HOW HE SEES IT U.S., China hide worries under smiles
By DANIEL SNEIDER
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Expect smiles all around when President Bush meets Chinese leader Hu Jintao later this week in Chile at the annual summit of Asian Pacific leaders.
U.S.-China relations under Bush had a rocky start four years ago when Chinese aircraft forced the landing of an American spy plane. But those tensions have largely faded in favor of partnership on a range of issues, from terrorism to North Korea's nuclear program.
"Now," a senior Asian diplomat told me, "Beijing feels comfortable with the Bush team."
While Beijing's comfort level has increased, however, the Chinese leadership is uneasy over the muscular unilateralism of American policy under Bush.
Those fears are mirrored in Washington. Worries about China's rise as a great power were subordinated in the aftermath of Sept. 11. But they have not gone away.
A small window onto the tension beneath the smiles opened up just before the U.S. election. A few days before the vote, the English-language China Daily published an unusually frank critique of the U.S. role in the world, penned by China's elder statesman, Qian Qichen.
Qian portrayed the United States as an empire off course, eager to use force, overstretched, arrogant and headed for demise.
The United States, he wrote, is using its anti-terror campaign to tighten control over the Middle East, Central Asia, Southeast and Northeast Asia. These moves "have made it obvious that the United States has not changed its Cold War mentality and that the country is still accustomed to applying military means to deal with various threats, visible or invisible."
The document made its way to the White House where it was read it as an indirect endorsement and anticipation of the victory of John Kerry. The president was enraged, according to a senior administration official. Secretary of State Colin Powell called in the Chinese Ambassador to formally complain.
The status of the author suggested that "this was not a case of one person making a bad call," the official told me. Qian is the architect of China's foreign policy from the late 1980s through 2002, when he retired as Vice Premier. He remains a powerful influence, a man who has direct access to American and Chinese leaders.
Chinese officials told the administration that the timing of the publication of the article was unintended. According to Chinese sources active in reform circles of the ruling Communist Party, Qian's article was first published on Oct. 18 in Study Weekly, a magazine for training high-level party cadres. A week later it appeared on major Chinese-language Web sites. Then China Daily, a government paper aimed at a foreign audience, published it.
'Too sensitive'
My Chinese party sources accuse the Americans of being "too sensitive" to criticism. The Europeans have been much more critical of Bush policy than China, one told me. Americans need to understand that China is a more pluralized society where all sorts of opinions are expressed. After all, he points out, in democracies such as India and South Korea, "there are many voices against America's unilateralism and the war in Iraq."
But some U.S. officials see Qian's views reflected in quiet efforts to expand Chinese influence and to counter American dominance. "They are getting a lot of traction in Asia and in certain European circles where there is broad and wide ambivalence about the U.S. now," the senior official says.
As an example, the Chinese rushed in to embrace the Philippines after that U.S. ally decided to withdraw its forces from Iraq. Among other things, they proposed an intelligence-sharing relationship between the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army and the Philippine military, an offer that alarmed U.S. officials.
When Hu meets Bush, the talk is likely to center more on Taiwan, where China wants the U.S. to crush the pro-independence ambitions of Taiwanese leader Chen Shui-bian. Terrorism and trade issues will no doubt be discussed as well. But as is often the case in this complex relationship, if you want to know what is going on, you need to look beneath the smiles.
X Daniel Sneider is foreign affairs columnist for the San Jose Mercury News. Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune.