U.S.-China relations seem more strained than any time since Richard Nixon and Zhou Enlai signed the Shanghai Communiqué in 1972. China's ancient sense of superiority – which, during the last dynasty, led to decay and obscurantism in confronting the modern world – appears almost overnight to have been discovered once again. Clearly, the leaders as well as the people of the Middle Kingdom are feeling their oats.
But their geopolitical goals and strategies have not changed fundamentally despite their new wealth. Taiwan is the main question on which they're pushing the United States, but the dynamics of this issue are the most positive in decades.
China today is like a poor Chinese farmer who suddenly enjoys a modest windfall – not through a lottery but through hard work, savings and good investment. But he continues to adhere to his long-term plan to have his family become the wealthiest and most respected in the county. This will require decades, perhaps generations, of work and savings but also education and making use of his rivals when possible but realizing that, unless they're hostile, their individual prosperity can be mutually beneficial.
THE BUSH YEARS
The years of George W. Bush were strange ones in U.S.-China relations. When Mr. Bush first took office in 2001, his administration saw the prevention of China's rise to regional military parity with the U.S. – which, if attained, would give China the basis for a global challenge to America's assumed benevolent pre-eminence – as a critical security goal. After 9/11, Mr. Bush turned over political and economic relations with China to Colin Powell, his secretary of state, and like-minded senior trade officials. Their instruction was to retain good ties with China and keep the Taiwan/mainland issue under control.
But geopolitical strategy and defence procurement, deployment and targeting regarding China were all left in the hands of neo-conservative civilians in the Pentagon. Without specifically naming China, the National Security Doctrine of 2002 affirmed the policy of maintaining U.S. global pre-eminence if necessary, it implied, through pre-emptive war. Defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld repeatedly accused the Chinese of an unseemly increase in defence spending and a lack of transparency in its military expenditures. But the Chinese response to the bold implication that China was a long-term threat to the U.S. was restrained, as was their response to the Pentagon's reported plans for new U.S. naval and air deployments to Asia, as well as nuclear retargeting toward the region.
The rhetoric of the Bush administration, meanwhile, emphasized friendly relations. This extended especially to trade. The money flowing into the American economy was consumed in good part by America's spiralling consumption of Chinese goods. Wall-Mart became The Great Wall-Mart. The booming Chinese economy that resulted provided the foundation for a future Chinese arms race with America if that was their intention – which the Pentagon believed it was. But still, there was no program in China to build hundreds of intercontinental ballistic missiles to offset the huge U.S. advantage in this field and the new anti-missile system that the Bush administration had begun to deploy.
CHEN AND OBAMA
The election of Chen Shui-bian, an openly pro-independence candidate, as president of Taiwan strained relations across the strait. But this had little effect on U.S.-China affairs, as Bush officials were careful not to seem to be backing away from the U.S. commitment not to support or encourage Taiwanese independence. In 2003, in a rare rebuke, Mr. Bush publicly lambasted Mr. Chen for his provocative words on the issue. Still, large U.S. arms sales to Taiwan went ahead. The Chinese generally responded only rhetorically, and briefly.
When the Obama administration took office, it made it clear that it believed the best way to assure a positive Chinese role in the world was to treat the Middle Kingdom as a prospective partner, not as the No. 1 potential enemy. Yet, paradoxically, China chose to get tough with Barack Obama in ways it never did with Mr. Bush.
Senior Chinese officials insist that China will not raise the value of its currency, and scold the U.S. for asking. Having profited from U.S. prolificacy, Beijing now demands that Washington protect China's $2-trillion in investments in U.S. dollar instruments. And China has sternly admonished America for its $6.4-billion arms deal with Taiwan and for Mr. Obama's meeting with the Dalai Lama.
