SCMP Thursday, June 17, 1999
ANALYSIS
Fattening up China
JOE BARNES and AMY JAFFE
Two recent events - the revelation of Chinese
spying on America's nuclear programme and
the sharp Chinese response to Nato's
accidental bombing of their embassy in
Belgrade - have brought Washington-Beijing
relations to a new nadir.
The top leadership in both countries appears
committed to the maintenance of civil bilateral
ties. But the current tension has clearly played
into the hands of those on both sides of the
Pacific who have long believed that conflict
between the United States and China is
inevitable.
There is a real risk that today's recrimination
could spiral out of control. This would
certainly be the case if Washington, as some
have suggested, were to block Beijing's
membership in the World Trade Organisation
and revoke its Most Favoured Nation trading
status.
Either step would be foolish for a very simple
reason: China's continuing integration into the
world economy is in America's national
interest.
This has nothing to do with the economic
advantages that accrue to American consumers
by the availability of inexpensive Chinese
goods or to businessmen by access to Chinese
markets - though these advantages are no
doubt real. Nor does it depend on the idea,
plausible though it may be, that Chinese
economic liberalisation will in time lead to a
more democratic and co-operative regime in
Beijing.
The argument is much simpler: growing
Chinese integration raises - immensely - the
costs to Beijing of any conflict with the US.
And the reason is just as simple: the legitimacy
of the regime in Beijing - long since only
nominally Marxist - has become dependent on
creating higher living standards for its citizens.
This fact places real constraints on Beijing's
freedom of international action. For instance,
an attempted invasion of Taiwan, particularly
if contested by the US, would surely lead to a
disruption if not suspension of China's
international trade as well as a stampede of
foreign investors fleeing a war zone.
The result for the Chinese economy would
range from the severe to the catastrophic.
An attack on Taiwan, admittedly, may still
occur. The recent demonstrations in China
clearly indicate that nationalist sentiment
remains powerful. And there is no area where
Chinese nationalism is more fervent than
Taiwan. But, other things being equal, the
economic costs of a move against Taiwan
should decrease the likelihood of it occurring.
There is also an important new development in
China's economy: its growing dependence on
imported oil. Beijing's imports, driven by
economic growth, now run between 500,000
and 700,000 barrels per day. They could rise
to the two to four million range by 2010.
This state of affairs will make China more, not
less vulnerable, to US military action, given
America's control of international sea-lanes and
ability to project power into the Persian Gulf.
American critics argue - rightly - that
integrating China into the world economy will
provide Beijing the means to upgrade its
military capability. But that capability is
decades away from matching that of the US,
particularly in the naval and aviation spheres.
It is one thing to steal nuclear secrets and use
them, as Beijing appears to have done, to
upgrade a few dozen intercontinental ballistic
missiles. It is another thing altogether to create
the complex and expensive mix of specialised
vessels, advanced aircraft, state of the art
technology and highly trained personnel that
constitute a carrier task force.
Beijing need not, of course, match US
capabilities to play the role of a spoiler - by
disrupting sea-lanes in the South China Sea,
say, or fomenting disputes in the Persian Gulf.
But, increasingly, China can play such a role
only by damaging its own interests as well.
Whether Beijing likes it or not, China's
commitment to high-growth has created a
convergence of US and Chinese interests in the
Persian Gulf and elsewhere.
This is what sets China today apart from the
Soviet Union following World War II - and
what makes talk of a new Cold War both
inaccurate and alarmist.
Moscow, its legitimacy staked on ideological
purity and committed to a policy of economic
autarky within its own bloc, faced far fewer
constraints in confronting the US than China
does today. In particular, the Soviet Union as
an oil exporter actually stood to gain by
conflict in the Persian Gulf; the opposite holds
true for China today and even more so in the
future.
At a more fundamental level, Moscow sought
power by attempting to create an alternate
international system to the one the US
dominated; China, in contrast, is trying to
succeed within that system.
For Americans, the consequences of this state
of affairs are clear: a richer China is, ironically,
a more compliant China, if only because it is
more vulnerable. And the surest road to
Chinese prosperity is through closer integration
in the world economy.
Neither the recent spy scandal nor the fallout
from America's tragic mistake in Belgrade
should blind the US to this truth.
Joe Barnes is a US foreign policy analyst and
Amy Jaffe, the senior energy analyst at the
James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy
of Rice University.