Tag: Chinese-American relations

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The Phone Call That Challenged an Obsolete Policy

President-elect Trump’s acceptance of a congratulatory call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen, the first such communication between a U.S. leader and a free Chinese President since 1979, has opened an issue that has been ignored for far too long.

During the worst days of the Cold War, The U.S. was able to use Beijing’s distrust of the Kremlin’s leadership to its advantage. While never formally allied, both America and China had a common interest in containing the vast Soviet military.

But on December 21, 1991, the USSR officially ceased to exist. Beijing and Moscow ended their rivalry, and now those two have formed what may well be the world’s most powerful military alliance, one which is centered around the goal of weakening American influence. The original reasons for Washington’s tilt away from Taiwan and towards the Mainland have all but vanished, but its’ policy tilt in favor of Beijing continues as though frozen in time.

There are harsh realities of the U.S-China relationship that have been ignored for far too long:

  • Beijing unfairly burdens American companies seeking to do business in China. They have even demanded that U.S. internet giants, such as Facebook, accept censorship. (Disgracefully, it appears that some have accepted that immoral condition as a cost of doing business.)
  • The Chinese military is geared against the US and its allies. China has engaged in a massive peacetime military buildup, despite the absence of any credible threat. It’s rate of spending increases even exceeds that of either the United States or the Soviet Union during the height of the Cold War.
  • Beijing engages in an extraordinary amount of espionage against the civilian American government, the military, and private businesses within the United States.
  • China has engaged in aggressive behavior against its neighbors. The World Court at The Hague has ruled that Beijing’s takeover of areas rightfully belonging to the Philippines, for example, was illegal.
  • China has established military relations across the globe, including within Latin America, that pose a threat to the United States.
  • One of the chief threats to international safety has been the North Korean nuclear weapons program. China has the influence to stop this, but has refused to do so.
  • Shortly before the call was made, mainland Chinese nuclear bombers circled Taiwan.

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The reaction to Trump’s acceptance of the call has been intriguing.  When President Obama re-established relations with Cuba, a Communist nation which has been a key sponsor of international terrorism, ruled by a government that harshly represses its own people, and which had recently invited the Russian navy back in, the media and much of the political class on the left considered the move praise-worthy.

However, the relatively innocuous acceptance of a phone call from Taiwan, which has been unfailingly friendly towards the United States, a good world neighbor and a fair and open trading partner, has been inappropriately met with distress.

The Brookings Institute  worried: “The news that President-elect Trump has spoken by phone to Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen as part of the series of congratulatory calls on his election heightens concerns about Trump’s foreign policy deftness. There are serious risks posed by his failure to take briefings by government professionals, and he appears to have little respect for the potential damage of actions taken without understanding long-standing U.S. national security concerns.”

The Washington Post  wrote: “Donald Trump’s protocol-breaking telephone call with Taiwan’s leader was an intentionally provocative move…”

The President-elect’s response to the criticism was issued via Twitter:

“Did China ask us if it was OK to devalue their currency (making it hard for our companies to compete), heavily tax our products going into their country (the U.S. doesn’t tax them) or to build a massive military complex in the middle of the South China Sea?”

Although the phone call was a minor move, it is, hopefully, the beginning of a more practical, realistic, and balanced policy towards Beijing.

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China’s Rise is not benevolent

It is clear that China is determined to eliminate U.S. influence, which it describes as “hegemony,” in Asia. Beijing phrases its desire in quasi-peaceful statements, but the phrases contradict China’s recent actions in the South China Sea, where its armed forces have seized disputed territory and militarized islands claimed by other nations. It does not reflect China’s invasion of the Philippines offshore exclusive economic zone several years ago.

Internally, China has left little doubt that America is, in its view, the enemy. Richard Bernstein and Ross Munro described this in their tome, “The Coming Conflict with China:”

“In the early months of 1994, a large number of Communist Party officials from all of China’s provinces were summoned to a meeting in Beijing…the attendees…were soon told the reason…was to designate the United States as China’s main global rival and to announce an eventual aim: setting up “a global antihegemonist united front at an opportune moment.” In the carefully crafted attack vocabulary of China, the word “hegemonist” has special meaning. It refers to a country that is so powerful in Asia that China’s independence and sovereignty are threatened by it.”

In Beijing’s worldview, much of what is considered by others international waters or the sovereign territory of other nations belongs to China. Therefore, any nation that defends against China’s expansionist claims, be it the United States, Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, Taiwan, or others—is interfering in Beijing’s “internal affairs.”

Bernstein and Munro continue their reporting on the conference:

“General Zhang’s central statement: ‘Facing blatant interference by the American hegemonist in our internal affairs…we must reinforce our armed forces more intensively…’ The authors describe the statement as the “language of the sort of aggressive posture that China has assumed towards the United States, whether testing American resolve on such matters as arms proliferation, violating international human rights standards, or engaging in an ambitious military buildup.”

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“…both societies believe they represent unique values. American exceptionalism is missionary.  It holds that the United States has an obligation to spread its values to every part of the world…China…is the heir to the Middle Kingdom tradition, which formally graded all other states as various levels of tributaries…”

There is a strong belief on the part of many in Western governments and international organizations that China’s rise is relatively benevolent.  But is that truly the case? Martin Jacques, in his study, “When China Rules the World,” presents a more realistic assessment:

“We are so used to the world being Western, even American, that we have little idea what it would be like if it was not…For reasons of both mindset and interest, therefore, the United States, and the West more generally, finds it difficult to visualize, or accept, a world that involves a major and continuing diminution in its influence. Take globalization as an example. The dominant Western view has been that globalization is a process by which the rest of the world becomes…increasingly Westernized, with the adoption of free markets, the import of Western capital, privatization, the rule of law, human rights regimes and democratic norms…[but] as nations grow more prosperous they become increasingly self-confident about their own culture and history, and thereby less inclined to ape the West…the United States may have been the single most influential player, exerting enormous power…but the biggest winner has been East Asia and the greatest single beneficiary China.”

Before placidly accepting China’s rise, which the United States and the West have tacitly done by sharply reducing their military power (the U.S. Navy has shrunk from almost 600 ships in 1990 to about 284 or 254—depending on how one counts certain types of vessels; the U.S. Air Force is at its smallest point since 1940, when it was part of the U.S. Army) it would be prudent to review what a new paradigm that does not include American naval and air supremacy would actually bring. Robert Kaplan discusses this in his book, Asia’s Cauldron:

“The fact that Russia is still constrained in its attempts to seriously undermine the sovereignty of states in Eastern and Central Europe; the fact that the Middle East has so far at least avoided an interstate holocaust of sorts; the fact that Pakistan and India have not engaged in a full-scale war in decades, and have never used their nuclear weapons; the fact that North Korea merely threatens South Korea and Japan with large-scale military aggression rather than actually carrying it out; is all in large measure because of a U.S. global security umbrella. The fact that small and embattled nations, be it Israel or Georgia, can even exist is because of what ultimately the U.S. military provides.  Indeed, it is the deployment of American air and naval platforms worldwide that gives American diplomacy much of its signal heft, which it then uses to support democracy and freer societies everywhere.  Substantially reduce that American military presence, and the world-and the South China Sea, in particular—looks like a very different place.”