China policy

An article by John Tkacik Jr. at The Weekly Standard entitled Revenge of the Panda Hugger examines how US policy on China may be starting to incorporate reality.

Since then, his China policy has evolved away from its once-cautious optimism that Beijing might possibly, somehow, be persuaded to join Washington in maintaining a rules-based world order on such issues as nonproliferation, trade, human rights, energy, environment, and health policies. The official U.S. agnosticism about where China's rise will take it--and the world--seems to be ebbing. Instead, the administration seems ready to conclude that China is not going in the right direction and that the United States must hedge its bets.

On February 3, a midlevel interagency meeting kicked off a new round of policy reviews in preparation for President Bush's upcoming meetings with Chinese president Hu Jintao, scheduled for the end of April. The meeting was hastily arranged after Taiwan president Chen Shui-bian's remarks questioning the continued utility of Taiwan's official "National Unification Council." (The council was established in 1991 to consider modes of eventual unification should China ever democratize, but has not met since 1999 and is kept on life support by a token annual budget appropriation of roughly $30.)

China is rising, and China is greasing the skids to make it happen. Last month, China reached an important oil deal with Saudi Arabia. From the Jamestown Foundation,

Saudi Arabian King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz arrived in China on January 22 for discussions on energy, trade and anti-terrorism cooperation. This was the first visit by a Saudi king since the establishment of bilateral relations in 1990. Abdullah, as crown prince, visited Beijing in 1998 before he ascended to the throne last year, and other high-level delegations from both countries have visited their foreign counterparts with increasing frequency in recent years (for a full summary of Sino-Saudi relations, see China Brief, September 27, 2005). The most recent three-day state visit saw the signing of an agreement on oil, natural gas and minerals cooperation, in which Saudi Arabia promised to increase the annual oil and gas exports to China by 39%. As part of the agreement, a 100-million-ton crude oil storage facility is planned for construction in China's Hainan province. Moreover, Riyadh is likely to build a new petroleum refinery in China to process oil imported exclusively from Saudi Arabia. As Sinopec will soon bring its eight million ton refinery into operation at Yangpu, Hainan in June 2006, Sinopec is likely to become an active participant in follow-up negotiations regarding project details with Saudi Arabia (Nanfang Daily, January 26, 2006).

Mr. Kong Quan, China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, stated during his press conference on January 24 that the Sino-Saudi oil protocol was just one of five agreements signed immediately following a meeting between the king and Chinese President Hu Jintao. The other four agreements cover vocational training; economic, trade, investment and technology cooperation; avoidance of double taxation; and a Saudi loan to fund a development project in China's largely Muslim region of Xinjiang (Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs).

One reason the US is keen to enhance its relationship with India is because that country's growing importance could be an important counterweight to China in Southeast Asia. And China knows it.

India and China are locked in a bitter struggle for Pan-Asian leadership in South, Southeast and Central Asia. Three regional economic and security organizations—South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC), the Association for Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)—symbolize their jostling for power. Of these, SAARC is symbolically significant with little political or economic substance. ASEAN combines Southeast Asia’s economic concerns with its security needs, while the SCO primarily remains a security organization dominated by Beijing’s interests in Central Asia.

These organizations, however, articulate multilateral concerns, which are greatly shaped by the competing interests of Beijing and New Delhi. India and China thus build bilateral relations to influence the regional agenda. As a result, it is the economic strength and military might of each country that is fueling the drive for ascendancy in Asia. Although there are several cooperative initiatives between Beijing and New Delhi that are underway at bilateral, regional and global levels, they only fuel their competitive tensions. This analysis, however, is limited to their competitive interests for Asia-wide leadership, which assesses their intrusion into each other’s turf, and that of their neighbors’.

Since the 1980s, China has made deep inroads into South Asia to isolate New Delhi, which culminated in its triumphant entry into SAARC on November 13, 2005. Similarly, New Delhi’s presence in Southeast Asia has dramatically grown since the 1990s, when its economy began to perk up. Yet China’s domination of Southeast Asia is far from having been dented by India’s presence in that region. Also, in Central Asia, both nations are jockeying for ascendancy, but India’s goals are more modest than China’s. India’s primary quest in Central Asia is for energy. To realize this objective, India also has enlisted the West Asian countries of Afghanistan and Iran into its economic and strategic initiatives to encircle Pakistan, which it believes is China’s proxy.

Therefore, it is encouraging if the US finally sees the foolishness in a blind eye, peace love and joy approach to China.

The Weekly Standard report highlights a portion of the recent Quadrennial Defense Review that may be a signal to China that the US means business.

It just so happened that the Pentagon also issued its Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) on February 3. A number of Pentagon China hands I spoke with that Friday evening pointed to QDR pages 29 and 30 and commented to me that it was the first time a QDR had ever mentioned a putative adversary nation by name. The passage reads as follows:

of the major and emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S. military advantages absent U.S. counter strategies.

The QDR then spends an entire page describing how "the pace and scope of China's military build-up already puts regional military balances at risk." And to top it off, one China specialist at Defense pointed to the two photos that bracket the China pages--one depicting a submarine launch of a Tomahawk cruise missile, the other showing Japanese and American F-15 fighter pilots "discussing tactics . . . before a mission." A mischievous smile on my interlocutor's face prompted me to ask, "Was that intentional?" He grinned, "Intentional or not, that's how the Chinese will see it."

The Quadrennial Defense Review can be read here, in PDF, and the two aforementioned pictures can be seen on pages 41 and 42.