CHINA: WAKING UP TO THE NEXT SUPERPOWER

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By tolerating the ways in which China acts against U.S. interests, the Clinton Administration would seem to be engaged in a very generous form of comprehensive engagement. That is not how the Chinese see it. As far as they are concerned, Clinton's policy is containment by another name. Not only have Washington's harangues on human rights rankled, but there have been other sources of friction. Because of pressure from the U.S., Beijing believes, it lost its bid to host the 2000 Olympics, which went instead to Sydney, Australia. Washington has blocked China's membership in the World Trade Organization, which Beijing wants as a venue for reconciling trade disputes and obtaining more favorable tariff treatment. The U.S. has also explored a closer military relationship with India, against which China fought a war in 1962, and last year established full diplomatic relations with Vietnam, a traditional enemy that repulsed a Chinese invasion in 1979.

James Lilley, a former U.S. ambassador to China, explains, "China sees America snuggling up to India and kicking Pakistan in the shins, recognizing Vietnam, selling F-16s to Taiwan, walking hand in hand with Japan into the 21st century, wanting a united Korea under Seoul allied with the U.S." What does it look like from the Chinese perspective? Lilley answers his own question: "A ring around China."

All this must be viewed in the context of Beijing's current state of fragility, with Deng Xiaoping on his deathbed and his designated successor, Jiang Zemin, not firmly in control. Despite the government's success in raising the standard of living, its problem list is long: money-losing state enterprises, more than 100 million basically unemployed migrant workers, rampant corruption, growing gaps between rich and poor as well as between the booming coastal provinces and the neglected hinterland--all tinder for potential social unrest. Perhaps most important, an ideologically bankrupt Communist Party is relying on repression and nationalism to keep itself in power and the country united.

Small wonder that U.S.-China exchanges, as Lilley puts it, are a "dialogue of the deaf." Weakened initially by the end of cold-war pressure to cooperate against the former Soviet Union, the relationship is in its worst shape since the Tiananmen massacre in 1989.

What should the U.S. do? For all the setbacks, over the long run, comprehensive engagement, in a more muscular form than that practiced in recent years, has the best chance of creating a balanced, fruitful relationship. The U.S. should be hard-nosed on nuclear proliferation and intellectual-property rights, and may find it advantageous to enlist friends' and allies' support in that endeavor instead of going it alone. In the more sensitive area of human rights, a breakthrough will probably have to await the arrival of a new generation of leaders in Beijing, but the U.S. should acknowledge whatever little progress China has made. Says Burt Levin, a veteran China analyst and former U.S. diplomat: "Chinese citizens have greater freedom today than they have had in 50 years. To be oblivious to that is foolish." Comprehensive engagement, sums up Secretary of Defense William Perry, "does not mean that the U.S. will acquiesce to [Chinese] actions with which we disagree. But we will not try to isolate China over these issues. You cannot isolate a country with more than a billion people."