May 20, 2006
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The San Jose Mercury News
November 30, 1996
Section: Editorial
Edition: Morning Final
Page: 7B
Author: Todd K. Dwyer
WEST MUST CONFRONT THE REAL CHINA
PRESIDENT Bill Clinton and Chinese President Jiang Zemin have agreed to meet for a pair of presidential summits over the next two years, an apparent sign that the two nations are committed to improving relations.
Clinton’s visit to Beijing would be the first by a U.S. president since George Bush went there in 1989, shortly before Chinese tanks crushed the pro-democracy movement in Tiananmen Square, killing hundreds of demonstrators. Many human rights activists in this country were quick to condemn President Clinton for sending the ”wrong message” to the ”Butchers of Beijing” by engaging in talks with the Chinese leadership.
Here are a few facts about China that many of us in the West may not necessarily like but are inescapable realities nonetheless.
China is today on course toward becoming the world’s largest economy by the year 2010. With the economic reforms implemented by Deng Xiaoping and his proteges, China now shows signs that it is beginning to realize its vast economic potential. Indeed, the biggest worry among the Chinese leadership is how to keep the economy from growing too rapidly.
It would serve us well to acknowledge the fact that China’s fear of the West is well-founded. Japan has benefited enormously from the current international order – it is relatively comfortable with interdependence – and it has a constitution that forbids offensive military action. However, it was a mere 50 some years ago that the Japanese Imperial Army burned, raped, and pillaged its way through China, killing millions. Japan’s failure to fully acknowledge the atrocities in China have only served to steel China’s suspicions of the West.
Strategic economic engagement designed to increase regionalism within China’s borders could be a policy option used to undermine China’s potential. The goal would be to strengthen the linkages between individual Chinese provinces and foreign states, and to weaken the links between the provinces and Beijing, making regional governors less likely to cooperate with attempts by the central government to marshal resources for campaigns of overseas conquest or coercion.
However, such a policy which promotes regionalism inside of China is inherently risky. The last time China fragmented, in the years following the collapse of the Qing Dynasty in 1911-12, the local warlords did not have nuclear weapons. What is more, such a policy would only serve to convince the Chinese of their worst fears about Western neo-imperialism: that the only aim of foreigners is to divide and conquer China. Economic suppression of China, while perhaps precluding one form of security threat from China, would likely create others.
The Chinese have re-acquired Hong Kong, and one billion Chinese are about to follow the Hong Kong economic model. Those billion Chinese are going to want their Ford Escorts and BMWs, their 501 jeans and Nike shoes, their stereos, and – God help us – their television sets, which will only increase their appetite for Western goods and products. We in the West who subscribe to the nascent ideas of democracy are naive if we think we can impose our own cultural notions of ”human rights” on the Chinese. Our notions of ”human rights” are as alien to the current Chinese leadership as their ideas on how to keep the lid on one billion people are to us.
- Todd K. Dwyer
Santa Clara
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