Foreign Policy In Focus | Global Affairs Commentary | BBQ in Crawford: The Interregnum in U.S.-China Relations

Last week's Crawford summit between U.S. President George W. Bush and Chinese President Jiang Zemin was notable less for the major new policy initiatives (there were none), than the fact that it reflects a U.S.-China relationship that remains contested and contradictory despite the historically unprecedented numbers of meetings between the leaders of both countries.

It was Mr. Jiang's third meeting in 12 months with a president who had campaigned against the Clinton administration's efforts to forge a "strategic partnership" with China and instead regard it as a "strategic competitor." Ironically, it is under President Bush that the U.S.-China relationship has more elements of a partnership than did relations during the Clinton era. Security issues are the centerpiece of the U.S.-China relationship, a theme echoed by Jiang's speech at the George Bush Presidential Library at Texas A&M University. He promised to cooperate more closely with the United States, to maintain peace on the Korean Peninsula, South Asia, and the Middle East, and to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

The meeting was of greater importance to Mr. Jiang than it was to Mr. Bush, who is focused on the upcoming midterm elections as well as the war on terrorism, Iraq, and North Korea. For Jiang the meeting represented his final curtain call before the transition to the new generation of leaders, which will take place at the Party Congress in early November. (In fact, the initial reports of the leadership shuffle emerged while Jiang was en route to America.) Jiang will likely use the summit, and the fact that he is the first Chinese president to be hosted by a U.S. president at his home, as evidence of the important role he could play in maintaining good relations with the U.S. even after his "retirement." This can fuel his efforts to maintain influence in foreign affairs after the new leadership takes over.

The tone of this summit was much more positive than that of the last presidential meeting earlier this year. At that meeting Mr. Jiang failed to provide an export control regime for sensitive military technologies that Washington has been advocating for several years, while Mr. Bush pointedly declined to voice a commitment to abide by the three Sino-U.S. communiqués that shape the relationship with Taiwan in addition to the Taiwan Relations Act.

This time around the tone was a little different. In August China announced new export control regimes for missile and biological weapons technologies. Days later, the White House officially labeled the relatively obscure Eastern Turkestan Islamic Movement as a "terrorist organization," reinforcing China's efforts to label pro-independence Uighur activists in Xinjiang as terrorists. Earlier this month, the Chinese government freed Ngawang Sandrol, a Tibetan nun who had been imprisoned for nearly a decade for "counterrevolutionary" activities, including attending a non-violent Tibetan independence demonstration. Two high-level envoys of the Dalai Lama, including his brother, were permitted to visit Tibet for the first time in two decades. The State Department announced that a bilateral human rights dialogue would take place in Beijing in December. And several major commercial deals were announced in the days before the summit, highlighting the continuing importance--albeit secondary--of closer economic ties. The deals include:

Although both men raised almost ritualistic concerns over Taiwan at the summit--Mr. Bush voiced concerns about the continuing Chinese missile buildup across from Taiwan while Mr. Jiang raised the issue of increases in the quality and quantity of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan--Mr. Bush did reiterate the administration's support for the One China Policy "based on the three communiqués and the Taiwan Relations Act."

There has been a significant increase in intelligence and police cooperation since the September 11th attacks and initial agreement on a diplomatic approach to North Korea. But a number of outstanding issues remain unresolved. The major global issue involves Iraq, while Taiwan and nonproliferation remain key bilateral irritants. While human rights are routinely referred to, they clearly occupy a position well below security and economic issues in the Bush administration's hierarchy of priorities.

On Iraq, the Bush administration wants a United Nations resolution that contains the threat of military action unless Saddam Hussein disarms. China, Russia, and France are reluctant to endorse a resolution that authorizes the U.S. to use force and opposes any unilateral U.S. action. China has not publicly criticized the U.S.-British draft UN resolutions on Iraq, leaving it to France and Russia to craft an alternative. The question now is what kind of deal Mr Jiang could exact for Chinese acquiescence, as everyone expects Beijing to at least abstain from any vote.

In terms of proliferation, the Bush administration views the new export control regime as having at least one major flaw: China reserves the right to ship materials that were contracted before November 2000, the date of a U.S.-China moratorium on such sales. U.S. officials are pushing Beijing to scrap all such "grandfathered" deals. Absent steps on these issues, the U.S. is unlikely to lift the restrictions on dual-use exports or repeal the ban on the launch of U.S. commercial satellites from Chinese rockets.

The Bush administration claims that it desires a "constructive, co-operative, and candid" relationship with China. This clever alliteration disguises deeper contradictions in U.S. policy, however, between a group of hawks, (including members of Vice President Cheney's staff, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, and Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton) and engagement advocates led by Secretary of State Colin Powell.

Early in the administration, the hawks appeared ascendant, and their rhetoric considerably sharper than that of the Clinton administration. The Clintonesque pattern of engagement did prevail at key points, however, such as the resolution of the April 2001 imbroglio involving the PC-3 spy plane collision. And since the September 11th attacks, engagement appears to have won the battle for the public face of the Bush administration's policy toward China.

The hawks have not given up, however. In the wake of the spy plane incident, the Pentagon halted military ties and they have yet to return to pre-April 2001 levels (Lower-level exchanges are likely to increase, but only to discuss issues of common concern (e.g., North Korea, South Asia, terrorism) and not bilateral strategic issues). Rumsfeld remains the only major cabinet member not to have met with his Chinese counterpart.

Having apparently lost the intra-administration battle over how to conduct direct relations with China, the Pentagon has focused on upgrading relations with Taiwan and other allies in the region. In the midst of the spy plane negotiations in April 2001, the Bush administration approved the most generous arms package for Taiwan in a decade, including destroyers, anti-submarine planes, and diesel submarines. While Bush administration rhetoric with respect to Taiwan became less strident after the September 11th attacks, the Pentagon quietly continued to forge closer links between the U.S. and Taiwanese military establishments, which included a meeting between Wolfowitz and Taiwan's minister of defense in late 2001. Last month Taiwan's deputy defense minister visited the Pentagon in what was the highest-level reception given to an envoy from the island in 23 years, and the U.S. Congress designated Taiwan as a "non-NATO ally" despite the lack of formal relations between Washington and Taipei. Beijing was uncharacteristically quiet about these latest events, apparently focused on the leadership transition. It remains to be seen if the new leadership will be as accommodating.

The Crawford summit was not a watershed event in U.S.-China relations--it left many big questions about the future of bilateral relations unanswered and its impact on Jiang Zemin's career trajectory remains uncertain as well. But it reflects the interregnum that exists in U.S.-China relations--the post-Tiananmen era has ended but a new one has yet to be built.

(John Gershman <john@irc-online.org> is a senior analyst at the Interhemispheric Resource Center (online at www.irc-online.org) and the Asia/Pacific editor for Foreign Policy in Focus.)

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