|
|
Potomac Crossings
--By George Mason
|
The Ides of March.com
Opposition candidate Chen Shui-bian and his running mate, Annette Lu, a leading feminist, won a three-way race
in which 76 % of Taiwanese voters rejected the Kuomingtang Party which had been in power for 50 years. Both president
and vice-president elects have served jail time for opposition activities in the past. Now that's news.
While the March 18th election was in Taiwan, the voting results may have even a greater influence on the future
of China itself. China's blatant interference in the Taiwanese election sparked a backlash here as well as in Taiwan.
That creates a campaign issue. The Clinton Doctrine of stripping Taiwan of its international legitimacy, keeping
it militarily weak yet pledging to defend it in unspecified ways is a formula for unintended war.
There are also elements in China who would be pleased to see reform-weakening WTO delays and even more pleased
to blame it on the United States. Furthermore, Taiwan is scheduled for WTO membership only after China has been
accepted. So, delays for China block WTO for Taiwan.
The election year battle in Congress involves deciding what is the appropriate level of defense for Taiwan (TSEA
legislation) and whether or not to grant Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to China. PNTR would provide a
clearer path to China's membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO). Chinese aggression towards Taiwan, on
the other hand, could provoke advanced military aid to Taiwan and tip the scales against PNTR status for Beijing
by creating left-right voting coalitions in the U.S. House of Representatives strong enough to overcome centrist
business and administration pressures. Current thinking is that PNTR will be approved with conditions rather than
rejected. The WTO vote can be put off until after China and the EU have finished their negotiations, safely beyond
the elections. The one really in a hurry is President Clinton, looking for a star in his crown.
There is a Brer Rabbit and the Briar Patch quality to the debate that calls for a most sophisticated reading of
unfolding events. The Stratfor Global Intelligence Update suggests why. In the battle for control of China, they
report, the reformers are losing ground to the reactionaries, led by Li Peng. Just one example, if China is included
in the WTO and thereby opens its markets to agricultural products, 400 million of its 1.2 billion citizens may
prosper but 800 million inefficient peasant farmers may suffer from reduced market prices. Delay in implementing
WTO a year or two could be seen as favorable to the agricultural peasants of the interior and a blow to the modern
economy of the coast. Closed markets equal tariff barriers protecting inefficient food production. That's a bonus
for the reactionaries.
The central issue through Chinese history has been stability. What can hold this vast and different land together
as a nation? Maoist communism could not. The Deng Xiaoping policy of permitting some marketplace activity without
political freedom has not provided universal progress. At first, the Deng strategies worked, producing vast regional
economic growth fueled by international capital and technology. Since 1997, however, China has experienced a severely
deteriorating economy with enormous social costs and splits between the poor interior and the prosperous coastal
regions. Today's China has no central belief system such as Communism left. It's all about retaining rank and position
and preserving privilege.
Some experts have suggested that the cling to power question for the aging and corrrupt leaders of China is how
and when to make an exit, not if. Many have sent their money and the next generation of their family overseas to
prepare for the exodus. When it comes time to shoot it out, says correspondent Jim Hoagland; the bosses want the
option to run. The fear of being swamped shapes their current erratic behavior. From March 18th to May 20th, the
young, educated and Internet literate portion of the population will see with their own eyes people of Chinese
culture voting for change and installing an opposition party in power without a military coup. It's a message that
the violent Marxist dictatorship cannot suppress. It's a message the Internet is poised to deliver.
Mainland Chinese will want the same rights they see in Taiwan. Even without entry into the WTO, the number of Chinese
connected to the Internet has grown from 640,000 to a projected 27 million by 2001. The government has established
a state security ministry devoted to tracking dissidents on-line. A software entrepreneur, Lin Hai, was sentenced
to two years in jail for providing 30,000 Chinese E-mail addresses to a U.S.-based magazine that supported reform
in China. These efforts will prove futile. There are plans, funded by Dutch electronics giant Philips, to bring
a billion Chinese users online through their television sets.
Two Camps
The reformers, led by Premier Zhu Rongji, say extend economic reforms, push on. They argue that China needs sufficient
foreign capital investment to create 20 million new jobs annually. The corrupt state-run sector does not generate
but rather consumes capital. Every three dollars of capital that the state enterprises use, produces just two dollars
worth of economic activity. With that performance, the state falls further behind and fails to create the new jobs
needed to accommodate a growing population. Since most Chinese business is owned and operated by the military,
the more foreign capital that can be attracted for business, the more local capital there is to fund an expanded
military presence. Therefore, the government needs to play in the global market. The sheer size of the population
requires a seven- percent or greater growth just to stay even.
In addition, China needs a successful economy because it has a huge aging problem. There are already about 126
million Chinese citizens over 60. That is equivelent to the entire population of Japan and the largest national
elderly cohort in the world. The number is projected to grow to 300 million by 2030 and 400 million by 2045. The
Falun Gong spiritual movement has promised better health for retirees struggling with rising health costs and missed
pension payments. That has been one of the main reasons for its growth and perhaps one of the reasons the government
has officially suppressed it.
The reactionaries, under Li Peng, are calling for a return to the traditional, centralized and oppressive Marxist-Leninism
that China experienced prior to Tiananmen Square in 1989. According to the recently released study The Black Book
of Communism, Asian Marxist regimes produced the deaths of 65 million Chinese in addition to economic chaos. (Adolph
Hitler, considered the essence of evil, killed 25 million.)
For the moment, President Jiang Zemin protects his personal power and his Communist legacy by veering away from
reform and backing the reactionary's idea that China can achieve great power status through heightened nationalism
build on confrontation, rather than cooperation, with the United States.
Having gotten Hong Kong and Macau through negotiations with colonial powers, without regard for the will of the
people, the Chinese seem to think that they can do the same with Taiwan. President Jiang Zemin has stated that
reunification of the motherland will be his Communist legacy. The effect of that statement is to put an absolute
time limit for the completion of reunification by the 17th Communist Party Congress in 2007.
In the meantime, Taiwan is a thorn in the side of China and a reproach to the Communist regime. Since 1987, Taiwan
has transformed itself into a vibrant free market democracy. Linda Jakobson, a China scholar, concludes that the
Taiwanese have proven that claims Western democracy is incompatible with Chinese cultural heritage have proven
hollow and self-serving to the Asian authoritarian leadership. For the first time in 5,000 years there was an election
on Chinese soil in 1996 and it was followed by another election in 2000 in which a new Taiwan government from the
opposition party will take peaceful control without violence from the current corrupt regime.
The Taiwanese enjoy freedom of speech, religion, press and elections. Taiwan's 22 million people are four times
wealthier per capita than their 1.2 billion mainland counterparts and produce a GDP one-third the size of all China.
More than 40,000 Taiwanese enterprises operate in China. Their total investments exceed $40 billion. Some 200,000
Taiwanese live in China and nearly two million visit each year. Annual two-way trade exceeds $25 billion, $319
million in January alone. Taiwan has the third or fourth largest capital reserves in the world. By every standard
of nation building trumpeted in the West, they have succeeded and deserve honor for their efforts.
To be blunt, however, the United States foreign policy elite does not consider Taiwan and its accomplishments sufficiently
important to risk nuclear war. Never mind Europe. China knows this. Marxist trained, the leadership also believes
that capitalists will gladly make the rope with which they will be hanged. They constantly pressure American business
for support by both sticks and carrots. China is America's number 4 trading partner. According to 1998 figures,
the U.S. imported $71 billion from China and exported $14 billion to them. That level of activity makes China the
13th largest U.S. market. Revoking PNTR would raise the average tariff rates on Chinese goods from about 4 percent
to more than 40 percent. If the Business Roundtable in America lusts after this market, so do their counterparts
in Taiwan. Neither have much regard for the notion that it is their money that enriches Beijing, giving it the
military resources to invade Taiwan within the next decade.
China is offering market access and tariff reduction to win support for WTO membership. Industrial tariffs would
be reduced from an average of 21% to 17% and agricultural duties to less than 15%. Export subsidies of China's
agricultural commodities would end. Telecommunications companies and financial service institutions would operate
under considerably more liberal rules about foreign ownership. The Clinton administration, however, has proposed
highly protectionist managed trade provisions that would last for the next 12 years and unfavorable anti-dumping
regulation definitions for 15 years.
The Search for Strength
In addition to pressure on Taiwan, China seeks to reduce American influence in the world by a series of strategic
agreements with Russia that would provide an overland oil supply as well as more secure borders. China will attend
a security conference in September including Russia, Kyrgzstan, Kazakstan and Tajikstan. China's oil demands outpace
supply, it lacks reliable sources of foreign oil and it has no strategic crude reserves. Two pipelines are being
discussed. One is through Russia and the other through Kazakstan. Were China forced to import oil by sea, its lack
of a green water navy would prove crucial. China cannot achieve its strategic goals without expanding its forces.
War machines run on petroleum. It cannot expand its forces without a stable oil supply.
It is believed that China has deeply penetrated the Taiwanese military with its spy network; to the point where
it not only knows about Taiwan's military assets it also knows what Taiwan knows about China's assets. As a consequence,
the Chinese military command has developed a strategy to force the capitulation of Taiwan without an invasion.
As reported by Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Pentagon Analyst Mark Stokes anticipates
that China could achieve air superiority over a paralyzed Taiwan within 45 minutes with minimal to no casualties.
A massive, surprise coordinated air strike employing hundreds of short-range, but currently inaccurate, ballistic
missiles could cripple Taiwan's air defenses and early warning systems, destroy its command, control and communications
centers and demolish all eight primary airports as well as all naval stations.
The Taiwanese, according to Chinese military doctrine, would then be forced to sue for peace before help could
arrive. The U.S, military has no capability and no plans to defend Taiwan in such a scenario. The Chinese believe
that the U.S. military will arrive too late to defend Taiwan and U.S. political leaders will not risk nuclear attack
on the United States to retaliate against a fait accompli. They do not believe that the American people will take
casualties to defend Taiwan. In their mind, American timidity in combat makes the 30 Chinese intercontinental ballistic
missiles trump America's 7,800 missiles.
In 1995, Stokes says, China had deployed 40 M-9 class missiles across the strait from Taiwan. By 1999, it had 200
and was increasing its stockpile at a rate of 50 per year. The Pentagon estimates that China may have 800 missiles
aimed at Taiwan by 2005. China's acquisition by both theft and purchase from American corporations of U.S. guidance
technology will make these missiles highly accurate in the future. Spy networks and short to medium range missiles
are the strategic advantages possessed by the Chinese military.
Pentagon briefings this week noted the construction of two new surface-to-air missile bases at Longtian, near the
city of Fuzhou. Several hundred short-range offensive missiles of the CSS-6 and CSS-7 class are capable of knocking
out Taiwan's military bases with little or no warning. Additional S-300 class missiles are being set up near the
coastal cities of Xiamen and Shantou. The S-300 system provides protection for the offensive 600 and 700 series.
It is an upgrade by a factor of two from the existing SA-2 missiles, adding range, speed and payload. The new system
can also be used to attack U.S. sea-launched cruise missiles and aircraft. The S-300, also known as the SA-10,
is Russia's most modern high-speed anti-aircraft weapons system. These fresh Chinese developments put the Clinton
administration in possible violation of the existing Taiwan Relations Act, which provides that the United States
will sell sufficient defensive arms to Taiwan to assure adequate defensive capability. Administration officials
oppose advanced sales to Taiwan and President Clinton has threatened a veto if Congress authorizes advanced weapons
sales.
America Has A Voice
In a Presidential year, it remains to be seen if Congress will decide if trade liberalization will pry loose the
grip of the Communist Party on China. After all, our allies have advanced the same trade liberalization argument
about Cuba over the last decade and Castro is worse than ever, according to a just released State Department report.
Can the United States move China in the direction of the global markets and their international norms and rules?
After all, the current regime believes that lying to an enemy is ethical behavior. Will China actually clear the
way for Taiwan to enjoy the benefits of WTO membership? The administration has stalled in the Senate the Taiwan
Security Enhancement Act (TSEA). In the meantime, will the U.S. offer immediate missile defense support to Taiwan?
The more time passes the greater the penetration in China of the digital world. Is 6-7 years enough time for TheFuture.com
to make a significant difference within China's governing elite?
These questions are not the usual political drivel but the real thing.
The majority of Taiwanese oppose both reunification and independence. Their legislature has already passed a bill
to reopen direct trade and postal links to the mainland. In the past decade they have forged a separate identity
that no one really expected.
We may still see that useful diplomatic ambiguity the "One China" policy. It means that Mainland China
can talk about "One China" that in their mind looks like Mainland China; and Taiwan can talk about "One
China" that in their mind looks like Taiwan. The ambiguity actually describes a One China that is a loose
confederation of states, similar to the United States at its beginning. After all, the preservation of the status
quo is independence for Taiwan.
Any U.S. solution seems to require offending Beijing now to avoid a war later. So far, the Clinton administration
seems incapable of that, threatening to veto TSEA and pressuring the new Taiwan government-elect to stand neutral
on passage of the bill. Taiwan needs to have pretty much the military hardware it has requested: four guided missile
destroyers equipped with the Aegis radar system to give early warnings and destroy incoming missiles. Even if the
sale is approved, the ships will not be deployed for five years. Taiwan must be included in the U.S. short-range
theater missile defense system (TMD) in the meantime. At the moment, the U.S. military conducts no joint exercises
with Taiwan, engages in no joint planning and cannot even communicate with the Taiwanese military in a crisis.
It has been a matter of Clinton policy not to offend Beijing. It's a policy that may well be an issue in the presidential
campaign.
The history of appeasement is that leaders tell their citizens that any effort to deter a future conflict is too
dangerous and provocative. The appeasement leaders attempt to get their citizens to believe that defenselessness
and a lack of preparation are not only safer but also a sign of maturity. And then, Robert Kagan concludes, the
war starts.
#####
| George Mason, 1725-92, was known as the Sage of Gunston Hall.
His Virginia declaration of rights, written in 1776, was the model for the first section of the Declaration of
Independence. A friend of Patrick Henry and Thomas Jefferson, Mason was an original drafter of the Constitution
and the first ten amendments to the Bill of Rights. He refused, however, to sign the final version of the Constitution
because he thought it did too little for individuals and, without the Bill of Rights, gave too much power to the
government.This column honors his memory. |
Back
to Inside Washington Archive || Current Inside Washington || Home
|
