The country lacks patience and vision when dealing with China. A historical outline
There is “no greater evil” for a statesman than to “underestimate the enemy”, taught the philosopher Laudse, who is still highly valued and often quoted in China, in his treatise more than two and a half millennia ago Daudedsching. The leaders of the Chinese People’s Republic can hardly be blamed for this. With the founding of the state in 1949, they found an enemy in the United States whom they could not underestimate because he gave them nothing. Think of the Korean War (1950-1953). When Chinese volunteer organizations came to the aid of Kim Il-sung’s armed forces from the communist north of the Korean peninsula against the army of the south, the latter received the support that was ultimately decisive for the war from US troops. Korea was and remained divided.
This exchange of blows played a part in the fact that relations between Beijing and Washington were in the absence of relations for two decades. The US did not recognize the People’s Republic, but instead held Taiwan as the legitimate representative of all of China. But then towards the end of the 1960s, in the wake of its “cultural revolution”, the Communist Party of China waved to the foreseeable fiasco. The traditional Maoist image of permanent class struggle lost its appeal. Maoism came into conflict with itself. The more radical he was, the more it damaged the country’s economic resources and the promise of social welfare. The compulsion to change course and throw off “cultural revolutionary” ballast did not leave foreign policy unaffected. In the newspaper Renmin Ribao (People’s daily newspaper) the motto emerged: “Make the foreign usable for the Chinese!” Also the North American?
The US does not want to wait for an answer to this question, but rather give it itself. During the reign of Mao Zedong, a diplomatic offensive began – aided by the impending US withdrawal from South Vietnam – to court a declared enemy. Henry Kissinger’s multiple visits to Beijing in 1971 received the label “Ping-pong diplomacy” after a match between the national table tennis teams (to which the Chinese Association invited). President Richard Nixon’s security advisor is sitting on Prime Minister Zhou Enlai’s flowered sofa, and not without profit. In February 1972, Nixon fled to the People’s Republic for the summit and met Mao Zedong. What the US wants is obvious. Since they are aware of the shattered Sino-Soviet relations, some of which are drifting into war, the Chinese card is played against the USSR. For its part, China takes pleasure in making an impression on the “social-imperialist regime” in Moscow with the Americans behind them. The modernization of the Chinese economy, which began in 1978/79 and was founded on the reform agenda of mentor Deng Xioaping, became the catalyst for pragmatic agreements. When he visited the USA in early 1979, spittoons were set up and polished in the White House so that the guest felt at home. He should not fail to hear that the host wishes to sell “defensive weapons” in the People’s Republic.
In 1980, China was asked to join the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB), and shortly afterwards to join the Asian Development Bank (ADB) controlled by Japan and the USA. Since the US is now pursuing “one-China policy”, Taiwan must evacuate these institutions and can console itself with a golden handshake. The repayment of Taiwanese deposits with the IMF results in a net profit of $ 100 million. Those who drop the Americans will be spared poverty. Especially since armaments that Taipei purchases from US stocks want to be paid for.
A sensational offer
From the American point of view, bringing China into the IMF with a considerable share of the vote is owed to the intention with this partner to resist the pressure of several developing countries to reform the core instance of the world financial system. At the same time, the granting of loans to the new member is intended to gain influence and, if necessary, exert pressure. An initial offer from the IMF is $ 9 billion and an interest rate of a sensationally low 0.5 percent. The People’s Republic does not make use of it. She eludes the intention to bind a partner in order to tame him. However, the Clinton administration (1993-2001) comes back to this when year after year it tries to impose conditions on an extension of the most favored nation clause (MFN) for trade with China: human rights, Tibet, Taiwan and so on. The practice, unofficially known as “coupling policy”, goes back to the diplomat Winston Lord, 1985 – 1989 ambassador to Beijing, who, as a Clinton advisor, turns away disappointed because the interests of the US business world set clear limits for political ambitions. After all, in 1996 every seventh Boeing machine was sold to China.
As it turns out, the strategic ambivalence of its China policy that is often attested to in the USA results not from the inability of presidents like Clinton, later Bush and Obama, but from the impossibility of reconciling contradictions that are insoluble. Especially since China cannot escape the instrumental nature of US appeals in the 1970s and 1980s. Instead of giving in to an alliance with the US, Beijing is increasingly fond of the “strategic triangle” between the US, China and the USSR as internal reforms advance. It should be equilateral, in other words: characterized by the parity of its components. Since Mikhail Gorbachev also changed course in foreign policy in the Soviet Union in 1985, the bilateral relationship eased. What remains and is resilient after the Russian Federation becomes a partner in the new agreement in 1991.
With the emerging multipolar world order, a Russia capable of acting as a counterweight to the USA is “the foreign” that can be “made usable for the Chinese”. The “strategic triangle” is even more so. And under other circumstances than those of the East-West conflict. The initially more informal liaison between Moscow and Beijing has two driving forces: the pacification of the border, which was almost 4,500 kilometers long during the lifetime of the USSR, which is shortened to 3,600 kilometers with the new Central Asian states, and the acquisition of weapons in Russia, which allows it to circumvent the Western delivery embargo imposed after the Tiananmen Uprising in 1989.
As usual, the USA is reacting with hesitation in terms of strategy. Should we expose ourselves in the western Pacific or should we concentrate on the reorganization of Europe after the Cold War and NATO’s eastward expansion? Is it time to give up the one-China policy, to place a US ambassador to the exiled Dalai Lama, to claim Tibet’s self-determination, to arm Taiwan in a targeted manner? Or is it too early for that? Obviously, a period of cooperative coexistence and controlled rivalry is coming to an end, in which the US, still under Bill Clinton, is campaigning for China to become a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in order to incorporate Chinese capitalism. Which fails because no political system transfer succeeds.
With Barack Obama’s second presidency from 2013, the signs point to a change from competition to confrontation. When Donald Trump takes over, it is carried out. Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen sent the election winner a message of greeting in November 2016, whereupon the incumbent-designate celebrated what one-China policy has not had in its repertoire for decades. He has an official phone call with Tsai, which causes anger in Beijing that turns into indignation when Trump signs the “Taiwan Travel Act” after taking office to promote exchanges between his government and that in Taipei “at all levels” . At the National People’s Congress in March 2018, head of state Xi Jinping called this “open support for separatist tendencies that would be punished by history”.
“True words are not beautiful, beautiful words are not true,” writes Laudse in the last chapter of his Daudedsching. Xi’s message could trust historical patience to be true.
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