Foreign Correspondence

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Michael Vatikiotis: U.S. sights are back on China

Michael Vatikiotis International Herald Tribune

TUESDAY, JUNE 7, 2005


SINGAPORE How will China and the rest of Asia respond to U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's blunt assertion that China's military spending is a threat to regional security? This is the very stance that some of America's friends in the region were hoping it would avoid. Only the day before, Singapore's prime minister, Lee Hsien Loong, warned that a policy of containing China would find few takers in the region.

China could probably see this coming. What Rumsfeld said in Singapore on Saturday simply restored a default setting of American foreign policy, at least under the Bush administration. Before 9/11 changed the world, Rumsfeld and other neoconservative hawks were busy fashioning a policy that cast rising China as America's competitor. Now that the war on terror seems to be waning, there has been a noticeable shift in Washington back to considering China a threat to free trade and security.

The suspension of reality these past four years has allowed China to gain some valuable strategic ground in Asia.

Just in the past few months, Beijing has signed a security treaty with Pakistan and a defense cooperation agreement with the Philippines, both stalwart American allies. If America is indeed preparing to contain China's rise, it will come up against an extensive network of multilateral arrangements that China has sewn up with countries in the region, including a soon to be inaugurated East Asian Community stretching from India to Japan and excluding the United States and its ally Australia.

From the beginning of the year, Washington put Beijing on notice that its emergence as a regional superpower would not go unchallenged. In February the United States convinced Japan to commit to a more robust defense of Taiwan. Then the U.S. Treasury stepped up pressure on China to revalue its currency, and more lately there have been threats of trade sanctions over textile imports. Now Rumsfeld is saying that China's improved ability to project power and its advanced military technology are putting the delicate military balance at risk.

One effect of this will be to erode the patina of good will and cooperation that allowed the United States a free hand in the global war on terror. We can now expect China to increase the tenor of its more active foreign policy, both at the United Nations, where it is a more vocal presence on the Security Council, and in parts of the world where China is acquiring a measure of influence through investment in natural resources, like Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Beijing's big fear is that the United States will set up a picket fence of alliances around China that will put a potential stranglehold on vital lines of supply.

China is also likely to accelerate its military expansion program, as Chinese leaders begin to sense that Americans should not be trusted. Rumsfeld told his Singapore audience that he saw no threat to China that could explain its growing military budget, which the Pentagon estimates is far higher than officially stated. A Chinese official in the audience shot back: "Do you believe that the United States is threatened by the emergence of China?" Rumsfeld's cheerful riposte was no, and if China had only peaceful intentions, then why roll out batteries of ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan?

While the rest of Asia would like China's meteoric rise to be balanced by a sustained U.S. commitment to defense of the region, no one wants to be asked to choose between supporting one superpower over the other. Lee Hsien Loong argued that as the pre-eminent player in the region, America has the rare opportunity to assist Asia's emerging giants, India and China, "in settling the parameters for long-term cooperation and competition."

Rumsfeld's words hardly sounded like those of a benign moderator. They sounded more like a challenge. It also seems as if the Bush administration wants to extend its campaign for freedom into the region with calls for China to open up its political system. "With a system that encouraged enterprise and free expression," Rumsfeld said, "China would appear more as a friend and a welcome partner." There are many in Asia, like Kishore Mahbubani, a Singaporean diplomat, who don't quite share this view. He argues that a sudden end of Communist rule in China would unleash dangerous nationalist forces that could lead to conflict in the region.

The worry is that as Washington's views on China harden, the channels for cooperation that act as valuable confidence-building mechanisms in the region will become sclerotic too. It is also possible that the same nationalist forces that unleashed anger against Japanese interests in China could turn against sizable American interests as well. This can only make us all worry more about the possible outbreak of conflict in regional hotspots like North Korea and the East China Sea. Few Asians will want to thank Secretary Rumsfeld for making them feel more secure in the region.

(Michael Vatikiotis is a visiting research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.)

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/06/06/news/edvatik.php