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CHINA and the United States have begun engaging each other by avoiding any public expression of their differences. Although U.S. President George W. Bush's visit to China was marked by the absence of any tension, diplomats in the Asia-Pacific region are not sure how long such polite diplomacy would last.
In an interaction with the media after holding talks with Chinese President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in Beijing on November 20, Bush said: "We have a complex relationship and it is a really important relationship." He described the engagement with China as "a very vibrant relationship", especially on matters of mutual interest and cooperation such as the issue of making the Korean peninsula free of nuclear weapons by addressing the concerns of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK).
On the issue of "Taiwanese independence", Hu told Bush that the idea was not in the interests of China or the U.S. According to the `One China' principle, which is accepted by the international community including the U.S., Taiwan is acknowledged as being part of the People's Republic of China (PRC). What needs to be settled is how to "actualise" this.
The Chinese leaders sought to place the engagement in the realm of "strategic dialogue" and even cooperation (wherever possible). China prefers a wider global perspective.
The realities, as outlined in public diplomacy by the two sides, do not hide the unease over the long-term implications of the qualitative enhancement in the military relationship between the U.S. and Japan, China's immediate neighbour. If Chinese concerns over the security relations did not flare up as an issue during Bush's visit, the reason goes beyond the political maturity that China and the U.S. seem eager to bring to their engagement. For China, it is good tactics indeed to keep Japan guessing by staying the course of an intensified "strategic dialogue" with the U.S. An outcome of the visit was that a second round of dialogue was agreed upon to keep alive the process that began well before the new Washington-Tokyo security compact.
The issue of Taiwan, which receives military aid from the U.S., and the U.S.' increased security links with Japan are not really new challenges to China. Its interactions with the present Bush administration will, however, begin to acquire a qualitatively new dimension as a result of the latest U.S.-Japan security accord. Now, the initial expectation in the Asia-Pacific region is that the new U.S.-Japan factor may, to some extent, determine the course of the "strategic dialogue" between Washington and Beijing, without actually defining it, at least in public. More important to the U.S.-China engagement is the effort by Bush to engage Chinese leaders on how to remodel their political system. It is a qualitatively new aspect in the current post-Cold-War milieu that Bush has chosen to raise the issue of changing the political system in China. Apart from raising the issue during his conversations with Chinese leaders, Bush spoke publicly about it during the visit itself.
An obvious question is why Bush resorted to "megaphone diplomacy" over China's political system at this stage. When U.S. President Richard Nixon visited Beijing in February 1972 to signal the first strategic shift in Washington's policy towards China, he famously declared: "What is important is not a nation's internal political philosophy" but its "policy towards the rest of the world and towards us". Bush has now reversed that.
The current dynamism in the U.S.-China dialogue can be traced to the politics of the reopening of their conversation after a break following the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989. Thus, the 1972 Nixon-Mao summit is no more the point of reference in the relations between the two countries.
China's rise as a big player in the international arena and as a "military moderniser" compelled the U.S. to re-engage it not long after the "Tiananmen incident". China, therefore, did not remain under the "Tiananmen shadow" for long. Instead, Beijing accelerated its economic policies of "reform and opening up" in a way that caught the attention of the international community.
With China staying firmly on its trajectory of economic reforms, its rise as a political force and its "military modernisation" could explain Bush's comment on the Chinese internal political situation. He is obviously seeking to confound China at one level while trying to establish "constructive and cooperative" dialogue at another, especially with regard to the goal of de-nuclearising the Korean peninsula.
The issue is not the only one in his catalogue of China-related "concerns". Another concern is the negative impact of China's current monetary policy, especially the "regulated" strength of the Chinese currency, on the U.S. economy. Trade frictions, which could spiral into a trade war if they are not managed properly by both sides, are also on Bush's China-specific "woes list".
Trying to correct an impression that the U.S.-China dialogue might once again flounder, Bush said in Beijing: "President Hu is a thoughtful fellow" and that "he listened to what I had to say". Disclosing that Hu "talked about human rights" in his country, Bush said: "Those who watch China closely would say that, maybe, a decade ago, a [Chinese] leader wouldn't have uttered those comments. He talked about democracy."
The way Bush presented it, the ground rule in his dialogue with the Chinese leadership is as follows: "You want to be able to sit down with somebody, and say: `Look. Here are my concerns'.... And I can [now] do that in such a way that he [the Chinese President] doesn't say: `I am tired of listening to you.' It is an important relationship."
Interesting indeed is the colloquial manner in which Bush described his communication with his Chinese interlocutors, some of the issues being tough and not necessarily on trade alone.
More of Bush's public comments in his own words: "I talked about the Dalai Lama. I thought it would be wise for the Chinese government to invite the Dalai Lama so he can tell them exactly what he told me in the White House the other day, that he has no desire for an independent Tibet. I talked about the Catholic Church, the need for this government to invite leaders from the Vatican to come and discuss religious freedoms in China. So, we discussed a lot of areas of concern: about the condition of the dissidents and people who want to express themselves."
For Bush, his visit to a church in Beijing on November 20 did, in a sense, provide him with the opening that he was looking for to widen the scope of his political dialogue with the Chinese leaders. His relaxing "adventure" of a mountain bike-ride near Beijing, in the company of cyclists aspiring to get into the Chinese Olympic squad, also lent a touch of informality. This, in itself, added to the level of "comfort" in Bush's dialogue with the Chinese leaders on political issues.
The official Chinese take on these talks is that Bush has avoided treating China, at least in the dialogue, as a "strategic rival" on the global stage. This aspect of Bush's diplomacy is understood to have given the Chinese side a chance to "size up" his real intentions in a much better atmosphere than appeared likely when, a few days earlier, he held out Taiwan's "democracy" as a model for China itself.
Shortly after the PRC was founded in 1949, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson suggested that Washington, instead of wasting its resources on fighting China, should turn its "centre of interest" in Asia toward a "crescent or a semi-circle which goes around Japan at one end and India at the other".
The current state of play in the U.S.-China engagement is indicative of the possibility that similar views hold sway in the Bush administration. While the latest Japan-U.S. security update is a pointer, Washington has made no secret of its intentions to explore a new strategic entente with India as well.
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