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* Weekly Summary: China Treats the Bombing as a Sign of Contempt
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Summary
China's reaction to the bombing of the Belgrade Embassy is not disproportionate. China feels that the United States permitted the accident to happen because it was not obsessed with not letting it happen. Unlike Vietnam, where accidents like that were seen as the worst possible thing to happen, the U.S. did not take sufficient care in Belgrade. That is because the United States does not take China's possible responses seriously. China will spend the next few months teaching the United States and the region that treating China casually is a major mistake.
Analysis
The bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade has brought U.S.-Chinese relations to a new low. Indeed, these relations have been in free-fall for months and the rate is accelerating. The Chinese response to the bombing was reminiscent of the worst periods in U.S.-Chinese history. The American apology for the bombing was not disseminated by China's government-controlled press, which insisted on portraying the bombing as a deliberate act of aggression. Chinese mobs attacked the U.S. Embassy with stones while Chinese security forces stood by. Additional issues, ranging from charges of systematic Chinese espionage against America's most valuable nuclear secrets to serious trade and financial issues, have been ripping U.S.-Chinese relations to shreds. While Americans with vested interests in maintaining close relations with China were working overtime to put the relationship back on track, events and fundamental divergences of interests were systematically tearing them apart. From our point of view, the breach cannot be healed in anywhere short of several years.
The bombing of the Chinese embassy infuriated China because it struck at the heart of China's tension with the United States. From the Chinese point of view, the United States is simply too powerful. The asymmetry of U.S.-Chinese relations, always present in the military and political areas, has now extended itself to the economic sphere. China used to be able to sit at the table with the United States as equals, at least in the sense that Americans were as eager to do business with the Chinese as the Chinese were to do business with the Americans. Indeed, since other countries were courting China, the advantage might even have been to China. That is no longer the case. China is weaker than the United States in every sense.
The bombing of the Embassy drives home the point. It may well have been an accident, but if it was, it was an accident that the United States should have been terrified to make. During all of the Vietnam war, the United States was scrupulously careful not to hit Soviet and Chinese facilities and ships. In Yugoslavia, the United States was not obsessed in any way with avoiding hitting the Embassy. The accident would not have happened if the United States were as concerned about China as it had been during the Vietnam War. Thus, the U.S. and NATO claim that the bombing was an accident was precisely what infuriated the Chinese.
For China, the highest priority in its foreign policy is to make the United States too frightened of potential Chinese responses to let accidents like that happen again. Put differently, China's primary interest now is to repair the asymmetry that has developed in the international system. The strategic foundation of that strategy is China's alliance with Russia. A secondary element in that strategy is to create a sense of unease around China's periphery that compels regional powers, from Japan to Thailand, to think carefully about how their actions will affect China and how China might respond. A tertiary element is to create substantial crises, as friction occurs, in order to condition the United States and other Asian countries to exercise extreme caution in dealing with China.
The key to this strategy is linkage. China does not have the ability to influence events in Kosovo nor does it have fundamental national interests involved in Kosovo. What it can and will do, is to link events in Kosovo to matters in which it does have fundamental interests and where it can bring direct pressures to bear on American interests. In our Global Intelligence Update Weekly Analysis (May 10), you will find a discussion of the unfolding Indonesian crisis and its potential affect on U.S.-Chinese relations. China's willingness to cooperate with the United States and others in stabilizing Indonesia will be limited. In fact, we expect that China will act to exacerbate the crisis.
That is a major area of linkage. Minor areas of linkage, that will affect business deals, bilateral economic agreements, seemingly unconnected scientific cooperation, educational and cultural accords, the visits of individual scholars, and literally all phases of international relations, will permeate Chinese behavior. China will not necessarily be looking for subservience in its bilateral relations. However, it will be looking for two things. First, that the people it is dealing with are not themselves completely subservient to, or dependent on, the United States. Second, it will be watching carefully for signs that the people it is dealing with are sensitive to Chinese needs and interests.
Put simply, China is now looking for respect from the United States and others. This is not a search for self- esteem or some odd, collective psychological need. The Chinese are doing fine in that department. What we mean by respect is that they now understand that unless they are seen as a major global power, or at least as an extraordinarily important and powerful regional power, the United States, or any other country, will not automatically take their interests into account. Their fundamental national interests will be irrevocably harmed.
They also understand that in order to get respect, they will have to do more than demand it. China knows that it will have to be able to demonstrate, on a consistent basis, that without Chinese cooperation, solutions to major international military, political, and economic issues are impossible. China has been seeking admission to the World Trade Organization and will now have to demonstrate that unless China is part of the WTO, its ability to disrupt international economic activity will be very costly to other nations. China was not consulted on NATO's attack on Kosovo. China will now seek to demonstrate that NATO will have to consult it, not as a moral matter, but in order to reach a resolution to the problem. In other words, on a host of issues China is going to have to prove that it has the power to disrupt the international system at will and that, therefore, other powers have no choice but to take China into account in planning their actions.
China, by itself, has only a limited ability to gain traction. It is the relationship with Russia that allows both nations to reach critical mass. Therefore, we should expect two things. First, Russia and China will be intensifying consultations in the coming weeks and months, seeking to define the operational modalities that will link them. Second, doing business with China in the coming months will be much more difficult, particularly for those known to have extremely close ties to the United States or the United Kingdom. China is going to be willing to pay an economic price to redefine its politico-military relations with the rest of the world. At the same time it will be prepared to be far more assertive politically and militarily in the region than it has been thus far.
We expect economic relations with China to become much more difficult in the months to come.
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