The Economist: China and the West （图文）

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China and the West

Meeting the superpower
Nov 17th 2005
From The Economist print edition

George Bush should treat China as an opportunity, not just a threat

IT IS never easy to deal with an emerging superpower. China may not justify that moniker quite yet, and perhaps it never will. But its rapid economic growth, its huge population, its demand for resources and its energetic diplomacy are posing delicate questions for politicians around the globe. China may not be another Evil Empire, but it is still a repressive one-party state: can it be changed, or must it merely be made room for? And will what China has termed its “peaceful rise” really be that, or could it become more confrontational?

This debate has long obsessed China's neighbours, notably Taiwan. As Mr Bush will discover on his Asian tour, loyal allies of the United States such as Japan, South Korea and Australia already feel the magnetic force of a new geopolitical pole (see article). But the dragon's breath is being felt farther afield. China is now the fastest-growing investor in Africa. Its indifference to human rights has given its companies an edge in places as disparate as Uzbekistan, Zimbabwe, Sudan and Iran.




Yet the country most able to influence China is still that other great power in Asia: the United States. This weekend, Mr Bush, reeling from setbacks at home, arrives in Beijing under pressure from Congress to “be tough” with his host, Hu Jintao. But he needs to be tough about the right things—and many voices at home are suggesting precisely the wrong ones.

The China-bashers gather force
Fear of China runs deep in America. From the left, trade unions and Democrats howl about the outsourcing of jobs to China. With America's bilateral trade deficit with China set to soar above $200 billion this year, many industries have joined the clamour, hoping for hand-outs and protection. And the China-bashers are making progress.

In July, American nagging helped persuade the Chinese to move the yuan from its dollar peg and peg it to a mixed basket of currencies, bringing a 2% revaluation in the process (though that has not stopped a Democratic senator, Charles Schumer, from threatening a 27.5% tariff if the yuan does not rise more). In August, the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) gave up trying to buy Unocal, a mid-sized American oil firm, after the House of Representatives voted by 398-15 to ask Mr Bush to review the bid. And last week, the Chinese agreed to a textiles deal that allows America to extend its quotas on Chinese imports till 2008.

All this might be dismissed as a re-run of the ill-judged Japanophobia of the 1980s. But whereas that was based on economic anxieties alone, China-bashing enjoys a much broader constituency: moralistic neo-conservatives, who have objected to America's China policy since Nixon began “appeasement” in the 1970s; defence types, who fear China's arms build-up; fundamentalist Christians, angry about China's repressively atheist ways. It is easy to see why Mr Bush will be under pressure to look stern in the photo-calls in Beijing. He should nonetheless hold his nerve against the knee-jerk Sinophobes, especially in the case of trade.

Calls for anti-dumping duties, protection against the undervalued yuan and so on all start from the politically convenient but economically illiterate idea that imports are bad and exports are good. Yet even by that twisted logic, it is an error to blame America's current-account deficit on China. Most of the increase in America's trade deficit over the past decade has come from other countries; and America's imbalance has far more to do with a shortage of American savings than imports from China. That does not mean that Mr Bush should not be tough on some subjects. It is right to restrict arms sales to a regime that abuses the human rights of its own citizens, to press China to open its market further, and to clamp down on software piracy. But China should not be made into a scapegoat for all the home-made ills of the American economy.

To his credit, Mr Bush has so far ignored much of the congressional clamour to punish China. But silence is not enough. By failing to make a strong, public case for open markets, he is storing up trouble for the future. The White House's silence over the CNOOC acquisition allowed a perfectly reasonable commercial deal to collapse for misplaced political reasons. Last week's deal on textiles was not as Luddite as many southerners in Congress wanted; but Mr Bush's failure to take on the cotton barons will hardly deter other industry lobbies. So far it has fallen to the deputy secretary of state, Robert Zoellick, to explain how China can become a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. Mr Bush should use his visit to build on this constructive case and take on the China-bashers more publicly—not only for the sake of China trade but also to stress America's commitment to free trade in general.

Coax—and co-operate
Beyond economics, Mr Bush needs to balance two sometimes competing imperatives. The first is to continue to use American muscle to encourage China's leaders to behave better towards their neighbours—and their own citizens. China needs to be talked out of its missile build-up opposite Taiwan and its stoking up of nationalist sentiment against Japan.

The regime does, after all, sometimes listen. When its National People's Congress passed a resolution in March threatening Taiwan with invasion, the ensuing outcry in the West destroyed Mr Hu's hopes of the arms embargo imposed on China after the Tiananmen massacre of 1989 being lifted in Europe. Since then, China has courted Taiwan's politicians—albeit the opposition ones—and toned down its attacks on its president, even though it abhors his support for the island's independence. Mr Bush also has a duty to press China on its systematically abysmal human-rights record—although America's own ambivalence on torture and lapses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay have made its lectures easier to ignore.

The second imperative is for America to find a way to work harmoniously alongside a China that is just beginning to find its way as a great power. Not every encounter has to be treated as a face-off between rivals. China says it wants to become a great power in the way America mostly did—not by conquest and plunder but by trading and co-operating with others. A lot of its regional diplomacy is useful. It is helping—though could doubtless do more—to talk North Korea into giving up nuclear weapons. Having once held aloof, China has lately become a great joiner of institutions. It is pushing for a free-trade deal that would link the ten South-East Asian economies with three of those of North-East Asia (its own, plus Japan and South Korea). The fact that it is now the largest trading partner of many of these countries reflects tact as well as muscle. Unlike America, which often takes allies for granted, China works patiently to cultivate friends. In 2003, for instance, Mr Bush went to Australia for a mere 18 hours or so. The next day, Mr Hu arrived, and spent three days there.

If you take a bleak view of the way history works, the great power that America is must one day collide with the great power China is destined to be. But there is no need to be so bleak. Much depends on when and how the Chinese Communist Party loses its monopoly of political power. For as long as China remains totalitarian in this respect, there can be no true meeting of minds with America. But in the meantime China and America have to co-operate. And part of the job of an American president is to prevent the narrow interests of protectionists at home from disrupting a relationship which, if it is handled correctly, could contribute so much to the peace and prosperity of mankind.