Robert A. Kapp
Cover by Benjamin Hurd
Let's not pretend that the key to stable relations between the United States and China is simply to emphasize the positives and sweep the negatives under the rug
It is time for the US and Chinese governments to institutionalize their joint crisis-management mechanisms and to start work, coolly and methodically, on the development of greater mutual confidence.
First we should ask: After such an endless series of incidents, offenses, annoyances, and frictions, should we just throw up our hands and conclude that the totality of US-China relations is equal to the sum of the irritations, and nothing more? Should we take at face value the chat-room effluent that filled our eyes and ears in the heat of the crisis and turn at last to the deadly business of having nothing civil to do with each other from here on out?
Of course not. Start with the familiar economic numbers: Last year two-way trade reached $125 billion. China was our fourth-ranked trade partner; the United States was China's number-two partner. Add the human dimensions: education, cultural exchange, and the flow of ideas and positive examples between two intensely engaged great nations. Toss in the darker challenges: global environmental concerns, human rights and poverty alleviation, international crime control, weapons proliferation, and the Korean peninsula--to name just a few. Neither country can escape the responsibility of addressing the dangers of miscommunication and outright alienation that rise and fall like the tides.
Next we should ask: Just how are our two countries supposed to climb out of the swamp of recrimination and distrust that gurgles around our feet when crises break into the open? How are we going to kick out the windows of this suffocating house? We know that thousands of people in both countries are ready at a moment's notice to declare the other guy outside the bounds of civilized behavior, and to score domestically at the other guy's expense. The question is, What are we going to do about it?
A Gordian knot-cutting answer does not present itself. Blaring demands for unilateral punishment of China are doomed to ineffectiveness--or worse, if a spiral of retaliation and counter-retaliation unfolds. Imperious Chinese demands that the United States display the "correct attitude" will be met here with contempt and hardening resentment.
Rose-colored glasses have no place here. The United States and China are locked in an embrace at once stimulating and unsettling. Neither country is internally monolithic; each grapples with constant domestic challenges, expressed through very different social, political, and ideological channels. As China becomes more economically and militarily significant its international economic relations intensify, and the two countries grind against one another more and more frequently. The resulting tensions seep into the domestic stresses of each polity. There is indeed much to be said for remembering the broad shared concerns that the two countries need to address and not dwelling solely on the differences between them. But it is useless to pretend that the key to stable relations between the United States and China is simply to emphasize the positive and sweep the negatives under the rug.
The positives, interestingly enough, will largely take care of themselves. As long as the negatives--the frictions, exasperations, resentments, and disillusionments--do not grow by default into a broad degradation of US-China relations, the economic, cultural, and humane components of this heavy engagement will thrive, to the benefit of both countries.
But surely we have learned over the last decade that failure to engage, anticipate, define, focus, plan, encourage, moderate, breathe deeply, reach out, signal, interpret properly, respect, and be clear--failures that can occur almost effortlessly--will serve our interests badly.
It is common for those in the United States who proclaim the inevitability of US-China confrontation to intone that American business either parrots the "Chinese line" or is blind to any considerations in regard to China except the pursuit of financial gain.
We will hear more of that in the months to come, as we work through another annual Normal Trade Relations debate; as a vaguely defined, new, congressionally appointed "US-China Security Review Commission" sets about unearthing the dangers that US business with China poses to America's security interests; and as events in China continue, seemingly without end, to affront the sensibilities of Americans, while American behavior toward China and the world continues to rub salt in seemingly untreatable Chinese wounds.
The media will, at the same time, course through the labyrinth of US-China relations like a conquering army, too often asking the wrong questions and not taking time to find the right answers. When some public figures flail, as they most certainly will, others will duck for cover. We've seen it a thousand times before. The scratch reflex in both the United States and China is very, very strong; the ticklish places, the itchiest sores are by now well known. Dragon-baiting and eagle-poking are, for some, easy and even profitable forms of entertainment, especially now that the bear-baiting market has all but evaporated.
Who will speak up for the larger, longer view? Who will speak of the consequences of passivity in the face of fraying support for a more productive US-China engagement? Who will provide the working skeleton and musculature of a more cooperative and beneficial US-China engagement?
Business will do a lot as part of its job. The convergence of business cultures, while still in its early stages, will be a major factor in the gradual growth of shared assumptions and work styles. But business cannot hold the ship on course alone. If the rest of this huge relationship is systematically bludgeoned to its knees by outbursts of smoldering resentments, cavalier insouciance, overheated rhetoric, and increasingly ugly popular hostility--in China as well as here at home--business will not be able to keep US-China relations intact.
Meanwhile, the rest of the world watches somberly. The effects of American-Chinese friction are theirs to suffer, but not theirs to eliminate.
With the Hainan incident receding into recent memory and another round of annual debate over Normal Trade Relations tariffs on Chinese imports looming in the United States, it is time for the US and Chinese governments to institutionalize their joint crisis-management mechanisms, and to start work, coolly and methodically, on the development of greater mutual confidence.
For if we don't move forward purposely--on trade and investment, as on so many other fronts--we might as well welcome a modified cold war right now. There has been progress, however laborious, on the trade and economic front. Let's get to work on the non-trade fronts as well, before the corrosion goes any deeper. Waiting around for the next emergency, to say nothing of fomenting it, is the height of folly.
And that goes for both of us.
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Michel Oksenberg Michel Oksenberg, known to his umpteen friends and colleagues as Mike, passed away in March. We miss him now, and we will miss him in the future. He was an extraordinarily influential figure in the field of modern and contemporary China studies, helping from an early point in his career to define the essential questions and offer the most creative interpretations for the understanding of Chinese domestic political processes and foreign policy making. His academic career took him to Columbia, Stanford, the East-West Center in Hawaii, and back to Stanford. Generations of graduate students were marked by his extraordinary devotion and his willingness to spend his own energies to ensure that they achieved the fullest realization of their talents. Public service beckoned to Mike during the Carter presidency, bringing him to the National Security Council and the fulcrum of the ultimately successful effort to normalize diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China. Mike Oksenberg was a gregarious and bubbling intellectual, brimming with ideas. He was also irrepressibly funny. My own numerous encounters with him provided me with some of the most unforgettably hilarious moments of my own working life. None of us in the China field can quite believe he is gone, at 62, and none of us will ever enjoy life quite as much without him. --Robert A. Kapp |
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