China's Military Game Changer?

Check out the cover of this month's US Naval Institute's Proceedings. It depicts a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier in flames, smoke billowing from the deck. The headline asks a simple question: Chinese Carrier Killer?

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Posted by John Pomfret on May 28, 2009 6:20 PM

China and Taiwan Get Snuggly

Speaking of luvfests, is anyone noticing the blossoming romance between China and Taiwan? Today, China announced that the World Health Organization has invited Taiwan to attend the 62nd World Health Assembly (WHA) as an observer.

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Posted by John Pomfret on April 29, 2009 9:40 AM

Why Can't the Dalai Lama Travel to South Africa?

Bending to Chinese pressure, the government of South Africa has refused to allow the Dalai Lama a visa to attend a conference of Nobel Peace Prize laureates. Two of South Africa's Nobel peace prize winners, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and FW de Klerk, pulled out of the conference, which was scheduled to start on Friday. The conference was subsequently postponed.

Back in Beijing, they must be congratulating themselves. South Africa, led by Nelson Mandela, once attempted to pursue one of the most creative policies vis-a-vis China. No longer. And therein lies a tale.

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Posted by John Pomfret on March 26, 2009 4:54 AM

U.S.-China's Rocky Road Ahead

It's pretty clear that one of the singular successes of the Bush administration's foreign policy is the U.S. relationship with China. Bush came into power calling China a "strategic competitor." But, like all presidents over the last three decades, when it came to China, he changed. Buffeted by events, especially the EP-3 incident during which a Chinese jet fighter crashed into a U.S. reconnaissance plane and, of course, 9/11, which rewrote America's strategic map, Bush has embraced a cool-headed policy toward Beijing.

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Posted by John Pomfret on September 10, 2008 12:41 PM

Olympic Protests? What Protests?

Chinese authorities at the Olympics announced at the beginning of the affair that they were setting aside specific venues for protesters in a new sign of openness. Protesters were supposed to apply to the police for a permit. None have been granted and several of the applicants have been detained. Ooops.

Now comes this official Chinese report explaining the whole situation.

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Posted by John Pomfret on August 18, 2008 5:59 PM

Democracy and Dirty Money in Taiwan

You have to love what's happening in Taiwan. Yeah, I know the story is in Beijing with the Olympics and all that, but the former President of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian, has just been banned from leaving the island and the Swiss are investigating a bank account that contains $20 million.

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Posted by John Pomfret on August 18, 2008 5:33 PM

China's Harmonious Diplomatic Symphony

While its propaganda machine might be sounding a little shrill lately, China's foreign policy is hitting all the right notes. In the past few weeks, President Hu Jintao has met twice with leading politicians from Taiwan following the election of Ma Ying-jeou. First Hu met with VP-elect Vincent Siew and then with KMT bigwig Lien Chan. There's a good possibility that the two sides will move a lot closer -- setting up direct flights and freight services -- once Ma takes power on May 20 and Taiwan's both incompetent and ideologically rigid president, Chen Shui-bian, leaves. Good for China and Taiwan.

What's more, last week, Hu spent five days in Japan using "smile" diplomacy with China's Asian nemesis. By all accounts, it was a pretty successful trip, a stark contrast to complete disaster that occurred when Hu's predecessor Jiang Zemin visited Japan in 1998 and gave a screaming lecture about history. The lecture played well in China but not anywhere else. China and Japan have reason to buddy up. Last year, China replaced the US as Japan's biggest export market - a trend that isn't going to change.

Then, last weekend in Shenzhen, lower ranking Chinese officials met with representatives of the Dalai Lama. They've agreed to keep talking. No one expects this to go anywhere, but it's a whole lot better than yelling at each other via the media.

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Posted by John Pomfret on May 9, 2008 12:00 AM

Tibet Won't Move China -- But Taiwan Might

A lot of ink has been spilled, and rightly so, on Tibet. But is it possible that the bigger story happening in Asia right now is what's going on between China and its other unruly relative - Taiwan? Is it also possible that the troubles in Tibet could be setting the scene for faster breakthroughs vis-a-vis Taiwan? I think so.

Here's why.

Over the weekend China's president, the purposely boring Hu Jintao, met with the purposely boring vice-president elect of Taiwan, Vincent "Smiling" Siew, in the purposely sleazy resort province of Hainan in southern China. The meeting amounted to the highest-level contact between officials from Taipei and Beijing, which claims that Taiwan is part of China, since 1949 - the year when China's Communists won a civil war and the defeated Nationalists scurried to Taiwan. More recently, the two sides have had no substantial talks in eight years.

The Post briefed the meeting in our Sunday paper. The Times filed something on its website today in a piece that argued the planned dialogue won't amount to much because the Tibet situation would constrain China's leaders on any openings with Taiwan. Just the opposite, I think.

The election last month of Siew and Ma Ying-jeou, the Nationalist candidate for president, in Taiwan means that after eight years of failed leadership by President Chen Shui-bian, who bungled the island's security and its economy, relations between Taipei and Beijing are likely to improve. Leaders from the two sides are finally talking about establishing direct flights. (It takes a day to get from Taipei to Shanghai, home to 250,000 businessmen, right now. If the flights were direct, it'd take an hour.) Pres-elect Ma has said he wants to end most restrictions on Taiwanese investment in China. (A recognition of reality considering Taiwan's businessmen have already sunk $100 billion or so in mainland factories.)

This is good news, but not just for the economy of the region. It's also good news for those who care about the preservation of the world's only majority-Chinese democracy (Taiwan) and the prospect of political change in China.

Why?

For eight years, outgoing President Chen basically advocated that Taiwan declare independence from China. He couldn't say it openly because 1) China threatened to fire missiles at Taiwan if Taiwan took such an act (...not fun) and 2) the United States, which is obligated to (kind of) defend Taiwan under the very ambiguously worded Taiwan Relations Act, has told Taiwan that if it declared independence we probably wouldn't be overly eager to run to its defense. So Chen resorted to a policy of what the Chinese liked to call "creeping independence" which basically meant seizing every opportunity to enrage Beijing. In the end, however, Chen - and Taiwan -- didn't get bupkis. Taiwan failed to improve its security. And China had a strong argument against any kind of democratization. Look at Taiwan, Beijing's mandarins would say, they have democracy and they want to split the motherland! That's a powerful argument over there.

So enter Ma, the Harvard-educated pretty boy of the National Party. He turned his strategy 180 degrees from Chen's. Needlessly antagonizing China, he's said, makes no sense. The keys to Taiwan's security and - critically - to the preservation of its full-throated democracy, he argued, are good relations with Beijing, not the constant tension Chen seemed to crave. This type of thinking upset some in Washington who frame dealing with China in a smart (and somewhat complex) way with Panda-hugging or collaboration with the godless Commies. But I think that Ma is right.

The reason is that as long as Taiwan stops purposely pissing off China, most of the Communist leadership will be happy to let the whole issue of Taiwan's sovereignty float for decades as long as everybody is making money. That will boost Taiwan's economy, grant China time to change and decrease the possibility that the US will have to go to war to defend Taiwan. This peaceful interim will also give Taiwan time to push China's political system in the right direction.

And that's a key here. The only territory in the world with the capability to teach China about democracy is Taiwan. It won't be Hong Kong, which was, is and will always be just a glitzy colony - whether to the old rulers, the Brits, or the new ones, the Chinese. It's definitely not the West. If there's anything the Tibet situation has shown it's that the gap in understanding between us and China is vast and growing bigger.

But once China's propaganda czars can no longer paint Taiwan's democracy with the tar brush of "splittism" or "treason" (which they gleefully did while Chen was president), its political system will become a lot more attractive to the Chinese.

Now, how does Tibet play into this?

China's president Hu has already pretty much ruled out any major breakthroughs with the Dalai Lama. China's state-run media have reverted to propaganda from the Cultural Revolution with a 9/11 twist, describing Tibet's spiritual leader as a "jackal" in a monk's habit and a "terrorist."

But Beijing is desperate for some type of international breakthrough to show the world in this, its Olympic, year. Why not Taiwan? Arguments that flexibility on Taiwan would be impossible because it'd be inconsistent with toughness on Tibet don't wash. When the chips are down (and they are down for China right now), expediency wins. Taiwan could be the beneficiary. And that'd be good news.

Posted by John Pomfret on April 15, 2008 10:09 AM