned Americans: "Remember to judge China by its deeds, not by its words."
