When newly appointed CIA Director Porter Goss recently warned that ChinaÂs modernization of its military posed a direct threat to the U.S., was it standard budget time scare tactics? Or did it signal the growing influence of hard-liners in the Bush administration who want to Âcontain China and re-institute the Cold War in Asia?
At first glance, the growing tension between China and Japan seems almost inexplicable. Massive anti-Japanese demonstrations in China over events that took place more than half a century ago? A heated exchange filled with mutual threats over an offshore petroleum field that western oil companies think is not worth exploiting? Has a Shinto shrine and slanted textbooks really driven the two great Asian powers to the edge of a Cold War or worse?
Key Points
Neoconservative hawks have scored a new victory in the administration of President George W. Bush with the hiring by Vice President Richard Cheney of a prominent hawk on China policy. China specialist and Princeton University professor Aaron Friedberg has been named deputy national security adviser and director of policy planning on Cheney’s high-powered foreign policy staff headed by I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, one of the most influential foreign policy strategists in the administration. Libby also served as the general counsel to the Cox Commission, a House Select Committee that issued a report in 1999 accusing China of large-scale espionage to advance its nuclear weapons program and was soundly criticized by many China scholars for its factual errors, unsupported allegations, and shoddy analysis.
In the wake of the Iraq War, growing tensions with Iran, and a possible confrontation with North Korea, it would be easy to miss the formation of yet another Washington think tank. But the freshly minted U.S.-India Institute for Strategic Policy is an organization to watch and one that may help reveal the next target of American power: containing China.
The much-anticipated 16th Party Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which ended in early November, followed the classic rhythm in China studies: optimism alternating with cynicism, certainty giving way to ambiguity. Many observers believed that Jiang Zemin would step down, thus signifying the first institutionalized transition of power in the country. Yet this optimistic view was undermined by Jiang’s decision to pass on only his post of general secretary of the Party to his successor, Hu Jintao, but to retain his chairmanship of the Central Military Commission (CMC). Combined with the fact that Jiang’s cronies now occupy two-thirds of the seats on the newly formed nine-member standing committee of the Politburo makes observers even more cynical about this political succession.
On Monday, April 15, the day after his dramatic return to power, Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez called for a “national dialogue.” He acknowledged the “large number of Venezuelans who were in disagreement with the government, and who would continue to demonstrate peacefully,” and he called for a lowering of the levels of confrontation in Venezuela. The current polarization, he said “is not positive. There has to be communication among the different sectors” of Venezuelan society.
China’s foreign policy has been hit hard by recent developments, including new U.S. influence on their western border. In December alone China was faced with these new twists in international affairs:
“What the hell have you come here for? We’ve got nothing here! The mines have shut down and those bastards in their offices are corrupt to the bone! We had a strike, but there’s no way of controlling them. It’s not like the USA where everyone’s rich and you’ve got democracy. Shulan Town? It’s a joke.”
As the Bush administration struggles to craft a coherent policy toward China, important developments within China are also taking place that may influence the trajectory of U.S.-China relations. One of the most important developments is the jockeying within the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over the leadership transition that will take place at the 16th Party Congress scheduled for September 2002.