No news good news on this China trip

By JAMES P. PINKERTON
LONG ISLAND NEWSDAY
Nothing much happened on George W. Bush's trip to China, and that's a good thing. Because when change comes to U.S.-China relations, that will most likely be a bad thing -- a very bad thing.
Newspaper headlines tell the story. Both USA Today and The New York Times used "mixed" in their headline, as in "mixed results." The Washington Post was nastier, "Bush's Asia Trip Meets Low Expectations." But is that just media bias?
Well, the reliably conservative Washington Times spoke volumes. Its story from Beijing was headlined, "Bush hits call for pullout" -- which is to say, that paper thought that the big news from China was ... Iraq. Only deep in the story did the Times report, "Bush leaves China without any tangible result."
Actually, there was one tangible result: The Chinese agreed to purchase 70 jetliners from beleaguered Boeing. But on every other issue that Bush raised -- currency, intellectual property, de-nuclearizing North Korea -- there were no breakthroughs, and maybe no progress.
As for the issue of human and religious rights, which was supposed to be the signature of Bush's second term, there was, if anything, backsliding. The Chinese openly detained dissidents during Bush's visit. In the diplo-speak of Secretary of State Condi Rice, "We've certainly not seen the progress that we would expect." Yet it's uncertain how much the topic was even brought up in Beijing; a spokesman for the Chinese foreign ministry told reporters, "Honestly, human rights issues made up a tiny, tiny, tiny part of the meeting between the leaders of the two countries."
What gives? Did we lose our oft-repeated status as "the world's only superpower" somewhere in the Forbidden City? In a word, yes. As Bush explained, "China is a big, growing, strong country, and it's very important for me to maintain a good working relationship with the leadership here." Which is to say, if we push them, they can push back.
So the Chinese will continue to nurse along North Korea, to steal our intellectual property, and to build their own Confucian-capitalist system, and there's not much we can do about it. Welcome to the world of foreign policy realism.
And the next president, whoever he or she might be, will be forced into even more realism, as the cold reality of three issues becomes ice-clear:
China's bluff?
First, Taiwan. China wants its island back, but we want Taiwan to stay independent, albeit at less status than full sovereignty. Beijing declares it will "settle" this issue by 2020 -- one way or another. Are the Chinese bluffing? We'll find out one of these years.
Second, Japan. The Japanese have decided to stop feeling guilty about World War II. Now, emboldened by their American patrons, they are back on a course of economic and military expansionism. Other Asian countries, including China, will react.
Third, oil. The Middle East, plus Central Asia, contains perhaps a third of the world's oil and gas, and other high-consumption/low production countries, including the U.S. and China, have long coveted those hydrocarbons. The U.S. staked its claim to Iraqi oil when it invaded in 2003. Now that claim -- and our credibility as a military hegemon -- is being tested. The Chinese, who have long believed that America is a "paper tiger," are watching to see if we can hold on in Baghdad.
For these reasons -- plus, of course, an inevitable trans-Pacific application of Murphy's Law -- the U.S. and China are headed for a collision. And 'twas ever thus: Over the last three centuries, America has squared off against every other great power in the world -- Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Russia -- in either an outright war or a close-call cold war.
We even fought China during the Korean War. They killed tens of thousands of ours, and we killed hundreds of thousands of theirs. And the fact that so few remember that conflict is yet another reminder of how easy it is to fall into another conflict.
Los Angeles Times-Washington Post News Service