CHINA: WAKING UP TO THE NEXT SUPERPOWER

CHINESE TROOPS LAUNCHING missiles that splash down perilously close to Taiwan and put its armed forces on high alert. A U.S carrier task force cruising the area, another sailing toward it. Washington assessing whether--and how--it might have to help Taiwan should the island be attacked by China. These are the most serious signals to date about the state of relations between the world's sole remaining superpower and its sole up-and-coming superpower. One misstep and one misperception after another in recent years have bumped the U.S. and China closer to crisis. The latest rupture has been triggered by China's harsh warning to Taiwan, underlined by war games offshore, that it must remain committed to eventual reunification and squelch whatever dreams of independence it might be harboring. True, what is happening off Taiwan is pantomime rather than confrontation: eager to avoid a clash, both sides are merely using their military to lend muscle to political messages. But to date neither Washington nor Beijing has given much indication that it knows the other well enough to ensure that pantomime belligerence does not someday give way to the real thing.

Over the next decade--or two or three--China will be at the top rung of American foreign-policy challenges. As a rising nation, like others before it, China is demanding respect in proportion to its strength. That would be reason enough for increased concern in the U.S.--and Asian countries--but Washington has a wider range of interests at stake where China is concerned.

Foremost is trade. The U.S. and China, a huge and largely untapped market of 1.2 billion people, now do $50 billion worth of business with each other. Beyond that, the enormous amount of U.S. commerce with Asia as a whole gives Washington even more reason to discourage China from intimidating its neighbors, to say nothing of starting a war. China poses a particular security worry because it has atomic weapons and has sent nuclear technology to other countries. Finally, the U.S. has both a moral and a realpolitik interest in seeing China improve its human-rights record. Encouraging the establishment of democracy and the rule of law not only satisfies America's sense of mission in the world but, if successful, would make China more stable.

China is not Haiti or Bosnia, places where America's involvement may be desirable but is ultimately optional. China is not optional. A half-century after World War II, the U.S. remains the dominant power in the Pacific, and to the degree that it tries to maintain influence there, it will inevitably knock up against China's rising importance. The peace and prosperity of the world in the next century depend in many ways on what Beijing does. How should the U.S. handle it? There are essentially two prescriptions: a policy called comprehensive engagement, and one that goes under the old cold-war name, containment.