9/26/00 3:05 p.m.
Wanted: A China Strategy
Now that the trade issue is permanently resolved, it's time to focus.

By Brett Wagner, president of the California Center for Strategic Studies

ost amid all the trade talk and lofty rhetoric that dominated the congressional debate over extending permanent normal trade relations to China has been any serious discussion of the various social, economic, and political crises currently facing the Communist regime there. Now that the PNTR debate is finally behind us, maybe we can get down to the business of developing a realistic China strategy that takes all these things into account.

America's long-avowed strategy of "constructive engagement" with China implicitly seeks to undermine its Communist system by encouraging free trade, foreign investment, contractual law, uncensored Internet access, and various other forms of de facto democratic and capitalist subversion. Yet despite the obvious destabilizing effects inherent in such a strategy, U.S. policymakers seem oblivious to the possibility of any other outcome in China but a peaceful, gradual transformation toward a multi-party system and democratic rule. Even George W. Bush, a harsh critic of the Clinton administration's China policy, declared that "if we trade with China . . . you'll be surprised by how soon democracy will come."

Such a transformation is highly unlikely however. An authoritarian government without total authority is a contradiction in terms. Authoritarian leaders will go to brutal extremes to crush such dissent even before it starts. Nowhere is this more true than in China, where the Communist regime understands all too well that its only real claim to political legitimacy is repressive force.

That the Chinese Communist Party systematically harasses, tortures, and imprisons Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns — arguably the most peaceful, non-threatening people on Earth — leaves little doubt as to how the ruling elite defines and maintains its political legitimacy. The party has even gone so far as to imprison the six-year-old boy identified by the Dalai Lama as the new Panchen Lama, and then appoint another candidate in his place — while simultaneously condemning the belief of reincarnation upon which such a decision is supposed to be based. Almost five and a half years later, the original little boy remains in government custody, supposedly "for his own protection." But who is this action really designed to protect?

The fact is, the Chinese Communist Party is afraid of its own shadow, and not without good reason. For all practical purposes, the Deng Xiaoping/Jiang Zemin wing of the party jettisoned Communist ideology long ago in an intra-party struggle with the Mao Zedong wing, and now bases the party's legitimacy, at least rhetorically, on economic growth and a continually improving standard of living. Unfortunately for the ruling elite, however, most of the "easy fruit" has already been picked in the overheated economic expansion, and the nation now faces profound economic and social crises driven by an alarmingly long list of problems the Communist system has proven incapable of solving.

This growing list includes over a hundred million unemployed Chinese, with another hundred million jobs in jeopardy. Serious overmigration from the countryside to the cities is exacerbating an already critical shortage of available housing. A deeply troubled banking system is being pushed to the brink by tens of thousands of insolvent government-owned businesses and a dangerously inflated national currency. Meanwhile, all China's problems are compounded by rampant and institutionalized corruption that riddles both government and industry, inflaming public opinion toward the party.

Beyond all that, agricultural experts are predicting that the country will lose the ability to feed itself by 2035 and will become increasingly dependent on the West for food. Violence continues to mount in the restive Muslim provinces along the Western border, and organized student dissent is beginning to reemerge on the nation's campuses. And last, but not least, add to the mix a military establishment that swore after the Tiananmen Square Massacre that the "People's Army" would never again fire on the people.

All this makes Beijing very nervous. The ruling elite remembers well how close it came to losing power during those fateful weeks of 1989 when enormous crowds of pro-democracy demonstrators occupied Tiananmen Square, the symbolic center of China. When the tank brigades supporting the ruling elite finally arrived in Beijing and began moving toward the Square, local tank brigades sympathetic to the demonstrators squared off against them on opposing cloverleaves of a strategic thoroughfare. For several tense hours until the local tanks finally backed down, the People's Republic was a single shot away from civil war openly breaking out in the nation's capitol.

Beijing is obviously concerned about the possibility of similar events arising in China today, especially in light of the long list of problems cited above. For evidence one need look no further than the Communist Party's obsessive and intensifying efforts to crack down on everyone from the Falun Gong and the house church movement, to student organizations and Internet chat rooms. However, one does not have to agree with the Chinese leadership that massive civil disobedience could break out at any moment, in order to believe that U.S. strategists should begin developing various contingency plans just in case — that is, after all, what we pay them for. And lest we forget, China is both a nuclear power and home to one-fifth of the world's population. Hence, U.S. strategy should be taking very serious any meaningful potential for civil unrest there.

With the debate over China's trade status finally behind us, hopefully we can now begin developing a China strategy that prepares for more than just a best case scenario. Otherwise, should America prove once again unprepared for communism's untimely demise, another opportunity to help build a more stable, prosperous, and democratic world may well be lost.