President Bill Clinton has been treading on egg shells in Asia. In Japan he has called for a greater role for Japan in security beyond Japan’s borders. He meant not only a greater role for Japan in countering low-level threats like terrorism but also in continuing with US bases in Japan to maintain the strategic balance in the area. He said that if the bases were to go, it would allow North Korea to upset the balance. When he cited North Korea upsetting the balance, there was a clear implication that he meant China as well. Japan has agreed, putting aside the popular dissent against US bases, particular in Okinawa where a teenager was raped by three US servicemen. Japan signed a new security arrangement called “”an Alliance of the 21st Century”. It leaves the level of US troops in Japan at 47,000 and acknowledges that the US should keep about 100,000 troops in the Asia-Pacific region … presumably to contain China. China, of course, does not like the implication.
In the meantime, Mr Clinton’s Secretary of State, Warren Christopher, has been looking at China in a different light. He has been coaxing China to become an agent of peace in the region. He wants China to join four-party talks on a Korean peace agreement. The other three parties would be North and South Korea and the United States. Mr Christopher has used a stopover in the Netherlands to meet the Chinese Foreign Minister, Qian Qichen, to persuade him to help set up the talks.
And in another development, the US Administration is working out what to do about China’s sale to Pakistan of material that might be used in a nuclear-weapons program. The sale should, under US law, have caused trade penalties to be imposed on China and the forfeiture of $US650 million paid in advance by Pakistan for the purchase of military aircraft and other military equipment. The administration has persuaded Congress not to impose penalties on either nation. The US Export-Import Bank has approved a guarantee for a loan for the purchase by China’s Yunnan Airlines of three Boeing jetliners.
And so, in the space of a week, the US has treated China in three different ways for three different reasons. At once China is a military threat which the US requires Japanese help to contain, an important peace-broking partner in an attempt to get more stability on the Korean peninsula, and a trading customer so important that a blind eye is turned to underhand dealing that threatens nuclear non-proliferation.
Consistency is sacrificed to diversity of interest. The Chinese must be very puzzled. What are they to make of this array of attitudes.
It could be argued that the policies arise from fear and greed tempered slightly by a concern for the pursuit of democracy and world peace. The US wants to trade with China whose markets present some of the best new economic opportunities in the world. It is troubled by China’s human-rights record, but does not want to make too much noise, lest trade be affected. It is troubled by getting its troops engaged in conflict in Asia and wants greater security in Korea.
The trouble is that by sending such mixed messages to China, China must feel there is no need to change its conduct. It can continue to sponsor the manic regime in North Korea; it can continue to sell nuclear parts to smaller nations and it need not do much about internal human rights.