[This article not online]
New York Press, September 1-7 1999
George Szamuely
The China Syndrome
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In July President Lee Teng-hui of Taiwan told a German journalist that relations between China and Taiwan would henceforth be on a "state to state basis." The Chinese knew this was no slip of the tongue. A few days earlier NATO had detached Kosovo from Serbia. The ostensible reason proffered was the supposed abuse of Albanian "human rights." What was the United States' response to Lee's remark? "We don't support Taiwan independence," lisped the State Dept.'s Jamie Rubin. Fine. But, Rubin continued, we "consider any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States." So Taiwan could declare independence, and if China used force, as any power is entitled to do when its sovereignty is challenged, the United States was ready to go to war. This is the same game the U.S. was playing in Yugoslavia. "We do not support independence for Kosovo," intoned the harridan of Foggy Bottom last October.
On the other hand, unless the Serbs "immediately end all military and police operations in Kosovo," they will be bombed. Today the KLA runs Kosovo. The Chinese are right to be concerned. Yugoslavia's forced disintegration could be in store for them as well.
A few weeks after Lee's comments, the United States and Japan signed an agreement to begin research on an antimissile defense system, known as theater missile defense (TMD). TMD is supposed to protect the U.S. and its allies from incoming ballistic missiles flying within an 1800-mile radius by detecting them with satellites and destroying them in flight with missiles. Who is being protected from what here? The U.S. says that the purpose of the system is to protect U.S. servicemen stationed in Asia. But why would someone attack soldiers with missiles after the Kosovo fiasco? After being attacked with missiles steadily for almost three months, the Yugoslav army suffered virtually no damage.
And who is to do this missile lobbing in Asia? Will it really be that mother of rogue states, North Korea? Yes! cry the lavishly funded foreign policy wonks in unison. But North Korea is extremely poor -- it is only just beginning to recover from several years of famine. They can't target anything with any accuracy. And what would North Korea get out of lobbing one missile or even two missiles? Since their point of origin would immediately be known, retaliation would be swift and devastating. In any case, if North Korea really is the threat, why has South Korea already opted out of the TMD scheme?
There is another reason why the "North Korea" explanation sounds implausible. The TMD project goes together with new U.S.-Japanese Security Guidelines. According to these, Japan will provide logistical support for U.S. military operations. This is new. For more than 50 years, at American insistence, Japan was committed to pacifism -- as required by Article IX of their constitution. Suddenly this has changed. Why? The Soviet Union -- a far more formidable adversary than North Korea -- was not threatening enough to cause any change in Japanese policy. And suddenly the North Korean peril is so dire that Japan must immediately step into the breach?
The Chinese do not buy this. They are sure that this U.S.-Japan military partnership is directed at them. The United States has already succeeded in exerting its hegemony over Europe by playing on Europe's innumerable ethnic conflicts. Now the United States is out to do the same in Asia. The goal is to break up the region's greatest superpower.
Chinese suspicions were hardly assuaged when little Jamie Rubin recently announced, "We do not preclude the possible sale of theater missile defense to Taiwan in the future." TMD would thus serve as a shield behind which Taiwan could make its bid for independence.
No wonder the Chinese were so upset about the bombing of Serbia! They must have recalled the way Yugoslavia disintegrated with the active encouragement of foreign powers. The West has the same incentive to do so to China.
They have made huge capital investments in China and fear for its safety. In the past, foreign investors found it much easier to deal with separate provinces or treaty ports in China. Would it not be in their interest to sponsor secessionist movements and dissolve China into the innumerable little statelets that now litter Southeastern Europe? These provinces could then become "safe havens" for international capital. Foreign investment could pour in unhindered; wages could be as low as possible; health and safety standards could be minimal; and profits, unlike the case today, would be easily repatriated.
How to you sponsor separatism? Just ask the Serbs. Since 1996, the Chinese have been fighting Muslim Uighur separatists in Xinjiang province in the west. They are also fighting an independence movement in Tibet. The Chinese have seen how easily Americans can switch from supporting Islam (in Bosnia) to supporting its repression (in Turkey).
Therefore, when a State Dept. Twerp like Assistant Secretary of State Harold Koh voiced his concern recently that in"Tibet and Xinjiang, the government . . . moved to suppress religious manifestations that advocate independence or any expression of 'separatism,'" the Chinese suspected something fishy. What country in the world does not suppress "manifestations" -- whatever they may be -- that advocate "independence or any expression of 'separatism?'"
Will the Uighurs of Xinjiang become tomorrow's Albanians -- oppressed victims as American clients? And what role will America's new Central Asian ally -- Uzbekistan -- play in all this?
Tibet is already something of an obsession in the United States. Buddhism became fashionable some years ago, and today Hollywood is happy to churn out anti-Chinese twaddle. To be sure, Chinese Communist treatment of Tibetan culture was brutal, but it was probably no worse than Communist treatment of Chinese culture as a whole. But Tibet has never existed as an independent state. Even during the years of the foreign encroachments upon China, the Europeans never questioned China's sovereignty over Tibet.
This could change soon. There is only one way China can avoid the fate of Yugoslavia. It has to stop Taiwan's drift toward independence. Threats alone will have no effect. Already the U.S. is putting it about that empty bluster is all the Chinese are capable of. China has to show its readiness to use force now. If they wait, Taiwan will slip away. Xinjiang, Tibet and other provinces will not be far behind. And that will be the end of China.