Facing Reality in China Policy

David Shambaugh

From Foreign Affairs, January/February 2001

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Summary:  China may be the most important country in America's future. Its power is undoubtedly on the rise, and Washington must give it due regard. U.S.-China relations have recently made great progress, particularly on trade-related issues. But the relationship is fraught with tensions that could explode into conflict at any time. The next administration needs to get China policy right, before disaster strikes.

David Shambaugh is Director of the China Policy Program and Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at the Elliott School of International Affairs of George Washington University. He is also a nonresident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. His newest book, Modernizing China's Military: Progress and Problems, will be published later this year by the University of California Press.

CHINA POLICY IN TRANSITION

The campaign is over and, although the rhetorical smoke about whether China is a strategic partner or competitor still lingers, the new U.S. administration must now craft and implement its policies toward China and Taiwan. The president's foreign policy and security team has to adjust itself to a number of pressing realities, so the White House should move with dispatch to process senior China and Asia appointments and begin systematic policy reviews. This group should focus on both the current U.S.-China agenda -- which includes some important issues that require immediate attention -- and the broader context of the U.S.-China relationship. First, the administration must handle some pressing issues.

THE IMMEDIATE AGENDA

The fragility and inherent dangers of the Taiwan situation command immediate attention. In April, the United States will have to make the next round of decisions on conventional arms sales to Taiwan. The decision, deferred last year, on whether to sell Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with sophisticated aegis battle-management systems and antimissile defenses will be particularly sensitive and has the potential to precipitate a diplomatic crisis with Beijing. The administration needs to be prepared for the fallout if it decides to proceed. U.S. policymakers will also face ongoing choices about helping Taiwan upgrade its military command-and-control infrastructure and potentially providing theater missile defenses (TMD) for the island.

Second, the need to jump-start a dialogue and build a sustainable framework of interaction between Beijing and Taipei is pressing. The current impasse between the two sides is fraught with danger -- it threatens U.S. interests (and potentially soldiers' lives), as well as broader peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

While not trying to mediate the intractable problem, the new administration should actively seek to bring the two sides to the bargaining table. This is not a problem amenable to easy solutions, and any resolution must be agreed on by both sides rather than imposed by either one. But Washington's considerable influence and leverage could help move the situation forward, if a careful mix of policy instruments is applied toward both sides.

Any official cross-strait dialogue must take the "one China" principle as its starting point. This principle, which holds that Taiwan is part of China, had been the accepted bottom line in Washington, Beijing, and Taipei until the 1990s, when the government of Taiwan progressively drifted away from that position. Even though in the eyes of all but a dozen or so countries Taiwan is not a sovereign nation-state, it does possess substantial international autonomy, and its democratic progress commands the world's respect. This autonomy must be turned from a negative into a positive factor and should serve as the basis for serious talks over forming a newly constituted Chinese nation-state.

The concept of confederation offers the best hope for an ultimate solution: it would bring the island back into the sovereign fold of China while guaranteeing substantial autonomy to Taiwan. Indeed, many intellectuals (and some officials) on both sides of the strait have ...

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