Message to China: The Appeasement is Over

(Washington, D.C.): In his meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Qian Qichen at the White House yesterday, President Bush faced a critical moment in defining the Nation’s relationship with the People’s Republic of China. According to unnamed “senior advisors,” the President used it to good effect, speaking candidly and sometimes forcefully on a range of issues. These reportedly included the outrageous detention by Beijing of U.S. scholar Gao Zhan, who was apparently abducted by Chinese security officers in February along with her family and coerced into “confessing” certain as-yet unidentified “crimes” — an incident Secretary of State Colin Powell called “outrageous.”

The Washington Times this morning also said that Mr. Bush discussed the sale of Aegis air defense-equipped destroyers to the democratic Republic of China (ROC) — a step that would be in accordance with U.S. mutual defense obligations under the Taiwan Relations Act and that has been made necessary by Beijing’s military build-up designed to intimidate, if not to devastate, the ROC. Presumably, he also spoke of his determination to proceed with the deployment of missile defenses decried by Communist China.

In short, this meeting afforded an important opportunity for the new President to establish that the United States will no longer strive to appease the PRC, as was the practice of the Clinton Administration, and that it would now take a more definitive stance in opposing acts that go against American principles. The need for such a course correction was the theme of two recent syndicated columns — the first by Michael Kelly, which appeared in the Washington Post on 28 February; the second was published yesterday by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe. If reports of the President’s meeting with Qian are accurate, he appears to have taken to heart these distinguished journalists’ recommendations — and the prayers of millions of Americans and Chinese, alike.

President Bush meets today with Qian Qichen, China’s Deputy Prime Minister and the first senior Beijing official to visit the White House since the new Administration began. Uppermost on Qian’s agenda is the question of arms for Taiwan, which he calls “the most important and sensitive issue in China-U.S. relations.” But uppermost on Bush’s agenda must be to underscore that the Clinton appeasement is over. Qian will want Bush to assure him that the Taiwanese are not going to get the American defense technology they need. Bush should assure them they will.

To protect itself from the growing threat of Chinese ballistic missiles, Taiwan would like to purchase four US destroyers equipped with the Aegis battle-management radar system. Taipei is not exaggerating its vulnerability: As many as 300 missiles have been deployed on the Chinese coast opposite Taiwan. Beijing regularly asserts that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China and that it reserves the right to unify the two by force.

No doubt Qian will repeat what he has been saying all week: that there will be dire consequences if Washington says yes to Taiwan’s request. But consequences may be even more dire if Washington says no. Nothing is more likely to embolden China into an attack on Taiwan than the perception that America is hesitant about defending its democratic friend.
Bill Clinton slammed the first George Bush for “coddling tyrants” in Beijing. But US policy soon became even more lopsidedly pro-China. Clinton hailed the world’s last totalitarian empire as a “strategic partner,” ignoring Beijing’s undisguised anti-American hostility. Human rights and trade were “de-linked.” Counterintelligence against Chinese spies was weakened. US companies – many of whose CEOs were Clinton donors – sold high-tech missile technology to China.

“The Clinton administration’s legacy in Asia,” writes Ross H. Munro, who covered Asia for Time magazine, “has been to weaken America’s standing and to make China a greater danger to its neighbors and the United States than it would otherwise have been.” Undoing that legacy must be one of Bush’s priorities.

Before his meeting today, Bush ought to reread his March 4 remarks at the christening of the USS Ronald Reagan. He used the occasion to recenter America’s orientation in the world on Reagan’s view that “great democracies . . . are built on the strong foundation of consent and human dignity” while “any government built on oppression is built on sand.” The implications of that approach, he said, are clear:

“America, by nature, stands for freedom. . . . We benefit when it expands. So we will stand by those nations moving toward freedom. We’ll stand up to those nations who deny freedom and threaten our neighbors or our vital interests. And we will assert emphatically that the future will belong to the free.”

If that means anything, surely it means that America will not deny the endangered democracy on Taiwan the hardware it needs to protect itself from the world’s largest dictatorship. Bush should make it clear to Qian that if China doesn’t want the sale of Aegis cruisers to go through, it must remove the missile threat that makes it necessary. The root of the crisis is Beijing’s menacing behavior, not Taiwan’s desire for freedom and safety.
Last month the State Department issued its new survey of human rights around the world. The section on China is harrowing, and gives the lie to the Clintonian spin that the more we “engaged” with Beijing, the more civilized it would become.

In 2000, reports the State Department, “the [Chinese] government’s poor human rights record worsened, and it continued to commit serious abuses. The government intensified crackdowns on religion and in Tibet, intensified its harsh treatment of political dissent, and suppressed any person or group perceived to threaten the government.”

By year’s end, “thousands of unregistered religious institutions had been either closed or destroyed . . . and thousands of Falun Gong practitioners remained in detention or were sentenced to [slave labor] camps or incarcerated in mental institutions. . . . Approximately 100 or more Falun Gong practitioners died as a result of torture and mistreatment in custody. . . .

“The government continued to commit widespread and well-documented human rights abuses. . . . Abuses included instances of extrajudicial killings, the use of torture . . . and denial of due process . . .”

Ultimately, Washington and Beijing are separated by a chasm: the gap that divides the decent from the indecent. We can do business across that chasm, but we cannot pretend it doesn’t.