Why our hardliners are wrong.

• Author: Ross, Robert S.
• Position: Detractors of US-Russia policy

Critics of U.S. China policy have been enjoying unprecedented attention lately. Between those who want to get tough with China and those who want to be more accommodating, the Clinton administration's second-term project to consolidate and expand cooperative Sino-U.S. relations has been vastly complicated. Advocates of nearly every stripe have had a hand in distorting China's impact on American interests and Washington's policy record since the late 1980s, which, despite its bad press, has had important successes. Character assassination has been so rampant and policy critiques so politicized that the normal rules of evidence used to evaluate a serious, complicated set of policy choices have been among the first casualties. Lost, too, in many cases, has been any sense of the geopolitics of the problem - that cool-headed assessment of capabilities and motives that ought to be our first task, not an emotionally exhausted afterthought.

Particularly egregious have been many of the claims of those neo-cold warriors in their efforts to persuade Americans to abandon engagement and follow a policy of "containing" the "China threat." As an example of the hostile hyperbole that has become quite common, consider this statement of June 9 from the Washington-based William J. Casey Institute of the Center for Security Policy: "The nature of the threat posed by China is in key respects of a greater magnitude and vastly greater complexity than that mounted by the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War." It is a rousing statement, to be sure, but by no reasonable or objective measure is it even remotely true.

If we step back and evaluate the issues fairly, two truths come clear: China is not a "rogue state", and U.S. policy has made important gains in affecting Chinese behavior over a wide range of issues bearing on important American interests. Both points may be demonstrated by looking at military and economic dimensions of the bilateral relationship, as well as at the heated debate over China's human rights practices.

Security Conflicts and Accommodations

The most serious Chinese challenge to the United States is its potential military power. The Chinese economy is growing and Beijing's ability to increase defense spending is growing with it. But advocates of containing China vastly overestimate Chinese power and underestimate our own.

A larger Chinese economy will not necessarily lead to greater military power. China can import weaponry, but sustained improvement in military capabilities will require indigenous defense modernization. China still cannot manufacture a reliable 1970s-generation fighter plane, much less anything like a U.S. F-16. The need of the People's Liberation Army to import Russian equipment is telling. Buying from Russia is a quick and relatively inexpensive way for China to equip its forces with materiel far superior to indigenous products. But this should not be particularly upsetting to U.S. planners, whose forte is the destruction of Soviet equipment with remarkable speed and skill. Moreover, China lacks the basic ability to maintain Russian equipment. It now requires extensive Russian assistance to repair many of its recently acquired SU-27s and its Kilo submarines.

China has developed a limited number of more modern destroyers, but it is decades away from being able to manufacture and deploy a first-generation, limited capability aircraft carrier. The PLA lacks the ability to conduct sustained military operations more than 100 miles from the Chinese shoreline. China is a formidable land power, but in maritime Southeast Asia, where U.S. interests are most at stake, China is militarily inferior even to such countries as Singapore and Malaysia.

In the end, China may succeed in modernizing its military. But it may fail, too - economic and technological modernization is a precarious enterprise. As an export processing zone for the advanced industrial countries, China has succeeded in raising living standards and its GNP, but this is a far cry from developing the economic and technological capabilities to field a twenty-first century military force.

U.S. military supremacy is so overwhelming that Washington has the luxury of being able to observe Chinese technology development and weapons production before adopting countervailing policies. As Secretary of Defense William Cohen recently observed, Washington has global superiority in every phase of warfare, and while China is trying to catch up, the United States is not standing still. Not only is the U.S. defense budget greater than the combined defense budgets of the next six largest competitors, but U.S. technology and weapons modernization are advancing so rapidly that, in all probability, with each passing day and despite its strenuous efforts, China's technological and military capabilities are losing ground rather than catching up with those of the United States.

Politically, too, the American alliance system in Asia is superior to anything the Chinese can hope to have. Logistically, the U.S. alliance with Japan and its access to basing facilities throughout the region give the United States an enormous advantage. Diplomatically, China is increasingly viewed in the region as a problem to be managed, while the United States is seen as a relatively disinterested power-broker whose aims are compatible with regional peace and prosperity for all. A potential Chinese alliance with Burma can hardly offset the U.S. relationship with Japan, South Korea, Australia, and the maritime states of Southeast Asia (including, still, the Philippines). With such logistical and diplomatic superiority to bring to bear, current U.S. defense spending and weapons acquisitions are already more than sufficient to hedge against China's potential development of advanced military capabilities.

It is true, nevertheless, that despite China's limited military capabilities the PLA can use force effectively and is not shy to do so. The PLA has been part of every major crisis in East Asia since 1949. It has the ability to disrupt regional stability and inflict considerable costs on U.S. interests. Clearly, the most serious security conflict in U.S.-China relations remains the Taiwan issue, and it is in principle unresolvable. Beijing wants unification under PRC role and reserves the right to use force to bring it about. The United States insists on Taiwan's right to make its choices free from military pressure.

Even if the Taiwan issue is intractable in principle, it can be managed so that U.S.-China conflicts of interest do not disrupt cooperative relations; this has clearly been the U.S. experience from the early 1970s to the early 1990s. U.S. policy has guaranteed Taiwan's security and, as important, has provided an environment in which Taiwan developed a prosperous economy and a flourishing democracy. These successes form the bedrock of Taiwan's diplomatic autonomy, and the only concession Washington had to make to help Taiwan achieve them was to refrain from actions that could be interpreted as support for formal Taiwanese independence.

Equally important, Washington's multifaceted assistance to Taiwan did not make improved relations with China impossible. Diplomatically, what seemed a zero-sum game between Taiwan and the mainland turned out not to be zero-sum at all for American policy. The main reason for this was China's strong desire to cooperate with the United States against the Soviet Union, but it was not the only reason. Mutually beneficial economic relations and cooperation in maintaining regional stability on a wide range of issues were also important, and they remain so despite the fact that the Soviet Union is no longer there as a common enemy. Indeed, a good deal less has changed than is often assumed. China today no less than before wants to avoid heightened U.S.-China adversarial relations, much less a literal fight with the United States over Taiwan. That being so, Washington can continue to protect Taiwan's most vital interests - security from mainland power and continued economic and political development - and avoid great power conflict and escalation...