E-Notes

How to Deal With Beijing

By Avery Goldstein

March 1, 1999

Avery Goldstein is Director of the Asia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania.

Sino-American relations are poised for another round of trouble. The optimism that prevailed at the time of President Clinton’s 1998 visit to China has faded. Since last fall Beijing has resumed its harassment and persecution of religious and political dissidents and, according to some reports, beefed up its deployment of ballistic missiles along the coast across from Taiwan. Moreover, while the investigation of a Chinese connection to the 1996 Clinton campaign has still failed to produce conclusive evidence of impropriety, interest is now shifting to China’s espionage effort in the U.S. and the military secrets it may have provided Beijing. One can already read the columns and hear the politicians alerting America to the re-emerging China threat and calling for a new tougher China policy. The following discussion of the current trio of concerns about ballistic missiles, espionage, and human rights abuses is offered to illustrate the problems with a policy that reflects mood swings more than careful analysis. As the Y2K presidential race heats up, and before partisanship clouds judgment, the time is ripe for a sober assessment of Sino-American relations.

Ballistic Missiles

I begin with the ballistic missile issue, not only because it has recently grabbed the headlines, but also because it touches on the sensitive and important Taiwan problem as well as broader, recurring concerns about the so-called China threat. To figure out what to make of the missiles aimed at Taiwan, one must grasp the larger picture.

Absent a defensible basis in international law, the real Basis on which the U.S.-Taiwan relationship rests is a Pragmatic attempt to do right by a former ally whose preferences we subordinate to broader American interests. This is long-standing, bipartisan American policy. The recently declassified transcripts of Henry Kissinger’s discussions with the Chinese and memos to President Nixon clearly reveal that they understood this was the direction in which they were moving our policy as early as 1973. International politics often confronts state leaders with unpleasant tradeoffs. Leaders in Beijing and Taipei craft policy based on an understanding of their own interests and so should we. In a world of tough choices, perhaps we should be both pleased and surprised that the strong unofficial relationship between Washington and Taipei that Beijing tolerated because it so valued strategic ties to the US while it confronted the Soviet threat, has outlived the Cold War. In part because of that relationship, but most importantly because of what the Taiwanese have done for themselves, the island’s economic, political and military health has put Taipei in a stronger bargaining position than might have been anticipated even fifteen years ago.

Beijing recognizes that the military balance in the strait And the political balance on the island is such that for the foreseeable future it cannot easily use military force to seize and control Taiwan, even if, as almost no one believes likely, the U.S. chose not to react. Therefore, Beijing’s policies remain more prudent than its occasionally inflamed rhetoric. This is reassuring, but should not be misleading. Prudence about means does not reflect a change in the end pursued. There is no wavering on the nationalist conviction that Taiwan is part of China’s sovereign territory. And, it should be added, all reports suggest this is a conviction that transcends political and generational divisions among elites and masses on the mainland. One should, therefore, not anticipate that the issue will simply fade with time.

How does Beijing pursue its interest in reunification given an unfavorable military balance and the anticipation that military action would precipitate US intervention? One leg of Beijing’s Taiwan policy is cross-strait engagement — direct and indirect diplomatic efforts to discover a reunification formula acceptable to both sides, combined with growing social and economic intercourse to reduce fears of the unknown and increase support on Taiwan for maintaining a workable relationship. The other leg of Beijing’s policy is the threat of force. This is where the ballistic missiles come in.

The top priority for Beijing is to dissuade Taipei from clear challenges to the assumption of reunification at some future date. Ballistic missiles provide the ability to punish such challenges because they give Beijing the option of terrorizing both the urban population of the island and, more importantly, trade partners that are the island’s lifeblood. In the event dissuasion fails, missiles also give Beijing the option to punish Taipei until it reverses course. These twin strategies of dissuasion by deterrence and persuasion by compellence do not depend on the balance of military power in the traditional sense. Since China lacks the capability to credibly threaten a successful combined arms offensive against Taiwan’s military, let alone one disrupted by the U.S. Seventh Fleet, these are Beijing’s strategies of choice. As long as an intolerable number of Chinese warheads may hit valued targets in and around Taiwan, Beijing’s threats must be taken into account. On an matter about which China’s resolve has been so clearly demonstrated, credibility may require little more than the visible deployment of forces and strong statements about the limits of tolerance.

The reaction to recent stories about China’s continued and possibly growing ballistic missile force aimed at Taiwan has been of two sorts, political and military. The political reaction has been a renewed tendency to interpret the deployment, and more broadly Beijing’s steadfast refusal to rule out the use of force against Taiwan, as evidence that China should be treated as an emerging “dangerous power” not to be appeased. According to this line of argument, China believes it can use military means to pursue its international objectives and is thus a threat against whom firm countermeasures must be taken, sooner rather than later. For reasons that require more elaboration than can be provided here, I think this assessment is a simplistic exaggeration of the sort of problem China’s growing power may pose for international relations in the coming century. Nevertheless, even if such alarmist views are right, their proponents are probably not right that the Taiwan issue offers strong evidence in support of their argument.

Whether or not one accepts Beijing’s position that Taiwan is a domestic political matter, the historical complexity of the case, involving as it does the bitter legacy of Japanese imperialism and resentment of the U.S. role in China’s mid-twentieth century civil war, means that even outright aggressiveness toward Taiwan may tell us next to nothing about China’s proclivities in resolving other conflicts that are indisputably international. Taiwan is not, Beijing’s Lincolnesque analogizing aside, the equivalent of the secessionist south during the US civil war. But it is also not the equivalent of Hungary or Czechoslovakia in the old Soviet empire. As ever, analogy is no substitute for analysis. Sui generis is the label best applied to the Taiwan problem. Analysts trying to get a read on Beijing’s international inclinations may be better served by focusing on the more clearly internationalized disputes such as those in the South China Sea.

The second sort of reaction to China’s missiles, sometimes linked to the first, has been the call for military countermeasures, especially theater missile defenses (TMD), enabling Taiwan to offset what is expected to be a continuing buildup. Three arguments can be advanced for deploying ballistic missile defenses. First, such systems could be useful to knock down a stray missile or warhead inadvertently or accidentally launched. Against such a contingency, TMD amounts to an insurance policy against a remote hazard whose likelihood is better reduced in other ways. Nevertheless, if the hazard is serious, the insurance may be worth the premium. Second, TMD could be useful to reduce the effectiveness of a missile-based attack. If missile attacks were expected to be precursor strikes clearing the path for an invasion force, reducing the number of detonations from 600 to 60 (i.e., 90% effective) would be militarily significant and, if technologically feasible, worth pursuing. Third, TMD could be useful to neutralize the terrorizing threat of punishment that ballistic missile warheads represent. Against this contingency, TMD success is measured by the ability to keep damage to levels that are politically acceptable — meaning that political leaders would not feel coerced to frame policy in order to avoid threatened punishment. When missile attacks are linked to such coercive (deterrent and compellent) strategies, the technological challenge for TMD is substantially greater. Militarily ineffective strikes may well inflict politically unacceptable damage. A small number of inaccurate, inefficient, intermittent ballistic missile strikes against major ports and cities would suffice to scare off most of Taiwan’s international economic partners. For this third purpose, what matters is not how many warheads TMD stops, but rather how many get through. The long debate about ballistic missile defenses in the U.S. dating to the mid- 1960s is discouraging on this score. Under current technology there are simply too many relatively cheap and simple ways for the attacker to overwhelm or fool the defense to have much confidence that some fraction of the warheads won’t make it through. When even a little “leakage” matters a lot, such as when nuclear warheads are in play or when the requirements for politically meaningful terror are relatively modest (as in Taiwan’s situation), TMD doesn’t seem very promising.

TMD for Taiwan might be a good response to the mainland’s ballistic missiles if they were part of a strategy for militarily seizing the island. But because those missiles are instead part of a strategy that rests on threats to punish rather than prevail, deploying the sorts of TMD current technology can produce is arguably an unwise diversion of resources. It is up to the government in Taipei (and Taiwan’s voters) to decide if they want to deploy TMD, or increase funding for research and development, and it is possible they will decide that the effort is worth it, even as a long shot against an unlikely scenario. For the US, however, the questionable strategic benefits of TMD for Taiwan raises serious doubts the wisdom of paying the political price in Sino-American relations that joint development would entail, especially if it includes Japanese participation. One thing is clear. It would be foolish for the US to move ahead on TMD cooperation with Taiwan (or Japan) for purely economic reasons. These are weapons systems that raise policy questions of vital importance. However ineffective ballistic missile defenses may be at present, the Chinese (and Russians) worry that the world’s most advanced industrial powers will figure out ways to improve these systems and pose an ever escalating challenge to the one component of their military arsenal that is not hopelessly outclassed. Their fears (arguably as exaggerated as the hopes of TMD advocates) will make it more difficult to work together on other areas of common interest and complicate efforts at conflict management (e.g., Korea, arms control, terrorism). For a strategically decisive system, such a price might be worth paying. For the type of system currently available, it is a bad bargain.

Espionage

What is one to make of the spate of stories about Chinese espionage against the U.S., including reports that Beijing was able to obtain important information about the highly accurate, miniaturized warheads used in the Trident II submarine ballistic missile system? Coming as it does on the heels of evidence about loosened U.S. government controls over the transfer of satellite-related technology by American businesses operating in China, the impact has been to raise alarm bells. This is appropriate, though one worries about an initial reaction that smacks of either rank naivete or self-righteous indignation rather than heightened vigilance.

If Congressional investigation reveals a pattern of Chinese spying in the U.S. dating back some two decades that will merely confirm what common sense should lead one to expect. Twenty-years ago is precisely when mutually beneficial exchanges between China and the U.S. began to mushroom. The possibilities for espionage within corporate, academic, and government settings inevitably increased as well. Prudent leaders understand that all states are motivated to learn about their rivals; those who lag behind are most strongly motivated to accelerate their efforts to catch up by stealing what cannot be obtained through purchase or open agreement. Prudent leaders would recognize that the combination of great opportunity and strong motivation makes China a likely candidate for a robust espionage effort in our country. Put simply, one must assume they will try; our task is to limit the opportunities for serious security breeches.

Indeed, most of the stories currently circulating don’t suggest a highly sophisticated Chinese espionage challenge, but rather laxness on the part of the U.S. The immediate aim should be to identify critical areas where the damage to US interests would be most serious and figure out how to tighten our security procedures. Broad-gauged criticism of China for spying is pointless, a bit disingenuous, and detracts from the effectiveness of a more focused, selective approach that punishes the most egregious behavior. Indeed, there is a troubling side to the current, actually recurrent, reportage about Chinese spying in the U.S. that improperly casts aspersions on virtually all Chinese visiting, doing business, or studying in the U.S. This is a dangerous path on which we should not embark. There is no point alienating a generation of mostly cosmopolitan, nationalist Chinese with whom we are currently engaged. Instead, in addition to doing a better job minding the store, we should do as the Chinese government so often demands: treat China equally. When Chinese spies are identified, they should be treated as we treat spies from any other country. If their actions call for expulsion, expel them. If their actions justify arrest, arrest them.

Human Rights

Those who have argued for a China policy of engagement have sometimes oversold the likelihood that a larger stake in good bilateral relations will lead Beijing to go easy on those who challenge the Communist Party’s authoritarian rule. We now seem to be entering a phase of disillusionment with engagement, in part, because dense networks of interaction between China and the U.S. have not prevented Beijing from maintaining tight controls over religious freedom in Tibet and over independent Christians elsewhere, or from once again undertaking a harsh crackdown on incipient efforts to form an independent political party and an independent labor movement. Such developments do not demonstrate so much the failure of engagement, as they highlight its limits. These limits reflect a reality that is obscured when observers casually use the label “reform” to refer to virtually all the policy changes introduced since China abandoned radical Maoism. In fact when we engage China at the end of the twentieth century we engage a country run by a regime that since 1979 has embraced an economic revolution while steadfastly fighting any signs of a political revolution.

After Mao’s death, Deng and his associates may have planned on merely reforming the socialist economy in order to save it. Two decades on the unintended result has been the de facto abandonment of the old system and the embrace of a capitalist market economy. The legacies of socialist planning are now viewed as remnant problems yet to be solved. In the political sphere, the communist leaders have also used the rhetoric of reform. Here, however, the regime has not wavered from its determination that proposed changes must not forfeit the core value of the political system — the unchallenged leading role of the Chinese Communist Party. As a result, the pragmatism that characterizes Economic policy does not prevail in politics.

When de facto privatization is proposed in agriculture, commerce, industry, or banking, the debate can be decided based on results — black cat, white cat as long as it catches mice, it’s a good cat. In politics, upholding unshakable party control rules out certain means. Although the CCP understands the threat corruption poses, it refuses to consider the three most reliable means for checking corruption — a free press, truly competitive elections, and an independent judiciary. Instead, Beijing haltingly calls for more accurate reporting, fairer local elections, and less political meddling in the courts, none of which results because all realize that the CCP is still running the show and will brook no serious challenge. When religious dissidents raise their voices, or political dissidents try to form an independent political party, or labor activists try to form an autonomous union, the question is not whether, but when the CCP will crack down. The leaders in Beijing are well aware of what happened in the countries of the former Soviet empire, and know that the decision to permit free association will be a signal that political revolution is on the way. This is not a choice one should expect them to make willingly or soon, especially inasmuch as personal anxiety is buttressed by a conviction that the public interest in economic growth requires the stability party control provides. A realistic expectation, then, is that as long as coercive capabilities permit, the CCP will do what it takes to hold the line against fundamental political change. Institutional and self-interest make it unlikely that the leaders in Beijing will budge from this “life and death” political position at home in order to enjoy the benefits of engagement (or, for that matter, to avoid the costs of containment).

So how can the U.S. deal with these bleak prospects for meaningful political reform in China? The best, if somewhat unsatisfactory, answer may be patience and firmness-two qualities once associated with Cold War containment of the Soviet Union, but that can as easily serve contemporary engagement with China. Developments within China are already giving rise to demands for political reform that will only grow with time. Most observers recognize that generational change in China threatens the party’s position. Even within the party, there is an inverse relationship between seniority and support for genuine political reform, though there is no consensus on what would best replace the current system. Economic change (as the ranks of self- interested actors outside the withering state sector expand) and interaction with the outside world (through exchanges and increasingly the virtual exchanges electronic media afford) inexorably erode the viability and legitimacy of the CCP’s claims to monopoly power. Patiently employed, engagement is an approach well designed to promote the sorts of changes in the long term that it cannot produce in the short term.

But if patience is necessary, so is firmness. On human rights issues, part of engagement must be the freedom to speak out when there are egregious violations. Indeed, when Presidents Clinton and Jiang explained the Sino-American “strategic partnership,” they asserted that they would not allow disagreements over secondary matters to undermine the overall relationship. This implied that disagreements would continue, and that each side reserved the right to criticize the other. A Sino-American relationship in which both parties have invested so heavily is not going to collapse if an American president stands up and speaks out when Chinese courts impose wildly excessive penalties on dissidents. Beijing is free to respond, and explain exactly what laws were violated and to try to muster credible evidence of alleged criminal activity. The bully pulpit is less effective internationally than at home, but no important US foreign policy is sustainable at home if it completely abandons ties to our fundamental beliefs and principles. And, it should be added, given the nature of our political system, the Chinese leadership knows that presidential tolerance is constrained by the separation of powers. China’s domestic political excesses risk triggering not only rhetorical condemnation, but Congressional pressure for changes in U.S. policy on matters Beijing cares about, including trade, Taiwan, and now TMD. Such linkage need not be an explicit part of U.S. policy for it to enter Beijing’s calculations. U.S. strategic and economic interests in maintaining ties to China make explicit linkage impractical, or at least very difficult (as the history of the MFN issue demonstrates). U.S. political realities, however make tacit linkage unavoidable.

The age of bipolarity may have ended, but a Sino-American relationship plagued by its own long-standing bipolar disorder endures, swinging from a manic phase of eager anticipation and warm embrace, to a depressive phase of deep disappointment and fearful suspicion. Recognizing the complexity of the issues at stake in this important relationship and the need to reconcile preference and necessity are, as ever, the starting points for a realistic and sustainable policy.

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