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U.S.-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century: The Proceedings of the Thirty-Ninth Air Force Academy
American Assembly at Columbia University
February 1997
THIRTY-NINTH AIR FORCE ACADEMY ASSEMBLY UNITED STATES AIR FORCE ACADEMY
Lt General Paul E. Stein Superintendent
Brig General Stephen R. Lorenz Commandant of Cadets
Brig General Reuben A. Cubero Dean of the Faculty
Colonel Randall W. Spetman Director of Athletics
THE AMERICAN ASSEMBLY COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
Mr. Daniel A. Sharp President
Mr. David H. Mortimer Vice President
Mrs. Eleanor Tejirian Secretary-Treasurer
ASSOCIATION OF GRADUATES THE OLMSTED FOUNDATION
General James P. Ulm, USAF (Ret) Chairman of the Board
Lt Col Richard M. Coppock, USAF (Ret)
THE FALCON FOUNDATION
Lt General Benjamin N. Bellis, USAF (ret) President
Maj General William Lyon, USAF (Ret) Chairman of the Board
Mr. Harold C. Stuart Vice Chairman
Objectives of the Academy Assembly
LIEUTENANT GENERAL Paul E. Stein
Lieutenant General Paul E. Stein was born August 30, 1944, in Monroe, LA. He graduated from the United States Air Force Academy in 1966 with a Bachelor of Science in Political Science. He earned his Master's degree in Business Administration from Florida State University. General Stein also completed Air Command and Staff College in 1979, Air War College in 1986, and the Harvard Program for Senior Executives in National and International Security in 1993. General Stein has served in a variety of staff positions, including Deputy Chief of Staff, Personnel, and Chief of Staff, Tactical Air Command, and has commanded Keesler Technical Training Center, Keesler AFB, MS. His most recent assignment was Director, Legislative Liaison, Washington, D.C. General Stein's military decorations and awards include the Distinguished Service Medal, Legion of Merit with one oak leaf cluster, Meritorious Service Medal with two oak leaf clusters, Air Force Commendation Medal with one oak leaf cluster, Air Force Outstanding Unit Award with one oak leaf cluster, and National Defense Service Medal with one oak leaf cluster. General Stein is the thirteenth Superintendent of the United States Air Force Academy.
39th ACADEMY ASSEMBLY CHAIRMAN Colonel Douglas J. Murray
Colonel Douglas J. Murray currently serves as Permanent Professor and Head of the Department of Political Science at the United States Air Force Academy. Colonel Murray graduated from Georgetown University in 1965 with a Bachelor's Degree in Foreign Service and as a Distinguished Graduate of ROTC. Colonel Murray received his Master's Degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas in 1970. In 1976, he returned to the University of Texas and eared a Doctorate in International Relations. Colonel Murray has served as a missile launch officer, an air intelligence officer, and as deputy chief for the Secretary of the Air Force Staff Group. He was appointed Permanent Professor and Head, Department of Political Science, United States Air Force Academy, in 1984, and in 1990, he was selected to be Vice Dean of the Faculty, a position he served in until 1992. From 1994 through 1996 he served as the Chief of the Air Staff Division, Directorate of Plans and Policy, U.S. European Command. Colonel Murray's military decorations include the Legion of Merit, the Meritorious Service Medal, and the Air Force Commendation Medal with one oak leaf cluster.
ACADEMY ASSEMBLY DIRECTOR Captain John Cappello
Captain Cappello is currently an instructor of political science at The United States Air Force Academy. He is a command pilot with over 1000 hours in both the B-1B and B-52G. Captain Cappello has served with distinction with the 22nd Bombardment Wing at Loring Air Force Base, Maine and the 384th Bombardment Wing at McConnell Air Force Base, Kansas. He also served in the Middle East during Operations DESERT SHIELD and DESERT STORM. Captain Cappello received his B.S. from the United States Air Force Academy and his M.A. from Wichita State University.
ACADEMY ASSEMBLY CADET DIRECTOR C1C Wendy Palatinus
Wendy Palatinus hails from the lovely town of Los Alamos, NM. She is an American History and Humanities double major. After graduation, Wendy is heading to Enid, OK for Undergraduate Pilot Training at Vance Air Force Base. This is her third year working the Academy Assembly and it has been the most educational experience of her life. She hopes all this year's participants enjoy their time in Colorado Springs and learn to appreciate the complexities of US-China Relations.
FINAL PROCEEDINGS EDITOR Major Mark Gose
Major Mark N. Gose is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the USAF Academy. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Colorado, Boulder, a M.A. in National Security Affairs from the Naval Postgraduate School, and a B.A. in history from New Mexico State University. He has served as an Air Force intelligence officer, political-military affairs analyst, and arms control advisor. While at the Academy, he has taught courses in American Government, International Relations, Defense Policy, Civil-Military Relations, European Politics, and Comparative Politics. In addition, Major Gose has published widely on civil-military, national security, and arms control topics. He is a distinguished graduate of USAF ROTC, the USAF Air Intelligence Training Center, and the Defense Language Institute.
ASSISTANT PROCEEDINGS EDITOR Lt Valarie Weber
Lt Weber is currently working in the Department of Political Science awaiting assignment to Intelligence School at Goodfellow AFB, TX. As a cadet she majored in Political Science with an emphasis in National Security Policy. This is her fourth year working with the Assembly.
The Thirty-ninth United States Air Force Academy Assembly convened on 18 February 1997 to discuss the timely topic of "China-U.S. Relations in the 21st Century: Fostering Cooperation, Preventing Conflict." Approximately 110 students from almost 80 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada participated in five roundtable sessions. At the conclusion of the roundtable sessions, the rapporteurs from each of the eleven roundtables met to compose a final draft report, using the consensus derived in each roundtable as the basis for their draft. The draft report was then presented to the delegates in a final plenary session and appears in this volume as the Assembly Final Report. Because the Assembly Final Report is, by design, a consensus document, readers should not assume that each delegate subscribes to every recommendation. Furthermore, the delegates do not necessarily represent the views of their schools nor those of the sponsors of the Academy Assembly. Neither the Department of the Air Force nor the Department of Defense have approved or endorsed the contents of this report. Since 1959, the Academy Assembly, in conjunction with the American Assembly of Columbia University, has brought together students eager to further their knowledge of the world and recognized experts willing to share their experiences. The hope is that the endeavor would broaden all the participants' horizons and lead students to a greater understanding of and appreciation for international issues. At this year's conference the delegates considered the future of China-U.S. relations. Dr. David Shambaugh raised several provocative questions Tuesday evening in his keynote address, "China: Rival, Competitor, or Partner?" which carried over into the roundtable discussions Wednesday. The Assembly was deemed the first "Post-Deng" conference on Wednesday evening at the panel discussion. The panel discussion further added to the debate, showcasing the diverse views of Dr. Edwin Feulner, president of The Heritage Foundation; Colonel Karl Eikenberry, U.S. Department of Defense Senior Country Director for China, Mongolia and Hong Kong; Dr. David Lampton, President of the National Committee on United States-China Relations; Ms. Sidney Jones, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch/Asia; and Dr. William Heaton, an Estimates Officer with the National Intelligence Estimates for the Director of Central Intelligence and Reserve AttachŽ to the People's Republic of China. Ambassador James Lilley, a resident fellow and director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute and former U.S. Ambassador to the People's Republic of China and to the Republic of Korea, wrapped up the conference in his Banquet Address in which he commented on policy and the end of the Deng Xiaoping era. This volume includes the text of all the events listed above but it cannot include the enthusiasm of the delegates nor the thoughtful discussions which led to the Final Report. The Assembly personnel, listed in back, put in many hours to make this year's Assembly possible, however, the delegates themselves are what gave the Academy Assembly life and character.
Contents
Key Note Speaker Dr. David Shambaugh Dr. David Shambaugh was appointed the Director for the Sigur Center for East Asian Studies in 1996 and serves as a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. He also holds other academic positions in the Department of Political Science at the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies and at the University of Michigan. Dr. Shambaugh was the Asia Program Associate and Acting Director for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Staff Assistant to the U.S. National Security Council, an Analyst to the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research/East Asia, as well as an Analyst and Senator Staff Aide. Beyond his professional experiences, Dr. Shambaugh is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and is published widely on Chinese domestic politics, military affairs, and foreign relations, as well as the international politics of Asia. He is the author of four books and monographs; contributing editor of eight books; author of more than 70 scholarly articles or book chapters; author of more than 30 newspaper editorials or magazine articles; and an author of more than 30 book reviews.
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
"CHINA: RIVAL, COMPETITOR, OR PARTNER?" by Dr. David Shambaugh February 18, 1997 CADET PALATINUS: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. It is my pleasure this evening to introduce to you the keynote speaker for the 39th Air Force Academy Assembly, Dr. David Shambaugh. Dr. Shambaugh was appointed the Director for the Sigur Center for East Asian studies in 1996, and serves as a Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. He also holds other academic positions in the Department of Political Science at the University of London, School of Oriental & African Studies and at the University of Michigan. Dr. Shambaugh was the Asian Program Associate and Acting Director for the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Staff Assistant to the US National Security Council, an Analyst to the US Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence & Research/East Asia, as well as an Analyst and Senator Staff Aide. Beyond his professional experiences, Dr. Shambaugh is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and has published widely on Chinese domestic politics, military affairs, and foreign relations, as well as the international politics of Asia. He is the author of four books and monographs; contributing editor of eight books; author of more than 70 scholarly articles or book chapters; author of more than 30 newspaper editorials or magazine articles; and an author of more than 30 book reviews. Please stand for our distinguished visitor. DR. SHAMBAUGH: Please be seated. It will be like I'm on television, without being able to see the audience. Well, General Stein, distinguished faculty and cadets of the Academy, ladies and gentlemen, and certainly delegates from across the United States and indeed the Pacific who have come to the 39th Academy Assembly on US-China Relations in the 21st Century. It's a great honor and privilege for me to be invited to give the opening keynote address to this meeting. I must start, I think, with an apology. You will hear me this evening, hopefully not too often, but no doubt frequently coughing. I am getting over -- I'm over a flu, a rather nasty flu, I must say. I am told, in fact, the Beijing brand was brought to Washington by Charlie Trie and John Huang, but it's a contribution to our nation's capital. Anyway, I'm still nursing the remnants of that, hence the tea, so I hope not to trouble you with my still remnant cough. There is probably no more important foreign policy issue that you could have chosen to devote your week to understanding than China and the various challenges that China is going to present--already is presenting--to the United States, but it's certainly going to continue to present challenges into the next millennium. This great, large and proud nation will be a permanent fixture on the certainly East Asian landscape, but indeed the global landscape of the next century, and it's going to prove critical and central to America's external dealings in a whole wide variety of areas. Whether China is going to become a cooperative partner, a pesky competitor or a strategic rival of the United States is, I would submit at this time, an open question. The goal for our two nations, of course, is embedded in the subtitle of this American Assembly, "Fostering Cooperation, Preventing Conflict," and that is indeed what you must strive for. We do not need another Cold War with China. We have had one, and that one led directly or indirectly to our wars in Korea and Vietnam. The premise, you will recall, or at least a premise of those wars, was to contain Chinese expansionism on the Asian mainland, Chinese Communist expansionism, and it led to a hundred thousand dead Americans, fine men and women from our Armed Services and countless Koreans, Vietnamese and Chinese in those two wars. So we do not need another Cold War with China and we certainly do not need to divert the resources, military or otherwise, to countering or balancing or containing China. Yet if our current policy of engagement fails with China, we are going to have to devote increasing resources to countering or balancing China, but I still would hope not to try and contain China because that, as I will argue tonight, is a folly. We don't know what future we will have in Asia and from China in the next century. That's one reason you're here this week, to explore the complexities of that issue. We are in one of those rare moments, it seems to me, of opportunity in history when you know something important is about to happen, you know the broad outlines of it, and you have the opportunity both to contemplate the direction of change and to do something about it that may affect its outcome. Our forefathers did not have that opportunity with the rise of Meiji Japan, Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia. The rise of all three of those powers caught the United States, the Western Allies and other Asian countries with much shorter lead time. We know that the Chinese giant, as Napoleon warned us, has awakened. We just don't know how it's going to behave now that it's awake. What is worrying about China to many observers is precisely the historical precedent of Germany, Japan and Soviet Russia or other rising powers, even indeed the United States. The international system has always had a difficult time absorbing a new power into it, and while there are certain political and economic similarities, I would argue, between China's current rise and that of Germany -- even in the 19th Century as well as the 20th -- or post- Meiji Japan and the Soviet Union, former Soviet Union, and this is namely strong political authoritarianism, forced industrialization and rapid military modernization. There are also significant differences between these countries and their experiences with that of the People's Republic of China, differences in traditional statecraft, differences in military traditions, differences in scientific establishments, all of which suggest I think that China may be much more benign than those other more expansionist powers. But today the third key variable is at play that will affect the way that China is absorbed into the system, and that's the nature of the system itself, the international system. International order today is indeed in flux. It's highly fluid. It's undergoing profound systemic change. It has yet to find its post Cold War equilibrium, and it may not for some time. It may indeed find a rather permanent state of disequilibrium. China is a rising power at the very time the post Cold War international system is in such flux. If the international system were more rigid and more set, absorbing China as a power into that system could be extremely disruptive, because it would challenge directly the powers that constitute the existing system. But the current system is a much more dynamic system. It's dispersed polarity around the world. Indeed there are what most international relations specialists would call a situation of a "uni/multi-polarity." There is one superpower. We are it. Yet the world is characterized by a growing number of other regional powers. So you have a characterization of a uni-polar world or just a single super power world, with a more dispersed multi-polarity across the regions. China's emerging certainly as one of those rising powers, probably the greatest one, and is having to fit into the international system at times of great flux. So we know that China is going to be a contender for power in the international arena, but we don't know how it's going to happen. And there has been a very robust debate that is ongoing, has been ongoing for a couple of years in this country -- but also in Europe and in Asia, Japan and in Southeast Asia in particular -- about China and how China is going to act in the world in the 21st Century. This debate has produced a lot of questions, many more questions than answers. Let me tick off some of those questions. Will China be a satisfied, secure power, or will China be a nouveau riche power trying to gain new wealth and acquire new territory just as a nouveau riche person would? Will China be a power at all? There are great skeptics that this move towards modernization is an inexorable path in which China is traveling that will deliver it the largest economy in the world earlier in the 21st Century. Indeed there are those who say or predict that that will be the case. There are people who point to a whole wide variety of problems that I will not go into in my prepared remarks tonight, but would be happy to explore with you in questions, a whole variety of problems that affect China and are going to affect China. There are those who ask could China even hold together, or will it fall apart and will it fragment? It was rather stylish or faddish a year or so ago to contemplate -- two years ago, to contemplate that China may go the way the former Soviet Union split up. I don't subscribe to that theory, but there are those who do. Will China's economic modernization continue with these stunning rates or will those rates decline? Will, indeed, the entire program come off the rails? Will the banking system, for example, go bust? A very good chance it might. Again, these are very specific issues to China that we can come back to. What will China do with its newfound military power? Will it flex its muscles? Will those muscles become strong and tall? Again, you have debates as to how strong China is at present, how strong China will be in 5, 10, 15, even 20 years. Will China have the capacity to project power around its periphery, and will it choose to do so if it has that capacity? Does China seek regional hegemony over East Asia to either recreate the so-called tribute system that it oversaw for about 2,000 years, in which it was the paramount hegemony over international relations in East Asia until about the mid 19th Century, or will China live in peaceful coexistence with its neighbors? Will economic development in China lead to political pluralization, or will China remain a single party dominant, repressing authoritarian power? Will China's aggrieved sense of its past -- and it does have one -- its virulent nationalism, which is rising by the day, lead to a revaunchist kind of country, or will it be more satisfying and let the past be the past? Or will it be looking for payback time to those who have done China ill historically, namely Japan and the West? Will China easily integrate into the international system? Will it indeed play by the rules of the international system and the rules of the game of international organizations and regimes? Or does Beijing seek to undermine and change those rules and institutions? Do China's leaders even understand the rules and those institutions and accept their premises? And can China meet and implement its existing bilateral and multilateral commitments domestically? Does it have the capacity of implementation, the State capacity of implementation to enforce its international agreements inside its own borders? These are just some of the questions that have fueled this very active debate over the last couple of years about China. The debate is far from over, and these questions remain unanswered. There are more. I cannot predict either the answers to these questions or whether China will be, as is the title of my talk night, "A Rival or Competitor or Partner?" If I had to do so, I suppose I would say that it will be a bit of all three, rival, competitor and partner for the United States. What I can do tonight and what I would like to try and do is to start your week's discussions with some assessments of the factors and the variables that will affect China's behavior, whether it will be a rival, partner or a competitor of the United States. But before I launch into that part, let me offer some thoughts about the role that history plays both in the current debate about China and in US-China relations more generally, because I think it's instructive. This current debate on China and China policy is hardly the first one this country has undergone. We seem to have some periodic decade intervals if you look back over the century. Indeed as we open this century, we were having debates about the open door in China, whether the United States should indeed push for a level playing field, to be more restrained and ask for equal access for all training partners, or whether the United States should follow the example of European countries and carve out specific spheres of influence and treaty ports as territoriality and so on. And throughout the century we have had debate after debate about China, and we say China was the call of the 30's, and Madame Chiang Kai-shek was quite capable of tapping into American sentiments to try and save China. Then it turned into who lost China in the late 40's, early 50's, and after the Chinese Communist Party came to power, a lot of hand wringing, finger pointing, McCarthyism, the State Department, and other American academe as well. There was a very brief, ever so brief recognition controversy, a kind of mini debate in early 1950 after the Communists came to power. Should we follow Britain's lead and recognize the People's Republic of China? Well, the Korean War brought a quick end to that debate. Then throughout the 50's at different intervals, '51, '52, '55, '56, there was a debate about rolling back Communism in China, how assertive should the United States be in doing so? You remember what happened to General McArthur when he advocated that, "We should not stop at the 38th parallel or at the Yalu River..."; but this was the chance indeed to strangle New China in its cradle. Then there were debates that went on through the 50's and the 60's, and the Vietnam War, and on to Nixon and the strategic opening to China from 1971. That produced yet more debate about the wisdom of that opening. And debates have plagued US-China policy ever since, certainly since 1989 and the Tiananmen Massacre, and the subsequent annual Most Favored Nation debates in this country. So China debates are nothing new to the United States. They seem to be, in fact, a rather permanent feature. They are not a bad thing; they are a good thing. But there is, and I'll suggest them in a few seconds, some patterns in these debates that we keep repeating over and over again. So the first point is that we have debated China before, and we must be cognizant of those previous debates, the positions taken and the conclusions arrived at. Secondly, our current China dilemma is not new. It takes place against the backdrop of, and grows out of, at least a century of interaction between our two countries. Americans, unfortunately, have very short memories, and it is a detriment, and we have a tendency to rediscover the wheel. The Chinese do not. They have very long and keen memories, perhaps to their detriment, but they bring a lot of baggage to this relationship. We tend to sort of restart every time, and as I am struck now with this new engagement policy of the United States. In 1995 and '96 we decide, okay, it's time to engage China. Let's start fresh. And the Chinese just accept that engagement policy as if nothing has been going on for the last six years. The Chinese have been looking for a policy, any kind of policy out of Washington since 1989. Anyway, my point is they bring to the relationship a considerable baggage in their sense of history in general, their relations with foreign powers, more generally, and with the United States in particular, and these are not always pleasant memories. And they come to the negotiating table with those memories uppermost in their minds, and it makes it difficult to do business with them, I would suggest. Our republic was only eight years old when a merchant vessel by the name of the Empress of China arrived in Canton, Guangzhou, having sailed from New York, and I mention this only because it represents what I would identify as the first of three persistent themes that one notices in the history of US-China relations over the last 200 plus years, that there has been a commercial impulse in the United States' approach to China. We have sought to trade our industrial know-how and technology for a piece of the vast consumer market in China, and for raw materials and earlier exotic goods. John D. Rockefeller wanted to put oil in the lamps of all Chinese. Andrew Carnegie wanted to link all Chinese to a railroad. Countless small businessmen wanted to sell consumer goods to every citizen in China. And they still do. We are not unique. Americans are not unique in this regard. Others certainly have sought to have commercial influence with China, too, but we are unique I think in not seeking territorial concessions historically from China for commerce. We did not seek treaty ports, we did not colonize China, and we did not seek extra territorial privileges for our traders in China. During the era of imperialism in China (which the Chinese now refer to over and over again as the "Century of Shame and Humiliation"), the United States rather persistently pursued the Open Door Policy and fought for a level playing field of all foreign traders in China. It fought for, in several international conferences and treaties including the Versailles Settlement and the Washington Conference in 1922, the protection of Chinese integrity and sovereignty, and open-door trading privileges for all concerned. The United States has actually had historically a rather more altruistic, if you will, approach to its commercial dealings to China than other Europeans in particular. So that's the first impulse. The second impulse that Americans have demonstrated over time is what one would call the missionary impulse. There are actually several different types of missionary impulses. The first would be commercial missionaries who seek not just to sell to China and trade with China, but to really remake and modernize China, and they do so with zeal. I recall one Senator Kenneth Wary from Kansas in the 1940's who said, "We shall lift Shanghai up, up, forever up until it is just like Kansas City." There have been and there are currently Senator Warys about in Capitol Hill, as well, and in American corporate life. There have also been religious missionaries who began to flood into Chinese cities and the Chinese interior in the mid 19th Century to convert the Chinese masses to Christianity. Some met with success, others came up against Chinese xenophobia, local despots, and met with more nasty fates. The third type of missionaries that I think we have seen over time are political missionaries, those who have wanted to remake China politically, not religiously or commercially, but politically to guide the Chinese Republic to democracy, American style democracy. These political missionaries found, I would say, very willing students in China amongst the Chinese intelligentsia and the Chinese government prior to 1949. And of course, this political mission didn't end in 1949 when the Communists came to power. It continued in our support for so-called Free China on Taiwan, and showed itself again on through into the late 1980's in the Tiananmen demonstrations. You recall those demonstrations had a very important impact on the American public. It was obviously beamed into all of our living rooms. What struck the chord I think in the American public was that the students were not just protesting corruption, which they were, calling for an open press and other reforms and lower inflation, but they were also calling for American style democracy. They were quoting Paine, they were quoting Jefferson, they were putting up replicas of the Statue of Liberty, all of this continuing to feed the American desire to remake China politically. And put simply, there has been a consistently strong sentiment to politically transform China into a more pluralistic American style country for a very long time, and this sentiment and this tension, really, I think is still very much with us. It still lies at the heart of US-China relations. It's one element. It's not the only one. But it is a subtext, I think. Then finally there are educational missionaries who sought to remake China's educational institutions and intellectual life, again along the lines of American intellectual and educational life, and again they met with considerable success. American educators started numerous comprehensive universities and private universities throughout China in the 30's and 40's. Those were closed down in '52 and '53 largely, and textbooks totally rewritten and American influence banished until the late 70's. But the point is, there was a willing audience. There were willing Chinese intellectuals who wished to learn to emulate American style education because they thought it would deliver American style modernization and American style democracy. And of course, the Chinese have always looked to dispatch their students to this country from the 1860's to the present day. There are over 40,000 Chinese students enrolled currently in American campuses, but over 100,000 still in the United States who have previously been enrolled and who have not returned. So there are a series of missionaries, if you will. It's the second impulse that I think we have seen over time. The third impulse that we have seen traditionally is the strategic impulse, the tendency to view China as a strategic element in an East Asian or even a global chessboard. Remember the playing of the China card in the early 1970's? It must be said, though, that for over a century the United States sought to protect China's territorial integrity, sovereignty and defense, and dispatched American troops to do so. American Marines, American Air Force, American Navy and American Army, all several times during this century served in China to protect Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity, and this was not lost on China, and it left a rather positive residue, I think historically. But after 1949, American forces were used in not such a benign fashion towards China; they were used from the Chinese perspective to contain China, and indeed to roll back the so-called New China. What the United States saw during this period, and I need not remind you, was an expansionist, ideological and aggressive China that sought to export its revolution throughout Southeast Asia, and indeed the rest of the developing world and most recently, Africa. And for a while Mao even spoke in the mid 60's about fomenting a revolution in the United States itself. And this led, this perception of expansionist China, as I say, led directly into the two Asian land wars that we fought, the trade embargo, the two Taiwan Straits crises, which came very near to a nuclear war in 1955. You now know with the released documentation just how close Eisenhower came to a nuclear limited strike upon China. Obviously it didn't happen, but it was much closer than we thought at the time. So we try to contain China, what we perceive to be an expansionist China. Other times since the Nixon opening, we tried to manipulate China, and China tried to manipulate us -- let's not fool each other -- in a kind of geometric strategic chess game vis-ˆ-vis the Soviet Union, and for awhile even vis-ˆ-vis Japan. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, this kind of maneuvering has reduced considerably, although it must be said that China is again trying to maneuver with Russia, I think in a broader Northeast Asian and even global way with the United States. The United States claims it does not see any trouble in the growing Russian-Chinese relationship, and I must say I don't really either, yet. And if you look at the history of that relationship, it's not going to develop very greatly from the long-term, I don't believe. There are many, many impediments again, something we can get into and you are going to explore over the next three days. So there are these three kind of impulses I think that you should keep in the back of your minds over the next three days as you walk through all these very current issues that the American Assembly has put before you. But don't forget that you're not starting with a clean slate; that we start with an historical background and a lot of baggage, as well. Okay. Let me, in the interest of time, move forward. One other thing to say about some historical considerations, and that is the kind of imagery that we have had with the Chinese over time. Some of it's been captured in what I have just said, but there has been a persistent sort of way in which the United States has characterized China in polar extremes over time, over a very long period of time -- love-hate images. We either romanticize China or we demonize China, but for some reason have been unable to find an equilibrium somewhere in the center. A lot of books have been written on this subject trying to figure out why the Americans can't come to a more nuanced, complex view of the world instead of this "good guys and bad guys," "black hats and white hats," "good cops and bad cops." I will not -- well, I won't enter into that debate here. I have entered it in print, but we have done this persistently, gone back and forth one to the other, and for their part, the Chinese -- and I wrote a whole book on this subject -- have had similar polar images of the United States. So I think we have got to break out of our stereotypes with China and see it for what it is. It is an extremely complex society today that cannot be stereotyped, cannot be easily typecast and defined. It is almost as complex as our own society. I wouldn't say it's completely as complex. They don't have a lot of the things that we have in our society, probably for the better, but it is not a society that we can easily identify as black or white. So again, try and avoid generalizations and stereotypical views of China. And that's why I think it's difficult to say China is going to be either a rival or a competitor or a partner. The logic would tell us it's got to be one or the other. You know, are we to be friends with these guys or not? Well, it's not so simple, I'm afraid. It's probably going to be all three, and maybe even some other categories I haven't thought of. So in my remaining time, let me walk through for you those three, what each might look like over time in the early next century. Let's start with China as a rival. This element, I would submit, may arise in the security, strategic and military realm. And I say "may" because it need not be the case. And one of the very best ways to ensure it is not the case is to build up the broad range of military-to-military contacts between our two armed forces, which fortunately have just been reinitiated this December with the visit of the Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian to the United States. General Chi's visit has set in train a whole series of exchanges that will build confidence I think between our two armed forces and build understanding between them, and it's a very important element of our overall relationship with China. We cannot have simply commercial relationships with China or simply diplomatic relationships with China. We must have a strategic and defense relationship with China, as well. The visit by General Chi has produced several things that I know you will get into, and there are people in attendance at this meeting who have been involved in the details of this visit and the broader relationship between our two militaries. But to take off for you some of the things they have sparked, there will be -- and they are all very positive -- regular security dialogues at the highest levels of our armed forces at the Joint Chiefs level, the Office of the Secretary of Defense level, the Undersecretary level, Pacific Command level and the Armed Services of the United States. General Shalikashvili is going to go to China later this year. Undersecretary for Policy Slocum is going, the Chief of Naval Operations is going, and a variety of their counterparts are coming this way indefinitely. This is not a one-off thing. There will be periodic exchanges of officers, capstone visits from our war colleges to China, the National Defense University exchange with the Chinese has been reaffirmed recently, and there will be Chinese military coming to civilian American universities as well, including my own, George Washington University, and indeed, hopefully here to the Air Force Academy and other institutions, similar institutions in the United States. There will be port calls and ship visits. The Chinese for the first time are sending at least two destroyers to Hawaii and San Diego next month, March, their first time to come to the West Coast of the United States. Some would say the first time they have been able to come to the West Coast of the United States. There are exchanges in the defense industrial area and technology exchanges, and other lab-to-lab exchanges and an agreement, or at least a tabled agreement, for instance, at sea. There is much more I think too -- it's a very good start. The Pentagon is to be commended, and I hope the Chinese do indeed take up all of these issues and more, but I think there is more to be done. First we need to really regularize these exchanges annually, let's say, and I think we should at least not only make them bilateral between our two defense ministers but trilateralize them between Japan, China and the United States as well, because there is nothing that any of us, the Chinese or the Americans do that does not impact upon Japan and vice versa. There is a dynamic which will be defining, singularly defining in the 21st Century security in East Asia. We are allied to Japan, and I think we need to bring the Japanese in to trilateral confrontations with the Chinese. They have their own bilaterals; we have our own bilaterals. Of course we have an alliance with Japan but we don't meet together. I think that needs to be done. We need to continue deep in these exchanges throughout the military bureaucracies, we need to collaborate with the PLA on the whole range of improved transparency, of doctrine, of expenditure and of deployments. It's not going to be easy, but we have to do it. We have to work with them. Even China's arms export control system, we can work with China to help improve its process as well as its transparency. We should work with China to ensure better compliance with the UN Register of Conventional Arms Transfers. We should work with China for prenotification and even observation of exercises, and eventually down the road somewhere, perhaps joint exercises; engage in joint search and rescue, anti-piracy, anti-smuggling and anti-narcotics; work with the Chinese, pursue -- and I gather this has been pursued but it hasn't gone anywhere -- a nuclear detargeting agreement, and exchange some nuclear doctrine with the Chinese, and to bring China fully into the Missile Technology Control Regime as a formal member. They generally adhere to the stipulations of that regime, but are not yet a member. So there is a good start, and I think that, again, the military relationship is an absolutely crucial leg on which this relationship has to stand. It's a sensitive leg. It's a leg that's going to be criticized by human rights groups and by some in Congress and in the media, but those of us who believe in it have to make the case for it publicly. So if things are going so well between the US and Chinese military of late, where, you might ask, lies the basis for rivalry? Well, in several areas, and let me start with two -- first, and these are of concern, China's already existing perception of the United States as a national security threat to its own national security, and two, China's desire to force a substantial if not complete withdrawal of US forward based forces in East Asia and the abrogation of America's existing five bilateral defense treaties in the region. You may grab your chair and say, "What, the Chinese want that?" Well, yes, some Chinese and some in the Chinese military want that, and they have been saying so privately since at least 1992, and they are beginning to say so publicly. This is -- both sources are a source of very great concern. There is ample evidence in leaked internal Chinese documents, oral reports, meetings with Chinese military, meetings with Chinese intelligence officials, Chinese academics that confirm these two perceptions. Again, they have increased over time in the last four to five years, and there seems to be a consensus in China that we have to undo that the United States is trying to contain China strategically through these forward based deployments. And through these treaties that are being revitalized, particularly the one with Japan, but also the one with Australia, that the United States is trying to subvert the regime politically, that the United States is trying to divide the country territorially by permanently separating Taiwan from the mainland and encourage trends towards independence on the island, and indeed in Tibet. They feel [the US] is trying to frustrate China's economic emergence internationally by keeping China out of the World Trade Organization and is not giving China due respect such as in the Olympic Games a few years ago. This is a commonly held set of perceptions that at least I, and I know many of my colleagues, hear when they go to Beijing, and it is not reassuring. I think it speaks much more to China's fears than certainly our own desires or policies. I do not say that we seek to do any of the four of those, yet the Chinese think we do. I hope my voice can make it through the rest of this. The reaffirmation and expansion of the US-Japan Security Alliance and the US-Australia Security Treaty, the dispatch of carrier battle groups to the Taiwan area last year, maintenance of 100,000 foreign deployed forces between Asia are taken by the Chinese as hostile contingents. They don't buy, in my discussions with them -- there may be members of those in the audience who have discussions at higher levels, but the levels I have been in -- they don't buy the US rationale for these deployments or for the treaties. And they say that these treaties, and indeed the deployments are relics of the Cold War. You have no enemy now, unless it's China, and they suspect it's China, and that's why we keep those troops there and revitalize the treaties, and therefore you should remove the troops and dissolve the treaties. I have had numerous Chinese make that case to me. One wonders how seriously, and after, you know, several times that I realized some of them at least are serious about it. Then they quickly will say, "Oh, well, you know, these are left over by history, and we realize that you can't go home tomorrow, but this is basically our position." And the skeptic would say, "Of course it's your position. You want us out of Asia so you can dominate it." But quite simply, I think it's for these two reasons that the potential for strategic rivalry lies in China's desire to remove the United States' conventional forces and security guarantees from East Asia. That, to my mind, is a major difference of perception that could lead to a strategic rivalry. If those two points are not enough, take five more: Taiwan. Increase -- well, Taiwan, we'll probably talk a little bit about each of these; the American desire at least for increased Japanese regional military role; the potential for a theater high-altitude defense system in Northeast Asia; China's own dedicated press for force projection, platforms and force multipliers; and fifth, territorial plans by China in the South China Sea that would effect navigation through those vital sea lanes. I could stay here all night, and you will talk about these five over the next three days, but in each of these areas we have interests that run counter to China's. I think we have got to look that straight in the eye and we have to talk about it directly with China. We do not seek that Taiwan should be bullied. Coercive diplomacy should not be used vis-ˆ-vis the island. We do not seek that the island should creep towards independence. We do not support that. But we have various obligations on the Taiwan Relations Act to sell weaponry so that Taiwan can defend itself, and if attacked, unprovoked by the mainland, who knows what the United States would do. I think there would be a very strong moral case for American intervention under some conditions. Increased Japanese regional military role, this is something that is in the newly redefined US-Japan Security Treaty, something that some in Japan, at least, would like to see become a more symmetrical power, a more circle than normal power. Now, there are very few in Asia who would like to see it, however, so that's probably a nonstarter, but the question is whether the Japanese Navy is going to control outside away from the home islands and become increasingly involved in international peacekeeping. Those are things I think the United States supports, but certainly the Chinese do not. Then the potential for theater high-altitude defense over Northeast Asia, which then, you know, it's in the future. The newspaper two days ago said the Japanese don't want to go along with this for fear of aggravating China, amongst other things, not to mention cost, but it strikes fear into the heart of Chinese strategic planners because of its obvious implications for rendering its nuclear, minimum nuclear deterrent, obsolete, so that's an issue. Then there is China's own military modernization program, something again I would be happy to talk about in a question and answer session. I am writing a book on the Chinese military, and the long and the short of it is, they have got a long way to go. They are 15 to 20 years behind modern systems in virtually every category across the board. Their Air Force is of 1960's vintage, their Navy about the same. They are highly dependent upon imports for both the Air Force and the Navy, but the new destroyer and the J10 fighter program all require foreign imports, and the ground forces are not much better. This is a very backward military with no force projection capacity. The Navy is not really a blue water Navy; it's a green water Navy. Their pilots get I think 30 or 40 hours air time a year. They don't have in-flight refueling. They don't have long range lift in air or sea. They couldn't even invade Taiwan if they wanted to, quite seriously. They could take out a number of strategic targets on Taiwan with ballistic missiles, and they could wreak havoc around the ports in Chi-lung and Kau-hsiung and disrupt shipping to that island, and therefore disrupt the economy of the island, which I think would be a pretty effective way to bring the island to its knees, but they do not plan at present to invade the island, according to most systems analysts. So there is a lot of discussion over the China threat in two weeks, and next week, in fact, a book is about to be published called The Coming Conflict of China. I do not recommend it to you, although you probably ought to read it. It is a real scaremongering book. And they have got their facts on it, on a number of things, but particularly in the defense realm. But it's going to fuel the view of China as a military threat. China is not at the present time and will not be, a threat to American interests or I would say even to most major East Asian interests; not a military threat for at least another decade, and the gap is widening. These other militaries around China are modernizing. I don't see a great deal of concern there. So, you know, that's the good news, but in the strategic realm, generally speaking, there is a lot of reason for concern that the United States and China may become -- flip into kind of a rivalry, for the reasons I tried to outline. Does China seek to dominate Asia, become a regional hegemon as it once was? No is the short answer, I don't think. For reasons of China's own history of being subjected to an imperialistic and hegemonic behavior itself, its traditional methods of statecraft, its insular world view on the weakness of its military capabilities for the foreseeable future, all suggest to me that China doesn't have the capability, much less the intent, to dominate Asia. So it's a nonstarter and a lot of scaremongering. This does not, however, preclude China from pursuing the strategic goals of evicting the United States military forces from foreign deployments in East Asia, and recovering Taiwan quite possibly by coercive force, stopping Japan from playing a regional security role, developing outlets to the Indian Ocean by Burma and developing platforms of force projection over time, and they will do that. You bet they can do that. They are not that far away from in-flight refueling. They are not that far away from being able to mount warheads. They are not that far away from changing the IL-76 transport into a long-range troop transport -- or an in-flight refueler rather. They are going to get this stuff, but it, I don't think, constitutes a threat to East Asia. But these general strategic goals do constitute cause for concern and run counter to American strategic interests and national security. So what can the US do under these conditions? Work to broaden and deepen the strategic dialogue we have started in military-to-military exchanges, explain to the Chinese why the US forces are in Asia, and more importantly, why it's in their interests that US forces are in Asia, mainly that they provide stability in East Asia which provides for economic growth in East Asia. The economic miracle of East Asia over the last two decades would not, I am going to submit, have been possible without the stability and security of the region, and that would not have been possible without the United States military. So it's in their interests that their own economy will grow because of our troops, and they need to be told that. I have told them that. They don't like to hear it, but they need to be told it, that American naval forces and assets in Asia protect the freedom of navigation. There are very important sea lanes through that region, and US forces deter aggression generally in the region, and specifically on the Korean Peninsula. We need to encourage, I think in rather strong language, the need for a peaceful settlement of the Taiwan issue, and to tell the Chinese that coercive diplomacy is counterproductive and that an attack on Taiwan may precipitate US intervention. They need to hear that. In the meantime, the US is obligated, as I mentioned under the Taiwan Relations Act, to continue to supply Taiwan with sufficient defensive weaponry for their own defense. I think what's in the pipeline now and will be delivered over the next 18 months is sufficient for Taiwan's own defense, once delivered. They are in a rather vulnerable window at the moment, but I think over the next 12 to 18 months they can sleep more soundly at night, and we need to explain to China why Japan, as a symmetrical power with regional security responsibilities is a good thing, not a bad thing, and can help ensure broader regional stability. We need to monitor China's activities in Burma and to increase US defense ties with India as a hedge. Indeed, we need to pursue a hedging strategy by building up our defense ties in countries around China's periphery. If that looks like containment to China, so be it, but it's a necessary hedge, and we should not, I don't think, sell or transfer systems, military systems to China that would augment its force projection capacity and urge restraints on others who seek to do so. I don't think it's politically feasible in the United States or in Western Europe, save perhaps France, to do so, but I don't think it's strategically in our interests to do so. Let me then turn in the remaining five minutes to the last two possibilities, in which I will be much more brief: China as a competitor and China as a partner. The China as a competitor involved the political realm. It's not that China is a political competitor, per se, of the United States. No one would say it is. No country in the world looks to China as a model, political model or ideological model. Quite to the contrary. China's political system is an anachronism, a remnant of another era that has bucked the global trend of democratization and is one of four remaining Communist Party states left on the face of the earth. I know that some of my colleagues tomorrow are going to be glad to tell you that China is not a political pariah, that China has come a long way towards pluralization from liberalization since the direct coming of the Maoist era, and that it is none of America's business how the Chinese Government treats its people, and in any event, they are treated much better than they used to be. Well, there is some truth to all this. China has experienced dramatically improved pluralization, if you will, political pluralization, increased freedom of speech and individual freedom, increased public discourse, increased freedom of movement both inside and outside the country, and social mobility, labor mobility, and has dramatically improved the standard of living, which is, after all, a basic human right. China is no North Korea, but China continues to be one of the world's worst abusers of human rights, political rights, civil rights, religious rights, reproductive rights and dissent. I encourage you to read the recent State Department's Human Rights Report on China. I did two nights ago finally. It is damning reading, chilling reading, and in 1997, it cannot be overlooked or condoned in my view. It concludes, among other things, that all political dissent has been muzzled through imprisonment or exile by the end of 1996. And indeed, what we are seeing in China's run up to recovering Hong Kong later last year in terms of disbanding the essential freedoms and codified laws that will protect the central freedoms of the territory is not encouraging either. In these areas, China's human rights record has deteriorated markedly in the last few years. I don't think it can be excused and simply wished away by saying the overall standard of living has risen, and therefore, we need to give the Chinese credit. You can give the Chinese credit and you can still accuse them of the draconian methods they use. Its political system moreover remains closed, dominated by the Chinese Communist Party; no checks and balances, extreme secrecy, a military and security establishment that is a tool of the party, not a separate autonomous corporate military such as we know in this country. It's a party that's intolerant of dissent run by a relative handful of self-chosen leaders, governed without a popular mandate from behind some high foreign walls of the Zhongnarhai. This is not a political system that exactly inspires confidence among American Democrats. Not only do the Chinese leaders not tolerate dissent in their own borders by their own people, but neither do they tolerate criticism from foreigners. They harshly reject it as interference in their internal affairs, and even worse, are beginning to increasingly tie into commercial opportunity. Those governments and companies who remain silent on Chinese human rights get the contracts. Those who don't, don't get them. I find this rather hideous by the Chinese, but probably even worse for the Western governments that are complicitous with this practice. So in the political realm, I think there is a sense of China, if you will, as a competitor, challenging the universality of human rights declarations and norms and defying the local wave of democratization and accountable government. So, there is bad news there. Finally let me close, and give you, maybe, a piece of good news -- China as a partner, and these are not mutually exclusive again. I think that we will face all three in the future with China, and do at present. China can be a partner for the United States in a number of ways, and if you have read the American Assembly Report, the small one -- the big one is still at press -- you will see the ways in which the American Assembly suggests China can be a partner. I find this report, frankly, rather soft on China. I think that it could have been much stronger on several categories, you know, something again for you to discuss over the next three days. It does bring some balance into the dialogue on China, but is noticeably absent on some of these things I'm talking about tonight, which is the very reason why I'm talking about them. Anyway, the report identifies China as a partner in maintaining peace in the Korean peninsula, true. China is a partner in maintaining peace in the Taiwan Strait, true, potentially. China is a partner in forcing the range of arms control accords; not insignificant ones, the Nonproliferation Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, the chemical weapons ban, biological weapons ban, even potentially the fissile material cutoff and the missile technology control regime. We see China as a partner in environmental protection that will indeed figure high on Vice-President Al Gore's agenda when he goes there next month, and sees China as a partner in fighting international crime, sees China as a potential partner in upholding World Trade Organization standards if China's admitted to the WTO, and again we can talk about that. It looks like there is some movement forward in that area, much to the better. We need China in, while not compromising the integrity of that institution, and the report sees China as a potential partner in the smooth transition for Hong Kong to the resumption of Chinese sovereignty this July. But again, it looks at present as if that transition is going to come at the cost of establishing institutions and guaranteed freedoms in the territory. Finally, the report sees China as a partner in building what -- the United States in fact is a partner in building up the legal system in China, and hence the protection of human rights. So these are indeed areas in which the United States can and should work together with China. But the area in which the partnership is most apparent is, of course, commerce, a very robust commercial relationship between our two countries today. One-third of all Chinese exports come to the United States. The two sides do well, in excess of 60, maybe $70 billion in bilateral trade, but the bad news with a nearly $50 billion deficit this year, according to the US Commerce Department. But those figures are disputed because of transshipping through Hong Kong. It's probably more in the range of $37, $38 billion -- not insignificant, but not quite as high as Commerce would have you believe. Aside from Hong Kong and Taiwan, the United States business community is the leading investor in China, foreign direct investment in China. And unknown to many, China is I think the number three investor in the United States. The money's flowing both ways across the Pacific. And Commerce is anchoring the relationship and will hopefully keep it from becoming a rivalry in these other elements in the strategic realm, the political human rights realm. This is a good thing. This anchors the relationship. I would also observe that it's an element we did not have with the Soviet Union, and hence the relationship became dominated by human rights and security concerns. But there are a lot of problems to doing business in China. I am not going to tell you what they are. China's got to make a lot of progress, which I think getting into the World Trade Organization will force on them. Let me just close by making two observations. The first in my mind, there is no alternative to engaging China. Containment is a word that should not be used, first of all. It's a naive and dangerous folly. It couldn't be implemented even if we wanted to, because to contain another country, you need the cooperation of many others. I can tell you that nobody in the European Union and nobody in Asia is going to go along with the United States if the United States were to try and contain China. An isolated China is a dangerous China. A China integrated into its own region and into the world is hopefully a much more peaceful China. That's what we are all betting on, and it is -- the policy of engagement to me is that it really centrally involves the integration of China into that international order, and to tie China into international organizations that will then force a commensurate change on Chinese behavior both domestically and internationally. And secondly, I would observe that we are most fortunate simply to have the opportunity to debate our China policy, where China is going and where we should go with China. As I mentioned at the outset, our ancestors did not necessarily have this chance when other powers were rising on the international scene earlier in this century, nonetheless, and they paid dearly for it. We have the chance to try, with some foresight, to fashion a policy, a wise policy towards China that can integrate it into the international system, stabilize its relations with our country, and if that is done, it will stabilize Asia, I can tell you. The US-China relationship is fundamental to the entire stability of East Asia. So we have a real opportunity to discuss this, and I envy you over the next three days. I wish I could stay to participate in your discussions, but you have the American Assembly at Columbia University and the US Air Force Academy here in Colorado Springs to thank for this opportunity, and I trust that you will have a very robust and hopefully fulfilling discussion about how to deal with China over the next three days. But do so with an open mind and sobriety. Don't be taken in by what I would say is the overly "warmish" tone of the American Assembly Report from China. Thank you very much. (Applause) AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes. Last November the Defense Appropriations Act of 1996 accepted that those who had had forced sterilization and abortion would qualify as refugees, thereby opening the door so people under the one child policy really obtained refugee status. Do you think that this will have an immediate effect on US-Chinese relations and also on numbers of refugees and immigrants to the United States from China? DR. SHAMBAUGH: Well, I must confess I'm not aware of it. This is the first I have heard of it. I could speculate on the second half of the question, will it have effect on the immigration to the United States, if that was your question. If word gets out in China, you bet it will. Beyond that, you know, beyond that I really wouldn't be able to even speculate on the impact. It's of obvious concern that the Congress has been giving American funding to UN agencies that have assisted in forced sterilizations and abortions in China. We all know the horror stories, and they are horrifying, of late term abortions, female infanticide and forced sterilizations in China. As far as I know, the government -- this is not government policy, number one, and two, the government is trying to stop those practices, but I don't have any evidence on whether it's making much headway. In fact, one report says it is not. These are very complicated issues, but the legislation itself, I would not want to be able to speculate beyond that. I am not sure what effect it will have, but we are getting into awful queues in front of the US Visa section, and if word, you know, gets out, the question is how do you prove it, I suppose. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Thank you. DR. SHAMBAUGH: Miss? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Most people argue that China is pushing arms control because it's really in their security interests, and not pursuing arms control when it's not in their security interests. So given China's obvious interest in nuclear modernization, why do you think China signed the CTBT? DR. SHAMBAUGH: If China's interest is in nonproliferation, why did they sign the CTBT? AUDIENCE MEMBER: No, no, in the Air Force modernization, their own interest in that. DR. SHAMBAUGH: Well, good question. I mean, as you know, they delayed signing as long as they could while they continued testing up until last year. My impression of that continued testing was to try and miniaturize warheads and to condense the yields or to make for more condensed yields, but I think they had to sign on for what I call status reasons. The costs of being outside the CTBT, political costs were too high for them. I think that argument holds in other areas, like the WTO. You can make the same argument, why does China want to go into the WTO? This can wreak havoc on their state ministerial sector, their financial sector, all kinds of things, on their agricultural sector included. Why do they want to go in? Costs of being out are too high, and if they want to think of themselves as a great power, then they should be members of all the great power clubs, so I'm all for it. I think you should bring China into the great power clubs, including the G7, but the CTBT, I think was a political call. If the inference of your question is military, they need to continue to modernize those forces and for theater use, as well, as you point out. But I think for political reasons they had no choice. They stretched it out as long as they could. Thank goodness from their perspective the French went ahead and tested, and then once the French ended, they were out there by themselves. So I would sort of -- status may not be the right word, but it was a disincentive for them to be seen as a kind of rogue outside the international convention. And of course, the UN vote, there was kind of a time line coming up at the UN as well, and they knew it had to be on board and signed by that time. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have one question. It was reported last night from a reputable Hong Kong paper that Deng Xiaoping, the leader of China, had died, and if that is so, what sort of problems will arise during this succession crisis that the US will have to face? DR. SHAMBAUGH: Well, indeed all the papers are full of these stories in the last 24 hours, and it looks -- you know, we have heard this before and he's still with us. We think he's still with us. The joke in Beijing for several years is that Deng is dead and nobody has told him. But this time it looks like it may well be the case, but I wouldn't count him out until he's out. But the fact that Jiang Zemin and Li Peng both aborted their respective trips inside the country yesterday and hurried back to the capital suggests it, and there was a lot of limousine activity in Peking. Before I left this morning, I talked to somebody there. It looks like this is the real thing. So what does it mean? More complicated. Well, it means that we can stop writing and rewriting and re-rewriting the obituaries we have all written for Deng Xiaoping for so many years, really, and updating those. But more seriously, I don't think it's going to have a major impact on the elite in China. The succession has been over for at least two years, generally speaking, as they say, the succession to Deng himself. They are still contending amongst themselves for the final shape, if you will, of the successor generation and regime. They have, coming up this autumn, the so-called 15th Party Congress, and they have by their constitution next March the fact that Premier Li Peng has completed two terms and he can't serve beyond that, so he has to step down from that position, which is forcing more fluidity into the situation. But I would say that the basic constellation of leaders, you know, you never want to predict about Chinese politics. If one in Chinese political science does that, they always get caught wrong. So let me make a couple sort of contradictory observations and hopefully cover myself first, that the succession is over and has been for some time. This is the generation of succession from one man to another man from Deng to Jiang. This is succession from a generation to another generation, and you have a generation of people in power now largely in their sixties who I characterize as technocratic apparatchiks. These are individuals who were trained in and by the Soviet Union in the 1950's. Their orientation is very much shaped by that profound experience. Many of them speak Russian, and in fact, the Russian Ambassador to Beijing proudly told me that he's counted, I think he said 14, out of 22 politburo members who he said are fluent in Russian. The Russian generation is running China today, the Soviet generation more precisely, and these are people who are engineers by background like Li Peng, like Jiang Zemin, like Zhu Rongji, and they are apparatchiks, inner-party apparatchiks; and a number of others who work in the security apparat and the political legal sphere. I would not call these people enlightened leaders who are going to take -- you know, cross the bridge into the 21st Century and move China down another political path. Their reference point is back to the 50's, and I think you see in their policies their perspective, the campaigns of the last year, spiritual civilization, party building at the local level, tough authoritarianism, cracking down on dissent, not giving an inch on civil society. If you do, you are going to wind up like the Poles and the Russians, the Hungarians and the East Germans. They have drawn some very profound lessons from 1989, not just in their own country, but in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and their lessons are if you give an inch, it will unravel in front of your eyes and you are going to be swept from power. So this is a group of people who, I think they have a siege mentality, who are very afraid in pushing ahead with political change of any pluralistic stripe. So that's the first observation. These people, unfortunately are in the prime of their political life. I don't see them leaving the stage for 10 years. Behind them you have the so-called Red Guard generation about whom Anne Thurston has written at some length. She is here. They are a different group. And we also have a number who have been trained abroad. Some of them have come back, most of whom are still overseas in this country. But this is the group that's going to rule China. That's the first one, and I think that they have -- it's a collective leadership. I don't see overt factionalism. If Deng dies tonight, I don't, you know, foresee midnight arrests in the Forbidden City like we had with the Gang of Four. I don't foresee several people being swept out of power. I don't see military factions contending with each other, only civilian factions. This is generally a pretty unified civilian elite and military elite, and there is a big story there, too, the relationship between the military and the Party in the inner-penetration of the two. The second observation, though, is that you have to look at the other half of the glass. There are two parts to this. There is an elite part and there is a society part. There are leaders in the elite who are either in office or more likely out of office who have been purged over the last seven or eight years who would like to see a much more open China, who did not support the Tiananmen Massacre, who would like to take China down a more pluralistic path, who would like to see civil society develop, would like to do all kinds of things, and much more liberal. And certainly in the Chinese intelligentsia, there are strong holds over such people. So that's at the elite level. These people -- you don't hear from them, because they will wind up in prison tomorrow if they speak out on these subjects -- you can bet they're there. Some of them are under arrest. Some are just laying low. Then at the societal level, what one might call the systemic level, this is not in my view a stable country. They, like the Chinese leadership tell you over and over and over, "We are stable." Well, when Chinese leadership tells you something over and over, you know to believe just the opposite of what they tell you. China's leadership historically fears instability. This is a kind of psychic element they call fear of Wang, Dan Wang, "The whole country is going to unravel into warlording fiefdoms if we don't keep control of it." So there is that, and there is some truth to it, and indeed the responsibilities of governing a country that size are enormous. But this is a country that has undergone profound economic change on a scale unprecedented in world history over the last 15 years, and this has produced extreme dislocations in that society in all sectors, in all classes of the society. There is very pronounced social stratification, very pronounced problems in the agricultural sector, huge so-called exploding population, a hundred million plus. The estate and industrial sector is insoluble. There are factories that produce roughly 50 percent of GDP, but require healthy subsidies to do so. There are discontent urban work forces, discontent youth, a kind of moral ideological vacuum. Nobody believes in Marx anymore. There is increasing crime, rampant corruption throughout both the state, the Party, the military and society. What else? The list goes on and on. This is not to my mind a stable country, and one I think when you look to the future of China's political system, you have got to look more systemically, not just at the elite level. If you look at the elite level, there is a sense of stability. If you look beneath the elite level, I foresee substantial instability in the coming years. So it was a more long-winded answer to your post Deng question, but who knows if he is really going to go this time. Yes, sir? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I have a quick question for you, sir. There is an ongoing debate in my department whether or not the Tiananmen Square movement was actually a fluke or if it was actually a deep-seated society movement within the people in China. Can I get your thoughts on that, please? DR. SHAMBAUGH: Sure. Well, again, the Tiananmen movement was several things. It started off as protests. Well, it started off as a commemoration of the death of Hu Yaubong, the former leader, and the things he stood for, namely the liberalization and pluralization, if you will, of intellectual life and political life in China. Quickly added to that, though, were the major concerns of the day, corruption and official corruption in particular, amongst families of the elite, and freedom of speech, which would indeed be a way to criticize corruption. It then blossomed into a much more pro-democracy movement, and we tend to remember it for that. Again, the goddess of democracy, and the Paine and Jefferson quotations, and the man in front of the tank and all that kind of reinforced the imagery of it. But it was -- if you look at the people who protested, it was a cross-class demonstration. Every sector of urban Beijing was there, and I remind you that 33 cities across the country erupted in protest during the month of May 1989, and they did so for various grievances. That's why I say -- this is an answer to your question, perhaps -- this is a society full of grievances. The more China develops economically, the deeper those grievances go, and the more combustible it is, and the regime does not recognize those growing demands. These are largely demands for what we call public goods, better air, you know, better water, better education, better health care. People are not demanding democracy in China. They are demanding a better quality of life. And then they are kind of asking themselves, "Well, the government is not giving us this. What alternative do we have but to organize it ourselves?" The answer known is because the government sees NGO's and civil society as seditious and does not permit them to form. So you know, the government should take a sort of a longer-term view of this and begin to deliver these public goods, let the civil society grow, but they know precisely where civil society led in Eastern Europe, and that's the rub. So I think that the kind of issues that surfaced in 1989 are very much there in China today, and indeed perhaps even more pronounced. The only reason they haven't exploded is that the security lid has been put on that society, A; and B, the increasing wealth that has penetrated this society has not sparked it, but it's there, and it could erupt. It probably won't erupt in Beijing. It could erupt elsewhere in the country, but it's there. It is not, in my view, a stable country. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Does it appear to you that there is a double standard in US human rights standards in Asia, especially with regard to political repression between China and I guess what you would call more friendly Asian countries, such as Singapore and Indonesia, where political repressionism is still evident, but does not have the censure from the US that China has? DR. SHAMBAUGH: Well, you know, except for the annual Human Rights Report that the State Department produces, I don't think that we censure China on human rights. I think we need a much more robust human rights policy in China. We have held silent on Chinese human rights over the last two years, and it's an unfortunate fact, but human rights conditions in China have deteriorated markedly, as I said, after the de-link with MFN. Now, I am the first to say it should have been delinked. You don't mix trade and human rights. But the fact of the matter is that China thought, after that delinkage, that there are no incentives to comply, and they are right. And the US Government, I don't hear them speaking out in the last two years about human rights abuses, except in the annual Congressionally mandated human rights report the State Department has released, which yes, is a stern critique. Now, Madeleine Albright says she is going to go to Beijing next week and tell them the way it is. I hope she does, but if she does, she is going to get an earful in return, and the Chinese are masters of linkage politics. They are going to -- if the Americans start to lecture them on human rights, they are going to dig in their heels on other issues, strategic issues, trade issues, others. So the Chinese are very effectively trying to maneuver the human rights issue, not just with the United States, but the European Union and indeed the Human Rights Commission in Geneva right off the stage, and they very effectively lobbied in the last two years to keep that resolution from being adopted there. Your question had to do with the double standards, vis-ˆ-vis other Asian countries. I don't know if my answer had to do with that. I don't think we are criticizing other Asian countries, and we are not criticizing the Chinese, either. You had some comments about, you know, Indonesia in terms of workers' rights. Our Human Rights Bureau has been muzzled over the last two years by elements of the Clinton Administration. I don't know where that's come from, but I think that you have to have a balanced policy where you can speak out on human rights and pursue your other interests, and you do it multilaterally, is the other thing. The United States must coordinate on human rights, on a number of issues: strategy of trade with our allies in the European Union and in Asia. The United States has a "Lone Ranger" characteristic that is to its detriment to go its own way with other countries; and particularly the US-China relationship is a bilateral relationship, but we should see it as a multilateral relationship, which means work very closely with the EU and our Asian partners and allies on a whole range of issues. The Chinese are very good with dividing the rule. One scholar called it, "To use the barbarians to control the barbarians and playing one off against the other." If we present a united front to China, it will be much more effective in policy terms. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just want to add something. Shouldn't we add something like timing into the factor? The reason I ask about the timing, I was talking to an individual about human rights, and he answered to me, "You live in America. Look, it takes 20 years to come to where you are, and remember 200 years ago they are still in the same place." How do you answer that? DR. SHAMBAUGH: If I understand the question, "You Americans can talk about human rights because you have been around for 200 years"? My answer to them would be, "You have been around 2,500 years at least, or 3,000 years." No, it's a real issue, but it's also a ruse. China is a developing country. With development, one is able to protect human rights better and put in place laws, various NGO's and mechanisms that will protect civil rights. Now, there are different types of human rights, and economic rights are part of them. Religious rights are part of them. Civil rights are part of them. Political rights are part of them. Reproductive rights are part of them. Gender rights are part of them. So one has to be careful about what, you know, element one is talking about. You know, we Americans tend to really focus on the political rights of dissent, but we should also focus on gender rights and reproductive rights, and more broadly, civil rights in China. Civil rights have improved, gender rights have improved, but you know, not appreciably so, I don't think. Now, okay, your friend's point is that China's a developing country, therefore we have to view rights in relative terms, not absolute terms. That's the essence of the argument I always get. Let us develop, then we will be happy to protect our rights. I don't buy it. I'm sorry. I think you can develop and protect human rights at the same time. Moreover, your country is a signatory at the International Human Rights Conventions, and you are not even upholding your international obligations in this regard. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I just want to make one more comment. It seems like it's difficult to talk about universal human rights when you have a double standard. There is no question of the political repression when it comes to negotiating trade relations with Singapore, but it always seems to come into question with China, and it seems like it would appear that Chinese human rights is more of a token, more of I guess a playing card than it is an actual issue, especially when they are upheld to a different standard than other countries that are more friendly. DR. SHAMBAUGH: Well, that's right. The United States has got to be consistent, but again, you have to multilateralize this, and the European Union is very concerned about human rights in other countries. It speaks out, and they are almost about to abscond it. It has concerns about teamwork. Anyway, we have to work. You know, there is a double standard if you don't implement human rights in a consistent way across various countries, so your point's well taken there. But you have got to work together with other countries in multilateral force such as the Human Rights Convention in Geneva on condemning these transgressions, and you have to work in those countries to help protect the rights through various methods of developing legal systems, bringing in external monitors. The best thing we can do is try and push China to allow the Red Cross inspection of their prisons, and that would make a very tangible, important step, something that's pretty widely accepted in the world, but not in China. AUDIENCE MEMBER: When you just mentioned a united front in US policy towards China, how is that presently possible considering the number of competing interests such as the State Department pursuing human rights on one side, the Commerce Department on international property, the other issue to be more open to China and welcome them into an international organization such as the WTO, more responsibility to the military organizations? There seems to be several competing interests within the US bureaucracy that prevent a united front or a single policy towards China. DR. SHAMBAUGH: Well, implicit in your question is kind of a zero sum competition between them. There are multiple interests, I would say, not competing interests, and I think they should be seen in a more positive sum than a zero sum fashion. We have a very complex multi-faceted agenda with China, as indeed does the world, and Secretary Albright has I think very clearly shown this in her statements, opening statements when she was being confirmed by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, she made that point. We have to address several issues simultaneously with the Chinese. We have to also be clear about our priorities. But to prioritize doesn't mean that you let others drop off the agenda altogether. So we pursue these issues, commerce, trade, but the point I wanted to make, and we will close on this, is you need Presidential leadership to do this. It is a proven historical fact that when the President doesn't lead, the bureaucracy leads, and in this country, interest groups lead. There is an interest group in this country for every issue concerning China. You name it and there are competing bureaucratic interests in the US, in Washington on a whole range of issues, and they will dominate the agenda with China if the President himself does not lead. And unfortunately, he has been woefully silent as a leader on the China issue. You know, he may be forced, I think through this growing scandal on, you know, for fundraising for the DNC and the Chinese links here, not just to answer the questions about that, but to actually stand up and say, "Look, these are our interests in China," and he should do that. The American Assembly has called for it. It's front and center in the report. We need President Clinton to outline very clearly and in detail what our policy is and then to implement it. He has not done so to date, and I think it's been to our detriment. CADET PALATINUS: Dr. Shambaugh, we know how busy your schedule is and appreciate your being here, so as a token of our appreciation, we would like to present you something we cadets actually call "The Bird." (Applause) Panelist Ms. Sidney Jones Ms. Sidney Jones is currently the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch/Asia, formerly known as Asia Watch. From 1985-1988 she was a Researcher for Amnesty International's Asia and Pacific Research Department at International Secretariat in London. From 1977-1985 she was the Program Officer for the For Foundation located in New York. She is well published and holds memberships and affiliations with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Association of Asian Studies, Amnesty International, American Assembly, where she is on the advisory committee, and on the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations where she is a board member. Panelist Dr. Edwin J. Feulner Edwin J. Feulner, Jr. Is the President of The Heritage Foundation. In 1989 he was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Reagan and was conferred as "a leader of the conservative movement." He served as a United States Representative to the United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament where he delivered the final United States Address to the General Assembly. During the transition from the Carter Administration to the Reagan Administration, he served in several senior roles including the Executive Committee of the Presidential Transition. He remains involved in various aspects of foreign policy, particularly public diplomacy, international communications issues and international economic policy. He served on the United States delegations to several meetings of the IMF/World Bank group. Dr. Feulner is the author of several books, contributor to 10 other books and numerous journals, reviews and magazines. He is a publisher, and his monthly syndicated column has won several Freedom's Foundation Awards and appears in more than 500 newspapers. Panelist and Roundtable Leader Colonel Karl W. Eikenberry Colonel Karl W. Eikenberry is the U.S. Department of Defense Senior Country Director for China, Mongolia and Gong Kong. Colonel Eikenberry has been assigned to the Department of Defense since 1994 and has been selected for infantry brigade command. He previously commanded a light infantry battalion and held command and staff positions in mechanized, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the United States, Korea and Europe. Colonel Eikenberry has served as division chief in the Strategy Plans and Policy Directorate of the Army Staff and as an Assistant Army AttachŽ to the People's Republic of China. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, earned his M.A. in East Asian Studies from Harvard, where he was also a national security fellow at the JFK School of Government, and is currently completing his Ph.D. in political science at Stanford University. Panelist Dr. David M. Lampton Since 1988, Dr. Lampton has been president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations. Prior to assuming this position, he was associate professor of political science at The Ohio State University and director of China Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Lampton received his B.A., M.A, and Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has lived and conducted research in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. His research addresses bureaucratic and elite politics in China, U.S.-China relations, and Chinese foreign policy. His articles have appeared widely, and he is the author of recent books and edited volumes. He also testified before the House and Senate Committees on U.S.-China relations. Panelist & Final Report Editor Dr. William R. Heaton William R. Heaton, Jr., is an Estimates Officer with the National Intelligence Estimates for the Director of Central Intelligence. He is also a Colonel in the USAF Reserve and serves as Reserve AttachŽ to the People's Republic of China. Additionally, he is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Politics, Catholic University, Washington DC. Dr. Heaton received his B.A. and M.A. from Brigham Young University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Heaton formerly was Professor of National Security Affairs at the National War College, 1981-1984, and an Associate Professor of Political Science, USAF Academy, 1973-1978. Dr. Heaton is the Co-author of two books and is the author of more than 50 articles on Chinese and East Asian political and military affairs in scholarly journals and magazines.
Secondary Plenary Session Panel
February 19, 1997 CADET PALATINUS: Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm very pleased to have our panelists here with us tonight. I believe this is one of our best opportunities to interact with experts in the foreign policy arena. Tonight we are privileged to have with us five of these experts, Dr. William R. Heaton, Colonel Karl Eikenberry, Dr. David Lampton, Ms. Sidney Jones and Dr. Edwin Feulner, as well as Colonel Douglas Murray as our panelist moderator. Each of your handbooks contains a biography of our panelists, so I will just touch on a few of the specifics. Dr. Heaton is an Estimates Officer, National Intelligence Estimates, for the Director of Central Intelligence. He is also a Colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve and serves as a Reserve AttachŽ to the People's Republic of China. Additionally, he is an Adjunct Associate Professor of Politics, Catholic University, Washington, DC Dr. Heaton was formerly the professor of National Security Affairs at the National War College, 1981 to 1984, and an associate professor of Political Science at the United States Air Force Academy from 1973 to 1978. Colonel Eikenberry is a United States Army infantry officer assigned to the Office of the Secretary of Defense, International Security Affairs. He commanded a light infantry battalion and the 10th Mountain Division, and has held command and staff positions in mechanized, airborne and ranger infantry units in the United States, Korea and Europe. He also served as a division chief in the Strategy, Plans and Policy Directorate of the Army Staff and was an Assistant Army AttachŽ to the People's Republic of China. Colonel Eikenberry is a graduate of the United States Military Academy, holds a Master's Degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard University, an Advanced Study Degree in History from the University Nan-ching in China, and is completing his Ph.D. graduate studies for the Department of Political Science at Stanford University. Since 1988, Dr. Lampton has been the President of the National Committee on United States-China Relations. Prior to assuming this position, he was associate professor of Political Science at Ohio State University and director of China Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Lampton received his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from Stanford University. He has lived and conducted research in the People's Republic of China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. His research addresses bureaucratic and elite politics in China, US-China relations and Chinese foreign policy. His articles have appeared widely, and he is also the author of recent books and edited volumes. He has also testified before the House and Senate Committees on US-China relations. Ms. Sidney Jones is currently the Executive Director of Human Rights Watch -- Asia, formerly known as Asia Watch. From 1985 through 1988 she was a Researcher for Amnesty International's Asia and Pacific Research Department at International Secretariat in London. From 1977 to 1985 she was the Program Officer for the Ford Foundation located in New York. She is well published and holds memberships and affiliations with the Council on Foreign Relations, the Association of Asian Studies, Amnesty International, American Assembly where she is on the advisory committee, and on the National Committee on US-China Relations where she is a board member. Dr. Edwin Feulner, Jr. is the President of The Heritage Foundation, Washington's leading policy organization. In 1989 he was awarded the Presidential Citizens Medal by President Reagan and was conferred as "a leader of the conservative movement." He served as a United States Representative to the United Nations Second Special Session on Disarmament where he delivered the final United States address to the General Assembly. He remains involved in various aspects of foreign policy, particularly public diplomacy and international communications issues and international economic policy. Dr. Feulner is the author of several books, contributor to 10 other books and numerous journals, reviews and magazines. He is a publisher, and his monthly syndicated column has won several Freedom's Foundation Awards and appears in more than 500 newspapers. So you can see we can rely on these panelists to represent the many different points of view on China-US foreign policy. I'm sure we will gain some very relevant insight from them which we can use in our discussions through the rest of the week. From here, Colonel Murray will take it and expand on the format of the panel discussion. COL. MURRAY: Thank you very much, Wendy. I guess as a professor I should start out by saying that there will be a quiz at the end of the seminar on that biography, at least a matching quiz. Seriously, this is panel night. This is my favorite night. I'm the Permanent Professor and Head of the Political Science Department here at the Air Force Academy. On behalf of the 40 some men and women who make up the department and the students who study with us, the cadets who study with us, we want to welcome you here tonight and thank you for being a part of what we think is a very, very unique event. Another reason why I always like this night is that Wendy, or whoever the cadet director is, lets me come out of my office and meet with you and talk with you, and then at the end of the night if I'm not too bad, they will roll me back into my office again and you won't see me again until Friday. But seriously, this is a very special night. It's a night that is very much "Janus-like" in its orientation, coming as it is midway between the sessions today, the two round tables today and the three round tables that will follow on Thursday and Friday morning. In many ways it gives us an opportunity, first of all, to ask and discuss some of those tough questions that weren't quite addressed in your round table this morning and this afternoon, and at the same time to serve as a preview for some of the discussions, as a catalyst for some of the discussions that will follow in the round table sessions on Thursday and Friday. This Assembly is, as I said before, very unique to the Academy, and I think in the United States. This is almost the 40th year. This is the 39th Assembly. We have been doing this since the first graduating class from 1959, and from the beginning of this effort it has been to bring together some of the best and brightest, and certainly that's what you are, from across the nation, young men and women who have professed an interest in policy and will be assuming a variety of different roles in that area, to come together while still undergraduate students, to discuss some of the critical issues that face this nation today and will face this nation in the future. And when you leave here on Saturday or if you go skiing on Sunday -- and hopefully if you do go skiing on Sunday, you will be in a physical condition to leave here that afternoon -- you leave here with a couple of things. First of all, I think you'll leave here with a better understanding of this issue, having shared perspectives on it. Secondly, I think you'll leave here with some new friends. It has been our experience over the years that we have been conducting this Assembly, that the young men and women who come here and meet and chat and interact with one another have a relationship that goes beyond here, and it's interesting to note that in later years many of these folks find themselves in the policy arena, whether in the service or in government service or in the civilian world in any variety of fields, education, commerce, relating back to the time they were here at the Assembly. And so I think that when you leave here, you'll leave with that. And the third thing is, I hope you will leave with a little better understanding of what this Academy is all about and the young men and women who attend the Academy, and why that's important I think was highlighted last night in the presentation we heard, which I thought was a very fine keynote address, and that is, that if we are to charter the future of US-China relations, it's going to involve a greater interaction between those who are in uniform and those who are not. We have a shared goal. Clearly the role of the military in the post Cold War environment is very different and distinct from what it was during that Cold War environment. Much of what we do at this institution is to inculcate in our young men and women that idea. And so, by helping to better understand us, we better understand the motivations and so forth in the civilian community and will be able to work better towards that common goal and purpose. Well, let's get started. And the keynote, or the main point of this session today and this evening is interaction. The rules of engagement are just that, to engage. I challenge you to engage, and in fact in previous years I have been known to come down off of this stage. John Cappello, who is the Officer Director of the Assembly working with Wendy, has a big stick -- used to be a lacrosse player -- and I will go around and knock a few on the head to make sure that we are participating, because the purpose here is to engage and talk about the issues that we have been discussing. And here's our format: To break the ice, I will ask each of our panel members to spend about five minutes addressing their perspective on what they see current US-China relations to be, and that's particularly important in terms of the events of the past day. In fact, I should welcome you, as David Lampton pointed out to me at dinner, to the first post-Deng conference on US-China relations. Now, that's an historical event in and of itself. Thank you for that reminder. The panelists will comment on their perspectives of US-China relations, where we are, what impact the death of Deng will have on those relations as we go into the 21st Century. Each panelist will have five minutes to do that. Following each of those brief presentations, I will then give each panelist an opportunity to counterpoint, address a particular perspective that was raised, either to agree with or hopefully to counter that and provide a different perspective. Then I have a whole series of questions I could ask, but I don't want to do that. I am going to then turn to the audience and ask you to pose a question. Please identify the individual you would like to ask a question to. Following their answer, I will then give opportunities for other members of the panel to comment on that, and then for you to comment on theirs. And so while we are separated here by lights and a distance of a few feet, I would like for you to view this as a seminar more than a lecture. Okay. That's all I want to say. We'll start, and I have asked David to be the first one to provide his perspectives on US-China relations as we cross that bridge into the 21st Century. DR. LAMPTON: Perhaps more accurately as we cross the bridge into the post-Deng era here. I want to thank you, Colonel Murray, and I want to thank all of you for caring about what I think is one of the most important issues and challenges facing our country. I think it's probably appropriate I'm the first speaker, and the organization I represent, the National Committee on US-China Relations, had some dealings with the Deng family when Deng Xiaoping came to the United States in 1979 when the US and China normalized relations. I think it's probably appropriate to recall what has happened with his death. Deng Xiaoping was really the last figure who lived through every major event of the 20th Century -- World War I, the Warlord period in China, the Revolution in China, the Japanese Invasion, the War in Korea, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and along the way was central to building a country that governs, whether we like the way it's governed or not, governs 22 percent of the world's people. This is a giant figure that has passed from the scene. I think I don't see any such figures even on the horizon at this point. Perhaps it's great events that make such people. But in any case, what has happened today really is an end of an era. It's not only the end of the millennium; it's the end of the 20th..., of this entire century. I might just say a couple of other things. I think he will be most remembered for probably two things certainly in America, but probably ought to be remembered for three things. In America he'll probably be remembered for opening China, the open policy, and the normalization being the second with the United States. But I think one thing that we ought to think about, and when we think about human rights, is that he put 22 percent of the world's people on a course that lifted, in about 15 years, 80 million people from absolute poverty. I think it is appropriate to think what the human rights legacy of Deng Xiaoping is. There will be plenty of time to remember the 30 million that starved to death in a misguided Great Leap Forward, which he did not do enough to stop. There will be time to remember the great anti-rightist campaign which he was instrumental in. But in that balance, that great historic balance, there is going to be the economic force that he unleashed, and I hope that we will keep that in mind. The other thing I would just say, and that's in terms of what do I believe to be the practical consequence of his death, I think probably the practical consequence in two important respects is going to be very little right now. I think there is probably not going to be a power struggle. That will be an empirically verifiable proposition you can test rather rapidly, I suppose, and equally important, I don't think his death is going to lead to any fundamental foreign policy or domestic policy change. I think in political terms he's been dead for some time, and people recognize that and operate with that in mind. I know there are debatable points that could be raised with every one of the assertions I have made, but I took my charge seriously from Colonel Murray to be a little provocative. Let me just tick off a couple of other points by way of addressing the topic that I thought was to sort of unify us, and that is the security dimension of US-China relations, and I just give you the conclusions without any supporting data whatsoever. I think the first thing that the United States has to do, and I think we are beginning to do, and the Clinton Administration is doing, although it's being resisted in many corridors, is setting some clear priorities among our security and other objectives. It is debatable, I think, whether security, proliferation, avoidance of war ought to be the first priority of our policy or human rights or economics, but I believe the Administration has come to the conclusion that security and economics should be the immediate priority objectives, and that while we are pushing the human rights area, that's a longterm proposition that ultimately depends on change in Chinese society. You can debate that proposition, but I think that is where our government's headed, and for one, personally I think that's an appropriate direction. The second thing is that I think you have to recognize when you are talking about security, narrowly defined or our policy broadly, that the United States has limited resources. We're the world's richest country, the world's most powerful, but we have limited resources. We do not have the resources to provide security for the whole world, pursue the maximum economic competition and change every political system that we find objectionable. So our resources require we prioritize. I think the President in this next administration will probably do better from my perspective in that regard, particularly with respect to China. I think the next thing that I would say is that there certainly is some uncertainty about what Chinese intentions and capabilities are in the world, and all I would say is I think that we probably have a window of opportunity of 15 to 20 years where we ought to explore the engagement, the positive constructive approach to dealing with China. I think we should not prematurely go to a confrontational deterrence/containment kind of framework. Maybe down the track that's where we are going to end up, but I think it's entirely premature to base our policy on those assumptions now. Therefore, and this is another conclusion, we should not in the short run treat China in a way that precipitates the kind of hostile reaction and arms buildup that will create a self-generating, reinforcing negative cycle. So by way of conclusion, I just simply say let's give engagement a chance. Dialogue, focus on the economics, see if that doesn't produce social change, and be mindful that we need to maintain a balance of power in Asia as we pursue that essentially positive course. Thank you very much. COL. MURRAY: David, thank you. Now Bill Heaton. Bill? DR. HEATON: Thanks for the opportunity, as well. I'm cautiously optimistic about the prospects for US-China relations. I'll talk about the caution first, then the optimism second. One of the things that has interested me in the discussions that I have listened to so far in going around to the round tables today is the seemingly, to me anyway, strong emphasis on the rational actor model of politics in China, and the idea that the Chinese do this and the US does that. I would caution everyone here to think a little bit differently about how we consider Chinese policy in its formation. Dave Shambaugh said yesterday that he felt that the succession was fairly stable at the top, but he was much less certain about mass politics. I am less certain about both. Just to show you why the rational actor model is not particularly useful, although sometimes it has to be employed, think of our own policy towards China, what forces have shaped our conduct. We have the Congress which weighs very heavily on what we do. We have bureaucracies with different goals and objectives. We have nongovernmental groups with interest in China, both economic and social, political, human rights, a variety of activities, and all of these work on the foreign relations policy. I would suggest to you that China has similar forces, although they are probably not as readily apparent to us. I think that there are very strong differences among the leadership, and I think there is substantial evidence to support that. I would just posit for you, for example, the difficulty in a modernizing country of resource allocations. There are competing resources in China. There are officials with different bureaucratic responsibilities that have different assignments that have to fight for their interests and equities, and these struggles, because of the nature of that system, eventually work their way to the top. And believe me, there is lots of reporting, both in the press and otherwise, about differences among the Chinese leadership, personality differences, differences between what we would call the quanxi networks, the personal relationships that exist among key figures in China and the regional variation, that as the economy has grown and certain areas have prospered, whereas others have been less prosperous, friction and complaints and diversity over the relative rates of growth. There has been an assumption, for example, that the Chinese military will ipso facto modernize because the funds will be available. Well, believe me, there are a lot of competing forces for these resources in China, and we should not come rapidly to the conclusion that China's military will modernize rapidly, because there will be plenty of money available for them to do that. There will be debate in China over how the resources will be allocated. There already is. The Taiwan issue, I think is an excellent illustration of my point. We had great difficulty in this country in dealing with issues like the visit of the leader of Taiwan, Lee Teng-hui, to the United States; Congress, the Executive, the universities, a wide diversity that came together in a very conflictual way on how this issue was to be resolved. China is in the position where in the succession period of Deng Xiaoping, no one can afford to be soft on the Taiwan issue publicly. Consequently, in public statements to US officials and in the press in these communiquŽs, you'll always see a very strong line on the importance of the Taiwan issue with China. But I think the evidence will show that not all Chinese agree on the best way to resolve it. I think there was a substantial debate over whether military force should be applied during the presidential elections in March of last year. There was tremendous debate, even within the military over whether or not missiles should be fired and maneuvers staged. Now, a decision had to be made, but that doesn't mean that the Chinese have once and for all resolved these differences. Consequently, I'm cautious about the prospect for US-China relations, in that as long as you have divergent perspectives competing for influence within the leadership of both countries, there is a propensity for mistakes, errors, misjudgments, miscalculations that could lead to difficulty. I'm optimistic because we have had now a fairly long relationship. We have encountered difficulties in the past, and even though our relationship has been troubled at times, I think we have learned from many of our mistakes. I think that because of the growing economic relations between our countries, the urgency with which both sides give the necessity to try to resolve problems through negotiation and discourse will be a very strong force in pushing the relationship forward rather than allowing it to deteriorate. So consequently, I declare myself to be cautiously optimistic. I recognize that many of the statements I made earlier would contain the seeds for some disasters. I don't think the relationship will be smooth. I think it will be difficult, but nevertheless it will be probably, in my view, more cooperative than conflictual. COL. MURRAY: Thank you very much. Now Dr. Edwin Feulner. DR. FEULNER: Thank you very much, Colonel Murray. The Heritage Foundation, as I hope most of you know, is a conservative think tank in Washington. And at the moment I left Washington this morning, I think I'm about the only conservative who at least publicly comes out and supports the Clinton Administration for continued Most Favored Nation status for the People's Republic of China, and to continue on basically the current bipartisan path that we have seen in terms of US-Chinese relations. As a conservative, take a step back and put the US-Chinese relationship in the context of our own national interests, because that to me is what our basic foreign policy has to be predicated upon, and the United States, as a Pacific power, has had national interests and consistent policy really now in the Pacific more or less most of the time, with some exceptions, but for more than a century. And I would list three components to that hundred-year broad Pacific policy. First, regional peace and stability, which means no one power dominating in the area. Secondly, market access throughout the region, which in this day and age and to my mind and my colleagues' minds, at least means free and open trade both ways, and thirdly, safe passages for peaceful vessels through international waters. With those, based on those three predicates, we come down as conservatives with certain assumptions in terms of where US-China policy should be going. First of all, we assume that China has to be -- has to develop as a responsible participant in the international scene, a participant that lives up to the generally agreed-upon standards, particularly international dealings when it comes to intellectual property rights, when it comes to the rule of law, when it comes to our international dealings, and maintaining clear and consistent policies with regard to her neighbors. It also means to me a cause of some concern when I see reports of China now talking about very seriously ending the process of negotiating to buy several very advanced Russian class destroyers with Mach II capable surface-to-ship missiles that are directly counter to our Aegis class cruisers of the United States and of the United States 7th Fleet in the area. It causes some concern. It causes concern to me when they sign agreements with Russia to buy 50 very advanced fighter planes and probably to engage in coproduction now for several hundred more. That's destabilizing to the region. You don't need those for internal peace. You don't need those to keep your own house in order, if you will. And what of course it also can mean is then responses from Japan and other significant countries in the region, which is potentially destabilizing throughout the area. My colleagues and I believe that the major test in terms of how China, in this post-Deng era, is going to evolve, is going to have it shortly after July 1st, when Hong Kong reverts to the People's Republic of China as a special administrative region, whether the emphasis will be, as my friends in China tell me on the one government, or whether the emphasis will be, as my friends in Hong Kong tell me on the two systems, and there is a very different emphasis depending on where you are and who you're talking to. And we produce annually an index of economic freedom, rating 150 countries around the world. China rated in the new index as No. 120. Hong Kong rates as No. 1, and we certainly hope that they are not just going to go in and split the difference, that in fact China is going to keep moving in the right direction, toward economic freedom, toward more individual economic responsibility and authority among the individual people. Finally, we as Americans, I think have to press this administration and every administration to resolve once and for all, but at least with every new administration, a clear, consistent and unequivocal policy toward Asia broadly, not just toward China, but toward Asia. I'm afraid in the past few years, at least, we have not had such a policy clearly enunciated, and that's one of the reasons why there has been confusion and contradiction among both our friends and some of our potential adversaries throughout the region. I don't define our policy toward China as containment or engagement or whatever; I just define it as common sense in America's national interests, and I would hope that as we discuss it, we can come up with other aspects of the relationship and how they might evolve in the near future. Thank you. COL. MURRAY: Thank you. Ms. Sidney Jones? MS. JONES: Thanks. Thank you very much. I think I'll start by addressing three myths on the human rights aspect of the US -- the Chinese-US relationship. One is that human rights is essentially an American concern. It's not really. It's rooted in a whole set of international conventions and treaties, but if we were to try and think through how we could improve the nature of how human rights gets discussed in US-Chinese relationships, then I think that we have to look at doing more to put those international conventions and treaties and the UN mechanism front and center. And that would mean the United States doing more within the international framework, including paying its dues to the UN and doing more itself to adhere to these treaties, but I don't think it's fair to call the effort to raise human rights issues an attempt to impose American values, because there are too many people in many different parts of the world who would take very serious issue with that. The second myth is that human rights has been the major impediment in the US-China relationship. This also, I don't think is fair, because if you look at the sources of friction in this relationship, Taiwan is clearly number one. Trade is probably two, security issues in a variety of ways maybe three, and human rights is certainly there, but it's one of a cluster of issues and sources of friction. It's not the only one, which means if you go silent on human rights, that doesn't mean you are going to improve the relationship. And finally, there is a myth that human rights pressure has achieved no lasting or significant results, and I think this is also not true. I think the kind of attention to human rights that has been so apparent since 1989, although I think there is in some ways too much focus on 1989, but I think the kind of attention that has been generated has created new interest in China in these international standards. I think that in some ways it can be partially responsible for some of the legal reforms that have taken place in China, trying to bring Chinese domestic law into greater accordance with international standards and so on, and it has resulted in some incremental improvement such as releases of certain prisoners. At one point the pressure was actually getting a discussion going with the International Committee of the Red Cross in access of Chinese prisons, and that only came about because of pressure, so I don't think you should discard pressure in an effort to improve the US-China relationship. In terms of the death of Deng Xiaoping, let me just say that I think that how that affects the human rights issue is going to depend on what it means for the strength of the central authority in Beijing. To the extent that that power is weakened, you may have implications for what happens in Tibet, for what happens in Hong Kong -- I don't think it will affect the reversion. It's a question of whether it affects anything that happens subsequent to the reversion of Hong Kong. It may lead in the not too distant future to a revisionist interpretation of Tiananmen Square, and perhaps this would have implications for people who are still detained. And as some of you know, in March there is going to be -- I don't know whether this will be affected by the death -- but there is going to be a decision taken by the National People's Congress to repeal of law of counterrevolution, under which many, many political dissidents are detained. It will only be replaced by a crime of state security, but the passing of Deng might be an opportunity to take some of the issues that have been really contentious and try to put them on a new footing in terms of figuring out new ways, maybe even people deciding that even if there is no major change in the political structure in Beijing, it would still be a useful opportunity to try and rethink how the issues of human rights get raised. In terms of the issues that it won't change on human rights, it's not going to change the worker rights issues, it's not going to change the issue of the migrant workers, which is an increasingly huge and important issue in China. It's not going to change issues relating to Xinjiang, which the issues didn't come up in the round table discussions at all, at least not in the two that I took part in, which is an increasingly serious issue where even Chinese Government officials acknowledge that the PLA is in control of large parts of the area. And it's not going to affect issues such as forced resettlement from major development projects, the Three Gorges being one, but all of these issues which it's not going to affect are issues where it's possible to find a more constructive approach, precisely because they aren't as overtly political as the dissident issue. So I think that if we force ourselves to find an opportunity in the death of Deng Xiaoping, we might actually move the issue forward a bit. Thank you. COL. MURRAY: Thank you. Karl? COL. EIKENBERRY: Thanks, Doug. Doug, you had said that you were going to administer a quiz on the bio sketches again. My mother has called in, says she is ready to take that. I would like to very briefly talk about and make three points here. First I would like to just pause at the analytical framework for how we look at China in terms of whether China is a threat to the United States. Secondly, and related to this, my second point would be on what are some of the strategic equities we have in our overall relationship with the People's Republic of China. And thirdly, related to both of those points then is maybe to identify several of the difficulties that, from our perspective within the Department of Defense, I think is shared widely within the United States Government within the administration that we'll have in trying to proceed with our security relationship with China. First of all in terms of an analytical framework, we hear frequently the statement made or the question asked, does China pose a threat, and I think it's important when we address this question so that we are clear as to what a threat is. The Chinese use for the word "threat," the word "wei xie" consists of two characters. The first word generally means power. You could say capabilities. The second of those characters, "xie" means to coerce somebody, or you can say another broadly, they say abstractly. It's kind of an intention. And it's useful to adopt that framework in looking at China, really in any kind of threat to our nation, but with China in terms of looking at capabilities and intentions, because the mixture of the two then combine to make a threat. In terms of capabilities, very broadly we can say simply that China, relative to our own power, is a good 10 to 20 years behind. Notwithstanding what Ed pointed out that there are points of excellence within the PLA, and there are increasing points of excellence that require a vigilance, but in general they are a good decade to two decades, in some cases even more away. Because despite the points of excellence as most people I think know in this audience, it's integration of those points of excellence that goes into making a credible, modern, war fighting machine. Secondly, in terms of intentions, without discounting the difficulties that we have with China clearly has been addressed already. The issue of Taiwan is truly a flashpoint kind of issue if not managed properly by both sides. I think that we can say in terms of intentions with China that they have, beyond Taiwan which is a sovereignty issue to China, they have no broad territorial agenda except saving perhaps the South China Sea that should give us alarm in the near term, at least, that they have an intention to push from beyond their borders. Setting aside the issue as was discussed well in my own group today, many points made about it would make sense for China to push out with all of their domestic agenda items they are facing, but they don't seem to have a territorial agenda at this point in time. In terms of an intention, I think we need to think in terms of broadly looking at intentions, is there an ideological way of approaching a nation's place in the universe that would lead them to be aggressive? Is there a kind of manifest destiny that exists as an ideology? Is there a kind of thinking that exists as perhaps did in Japan in the 20's and 30's, about a place of a greater East Asia co-prosperity spirit? Clearly we would have to say in 1996 to the extent that we can draw from history and do linear projections, which is not always a valid way to approach these issues, but it's hard to make a convincing argument that China has had an ideology at any point in time which gave it global ambitions, except perhaps during times of the 1950's and 60's when they didn't have the power in fact to act that ideology out. So when we talk about the issue of threat, it's important to ask the question, threat, first of all, against whom? Against the United States? Against Taiwan? Against Vietnam? Because you get very different answers. Secondly, what kind of threat do they pose, which leads to the second point I would like to make, and that is, on what are the security equities in our relationship with China? Let me posit for you several not-so-good year 2010, year 2020 kind of China-US relationships, and just let these stand by themselves. First of all, I would posit a China that, for a variety of reasons, is unwilling to enter into serious strategic arms control limitation talks with the United States and/or Russia, and in fact is working hard to leapfrog where they are in the world and where we are in the world with our nuclear technology and our weapons and our means of delivery, and we are finding ourselves challenged by the Chinese in that arena. A second scenario, in the year 2010, we know if China's growth rates continue like they are, that China will be a major importer of Persian Gulf oil; along with the United States and Japan will be the top three. They have moved in the last three years from an exporter of oil to an importer of oil. Now in the year 2010, they will be a significant importer of oil, and I will tell you that our projections now show in the year 2010, 90 percent of their imports are going to come from the Persian Gulf. Now, in the year 2010 in that kind of environment, if we have Desert Storm No. 2, and we find a China that's uncooperative, in fact a China that is trying to mobilize a coalition against us, is that in our interests or not? A third scenario in the Taiwan Strait, a China that, either due to policies from Taiwan, a weak regime in Beijing that was trying to shore it's own credibility up now, was applying force against Taiwan; China had set aside peaceful means, and now is determined and bent on using force or, as I mentioned earlier, in the South China Sea. A fourth scenario, a China that was failing to join or abide by a considerable number of international arms control regimes that it has already joined, and we find a weak China or a China hostile to the United States that was involved in proliferation of weapons of mass destruction to the likes of Libya, to the likes of Iran and facing a China in that area. A fifth would be in the Korean Peninsula, the Korean Peninsula by the year 2010 likely unified, but because of hostility, the Chinese had gone all out to neutralize the Korean Peninsula to ensure we were excluded from it, and now we have a very bipolar confrontation between China, perhaps Russia and Korea and Japan and the United States. And finally already touched upon by Ed is in international interest, is freedom of navigation. What if in the year 2010 we are faced with a China that, although at this point in time our reckoning is that for the main, over the last 15 years, there has been an incredible development within China in terms of their recognition of the international norms of freedom of navigation? What if they should take a different path and at least in their own littoral waters should be opposing the concept of freedom of navigation? Now, I would like to then shift to a third focus, and that would be, having I think made the point that we do have legitimate security concerns and interest in our dealings with China. What are some of the difficulties that we may be facing? First of all, from China's perspective, briefly, China is a rising power. China, as a rising power, if history is to give us any kind of indications, rising powers do not like to be tied down by international agreements and security domain. They like flexibility. Status quo powers like the United States are the defenders of the status quo like international agreements, and they would like to tie other powers down and to involve them in agreements that preserve the status quo. So will China, as a rising power, continue to keep us at arm's length on international security agreements? Will they wish to have a degree of independence, and in fact wish to keep a level of tension within the Asia-Pacific region that keeps us off balance and lets the rest of the region know that they are around? Secondly, our engagement strategy is predicated upon -- part of the engagement strategy of the United States is predicated upon the assumption that the Chinese wish to have engagement work. Many would argue that China has two fears. One is that a containment strategy would be unrolled by Washington. The second is that its engagement strategy would work, and why is that? I think that we have to come to grips with the challenge that the United States and the Western World does pose to the regime in China, and that various aspects of our engagement strategy are regime threatening, and that gets into the third point in terms of our own security dialogue with the Chinese. The United States is quite comfortable in terms of its own power at this particular stage when we come to the table to talk about security. We are talking about security as it starts at the edge of the US shores. The Chinese, their number one security concern -- and this gets into the issue of Deng Xiaoping's passing and transition -- number one security concern is regime preservation, and that's a fact. In 1989 in June, that was the regime preservation outcome, and so this causes enormous difficulties for the United States and China, because our definition of what does international security mean, at times we are talking past one another. A fourth point I would make in terms of China would be the issue of Taiwan, and I think you have to put that into a separate category. It remains a civil war issue for China. I have talked to people from Taiwan before that have said, "40 percent of our people support independence today." I have talked to people from the PRC. They would genuinely say, "99 percent of our people oppose independence." It's a hot button item. If mismanaged, it could lead to severe conflict. From a US focus, a US perspective, one of our difficulties as also addressed by Mike and addressed by Bill, is a difficulty in focus. Well, why is that? Well, it's not only the difference of the systems, but you can take a real politic kind of approach to this. The one power in the world right now, from Beijing's perspective that can deny them their security objectives, is the United States. We have that power. On the other hand, China does not, in 1996, loom as a threat to the United States in the sense that the Soviet Union did during the Cold War, hence there is not a consensus within this country. There is not a disciplining force that is causing the administration and Congress to work in a coherent manner in approaching China. China reads these different signals many times coming from Washington as a form of containment. It's nothing of the sort. It's a lack of focus, and frankly, it's because, I think, of the difference in power and the relative threats that are the relative importance of the issue to one another that causes many misunderstandings. Secondly is an issue of ideological approach by the United States. The United States is an ideological power, and we have the resources right now to follow an ideological agenda. I don't mean that in a pejorative sense in talking about human rights as a negative ideological kind of approach. But the fact is, we are very much of an ideological power, and will this ideology contrast with China's approach to the world, lead to difficulties in the years ahead? And the third and final point I would make is in terms of US problems that we have. When you look at the United States and our diplomatic history and our security history prior to World War II, we were not involved in the international system. We were sitting on the side. We were very much of an isolationist power. After World War II, we had a structure that existed in the world that was bipolar, and we were one part of a gridlocked structure, and doing a good job of managing our part of it in retrospect. But when you think about it, the United States has really never had to operate an international system. And what we're evolving to, as we get farther from the Cold War, is an international system, a multi-polar international system, and I would go back to what Ed had said about do we define this relationship with China increasingly in how we approach the world, a multi-polar world, as containment or engagement, or is it simply pursuing our national interest in a common sense manner? And can we then learn as a nation, as an administration and Congress as time goes on, how do we really wish to operate a kind of system that will allow us to defend those interests? COL. MURRAY: Now I would like to give each of the panelists, if they would like to comment on anything that any one of their fellow panelists had to say. Does anyone want to step up and make a comment, agreement or disagreement? DR. LAMPTON: I think I would just comment on a couple. One is I think Mr. Heaton's point that, I think your final conclusion was relations with some luck will be more constructive than negative in character. But I would just want to emphasize that I think I was asked on a program a couple days ago, is China the new Soviet Union? And the way I put it is I don't think it's Canada and I don't think it's the Soviet Union. We have some positive reinforcing interests on the Korean Peninsula, at least in terms of proliferation at the moment might be an example, certainly in the economic area, but we have some very conflictual and difficult-to-manage areas like you mentioned in Taiwan. So I think we shouldn't have easy metaphors for this relationship. It's going to be a very difficult management job, where in some areas we have very conflictual interests and in others we have very compatible ones, and I think the real challenge is how can we build on those positive interests to make those more conflictual areas manageable, is the way I would put it. I would say one thing on what Sidney said, and I agreed with very much on what she had to say. You did say, however, though, that if Deng ended up his departure from the scene leading to a weakened Beijing, that might conceivably have some positive benefit for the human rights situation. MS. JONES: I said an effect. I didn't say a positive effect. DR. LAMPTON: Well, I was just going to draw that out, because I wasn't sure what the implication is. I am not at all sure that the local authorities and local sensibilities to human rights aren't more retrogressive in many respects than they appear, and I think we have to think -- we sometimes think because China's an authoritarian regime, weakened in the center will have positive results for the kind of humane government's values we have. All I would say is that I think chaos or disorder or frequently local rule leads to very undesirable human rights outcomes. COL. MURRAY: Did you have anything you wanted to add? DR. HEATON: I guess I will just pile on Sidney. The question comes to mind when your myth, I think it was Myth No. 3 that said -- I am probably not getting it right, but that remonstrations with the Chinese or pressure don't bring good results. My question is, are human rights better in China today than they were four years ago? Do you want to answer? MS. JONES: My quick answer to that is which human rights, and if defined by the respect for basic political and civil rights, probably not better than they were four years ago, probably worse now in terms of the ability of groups which express any kind of challenge to the party structure, to operate, whether you're talking about the dissident group, whether you're talking about religious activists, whether you are talking about Tibet, and it's not such a small group as many people point out. What we're seeing increasingly is arbitrary businessmen who fail to follow their training in the business field. So in terms of four years ago, no. In terms of is it better than 20 years ago, absolutely. No question. DR. HEATON: But has pressure in the past four years paid any dividend? MS. JONES: I think there hasn't been any significant pressure backed by any kind of credible will to use that pressure. I think what we have seen is blustering and a kind of rhetorical criticism, but I don't think there has been any real will to try and put together a coalition that would produce positive human rights results. I think that if you look at access by UN agencies to China, the US Administration could have put far more resources and effort into that. But there has been this division within the Clinton Administration that you all pointed to, from the Commerce Department, the Defense Department, the Congress and so on, so there has been nothing that I would consider genuinely serious human rights pressure. Five years ago maybe there was. It's over now. COL. MURRAY: Ed, do you want to enter the fray? DR. FEULNER: I would, I guess come to Sidney's defense in one incident which she did not relate, which I think in fact -- and she, I am sure, knows more about it than I, but is in fact when, in the course of the last 12 months, various American NGO's have had observer groups at local elections inside China, which are at least a small mini step in the right direction. I know that the International Republican Institute for one was involved in some of those local elections. The other comment I would make goes to a point Bill first raised and Colonel Eikenberry also discussed in some detail, and that has to do with Taiwan. And one of the experiences I have had in my trips to Beijing over the years has been a series of meetings, usually one on one or a small group with Foreign Minister Qian, where it starts out in a very formal fashion where he berates me, because he knows The Heritage Foundation has had a long and some would say a close relationship with the Republic of China and Taiwan. He talks about Taiwan as being a renegade province, and then starts emphasizing the various communiquŽs that our two governments have entered into, and he does that for about ten minutes routinely, at which point, since he is the host, I only take five minutes to remind him that the Taiwan Relations Act was passed by the US Congress, was signed by the President of the United States, overwhelmingly supported by members of both political parties in the Congress, and that it is the only specific statute in the American system that regulates the relationships between the United States and a foreign entity. We then take all that formality, put it aside, and then start talking about what the real US-PRC relationship is going to be. He knows where I am coming from; I know where he is coming from. We are kind of clear and predictable. We usually have very positive and helpful kinds of conversations when we get past that stage. And frankly, I just wish that sometimes some of our friends in the administration at the policymaking levels who are meeting with their counterparts in the PRC would be able to have that kind of a forthright and clear enunciation of what US interests are. MS. JONES: Just a very brief comment on Mike's point about the problems of a strong versus a weak and central authority. One of the comments made tonight on CNN by, of all people, Martin Lee, who is the leader of the Democratic Party in Hong Kong, was Deng's passing means that nobody in China will have the authority to compromise, and it was an interesting comment in terms of where you might be able to go with very difficult human rights issues. Maybe there isn't anybody with the authority to make hard decisions. COL. MURRAY: Karl, did you want to add anything? COL. EIKENBERRY: I would like to just make one point on Deng Xiaoping's passing and which you had asked us to comment on, Doug, from a security perspective. One point I would like to make on Deng is that, as Mike had correctly indicated, Deng marks the end of the era, the era of the revolution. And you think about that in our terms, it means that Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Hamilton, they have all passed away from the scene. And then the interesting drill is to give a quiz to a group of people to name all the great names in American politics, setting aside one or two obvious ones like an Andrew Jackson, but list all the great names in American politics from, say, the passing of Monroe until Lincoln's rise, the circumstances making Lincoln. Why do I raise this as an issue is because when revolutions are made, and China had a great revolution in a period of time where basic needs that led to the revolution are being addressed, but at some point in time the leadership has to create institutions that will outlast them. You look at the French Revolution, such a great beginning and such a disastrous failure because they didn't create the institutions. And so my one worry for China in the passing of Deng Xiaoping is how will Deng be remembered a hundred years from now when China will go through many great transitions between now and then. I submit that there is a chance that Deng will be remembered very mixed, as Mao Tse-tung has been, that he will be remembered as a man that embarked on a course of opening, that was the one man in hindsight that had the potential to develop some kind of political institution that would lead to more stability on a multi-party system, that some kind of set of institutions, even a one-party strong-party system that would have outlasted him. And I think that with his passing, we should be cognizant that even as he had remained behind the scenes and bedridden for the last several years, the fact was that he was alive and made his legacy alive in what he stood for. To give you two concerns on the security front, Deng Xiaoping's, his legacy and his program was before modernization's industry, agriculture, signs of technology. The fourth, military, would be number four. With him away from the scene now, does this -- will this lead the PLA to rechallenge that ordering of priorities? And secondly, in a general sense, a consensus among the leadership that economic modernization should always reign supreme as in 1992 when the United States announced, to Beijing's chagrin and extreme opposition, the decision to sell F16 fighters to Taiwan. It's very much Deng Xiaoping's intervention, we believe, that led China to say, "Let's take the long-term view." In the end, the Taiwan Strait balance is something that we don't need to worry about in the next 20 to 25 years. With him passing from the scene, will there be that kind of consensus about the long-term versus the short-term kind of outcomes on security issues that we might not wish to see? COL. MURRAY: Thanks. I would like now to turn to the folks out there. There are two microphones available. I am looking for any comments on what you have heard or questions you may have to those, or any other issues you would like to bring forward on the floor that we can begin to discuss. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yes, I have a question relating to Colonel Eikenberry's statement about China being a rising nation and not wishing to be held back. Relating to that within Asia, is there any chance, do you think, for a possibility of either a military security conflict between China and India, or conflict economically between the two nations? COL. EIKENBERRY: I think that in the mid-term, our belief is that China-India relations will be relatively stable. If you look at the pattern and the breadth of Chinese diplomacy over the last three years -- something that has not been given much attention -- but as you look at it and how it's been operationalized, that is, an enormously successful diplomacy, a diplomacy that has looked at their land borders and methodically, systematically tried to find ways to shore up those land borders with neighbors that they have had hostility with as recently as ten years ago and conflicts. But starting with Russia, let's exclude the Korean Peninsula, but starting with Russia, working around to the "stan's," through India and even with Vietnam, especially with Burma, enormous progress has been made. I believe that that reflects on the Chinese case, more of a focus now on Taiwan and much more of a maritime focus than they previously had. So a short answer to your question do we think in the short-term, in the mid-term, no, there clearly are still territorial differences that exist with India. There is always the potential for some kind of miscalculation to begin by a shooting match between border outposts that will probably be contained in short order. Whether, in the long-term, the rise of India and differences that those two countries face would lead to conflict or to intense rivalry, I would have to discount that, because it's so far into the future. COL. MURRAY: Does anyone want to add to that? DR. HEATON: I want to comment on the South China Sea case. There is sort of an assumption here that this is a China that's going to call the shots in the South China Sea. It will develop its naval capabilities, and therefore be able to enforce its territorial claims. I am not sure that it's that simple. I mean, after all, the Malaysians have plenty of students in the United States who have learned a lot of technology. Malaysia, for a very low price, could build surface-to-surface missile capabilities and anti-ship missile capabilities with the revolution in military technology, with off-the-shelf technology that Malaysians, should they desire, could make it very difficult for the Chinese Navy to operate in the South China Sea in the next five to 10 years. So, similar with Taiwan, there is somehow this idea that China buys certain things, then somehow the balance is upset. I am not sure that the Japanese are going to sit still while this happens, nor will the other countries with resources in terms of military expenditures -- probably not in the aggregate relative to people of China, but technologically able to for a much lower price. They will build defensive systems. Now, you can be concerned about an arms race in Asia. That's been talked about with the ASEAN countries, but that somehow China is going to progress while everyone else stands still in the region I find highly implausible. DR. FEULNER: What's our military role going to be in that kind of a situation? Certainly the ASEAN and Australian regime aren't going to come together to start selling a new regional security agreement without us. DR. HEATON: Well, Singapore has very strong military capabilities, Indonesia has very strong interests, all of those countries, and both are bilateral, and yet they see it nevertheless within a steady multilateral such as the ASEAN regional forum. Now, this is not collective security, at least in ASEAN terms yet, but there is a tremendous interest in common exercises with the United States, and to the degree it's a Chinese threat, that China is perceived to be a threat in the region, the United States I think will be perceived as playing a stabilizer of sort, to the degree that we commit to - DR. FEULNER: Our presence. DR. HEATON: -- maintain our presence in the region, so the point that I want to make -- it's not one side building up and everybody else standing still. Things just don't work that way. DR. LAMPTON: I was just in Okinawa, and I was with some security-oriented defense intellectuals and others -- so they don't necessarily represent a full range of Japanese public opinion -- but I was struck by the degree to which the Japanese seem increasingly preoccupied with what China's rise means economically, but more importantly also in security terms. And really what I felt were rather alarming kinds of constructions on where China was headed, but nonetheless real. And I wonder if any colleagues on the panel would agree with my proposition, and that is, that I think over the long run, particularly when you talk to the Chinese about what they think about the Japanese -- I come away from listening to both sides of that relationship thinking that the Japan-China relationship is really the most problematic and perhaps the most dangerous over the long run excluding, of course, Taiwan, which is in a whole different league. But I wonder if my colleagues would agree with that. MS. JONES: It's interesting just in terms of some of the rhetoric you hear from even within the distant communities, a real strong anti-Japanese nationalism that's coming through to the point the Chinese Government finds it so objectionable, they arrest them. I mean, it's a real serious problem, and it's in Hong Kong, as well, with that whole question over the Diayu Islands. DR. FEULNER: I was in Asia several years ago when the whole Japanese textbook controversy was erupting, when they were rewriting the history of World War II in the official school textbooks, and the one thing that could unite people in Taipei and Beijing and Pyongyang and Seoul and everywhere else in the whole region was this just slightly beneath the surface fear, hatred, still very, very deep, deep feelings about Japan, about a re-emerging Japan, and the notion of a Japan-China clash would be a very, very serious concern. DR. HEATON: Just a footnote on that, of course we have the Japan that can say no, the China that can say no. Increasingly there is a mood in Japan that, "we're tired of it." I mean, the Chinese Government especially constantly uses Japan as a nationalistic whipping boy. The Japanese, at least I sense, are getting increasingly sick and tired of it. And so if China -- I think if the government chooses to push continually anti-Japanese negative nationalism, they'll find increasingly a strong Japanese response. There is a tendency to blame Japan for the problem, but it works both ways. MS. JONES: One interesting aspect is that some of our Japanese contacts within the foreign ministry and within some of the think tanks like Nomura Securities and so on have said, quite frankly, that Japan is likely to take a more active role on human rights in China to the extent that its fear of Chinese security and Chinese military expansion rises, so the two are quite closely linked. COL. MURRAY: Yes. How about you out there, do you have a comment? AUDIENCE MEMBER: Not about that. I have another question. COL. MURRAY: Sure, go ahead. AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is kind of touching about the "China can say no thing," and this is kind of addressed to Ms. Jones. Part of the Chinese psyche, if you will, it includes the sort of period of humiliation that it underwent with the Western Powers playing a very, very large role earlier in the century, and there has been a recently growing nationalism and sensitivity to pressure and what they would view as imperialism, imperialist intents and stuff like that, and I would like to hear you lay out just how you would go about putting pressure and bringing about positive willingness in the human rights issue without putting their pride and face on the line and actually causing a backward reaction. MS. JONES: Okay. There are a couple aspects to that. I mean, I think it's worth remembering, and I mentioned this in the round table, that there is not a single victim of human rights abuse or a family member of such a person who feels that international pressure has been counter-productive or feels humiliated by the way in which human rights pressure has been exerted. So I think it depends a little bit on what position you are looking at the human rights issue from. I find a lot to be unhappy about in terms of the style with which some human rights issues have been raised, but if it were up to me and there were no countervailing political pressures, I think I would try to use the UN human rights machinery, not the UN Human Rights Commission exclusively, but some of the -- there is a whole mechanism of special repertoires on torture, or repertoires on arbitrary detention, a special repertoire in religious intolerance and so on, people who are not American. I don't think there is a single American among the special repertoires, many of them from developing countries, and I would try to get international pressure probably through back channels in part, something like the Oslo process with Norway going behind the scenes getting into Middle East Peace Accords, something similar to that to try and get China to invite some of these groups in. And there already have been two such visits, so it's not unprecedented, one by the special repertoire in religious intolerance, and one by a kind of preliminary visit by someone associated with workmen's arbitration, etc. I would also try to hold out there as an objective, access to Chinese and Tibetan prisons by the International Committee of the Red Cross, but again, that's the objective. The way you get there is not always by saying every time an official goes, this has got to be the key issue that's publicized all over the place, although I do believe that there is a strong role for a good cop/bad cop kind of counterpart on human rights, because if you have the publicity, then you allow people to come in quietly and say, "Well, you don't really have to pay attention to them. Let's work on it this way." You don't have that public voice out there. There is no point in even thinking about the quiet diplomacy. So I would set specific objectives that were tied to the international system on human rights protection. I would look for back channels, probably using the United States not to directly confront China, but to use its influence with other countries that might be able to have influence, and let the NGO's like us raise human rights concerns publicly, loudly and so on, so that these other channels might have a chance to work. But that requires having in place a whole set of different political actors that you must now work with. AUDIENCE MEMBER: So if I am understanding you correctly, it seems like some of the UN groups, things like that, these are not US Government things, and you would actually see like the way to avoid sort of the imperialistic tolerance as going through more special interest groups and private citizenry as opposed to being part of our defense foreign policy? MS. JONES: I think there is a very strong role for governments to act. I do think it's important for governments to raise human rights issues in a variety of different ways. I don't think it should be restricted to the kind of blustering approach that we sometimes see out of American officials in various settings. But I also think it's a little bit naive in some ways to think that the Chinese Government is reacting this way because of some kind of special Chinese characteristics over a long period of history or a particular feeling of humiliation. No government anywhere likes to be criticized on human rights, and every government has exactly the same reaction that interferes in our internal affairs and so on. Interestingly, in the work we do on Asia, with the exception of North Korea that we don't have any contact with, the government that's most hostile on human rights is not China and it's not Vietnam. It's India, open democratic society and so on. So it's not the case that you are just dealing with one particular kind of reaction. This is a pattern that all governments react with. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Could I get you to talk a little bit about what you think the Federal Government's role is in that? MS. JONES: I do think there is a role -- I do think there is a role for, for example, raising individual cases of detained people. I do think there is a role for suggesting that China invite some of these UN mechanisms there. I do think one of the things I would like to see happen with the Clinton Administration is for Clinton to conduct the kind of seminar in economics on human rights like he conducted on economics in Little Rock in the period between his election and his inauguration, where you got members of the private sector to actually take part and have people come up with new creative ideas with some of the most important players in China now, which are some of the American companies, and the private sector more generally. And I think getting more ideas out on the table because of the kinds of tools the administration is using and the kinds of tools suggested by different members of Congress are kind of old and tired techniques in a world that's changed, and we need new thinking, and I think a seminar like that would be the way to go. DR. LAMPTON: I think I would take a different -- I wouldn't entirely disagree with that, but I think the answer, or at least my answer to the question what could the US Government do, I think I would take an entirely different approach. First of all, I think your question was very good. I talk to intellectuals a lot in China, people who live in universities, professors and so on, and after Tiananmen, they were very supportive of the human rights critique, one. I would say it lasted for about nine months, maybe a year and a half, but some finite period. But very rapidly, even the people we thought whose interests we were trying to advance in some sense or safeguard began to resent what they almost uniformly referred to now as the strong-arm bullying tactics of the United States. So I think in some sense, our natural allies, those people that we think we are helping, in fact are becoming most resentful to the approach that seems to characterize it. I think a more productive approach for the US Government would be to push in some areas that's talked about, but frankly, our policy has been absolutely nothing but rhetoric, and there has been no allocation of resource. In fact, there has been a diminution of resource of the President when he delinked the MFN in May of 1994; he talked about loading very substantial resources to rule of law programs in China. I can tell you that has not happened, and I can tell you that our organizations raised in the private sector, I think more money devoted to that objective than the US Government has done, and I should say that's a pathetically little amount of money. Another area, environment is an area that tends to create civil organizations in the society. The United States has, as a matter of policy, excluded China from the US environmental partnership in Asia. I think we are all concerned about the environment. We want to encourage that kind of involvement of organizations in China. We are opposed to it, as at least a matter of policy. If you look at the impact that American scholars and researchers have when they go live in China, we are cutting back on funding on that. So I would say let's look at some of the areas where we can really have an impact that doesn't elicit this kind of nationalistic backlash, but it seems to me that we are left with the most counterproductive policy of an inflammatory rhetoric and approach on the one hand, and absolutely no allocation of resource in the direction that would actually be effective and constructive. So I think frankly, at least up until very recently we have been left with the worst of both worlds MS. JONES: I don't have any problem with that. I strongly support certainly any efforts and all efforts to build academic exchanges in the rule of law and work on the environment, no question whatsoever. COL. EIKENBERRY: I think that in our discussion today when, as a round table leader and listening to some of the discussions this evening, I would go back again to what Ed had said about your starting point being to identify national interests. Now, in terms of human rights development, not narrowly defined, but more broadly defined as Mike was doing in terms of defining human rights as the development of civil society, in terms of leaders being held accountable by their people for their own allocation of resources; are their interests national security interests and broad interests of the United States in seeing those kind of changes in China? Let me give you three examples. One is defense transparency. China is one of the most opaque defense systems in the world, and they are reaching a point in their rise to power where it's frankly causing concerns in our Asian-Pacific friends and allies. We are comfortable with our position, but even we are becoming concerned. And lack of transparency, it hides capabilities and it hides intentions and it causes worst case assessments on threats. Now, what is one of the best ways to influence defense transparency in a system? It's an evolution internally within a society where the people were a national part of the People's Congress, and they get to ask the military questions about how much money are you going to spend this year and what are you spending that money on? A second point is on environment, as Mike has pointed out. We can pressure China from the outside on environment, and they will answer to us with some justification, "Easy for you, United States, to talk about environment with your average income of $25,000 a year. For us, with an average income of $600 a year, not so easy to put those priorities out there." But if there is a civil society in China which wants to demand of its government that they start to address these problems before they have a first class disaster, which could have an impact on the Asia-Pacific region, is that not a more effective way? Or in terms of just channels of communication open to China, we are a very poor system and the Chinese have many ways of accessing into our system, as we know in some cases from reading the headlines from Washington, DC, perhaps too many channels of communications at times. But on the other hand, without the -- in the absence of a civil society in China, the absence of a movement in progress in that area, are we a competitive vantage against China because we don't have access into that society? We don't have groups to turn to carry forward our agenda. So I believe that -- and we wish to define human rights narrowly in terms of number of dissidents locked up, and it's going to be an in-your-face approach. That clearly is counter- productive, but a more broad definition that is clearly delinked to national interest is something that I believe that should be considered and weighed carefully. MS. JONES: I just have one brief comment in there. I agree that it would be healthy to have a broader definition, and I do wholeheartedly support that, but I don't think it can be at the expense of the people who are locked up or the people who are suffering immediate problems. I do think that any kind of human rights strategy does very much have to deal with those people who in some cases may be in real life-threatening situations or at least where their physical well-being is a real issue. And I think any kind of human rights policy has to address both, both the longer term rule of law issues, the longer strategic interests, but also the very immediate problems, and that's the immediate issues where you tend to get the inflammatory rhetoric and the kind of in-your-face approach. You have got to find a different way of dealing with it. We can't not deal with it. COL. MURRAY: I will be with you in just a second. The gentleman in the back was standing up. Could I have your comments or questions, sir? AUDIENCE MEMBER: This is to Dr. Feulner and the other panelists, as well. How important do you think partisan politics is going to play a part in the US's policy towards China? DR. FEULNER: The extension of MFN, specifically in terms of US-China policy has been supported on a bipartisan basis with more Democrats percentage-wise, I suspect, supporting it in the past. I haven't done actual head counts, but certainly critics of extending it have been very bipartisan, whether it's someone on the Democratic side or some of the more outspoken Republicans. Colonel Eikenberry just made a vague reference to an emerging concern that I certainly have, and that is that I think two weeks ago most people who were watching, very specifically, questions like the extension of Most Favored Nation status, again coming up here in a couple months, thought that more or less this year it was going to be a slam dunk. Then about a week ago there was a front page article in the Washington Post about the PRC's Embassy, allegedly there having been some US high-tech intercepts of some communications from within the PRC Embassy indicating that as a PRC government policy, there was going to be involvement in terms of US domestic politics. And all I've got to say is, if those allegations turn out to be true, MFN is going to be a very, very tough row to hoe this year. There is not going to be a vote on at least one side of the aisle on behalf of it, and that disturbs me very greatly because, as I said before, I'm in favor of continued MFN status for China. Cutting it off I think hurts all the wrong people. It hurts the people who are basically in the private sector, the people who are moved from real poverty, as David was saying, the 80 million people who moved from real poverty into at least some kind of lower income but rising income positions. It hurts Hong Kong very greatly in terms of being the main trade shipment point. It hurts private sector investment, it reinforces the worst instincts among the worst political types of Beijing in terms that you could never trust the reliability of US policy and let's close ourselves to them. It does all the wrong kind of things, but the political reality is that politics could play a very big role in that. COL. MURRAY: Bill? DR. HEATON: I think the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is going to make life very miserable for the Clinton Administration and China policy. DR. LAMPTON: I would second that and say I find it interesting that every year about two to three months before the MFN debate begins to heat up, you find interesting intercepts from the intelligence community finding their way into public discourse. I am becoming a little jaded on that score. DR. HEATON: It wasn't me. DR. LAMPTON: I would just say one other thing, though, that actually my hopes prior to this most recent set of episodes -- and I had a fear about what Hong Kong was also going to do to the Congressional attitude -- but actually I was quite encouraged by the vote last year in the House which had always been the problem on MFN, it was basically two to one in favor, and on a quite bipartisan basis, and I was quite encouraged by the degree to which China in fact wasn't an issue in the presidential election, in that Candidate Dole -- he lost the election but he didn't politicize China policy. He gave a speech that certainly didn't dovetail very well with what China would have liked on the Taiwan issue, but in general he did not seek to make China policy partisan, even though I think he reasonably could have calculated that it might have been in his short-term interest to do so. So I think there are still impulses there for a bipartisanship. I am not totally manic-depressive yet. MS. JONES: I would just say that my sense from our contacts in Congress is that indeed Hong Kong is going to be the major issue, and it may not break down along party lines, but that's going to be -- it's going to be a clear barrier to any consideration of MFN status this year, and it's probably going to continue to be the tail that wags the dog in US-China relations. COL. MURRAY: Go ahead, Karl. COL. EIKENBERRY: I think there are four points on this issue of where we're going to go in a bipartisan front with China. One, clearly the Taiwan Strait missile exercises of March of '96 has led to, I believe a more sober assessment by the administration and by Congress, or let's say at least a more serious approach towards China on defensive military issues. There is no question on any front in Congress as there was just two years ago about the wisdom, say, of pursuing confidence-building measures with the PLA, appropriate military relations, appropriate military dialogue, but a broad consensus. Secondly in terms of presidential politics, I would believe that having gone through the experience of Candidate Reagan, who on the campaign trail said certain things that led to a first-class crisis the first two years in the administration, and Candidate Clinton, who said things on the campaign trial that led to this angst over the MFN decision in 1994, that there is probably enough learning there at the Presidential level I would think long-term, that we may be in for a period of time where we will see candidates not being too frivolous in their statements regarding China. Third on the issue of Congress, though, I am not so optimistic, and beyond the crisis that Ed has talked about, there is just a fundamental dynamics at work where the President is getting paid to try to keep the relationship with China moving forward in some kind of constructive fashion. But it's extremely difficult, as we have talked about, looking at all these complex issues. And if you are in Congress, the temptation to defect and just torture the President on one of these issues is just too great. It's just first-class politics. It's a collective action problem, and it will continue to have that dynamic for some period of time. And the fourth point is on the business community. I am more worried here, too. Traditionally, the business community in Washington has been a powerful force for advocating keeping our relationship with China on some kind of an even keel. And where I worry is in terms of the trade deficit that's starting to blossom, that if our trade relations with China start to get so out of whack, if we can't penetrate Chinese markets -- and some of this being our own lack of competitiveness -- I am afraid that that very important domestic group that argues, I think for rather sound long-term policies with China, we may see a weakening of their influence because they simply don't have the strong desire to push that agenda. COL. MURRAY: Going to go back to the floor. Yes, sir? AUDIENCE MEMBER: I am (inaudible) from China. I have been here (inaudible). My question is, you know, should maybe a theory on the difference between our cultures has on Washington, and a second theory is a convenient advantage of power in Beijing, Americans now like to (inaudible) to pay against China. The third theory is a multi-state. We are not fighting each other. It seems American side (inaudible) about China. The other units of these three schools of theory, arms (inaudible) Americans, foreign policy and the secured policy to our China and the (inaudible) is jail (inaudible). DR. LAMPTON: I might just take a whack at a couple of these theories, take a couple of side swipes at it. The clash of civilization idea, I think there are many fissures in the world today. Cultural values and civilization is one of those things, but economics is a very great ethnicity, it is even becoming more so, so I think there are many lines of fissure and I think civilization, in fact kind of an ill-defined concept in itself, but it's only one. I would point to the particular problem in the case of Huntington in China towards the end of his article in Foreign Affairs, which was one of the expositions of this. He had China in effect aligned with the Muslim world, Muslim fundamentalism against the interests of the West, the modern West. Well, I think you can see what's going on in Xinjiang right now. That just doesn't explain -- you cannot understand what's going on in Western China, I think by reference to some presumed symmetry of interest against the West with the Muslim fundamentalist world and in China. So I have got a big problem with that. The balance of power, I think the US in some sense, and I think Mr. Feulner gave view to that, for a long time we never wanted Asia to be dominated by any other power. And I think it's true that we place a cornerstone importance on the US-Japan security relationship. We have in the past and we are continuing to in the future. All I would point out, though, is I think that if one wants to talk about the balance of power, China is the master practitioner of balance of power, and I would point out it was no accident, at the same time US President Clinton talking to Prime Minister Hashimoto. You also had Yeltsin coming to China, and China and Russia are talking about strategic partnership. And actually, I think one of the more interesting questions I would like to ask Chinese people is, what on earth is the content of strategic partnership between a decaying Russia and a rise in China? MS. JONES: I will take the third theory on the Democratic states don't fight each other. My biggest problem with that particular argument was part of it that you didn't state, which was the equation of human rights and democratic systems as though analytically the two concepts were identical. You couldn't have human rights without having a democratic system, which did imply that the ultimate aim of a human rights policy was to push all countries toward a specific set of institutions and so on. I think that's a real mistake. Whatever you think about what kind of political system you need in the long distant future in order to ensure the protection of human rights, I'm convinced that it is possible to do basic human rights protection in any kind of political system without necessarily challenging the legitimacy of whatever political system exists. You certainly can prevent torture under any political system. You don't have to have a secret police or a system of arbitrary detention in an authoritarian government. It's possible to have a strong central authority without also having it be accompanied by real severe human rights violations. So my problem with the democratic states don't fight each other was that it was sort of -- it was a simplistic and unfortunate blending of human rights and democracy in US policy. DR. HEATON: On the face of it, the idea of a balance of power between the United States and Japan to balance Chinese power isn't very persuasive. I mean, after all, Japan's military capabilities, except for the nuclear component certainly exceed those with China today. Even though the ground forces are small, the naval and the air components in the United States, which military budget I think exceeds the next ten countries combined, or at least is pretty close to it, so that the idea that the United States would have to form some kind of an alliance with Japan to balance China just doesn't add up. The Chinese I know are very suspicious of the US-Japan relation. I should say some Chinese are, because there are some Chinese that see it even now, even today see it as a restraint on Japan's improvement of its military capabilities, and for that reason they are not adamantly opposed to the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty. You also see it more importantly as a check on Japan's development of nuclear capability. There probably is mistrust of China and the United States, but I don't think that it's nearly as deep as a mistrust of the United States and China. COL. MURRAY: Did you want to respond to that? AUDIENCE MEMBER: It's okay. COL. MURRAY: Yes, sir? AUDIENCE MEMBER: My question is referring back to the human rights and some society issues, and I am wondering, you mentioned including more NGO's into China and giving them more voice and also looking more at the private sector. I think, Sidney, you were mentioning that. And I am wondering exactly, I guess my fundamental question is how is a civil society created within China, and when you don't necessarily have space for those voices to be heard at the moment for dissenting with the government, to be heard at the moment? How can those seeds be planted? And then I guess the second part of that question is what's the U.S.'s role in helping to plant those seeds, and how do we use our economic and our strategic relations with China to possibly help further human rights and make our human rights wishes explicit with China? Because it seems to me that if it's sort of like an aftermath of first establishing an economic and strategic relationship, that maybe the human rights would somehow get lost in there, and I think that they need to be explicit, but I am wondering exactly how we go about doing that. MS. JONES: Let me just give a brief comment on the civil society part, then Mike should probably address that, as well, because the National Committee has been doing some useful work on that. In both Vietnam and China, it's very interesting to see how, through some of the organizations that are in fact party organizations, and China would be the All China Women's Federation, for example, there is a Vietnamese equivalent. There are beginning to be local parts of this structure, which in fact are taking positions and sort of working on what, in other countries call community empowerment, where they are expressing local concerns, finding a way to organize and channel these up the system. It's not what we would call an NGO, because they are not nongovernmental. They are still governmental, but they are taking on some of the functions of NGO's. And the Ford Foundation in Beijing has been doing a lot to support community based organizations, particularly nonprofits, I think, local farmers groups and so on. The problem is that in the last 18 months or so, there has been a chill even there, and I am not sure exactly what explains that chill. It's not external pressure. It has as much to do with internal Chinese political dynamics as it does from external pressure, but nevertheless, there is a momentum that's slowed down somewhat. My guess is it will pick up again eventually, but I think we have to think of NGO's a little bit differently in China or in a place like Vietnam than we do in a place like Indonesia or Thailand, Philippines or other Asian countries where they are allowed to exist openly outside of party control. Maybe Mike wants to - DR. LAMPTON: Well, I think there are actually some very encouraging developments going on at really three levels, and I think one thing that's implicit in some questions is really the notion that if either society doesn't push the leadership or the foreigners don't push the leadership, then positive things aren't going to happen. I think these are additives, but I do think -- I had a meeting that must have been about two years ago with Vice Premier Li Lanqing, and we were talking about just the question you raised, and he volunteered as, "Look it, China's gone to the market. Central revenues are inadequate to cope with the rising demands of society. Society's expectations are going up. Our revenues as a percentage of the economy are going down, and short demands are going up for government services. Our capacity to provide them is going down. We have no choice but to rely increasingly on civic organizations for poverty alleviation, illiteracy, taking care of disabled people and so forth." So I think there is a recognition, not uniform, and there are many people that have no -- even in China's leadership -- that have no conception of this. But the point is, there are people in China's leadership that recognize they need it so that they can meet the demands that the government is unable to meet. So I think that's one place where this seed is already planted, in one of the most effective places. Secondly, I think what is naturally happening in the Chinese economy is very helpful. You are developing companies. The fastest growing sector of the Chinese economy is the private and joint venture and cooperative sector. That is, the localities, individuals and companies are acquiring the right to distribute their own resources. And you are beginning to see the phenomenon now where private Chinese companies are beginning to support, let us say philanthropic and let us say civic organizations of various sorts. So I think the economic development process is creating a middle class and a resource base that's not under the control of the government that is quite helpful. And finally, I think the external foreigners, the Ford Foundation as was mentioned, but many organizations, including the US Government, in certain areas can be very helpful to this in terms of developing a structure, a legal structure that governs nongovernmental organizations and so are helping the Chinese develop it. So I think this is a very encouraging set of developments that's going on in China. The problem is that it has a time horizon of 20 or 30 years. It's not instant gratification. MS. JONES: If I could, just the second part of your question on how you keep the human rights issue in balance with the economic and the strategic issues, it's very difficult. I don't think there is any particular set of arguments that you can use except to have as much time and resources devoted to each of the three, you know, and not just, you know, send John Shattuck, the Assistant Secretary of State, off to have a completely meaningless discussion and call it a human rights policy on the part of the US Government. I think it's looking for ways in which failure to respect human rights at least has either economic or security implication is an important thing to do. If you don't respect worker rights, you may get industrial unrest which is causing problems for investment in particular areas, or if the practice of arbitrary detention leads you to imprison one of the leading architects of economic reform, that's a problem. But it's looking for the linkages among those areas, I think that's one way of trying to make the argument. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just to follow up real quick, we are sort of also saying that it's not necessary to have voices that are dissenting towards the government or that are able to dissent towards the government in order to start creating a civil society. Maybe that would be an end result that we don't have to necessarily create spaces that are critical of the government right away. Is that - MS. JONES: Well, as I understand it, part of the reason for this chill in the growth of some of these community-level organizations was precisely the fact that once you begin to have people at a local level speaking out, you do get people challenging the system more generally. It's not at the level that Wei Jingsheng was challenging the system and advocating for change, but it does represent a threat to the established order in some ways, so the issues are linked. COL. MURRAY: Sir, you had a comment earlier and I cut you off. Could you share that with us? DR. HARVEY NELSON: My question is directed to either Bill Heaton or Karl Eikenberry. They both emphasize very heavily the Taiwan problem, but then Taiwan kind of got left in our later discussions. Everybody seems to agree it's truly, potentially the most critical of all the hot spots in our relationships with China. Democracies don't fight each other, but the problem is democracies don't control each other either. We are losing leverage within Taiwan now that Taiwan is a truly democratic country. The DPP is getting stronger. Many of my Chinese acquaintances believe firmly that Lee Tung-hui is a closet independence guy, even though he says he is not publicly. What can the United States do, if anything, if Taiwan continues this gradual drift towards more and more independence? When Chiang Kai-shek was around, we could go over and arm-twist it, but Chiang Kai-shek is gone and you have got a democracy in Taiwan now. How do you manage this? DR. LAMPTON: Bill has got the answer to that one. DR. HEATON: Piece of cake. If in fact you could say that the big problem for the United States is that we have somehow gotten ourselves in the middle of the Chinese Civil War, an issue that we committed in the Shanghai CommuniquŽ that the people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait should take the principal role in resolving, and I mean, it's not just in Taiwan that a lot of people want independence in the United States. In the nonpolitical circles there are people who would like Taiwan to eventually become independent. It's not US Government policy, but that doesn't mean that there isn't strong sentiment. Going back to what I said, there are multiple influences. I think that probably the best course of action for the United States, difficult as it may be, is progressive disengagement from the Taiwan issue, the policy that says eventually that the Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait can't look to the United States as bearing the primary responsibility for the resolution of the problem. And it's true we can't twist arms in Taiwan. We can't also twist arms in Beijing. Maybe this is an opportunity for us to continue to emphasize the importance of peace and stability in Asia, but also to say to the two sides, "You have to talk to each other. You can't both come to us or expect us to resolve the problem." I know that's not a very good answer, but it's probably about the best I can come up with. DR. FEULNER: Let me throw out a couple comments. I think that the last assembly election and the presidential election showed that the KMT, which certainly 15 or 20 years ago was not a model of what anyone in this room would like to see in terms of the forward-looking, open and vibrant political party -- it has in fact been rejuvenating itself during the last several years -- that with the splintering of the new party as a third kind of political force, that the notion that somehow the DPP is going to continue inexorably overtaking the KMT, and therefore putting out front some kind of a coherent Taiwan independence policy I think is just wrong. Knowing various of the actors in the DPP, they don't all share that view in any event. The DPP in many respects is a real coalition within itself. The other point I have to take some exception with Bill about is, of course, when he quotes the Shanghai CommuniquŽ, I would go back and quote the Taiwan Relations Act, which says it is a policy of the United States Government that we will provide Taiwan with what necessary defense and capabilities they need to protect themselves, and that's policy from the Congress, and as you do point out earlier, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, among others, can make life very uncomfortable for any administration, and again, the TRA passed overwhelmingly with support of both parties and both houses. DR. HEATON: Which, by the way, interferes with China's foreign affairs. I mean, what do you have, international law or public law? Which is going to take precedence? DR. FEULNER: Well, the Shanghai CommuniquŽ is neither. COL. EIKENBERRY: Let me make a couple of points here, not necessarily speaking as a -- clearly not speaking as a representative of the Department of Defense, let me make that clear, just some observations. First of all, I talked not long ago with a Chinese military officer who, in a very frank conversation over a beer said, "You know, the best solution to the Taiwan problem, to define it, probably the best solution for the Taiwan problem is not to solve it." And that is, I believe, Beijing's assessment. I think sober heads in Taipei, that's their assessment, certainly the assessment in Washington. The best solution is to postpone any resolution of that issue for as long as possible with the hope, the assumption that developments on perhaps the PRC side of the Strait will lead in time to some kind of amiable reconciliation. At the same time that's also recognizing that if you are in Taipei right now, under no circumstances does reunification in 1997 make sense. A second point that has to be made is regarding Taiwan. Taiwan can accomplish many things. It already has accomplished great things. One thing that it cannot accomplish, it cannot move itself to the Caribbean, and a fundamental fact will be 100 years from now that Taiwan will still be much closer to China than it is to the United States. The third point is concerning the Taiwan Relations Act. It is the law of the land, but I would say that great powers nations never go to war over acts. They go to war when there is a determination that's in their interests. I will give two hypotheticals. One hypothetical is that tomorrow morning we wake up and on CNN we find that Beijing has begun missile attacks, unprovoked, against Taiwan, and has decided they are going to use a military option. What will be the United States' reaction? A second hypothetical is that six months from now Lee Teng-hui decides, for the sake of the new national flag and the national anthem, with severe warnings, Beijing declares independence and war breaks out. What will be our reaction? There will be two very different reactions, and so we can't really define what our policy will be specifically regarding Taiwan. Many times you can say it's a policy of strategic ambiguity, and I would think so. I would think actually strategically, it's quite clear what our policy is: What's in our national interest. What is ambiguous is tactically how we would respond to them in that situation. DR. LAMPTON: I just wonder if you would agree, Karl and Mr. Feulner, I think there are a couple of useful things we can say. I don't think we have the option of disengaging. I think that would embolden Beijing. I met with Jiang Zemin not long ago, and he said, "If it wasn't for you Americans, we would have solved this Taiwan problem a long time ago." DR. FEULNER: Our way. DR. LAMPTON: Our way, so I think long-term. So I think we probably don't have the disengagement option entirely as much as we would all dearly love that option. I think where we have to go back is really to the Cairo Declaration, and if we are looking for pieces of international law, the United States is really at a one China policy. In fact earlier, Ed, you pointed to the hundred years of continuity policy. So I think we stick with the one China policy and then we say one further thing, and that is the United States will not support a unilateral change in the status quo, whether it's an attack from the PRC or a declaration. That's -- those are the parameters of our policy, and we want peaceful resolution, and I think almost anything more than that, we say is either provocative to one side or the other. DR. HEATON: That doesn't solve Karl's problem, though. I mean, it's great to be able to say, "We stand for this," but what if Lee Tung-hui says, "Okay, we will --" DR. LAMPTON: Well, I think the carriers answer one scenario. I mean, if there is an application of force, I can't imagine a President of the United States that can stand by. On the other hand, if Taiwan -- or Taipei is identified as acting provocatively in a reckless way, I think you might get a rather different response. And so we ought to make it clear to both sides, we don't support provocative behavior. DR. HEATON: And have we not done that? I mean, I think we already have, haven't we? DR. LAMPTON: Which instance do you have in mind? DR. HEATON: Well, like even back at the missile launches and tests and sending of the carriers, I think we stated quite clearly what our position was, didn't we? COL. EIKENBERRY: Bill, I think that we did regarding that incident. I would, again not speaking as a representative of the Department of Defense of the government, I would go back to what Ed had said, though, about the need to have candid dialogues with both sides, both parties, candid dialogues that make sure neither side is miscalculating what lined out as our interests. I would go back and say what Ed -- following up with what Ed had said about particular dialogues, the need to look the other party in the face, whether that's in Taipei, and say, declaration of independence when the American taxpayer knows the long-term price that's going to be paid in blood by the Treasury, likely, for this, you are not getting support, because it's not our policy explicitly. It's not our policy. It's not in our interests. To be able to turn to Beijing and say that we have a security obligation, and although you don't recognize or like the three words "Taiwan Relations Act," the Taiwan Relations Act governs our security relationship, and it will be followed and it will ensure that Taiwan maintains a sufficient defensive capability. If you look at the arsenal of Taiwan, what we are doing does not include stealth fighters, does not include aircraft carriers. It is quite modest. It's very appropriate. It is clearly, by any kind of real political address of this issue, it's in the interest of peace and stability of all parties that this policy continues, and it frankly will. That's really the kind of candid dialogue that I think is essential at this point. I am afraid that if you don't have that kind of explicit dialogue, the potential for miscalculation is still out there. DR. HEATON: I have to pressure you a little bit, because Harvey's question was assuming there is an independent movement. Now, you may be right. Maybe they will fragment. Maybe it will never come to fruition, but the argument here is if they do, don't we increasingly have less leverage to tell Taiwan that you can't be independent? I mean, what if they do it? I mean, are we really going to say, "Oh, that's a provocation?" I mean really, can the United States afford to save a country that has met all of its obligations, has been cooperative with us? I shouldn't say a country. I should say an entity, but people that have introduced democratization? We are going to say, "Oh, you're provocative." We are not going to -- I mean, really. COL. EIKENBERRY: Bill, I would say two things in that regard in what can be done, what's very difficult in how to proceed. I think the best policy is to try to kick it down the road, but in terms of with Taiwan, is there leverage there? Well, if you see concrete moves towards independence, we have a security relationship with Taiwan. That security relationship is predicated upon, I think, there is a consensus in this country that security relationship is predicated upon responsibility in Taipei, and if there are movements towards independence at that juncture, how do we proceed with our security relationship? That certainly is a form of leverage. As well, though, I would say that in this issue of how we proceed, there probably needs to be an enormous amount of work that needs to be done. We commented about making dialogues more explicit, but internally within our own system. One Congressman was in Beijing at the time the Lee Teng-hui Visa decision was announced, and he was challenged by his PRC interlocutors about why this happened. He said, "Well, I am not certain. I didn't vote for it." And his interlocutor said, "Yes, you did vote for it. Here is the record. You did vote for it." I really wasn't aware of the significance of this, and clearly some people on our side were caught by surprise at the virulence of Beijing's reaction to this. You can question whether it was an overreaction or not, but there was a certain education that was going on there, and I think that in terms of making the consequences, at least, of getting this thing wrong, making sure that Congress, and more importantly their constituencies, the American people, know what the stakes are, it's at least a step in the right direction. I don't want to give a doomsday prophecy, but if the American people are told that in the case of a Taiwan declaration of independence that the only thing we need to do is send two carrier battle groups and the problem is going to be over, or you are being told that you are about to embark on a 25-year war with the People's Republic of China that will lead to several hundred thousand US casualties and a tremendous cost to the US Treasury, I don't think you will get the same Congressional response. Our danger is that that is not explicit beforehand that we could stumble into a crisis and then find ourselves engaged and walking down a path that we last walked down in Southeast Asia two decades ago, three decades ago, with a terrible consequence for the United States. COL. MURRAY: We have been about two hours. I want to cut short in a little bit, but I want to have time for a couple more questions from folks who haven't had a chance to ask or comment. Yes, ma'am, you have been standing there for awhile. AUDIENCE MEMBER: I would like to ask about, Colonel Eikenberry, you made the statement that China doesn't have expansionist tendencies with Taiwan, obviously. Then you talked a little bit about oil shortages, and since China will face oil and energy shortages in the future, I think everyone pretty much agrees, what do you think the prospects are that China will make claims in the South China Sea because of the energy shortages? COL. EIKENBERRY: That's a very good question. At this juncture, we are not at all certain that -- geologists are not at all certain as to really what is the potential of the South China Sea. There is a considerable debate about the value of what the resources down there might look like, but let's say for the sake of argument that they are considerable. Again, it gets into a question of, at the stage that China has a growing energy problem, and coupled with we find out that there are significant resources down there, then what is China's stake in the international community at that time? One of the encouraging things about China's policy in the South China Sea is that it said starting in 1995, they made the announcement that all issues should be resolved in accordance with the United Nations Law of the Sea, and there is a debate about what that really does for trying to resolve the issue, but it was a step forward. They also have consistently given the line that they are willing to look at co-production or co-development of resources, but only on a bilateral basis, which upsets us, then keeps off balance many of the other claimants in the region. But I guess the point I would make is that if they are more of a responsible member of the international community at such a time, if they are a full member of the WTO, if they developed early an early integrated economy with the members of the Southeast Asian nations, if in fact the US has kept a presence in the region that has bolstered ASEAN and other claimants in the area to the point that they do have security options of their own which drives up the price of an aggressive response by China, not only in terms of reputational costs that they will have in the international community, frankly in terms of military price that they might have to pay to take on other members and other 97 claimants within that area, I would be more optimistic that they would adopt a more peaceful approach towards the South China Sea in the exportation of the oil and the possible natural gas resources that are there. COL. MURRAY: Yes, ma'am. You can go ahead and ask from there if you like. AUDIENCE MEMBER: Is there a golden opportunity with Deng Xiaoping's death for President Clinton to go to the funeral and start his heritage that he wants to make with his second term as President, not having to worry about re-election, to make his mark on history to make the bold type of moves that Nixon did? DR. HEATON: The Chinese don't invite foreigners to their funerals. They never have, and I don't see any reason for them to change. DR. LAMPTON: Beyond that, which I would agree with, I mean, normally my reflexive action would be let's take some risks and do something that will kind of get people's attention focused. But I think when you involve the President of the United States, there are many issues in this relationship. I think he shouldn't be moving in this circumstance in totally symbolic fashion. I think that there ought to be real issues that get addressed, and you simply don't have the kind of time horizon that would allow you to properly staff that out. So I think the United States ought to find a suitable way to make a meaningful statement that this is important. I would like to see the schedule of our summits that have been agreed to in principle, but yet the timing is not. I would like to see that accelerated. I think we are being entirely too cautious from my viewpoint, but I think to move with the degree of rapidity you suggest is not feasible, and probably not desirable either. COL. MURRAY: Yes? MS. JONES: I would just like to disagree with Mike on that point, because I think precisely because the summit is so important and it carries such a symbolic weight regardless of the substantive issues discussed, that it does provide a very important opportunity for noneconomic leverage. And one of the things that ought to be made clear in the dialogue with the Chinese Government is that the US expects certain kinds of human rights improvements to take place before that summit actually goes ahead. Not in terms of publicly stated conditions that because of loss of face or humiliation or whatever, but you don't give something this important away without getting something very concrete in return. COL. MURRAY: Bill? DR. HEATON: Yes. This is a technical issue. When Tony Lake visited China before the presidential election, the US and China agreed to a series of steps that would lead up to the exchange of Presidential visits. And I think those steps are on track, and I think speeding it up would be inappropriate, because both sides seem to be working the agenda quite well, and there are some other visits that are scheduled to take place, and they are leading up to symmetry that can probably have some concrete results because of the work that will have been done before. COL. MURRAY: Well, the hour is late. I want to thank the panelists for their participation. I would also want to particularly thank all of you for your participation. I know we could spend a lot more time talking about some of these issues and questions. You know, the job of the moderator at the end is supposed to summarize what was said. I don't think I could possibly do that. We phrased more questions than we have answered, but I have one last question before I turn the floor over to Wendy, and that is a question that I am going to ask each of the panelists. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being a metaphysical certainty, how would you characterize US-China relations into the 21st Century, with 1 being conflictual, perhaps even going to the point of possible warfare, and 10 being cooperative, perhaps going to the point of an alliance and close working relationships? On a scale of 1 to 10, how would each of you rate that? Mike? DR. LAMPTON: I would give it a 5 with a margin of error of 3 in either direction. COL. MURRAY: Write that down. We will discuss that later. Bill? DR. HEATON: Boy, that's really calling it, isn't it? Maybe this and maybe that. 6. COL. MURRAY: 6. DR. FEULNER: 6. MS. JONES: 5. COL. EIKENBERRY: I would say 5, with a, two years ago, 7. COL. MURRAY: Thank you all very much. Wendy, I will turn the floor back over to you. (Applause) CADET PALATINUS: Panelists, we would just like to thank you very much for coming this evening, and as a traditional show of the cadets' appreciation for your attendance, we would like to present each of you with "The Bird." COL. EIKENBERRY: I wanted to say that the last time that I received "The Bird" at the Air Force Academy was when I was a West Point cadet here for a football game, and it was not the same kind. COL. MURRAY: Thank you all. Have a good evening, and we will see you at the roundtable tomorrow. Good night.
Banquet Speaker Ambassador James R. Lilley Ambassador Lilley is a resident fellow and director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Lilley served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, 1991-1993, U.S. Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, 1989-1991, and U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Korea, 1986-1989. Dr. Lilley served both in the United States Army and in the United States Air Force Reserve and attended the National War College. In his government career Ambassador Lilley has worked in Washington and in a number of American missions in East Asia, including Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, and the United States Liaison Office in Beijing. Additionally, Dr. Lilley was appointed National Intelligence Officer for China, the senior post in the intelligence community for Chinese affairs. He has taught courses on Chinese economics and Asia-Pacific security. He was an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics. Ambassador Lilley earned a B.A. from Yale University and an M.A. in International Relations from George Washington University. He also attended Hong Kong and Columbia Universities for studies in Classical Chinese.
Assembly Banquet Address
CADET PALATINUS: Good evening, and welcome honored guests. It is my pleasure to welcome each of you to this event, the 39th US Air Force Academy Assembly Banquet. As I reflect on this year's Assembly, it's obvious to me that each of you made a concerted effort to reach a consensus on a very challenging issue. I'm confident we produced a quality final report. The particulars you struggled with are no less complex and challenging than those faced by our leaders in China and the United States today. Tonight we take the time to celebrate the success we have achieved throughout the week. At this time I would like to introduce the members of the head table. To my left we have Father Mike, who will be giving our invocation, Mrs. Murray, Col. Wagie, the host of this evening's event, Ambassador Lilley, our speaker, Colonel Murray, Mrs. Wagie, Captain Cappello and I will be sitting to his right. (After dinner): CADET PALATINUS: Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you. As I mentioned before, foreign policy is a very complex issue. You can't expect to fully master the intricacies, and we probably didn't. Additionally, we cannot expect to solve all the problems we are presented with in such a short period of time. We can still try to gain a better understanding of the concerns and implications of the US-Chinese relationship. To further help us gain this understanding, we are honored to have as our banquet speaker, Ambassador James Lilley. Ambassador Lilley is a resident fellow and director of Asian Studies at the American Enterprise Institute. Dr. Lilley served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, 1991 to 1993, US Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, 1989 to 1991, and US Ambassador to the Republic of Korea 1986 to 1989. From 1982 to 1984, he was also the Chief of American Mission in Taiwan. He's the only American who has served as head of missions to both sides of Taiwan strait. Ambassador Lilley has served both in the United States Army and the United States Air Force Reserve, and has attended the National War College. In his government career, Ambassador Lilley has worked in Washington and in a number of American missions in East Asia that include Thailand, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos and the United States liaison office in Beijing. Additionally, Ambassador Lilley was appointed National Intelligence Officer for China, the senior post in the intelligence community for Chinese affairs. He has taught courses on Chinese economics and Asia-Pacific security. He was an adjunct professor at the Johns Hopkins Schools of Advanced International Studies and a fellow at Harvard University's Institute of Politics. Ambassador Lilley earned a B.A. from Yale University and an M.A. in International Relations from George Washington University. He has also attended Hong Kong and Columbia Universities for studies in classical Chinese. Ambassador Lilley? AMBASSADOR LILLEY: Thank you, Wendy. It's very good to be here for the first time at the Air Force Academy. I believe I was one of the oldest first lieutenants in the United States Air Force Reserve in 1964 when they finally retired me. And, I've always had a fondness for the Air Force and have a great respect for people who fly airplanes and fix them. You have been subjected to discussions and writings on concepts, interests, strategies, containment, power projection, constructive engagement, selective engagement, credible deterrence -- all these things you've talked about as important concepts. You've also had to have active perceptions, clichŽs, if you will, on anti-Americanism, the Taiwan problem, the "yellow peril," greater China, the 1 billion market, the "1 million man swim," missile diplomacy, Taiwan independence -- and sacred, irrefutable, indisputable sovereignty, and unity. Anything against these last two concepts would hurt the feelings of 1.2 billion Chinese people. Taiwan is a renegade province. There are black hands, conspiracies, a hundred years of humiliation.. China has stood up in your readings. You have read about conservatives, recollectivization (as well as privatization), at the same time you have read that state-owned enterprises which might be going bankrupt are trying to get special economic preferences. That is part of what you've read. I do have some comments on this book, which you all looked at. I thought one of the comments in your readings was quite interesting. The comment was one I paraphrase: China should encourage restraint by the Shanghai people from using political clout to accelerate their development through "poaching" on Hong Kong enterprises. That sounds rather preachy and unrealistic. Has this writer ever met a Shanghai entrepreneur? Has he ever talked to one of these people about poaching on Hong Kong? And I read on in this book and encountered this muscular statement -- "...The United States views as unhelpful any unilateral actions that alter the status quo in the South China Sea." "Unhelpful!" I don't believe that's the word that Admiral Charles Larson, former CINCPAC, used when he described the American interests in critical sea links in the Spratley Islands in the South China Sea. And then I read about North Korea. The writer seemed to have missed the point on this one. China's long-term strategic interest in the Korean Peninsula is not exactly the same as ours. China does not want a unified Korea under Seoul allied to a great power who is an adversary of China, namely the US. They fought the Korean War over that. I know, I was there. When Taiwan comes up, they don't talk about the basic contradiction between the Taiwan Relations Act and the August 1982 communiquŽ on arms sales to Taiwan. They skirt that one. Having dumped on your book a bit, I will also say that I did read some brilliant essays, particularly the one by Mike Lampton. I recommend that to all of you. I thought it was first class. I think your human rights one was a little bit preachy and a little bit off-scale. It wasn't designed to deal with the human rights problem in China or the way I see it in any case. Other pieces I thought were also worthwhile reading. In sum, you've got a good book with a lot of solid and provocative thoughts in it. I thought I would give you tonight a practitioner's, not a philosopher's, view of this particular summary. These clichŽs and perceptions have been, in effect, scratches on our minds. I'm going to talk to you about flesh and blood people. They are the ones that make policy. Today there are people of influence who have made things happen. I will start with the Chinese paramount leader, Deng Xiaoping who recently died, because I have personal remembrances of this man, and I believe these relate to policies. He died Wednesday at the age of 92, and he probably influenced China positively more than any other current Chinese leader. Certainly Chairman Mao of China who died in 1976 probably had more influence, but his huge negatives offset his monumental achievements. He won the Civil War, but he also caused the Great Leap Forward in 1958-1960. He organized the Communist Party, but he also caused the disastrous Cultural Revolution between 1966-1976. I met Deng five times, and the first thing you had sensed when you met Deng was that you had met a man that made a difference. The first meeting with him was in 1977. The last meeting was in 1989. Over a twelve-year span, I was probably one of the last foreigners who had the privilege of seeing this man alive. I'll go through each of the meetings, because I believe each one had an impact on what happened later. When you met Deng, you had the impression of a man who talked straight. He didn't pull his punches. He did get occasionally on a tirade, but he laid out his thoughts in direct and comprehensible Chinese, if you could work your way through a Sichuan accent In 1977, when I first met him, he was, in that meeting, exposed to the risk contract production concept. That is, the sharing of off-shore oil with foreign investors who had the modern technology was a solution to China's terrible problems with its off-shore oil program. China's "jack-up rigs" were turning over with loss of lives. They couldn't use semi-submersible rigs they had bought from Norway. These were rotting off Hainan Island. It was becoming a disaster. Then the Americans came directly to Deng and said, "We will take all the risks. We will find the oil. We will pay all the costs, and then we'll share your production with you." He said the Chinese equivalent of, "That's a damn good idea." The three no's, no foreign joint ventures, no foreign exploitation of natural resources, no foreign investment, which were the three no's of the Cultural Revolution, were waived aside, and it was clear this man had the power to do it. Fourteen months later at the 3rd Plenum of the 11th Party Congress, he announced this huge program for economic reform that changed the face of China. Earlier, in 1977, we got the first hints of his hard-headed pragmatism, the way a good idea can seize him. The next day after Deng's meeting, a Chinese subordinate contacted you and tried to get all the details. Within two months a proposal had been put to the Chinese. And within a year or so, major movement occurred. The whole idea of Chinese autarky was altered. In 1979, I saw him for the second time. One issue was on his mind, Vietnam. This was when he came to the US on the normalization of Chinese-American relations. He talked a great deal about Vietnam; not so much about Taiwan, but Vietnam. And of course, shortly after the Chinese in and hit Vietnam militarily. It gave us a sense of the way this man acted. He was working on the Americans so he could shore-up his position against the Russians who were allies of Vietnam. But he was going to act in any case, and we got the early indication of what he was going to do. In 1980, we saw Deng in different circumstances. This was during the Reagan-Bush campaign, and President Reagan, then Candidate Reagan, had made a comment that he was going to restore official relations with Taiwan. Needless to say, that meeting was not a smashing success. In August 1980, Deng was in a controlled fury. He said, "Do you Americans have to begin to experiment with the relationship every time you go through an election spasm?" Well, he did let out his anger, and Vice Presidential candidate Bush said to me after, "That was pretty rough." I said, "Yes, sir, it was rough." We wrote it up , but kept distribution limited. When we came back to the US after the China trip, we had a press conference and candidate Reagan got up and said all the right things. "We're going to open our arms to all Chinese," et cetera, et cetera -- No more talk of official relations. The Chinese then went and looked at the election polls that we had. In these, Reagan was running ten points ahead of Carter. The Chinese position changed, and we both of us quieted down. They did not attack Reagan and we did not raise the official relationship with Taiwan as this could have undermined the relationship. After Reagan got in office, we had a year and a half of negotiations which resulted in the August communiquŽ of 1982 on arms sales to Taiwan. The issue was papered over, and we got on with the overall relationship. In 1982, when Secretary of State George Schultz visited China, Deng would talk about nothing else but the Taiwan situation. Every time Schultz would raise the issue of technology transfer or whatever it was, Deng would bring it right back to Taiwan. 1985 was the fourth time. What we wanted to see then was the new Chinese leadership. We asked Deng if he could show us the future, younger, leaders of China, and he brought in a man, an attractive young man called Hu Qili, who is now the Minister, I believe, of Electronic Industry. He was put down after the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, but now he's back. He's limited as to how far he can go, but he was the new breed of English speaking, free-thinking, smart technocrat that Deng was bringing along. Deng would bring them along just so long as they didn't try to change his political agenda. They could argue with him on the economy, but they couldn't do it in the political field. We met Hu Qili, and were exposed to some of his creative thinking. He didn't say much in the meeting, but we learned that Hu Qili was making statements outside the usual party polemics. These concerned handling Taiwan more flexibly. Two years later there was the opening to Taiwan. Contacts, tourism, and investment trade between China and Taiwan took off. Finally in December 1989, Deng was an old man by this time. He was deaf, his hands were shaking, and it seemed his Parkinson's was setting in. I was the notetaker at the meeting. He spoke - but his youngest daughter talked into his ear directly. He was very hard to understand. I could understand maybe 25 percent of what he said. That's about all I could get. But I looked at my notes afterwards; and despite his physical frailty, all his comments were logical and sensible. His mind was still working well in '89. We laid out at that time a new road map to improve Chinese-American relations. This meeting was with the principles, General Scowcroft and Deputy Secretary Larry Eagleburger. Although Scowcroft was subsequently savaged for this meeting and castigated for the toast that he had with the Chinese foreign minister, nevertheless, a solid and workable road map was set for the relationship. We moved ahead on parallel tracks. And by the time, let's say, a year and a half later, the relationship was positively moving ahead. Deng obviously wanted to get obstacles out of the way, including the Chinese dissident who sought refuge in our embassy, and the martial law was lifted so some sort of amnesty could be arranged to lessen the attacks he was getting for the massacre which took place at Tiananmen. As I said, the relationship moved ahead. We got agreements on property, science and technology, education; the whole relationship started to move. Unfortunately, it then got mixed up in American domestic partisan politics in 1991-1992 and went downhill. Deng could be sarcastic. He was, however, direct. Things did happen when he talked. You could see it in the way other Chinese treated him, the deference he got. I knew Deng was important, even in 1974, when he was simply a vice-premier, my cover in China was as a consulate officer, and I issued him his visa to go to the UN. This may have led to his demise in '75 when they found out who I really was. But I looked at his passport, and it was 00001, and I said, " This man is probably on an upwardly mobile track." Deng could make acid comments to George Bush on Eurocommunism, the fad in 1977. "If they go to the Soviet Union, they're running dogs. If they go against the Soviet Union, they're like Yugoslavia; they're revisionists." Deng added, "They're second-raters, all of them," in effect. I remember in 1980 when we had this fracas over Taiwan, and people were making statements in the States and stirring this thing up, and Deng finally turned and said, "Look, if you keep this up, I'll have to take out American citizenship." It was, I suppose, his way of saying that he couldn't live with you, but couldn't live without you either. You have probably heard of his classic put-down of the actress Shirley MacLaine who was then "ga-ga" over China. She had gone to China and she said she had found her soul on the sacred Hua Shan Mountain. "I have found selfless Chinese. They work for the betterment of their country. It is great to see them. And then I went out and I saw this old man..." She didn't know about Deng's experiences during the Cultural Revolution when his son had his back broken, and Deng was in the cow shed. And she said, "I saw this old man. He said to me, 'I went through the Cultural Revolution. They sent me to the countryside. I went to work with my hands and this knit my soul.' Wasn't that wonderful?" And Deng looked at her and said, "He lied." But how can you describe Deng in a flesh and blood way? Some of you may find this offensive, but I've just finished David McCullough's book on Harry Truman, and I compared Truman and Deng. Of course, there were profound differences. Harry Truman was a devout Christian. Deng was a devout communist. Harry Truman believed in peaceful integration of dissidents and led our country this way. Deng would not tolerate any dissidents who went outside the system. He crushed them. Once you get beyond there, you begin to see some similarities. To begin, both men were physically short. Both of them died in full life at 90. Both of them came from the central core part of their countries. They both came from the rural farming community, and this influenced them. Truman was as thoroughly American as Deng was Chinese. Deng referred to himself, "I'm a tubaozi, a country bumpkin." He used that expression to describe himself. But both of these men, I think, had a deep self-respect. They knew where they came from. They had core values, and were without pride and arrogance. They didn't seek the cult of personality. Deng's ashes are being scattered over China, not entombed under glass like Mao. Truman is buried at Independence, his hometown. As I said, they knew themselves.. They reached inward to their basic values. Neither had much charisma. Each one of them lived in the shadow of a very charismatic person. Truman under Roosevelt. Deng under Mao. Each was decisive. Each was a doer. Each was a plain talker, and each came to his country at a critical time. Truman after World War II came to us as a person we didn't even know well. But what came out of this guy from Missouri? -- the Marshall Plan (he didn't call it the Truman Plan, he named it after George Marshall); the Truman Doctrine (less grand, but he did allow them to use his name on that); the Berlin Airlift; the Korean War; the integration of the Armed Forces; the use of the atomic bomb. He was a very decisive man. He made more decisions than perhaps any other president in the 20th Century. Truman set the stage for US policy for the next 40 years. Deng, after the horrors of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution comes to the 11th Congress, Third Plenum. He carefully places agriculture first. He knows what the economic priorities should be. He's not an economist, but he has common sense and experience. Reform and industry follows and this ends up with spectacular economic growth for China. Deng personally sees to the normalization of relations with the United States. The American relationship is very important to him. He intercedes at the key moment to break a logjam in negotiations to make sure that the relationship is cemented in normalization. He makes compromises, but he gets it done. He created the special economic zones with his coastal strategy. He coined the phrase, "To be rich is glorious." He seized on the old Chinese concept of a rich country and strong soldiers, fuguoqianabong. He knew his Chinese history. Both of these men had risen from the ashes. Truman, after the defeat in 1946 for Congress comes back in '48 with his great victory over Tom Dewey. Deng Xiaoping purged in 1976, comes back in '77, takes over the country and puts it on his track with his decisions. They were both courageous leaders in war, which formed them. And they were clearly leaders of men. They both loved their families and were family-oriented men. Deng had three wives, but he was closest to his final wife, and their grandchildren. You see the way he is and I do not believe a put-on. And Truman, as you know with Bess, Margaret was very close. Neither went to college, but both read a great deal. Harry played poker. Deng played bridge. They were both deeply patriotic men. They both loved their country. Deng was sinocentric. Truman was U.S.-centric. They both played tough pragmatic roles on the world stage. Both had to fire heroes. Deng had to fire Zhao Ziyang, the hero of Chinese reform; and of course, Harry Truman had to fire General MacArthur. To carry this analogy a little bit further, and I won't pursue this too far, is Clinton similar to Jiang Zemin? Both of these men are garrulous and good talkers. Both of them work in networks. Both of them function on balance and compromise. Both of them are products of elite schools. They're more new age. Jiang Zemin sings "Love Me Tender," and Clinton plays the saxophone. Now, after going through the pendulum swings we've had over the past 3 years with the Chinese, we've come to the conclusion somewhat belatedly, that summitry rituals and symbols are after all important for the overall framework to working on the issues. Nixon figured this out. Ford figured it out quickly; Carter a little longer, perhaps one year. Reagan figured it out reluctantly at first, but he came along. Bush knew about summitry and rituals with China instinctively. Now the current administration has caught on, and we see that this offers us some hope. The talk is that economic development and constructive engagement lead to eventual democracy. We all hope that's true. We have the successful Taiwan experience of economic growth leading to democracy and the similar Korean experience. But, I warn people to think this through carefully. When Christianity was introduced into China, you didn't get a benign Christianity; you got the Taiping Rebellion. When a young epileptic Hakka thought he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ, he mobilized southern Chinese in a weird religious crusade to overthrow the Manchu Dynasty, and 20 million Chinese died. You didn't get the kind of Christianity in the 19th Century that we were accustomed to. You got it with Chinese characteristics. When communism was introduced to China and the communists took over in '49, you didn't get Utopia; you got the Great Leap Forward. The Chinese under Mao tried to revise the laws of nature, and adopted practices that probably led to the death, according to Jasper Becker's book, probably between 30 to 40 million Chinese. This was not because of natural disasters, but because of lunatic social engineering. You didn't see Marxism/communism didn't come out in any recognizable form. If market economy is introduced into China, what will we get? Will we get a Jeffersonian democracy? Will we get secret ballot, opposition parties, a free press? We may get something quite different -- state capitalism with Chinese characteristics. An evolution is taking place in China. There is more openness and mobility, but Americans always tend to build expectations and get jilted. We somehow thought in the '80s that China was moving from economic reform to political openness. We were wrong. Yes, there were changes. There are fundamental changes going on, but those that thought that people like Deng would tolerate massive and continuous demonstrations in Tiananmen were definitely wrong. So what does all this mean for the future? Again, this may be about flesh and blood matters, not concepts. One of the most important relationships that was developed early, and that this had a major impact on the United States-Chinese relations, was the relationship between George Bush and Deng Xiaoping. They met early in 1974 and there was a certain chemistry. It was almost instinctive. George Bush had just left the Republican National Committee, and come by China to this little job heading 26 people at the U.S. Liaison Office in Peking. Bush was out of it. Nixon had just resigned in disgrace. Ford was in political trouble and Bush was sitting there in isolated Peking. Deng was only a vice-premier. But they saw something in each other and it wasn't intellectual. I believe each one knew the other was going to be the leader of his country. They didn't spell this out, but there was a special chemistry. When Bush left, he was going back to be Director of the CIA. Deng gave him a lunch and that was quite rare. He said to Bush, "Congratulations on your promotion. That will be a good job." Our State Department colleagues saw it differently. The cultivation of Deng and our rejection of his opposition (the Gang of Four) contributed to the off-shore oil cooperation, the security cooperation against Russia, and the opening of the Chinese market. These were all basic to Deng. In all of this, we are not necessarily trying to change China, as the Yale professor, Jonathan Spence says. We knew this and Spence points out that the landscape is strewn with Americans that go there and try to Christianize them, organize them, change them. It doesn't work. But you do have influence at the margins. There are certain priorities with which we must engage China today. Certainly the commercial engagement is strong and important. This now hinges around China's entry into the World Trade Organization on the appropriate terms. Our negotiators' good work is boiling this down to issues of hidden subsidies, new tariff barriers, etc. We need China to abide by world standards. This is a crucial step. It pits protectionism against the international standards. The negotiators are dealing with these issues systematically, 29 issues, point by point. They're beginning to get breakthroughs, after long tedious negotiations. Our man said to the Chinese, "I'm going to work with you on the World Trade Organization and I will try to get you in, but are you serious? Do you want to be in? We know you have arguments in your leadership about this. But if I'm going to spend the next year hassling you on this thing, I've got to know what you want to do." And the Chinese said, "We want to join it." This was the key. What crops up constantly in our writings is the sort of patronizing, condescending statement that we want the Chinese to join the world community. As though we were the determinants of rectitude. It is important for the WTO that China join. But China is a big actor in the world community, whether we want it or not. They faced us down on Most Favored Nation linkages to human rights in 1994. The world was behind them on this, not behind us. We could not make l.2 billion Chinese Christians, or turn them into little capitalists. We aren't going to take China into the world community and civilize them. This kind of talk is not helpful. We must cope honestly with the problem of weapons of mass destruction and counter proliferation. This is a nasty, tough issue. In the past we've said, "you're naughty," and slapped them across the face publicly by levying our unilateral sanctions on them. This only works when you have a monopoly, but it doesn't work so well when China has other sources of supply. They sell $50,000 worth of magnetic rings to Pakistan for a nuclear weapons program and we threaten to take $10-20 billion of EXIM loans. This is no deal. It is not a good bargain. Our laws are not adjusted to the realities with which we are faced. We need a strategic concept agreement with the Chinese that arming fundamental Moslems is not in their interest, given their problems in northern China and our problems in the Middle East. We worked together successfully in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union and communist threat. We can do it again, but it's going to take a lot of work. There are many differences between us, but I think I can see common levels of cooperation where we tackle issues when our interests coincide as in dealing with the radical Muslim movement. We have the problem with human rights in Hong Kong and Taiwan. We have our principles of democracy and free market. These are basic to us and they cannot be overthrown by force. The Chinese in turn have their concepts of unity and sovereignty, which we should respect. There remains a wide range of activity between these concepts. There is clearly room for improvement if Taiwan and China go the way they're going in economic cooperation. The focus should be on this. The Chinese know they can make money together. Shooting missiles or going independent for Taiwan are not the ways to go. It's not good for business. That logic is quite compelling to Chinese. U.S. interests in Hong Kong should be clear. Our first interests aren't in how they can compose their legislative council, or how the Chinese leadership deals with the Hong Kong press. Our interest is in how they handle Americans in Hong Kong under the terms of the Joint Agreement and the Basic Law. The Chinese insist we leave them alone, but freedom of religion, free access to information, rule of law, these are important to the U.S. and our community in Hong Kong. The American media -- Keith Richberg of the Washington Post, or Ed Gargon of the New York Times, or Debbie Wong of ABC Television -- all must continue to operate without impediment under the one China, two systems concept. China promised that for 50 years the system would remain unchanged. So, don't start messing with the freedom of American missionaries, or the Americans' right to do business under rule of law, or Americans' right for access to full information. All of them are important to us, and China said it wouldn't alter the environment under the terms of the Basic Law and Joint Agreement; China should honor this. It is important that the rest of the world come along with us, because I would hate to see us get into some bilateral contest with the Chinese when these are all matters of international concern. We must work with the Chinese on North Korea. This is probably the most dangerous flashpoint in the world. We have some troops in Bosnia, some troops in Haiti, but the 37,000 troops we have in South Korea are vulnerable and are a major commitment to South Korea. The Chinese are the key in Korea. They are the key to agricultural reform in North Korea. They're the key to credible deterrence. In the past, the Chinese have been cooperative as in North Korea joining the U.N. Tactical cooperation right now is critical given the desperate economic circumstances and huge military power in North Korea. In the long run, perhaps there are strategic differences, but these can be worked out over time. I see it in your papers, that you don't want the Korean Peninsula to be nuclear. You want peace and stability. You want prosperity and you want reform in the north, and those are precisely what we should go after. In China itself, I think certainly there are positive signs. Rule of law, village elections, already are there. The International Republican Institute works closely with those village elections. Opposition candidates and secret ballot are happening on a modest level. The emergence of the rule of law, not by law, is tied to intellectual property rights and to China joining the WTO. The U.S. has in fact, a surplus of lawyers that we could export to China to help them, or to confuse them. Inside China, political dissidence has been suppressed. But we should not place too great an emphasis on the dissidents. It upsets us when the Chinese sentenced the dissident, Wang Dan to 13 or 14 years in jail for peaceful political activity, but it may be more important to focus on the six million people in Hong Kong or the 21 million people in Taiwan. They're the people who should remain free, and we have some bargaining leverage there, particularly in Taiwan. But we still have to work with China. Agriculture is important to China, and Taiwan can have major inputs there. There are people in China who more or less share our motives for flexibility and reform; we should know who they are. They should be invited to the U.S. to meet our Congress. And we should expand our programs to involve our agricultural experts with those of China and Taiwan along with resources to help find solutions to the problems of Chinese agriculture in the 21st Century. If we don't, this could be a catastrophe. Newt Gingrich is going to China. Many Congressmen have already gone to China and they have come back with a reasonably good impression. We need to strengthen ties to the National People's Congress Chairman, Qiao Shi, and Li Ruihuan of the Chinese People's Consultative Conference. We need to reach Hu Jintao before President Jiang Zemin, a matter of power and protocol. Qiao Shi can't come, but others can come sooner. We need to establish this relationship between our Congress and theirs, because their Congress is slowly changing for the better. We also have to be conscious as always (and I don't believe your documents have done enough on this), and face up to the dark side of the Chinese. We sometimes need to "worst-case" a situation. Defense officials aren't cookie pushers. Their job is not diplomacy and official negotiations. They are to defend our country in a worse case scenario, and we have to be prepared to deal with this. Our forward deployment of forces is important. The stability and prosperity of East Asian markets is crucial to the U.S. and of course to Asia. Because our military is modernizing, we don't have to get indefinitely hung up on 100,000 troops, especially as information warfare comes in; as Admiral Bill Owens describes information warfare, "good sensors, reliable communication, and smart weapons." This is the direction we must go. Cooperation improves when you have a military advantage. The seas are still ours and the areas of potential confrontation largely involve water whether it's the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait or the East China Sea off Japan. Military operations during the Chinese live fire exercises in March 1996 demonstrated weaknesses in tri-service operations and aborted amphibious exercises, but strengths in cruise missiles. We therefore still have an advantage which will be very important and the Chinese know this. They're trying to deal with it by acquisition, technology, and training, but it remains a reality they are going to have to live with indefinitely. Confidence building measures also matter. Ship visits, high-level exchanges, and prevention of incidents at sea, are being accomplished. Theater missile defense, the Japan-U.S. security relationship, and Taiwan's flexible diplomacy are sensitive and important for China and often trigger strong responses. This is not necessarily negative as it can give us leverage. And certainly in my experience in dealing with China, once you work through the principle stage, you get down to pragmatism and their track record of pragmatism. The Korean Peninsula, Desert Storm or Cambodia reflect acting realistically in their own interests. China has not backed losers. In North Korea Kim Jong Il is becoming a clear loser. Pol Pot in Cambodia was a loser, just as Saddam Hussein was a loser in Iraq. China made practical adjustments away from their anti-imperialist brothers-in-arms to the stronger powers in the West. The true revolutionaries that brought the countryside into the city, such as Pol Pot of the Khmer Rouge, went over the side in favor of the permanent five of the U.N. Security Council. I come out with a basic feeling that Secretary Madeleine Albright's trip to Asia has been a success. Certainly my Korean friends have been very excited about her coming. They phrased it as the "new beginning." They say she is somebody we know and we can respect. She has core values. She talks in clear ways we understand. I'm not sure what the Chinese reaction has been, but I heard from a friend of mine, who was going to be with her in China that it was going to be really a seeking-out session and that detail would be avoided. We would state our principles, they would state theirs, and then have a banquet including toasts. Once we get our new Asian team in place, then we can begin to deal with the tough issues, they will still all be there. There will be plenty of work to do. But in the long run, it seems to me that China, Japan and America are the key to stability in Asia. When we fight, it's a horrible thing. I've seen this happen in Korea and Vietnam , and I can tell you finally, it's much better to talk with them than to shoot at them. Thank you. Now we can throw this open to some comments or questions from you, if you'd like. I would love to hear what you have to say after your total immersion for the last couple of days. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: (Inaudible question) AMBASSADOR LILLEY: Don't be mesmerized by multilateral security fora. What keeps us in balance is not multilateralism or the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). The American bilateral security arrangements with Korea, Thailand, the Philippines, Australia, Taiwan, and Japan are the real muscle and deterrents. Regional arrangements are desirable. It brings China politically into the environment. It gets them to join ARF, and it makes them listen to ASEAN. When the Chinese seized Mischief Reef in the Spratley Islands, Chok Tong, Prime Minister of Singapore went to Peking with other ASEAN members and made it clear they were very upset about the seizure and the Chinese dissembling of its military buildup. This is important. Because ASEAN clearly has political clout in Peking. Peking wants to be good friends with its neighbors. A combination of ASEAN's political clout and the Seventh Fleet was the answer. Yes? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Yes. What is your reaction to the theory that the invasion of Vietnam or the attack of Vietnam in '79 was actually a calculated move on Deng Xiaoping's part to demonstrate the military's need to modernize? AMBASSADOR LILLEY: Well, Deng was fed up with the Chinese military. In 1975 he made a famous comment about them. They were fat, bloated and lazy. He saw that this great military bureaucracy in China had become soft. And he wanted to see the Chinese military modernized, but he still made it only the fourth of their four modernizations. Agriculture, industry, science and technology came first, second and third. That changed in 1985 when the Chinese developed new strategic concepts and moved towards modernization, and dealing with smaller and weaker states on its periphery rather than one threat in the north -- the Soviet Union. Vietnam may have accelerated modernization. My sense is that the more important reason was to punish the Vietnamese; the Vietnamese had tread on China's sphere of influence in Cambodia. They had invaded Cambodia, and China was disturbed and had to react. Cambodia was their little state. China had helped Vietnam during the Vietnam War by shipping tens of thousands of tons of ammunition through Cambodia into the Viet Cong area, and this is what they got for it -- the Vietnamese invading Cambodia, trying to take over the whole country. Although they attacked strongly the Vietnamese, they lost and the Vietnamese lost too. To this day, this has had an effect on Vietnamese psychology. The Vietnamese, although they do not necessarily like the Chinese, are concerned about Chnese military predators and adjust their policy accordingly. The Vietnamese Army has gone downhill since '75, and they remain conscious of Chinese power. The '79 "incursion" wasn't to the Chinese liking in many ways, but it did give the Vietnamese the lesson that Deng wanted to give them. That was the most important consideration. But remember, Desert Storm probably had a much greater effect on Chinese military modernization than the debacle in 1979 had. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: I'd like to ask you, if you don't think that we need to look back at 2,000 years of Chinese history, when our ancestors were climbing the trees, and they had a very advanced civilization, don't you think that has some effect on what is going on today? AMBASSADOR LILLEY: Well, I tried to make the point that one of Deng's attributes is the fact that he understood Chinese history. He understood it and he used it, and read it. The Chinese remind us of this fact, that you just reminded me of, almost every day. They remind us that they are a much older civilization, but the number is 5000 years not the 2000 years you suggested. We were in fact in the trees when they were at the great court and built the Great Wall. They built the Grand Canal when Columbus hadn't yet even discovered America. Anybody who deals with China cannot but respect its long history and its profound culture. People love China who have seen their paintings, their art, their pottery, their porcelain, their poetry. I have studied China's history and culture for years. Overall, we're not ignorant of the fact they have a long history. What we have to be careful about is becoming too defensive and too humble. We should not shrink before this great Chinese history and say, "You're 2,000 years old and I'm only 200 years old, you win old man!" We have done remarkable things in our 200 years and they in fact appreciate that. They don't necessarily like our experiments in democracy, at least the Chinese leadership doesn't. But they admire our taming of the continent. I remember when the first Chinese went to see Minneapolis and he said, "Do you mean you have this kind of a city in the middle of your country?" And he was amazed at what we've been able to do. So it seems to me it's an appreciation that each side has for what the other side did. Any people who usually deal with China have a sense of their great history; and if you don't have it, you can be darn sure they will remind you of it often and very quickly. Yes? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Well, with the death of Deng Xiaoping and social and Chinese characteristics, what do you see as the political ideology? Is there going to be Chinese nationalism, or is there going to be democracy with Chinese characteristics, or what do you see that as? AMBASSADOR LILLEY: That is the $64 million question. I repeat, I said that when you get involved in introducing China to the free market, you better be careful about what's coming out the other end. It may not be what you expect it to be. Monopoly capitalist, state capitalist, the old bureaucracy working with the greedy entrepreneurs to monopolize trade. That's happening already. The children of the high level cadre are not free market people. They want to control the market and the banks. So there's going to be a mafia. There are reactionary forces in China which will inevitably try to pull back towards a more autocratic existence, more self-reliance, more independence. They have gone down that track and the people say, "Never again are we going to get caught in this trap in the Cultural Revolution and turn against the world, that's wrong. We've been inoculated." The economic struggle has now shrunk. The differences among the Chinese are not what they were in 1976 when it was a zero sum game between Deng, the economic reformer, and the Gang of Four, the people who wanted to drive China backwards into primitive communism. Deng won. The radicals ended up dead or in jail. Today the differences are less acute. The key Chinese problems are unemployment versus inflation; central control of interest rates; how you manage the currency. How do you reform state-owned enterprises? How fast do you go on this? These arguments don't end up with people being arrested for 20 years. They end up with a loser ending up as a lieutenant governor in a province. It was different in Zhou Ziyang's case, because he challenged Deng's politics, he ended up under pleasant house arrest, but he's still playing golf. He is still occasionally heard as in suggesting the verdict on Tiananmen be reversed; the demonstrators should be exonerated. China is moving in a general trend toward greater openness, especially in the economic field. People who were in China in '73 when I was first there as an official, and then came back as Ambassador in '89, saw incredible changes take place in terms of lifting people out of poverty, in flow of foreign investments, greater access to media, and mobility of populations. If you project ahead 15 years, it seems to me that China will move inevitably towards greater economic reform and broader association with the world system. They still have to grapple with the real problems of social dislocation, corruption, growing populations, shrinking agricultural land and water pollution. They themselves know well what these issues are. Clearly, they know that agriculture is a very serious problem for them. It's their first priority in their five-year plan. They're having to import a great deal of grain now and the population is going up. They also have to ship largely gratis large amounts of food to their broken down socialist brothers in North Korea lest they explode in one way or another. China should be entering the WTO. It should reach accommodations with the Southeast Asian nations. Hopefully, it will work out a modus operandi with Japan, and as problems on the Korean Peninsula get solved, with Seoul taking over and the North Koreans hopefully disappearing, Taiwan will probably become more of an economic and commercial fact of life in China than a military one. If we project ahead a best case, China will be moving to become part of the world game, a constructive player. When I was in Shanghai, a longtime resident there told me last year, "You've always got to watch the liberation mentality here. We've got our Pat Buchanans." He said, "We've got people with rock-hard ideas about how to deal with foreigners, how to deal with dissidents, what to do about the economy. Many of them are revolutionary old men, but some of them are the younger nationalist people. These people always argue you cannot put up with any kind of political dissidence in Hong Kong. It must be crushed before it ever really takes root and infects China." Certainly other people are saying that's irrational, and some of the top Chinese leaders are saying, "You've got to go slow in Hong Kong. You cannot kill the goose that lays the golden egg." But Governor Chris Patten says, "There's a lot of dead geese around...." -- so everyone has to be careful. COLONEL WAGIE: I think we're running over time. AMBASSADOR LILLEY: Okay. One more quickly. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: If you were Clinton's policy advisor in China - AMBASSADOR LILLEY: He does not seek me often. UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: -- how would you lay out our policies? What is most important? What is not quite? Who are the expert policy advisors in Clinton's administration? AMBASSADOR LILLEY: Well, we don't have intimate conversations on this. I do pick up occasional tidbits. But people that manage China policy, I'm told, are people like Sandy Berger. He's key in the process. He's now the national security advisor. Perhaps the leading man in the East Asia Bureau of State on China policy right now is Jim Bader. I certainly expect ISA is involved. Often I'm told that the group tends to become small and exclusive, and I believe this is not good. I had basically a good experience in working with people when I was overseas during the Reagan Administration. There key men worked together very well in the NSC, ISA, State and CIA. We had a team that thought alike and frequently met together. These men functioned at the working level, but would form common policies and go back to sell them to their bosses who made the decisions. I was in the field so to speak, but things got done. When I was in Taiwan in 1982-1984, this happened. When I was in Korea between 1986 and 1989, it happened. It did not work as well when I was later in China. It was much more fragmented. But I gather now it's being pulled together in this administration after a rocky start. As I have said, you need a combination of the process of engagement, with rituals, symbolism, and summitry. That's part of it. But you also have to break down the issues that I discussed earlier in the economic field, entry into WTO, IPR cooperation, market access in China, weapons of mass destruction, Hong Kong, Taiwan, North Korea, and of course human rights as part of the overall process, not the dominant issue. We have to change what we have been doing for the last three and a half years. Fragmented confrontation was our approach. We chased the Chinese ship, Milky Way, all over the Indian Ocean and found nothing. We threaten on magnetic rings to Pakistan. We threaten them again on intellectual property rights. We tried to humiliate them in the UN Commission on Human Rights. There is, as I pointed out in the column I wrote in Newsweek, the strident voices on either side of nationalism, bashing each other, and they are loud on both sides. But I remember a conversation I had with a Chinese leader in Shanghai when I saw him in 1989. He came in 15 minutes late. He'd been out with the protesting students all night talking. This was the difference between the way Beijing handled the demonstrators and the way Shanghai handled them. That's why Shanghai is running the show at the center today. When he came in, he said, "I'm sorry I'm late, but would you guys please stop this Voice of America broadcasts? They are stirring up our kids." And I said, "Well, you know, you people say an awful lot of terrible things about us too. Your broadcasts can be very unpleasant." And he said, "What are you going to do about it?" I said, "You take your propagandists and with our propagandists, we put them in a corner and let them shout at each other, and then you and I get on with business." And he sort of chuckled and said, "Well, okay." But I could see that he was tired. He's a man who has a reputation of not putting up with fools, and yet he had to sit there all night and with all due respect to the young people present, take a lot of provocative questions, and then reason with them for hours and hours; which he did, not in the Peking style, but in his own style. CADET PALATINUS: Ambassador Lilley, I certainly understand how busy your schedule is. We are, therefore, all the more honored to have had you here with us tonight. Your insight on the United States-Chinese relations has enhanced our knowledge of the subject and very fittingly brought closure to this week's activities. On behalf of the entire Academy Assembly staff and delegation, I'd like to present you with this memento affectionately known as the Bird. AMBASSADOR LILLEY: First Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. Thank you very much. CADET PALATINUS: As you may know, an event of this size certainly cannot happen without a great deal of support. I'd like to recognize a few of our key contributors at this time. First of all, I would like to thank Retired Lieutenant General and Mrs. A. P. Clark representing the Soccer Foundation, and Retired Lieutenant Colonel and Mrs. James Brown representing the Association of Graduates for attending tonight. Financial contributions from these organizations along with those of the American Assembly help us to attract the high quality of distinguished speakers and participants associated with the Academy Assembly. For as long as anyone I know has worked at the Assembly, these two organizations have bent over backwards to help us. We're so very fortunate to have friends like you. Thank you. I would also like to thank Colonel Wagie for hosting this final banquet. The Dean and his associates have always been very supportive of the Assembly. Colonel and Mrs. Wagie, we thank you for attending these special events. Colonel and Mrs. Murray, thank you for all of your help during the Assembly. As you know, Colonel Murray is the Chairman of the Assembly each year and helps us in countless other ways. Thank you, sir, for moderating our panel discussion and for your continued involvement in our program. Father Mike, thank you for the wonderful invocation that you gave at the beginning of the evening. Finally, a special thank you is sent to all of the round table leaders who expertly guided the discussions throughout the week. Thank you for developing the kind of rapport in your round table that is vital to this type of discussion. We would like to present each of you with a memento of these events. Dr. Nancy Park. Dr. Cheek. Mrs. Ching Eikenberry. Ambassador Block. Ms. Jan Berris. Dr. Thurston. Dr. Lovejoy. Dr. Harvey Nelson. Colonel William Berry. Colonel Carl Eikenberry. Dr. Vera Fennell. At this time, I would like to hand the floor over to our host, Colonel Wagie, for his closing remarks. COLONEL WAGIE: I'd like to, on behalf of the Dean and the faculty, and all the people at the Air Force Academy, echo some of the thank you's that Wendy made. Ambassador Lilley, thank you again for taking time out of your schedule and giving us an idea of the personality and life in China in the 20th Century and Deng Xiaoping. Thank you very much, sir. And all of the delegates who took part in this, on behalf of the Academy, I'd like to congratulate you on having a wonderful Assembly. I had a chance to sit in on a few of the round-table discussions this morning. They seemed like arguments sometimes more than discussions, but they were very good. I hope you enjoyed your time here in Colorado Springs, and I hope you get a chance to come back to the Academy again in the future. I hope you enjoyed being here as much as we enjoyed having you, so congratulations on a wonderful Assembly. I'd really like to thank, also, the people that put all this together. And Wendy said thank you to our sponsors, General Clark and Colonel Brown, who have helped so much financially to back us, but I'd also like to talk about - pass on thanks to the individuals who worked so hard at making these three days run so smoothly. First, Captain John Cappello, the Director for the 39th Assembly. And just two days ago, John was announced as the Political Science Department Company Grade Officer of the year, which is quite an honor to be selected for that, so congratulations. Lieutenant Allen Duckworth, are you here, Allen? UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Pilot training. COLONEL WAGIE: He's gone, too. Okay. I got that. And a big thank you to Wendy, who has put so much of this together tonight. She's been such a great moderator. And now the person who has a great deal of stress because this is the person who is the assistant this year and will have to do this next year by himself, Cadet Second Class Erik Fiederer. Erik, are you here? You're under a lot of pressure, Erik. Captain Tony Delgenis, who was the Delegate Affairs Officer in charge. Tony? Cadet First Class Valarie Weber, who was the Delegate Affairs Cadet in charge. Captain Jeff Neal, the Logistics Officer. That corresponds to doughnuts and food and things like that, so that's important. Cadet First Class Brett Lucas who was the Logistics Cadet in charge. Captain Jim Penrod, the Protocol Officer in charge, and Cadet First Class Chris Barrett, who was the cadet that worked the Protocol for us. Once again, to all those who worked on this Assembly and made it run so smoothly, and provided us such a wonderful and challenging time for all the delegates and all of us involved, we would like to thank all those people who worked so hard to make this such a wonderful event. And once again, on behalf of the Dean and the whole staff of the Academy, thank you for coming to the Air Force Academy, and I hope you get a chance to come back and visit us again. CADET PALATINUS: All right. This concludes the 39th Academy Assembly. This has been a great experience for me, and I hope it's been a great one for you too. And thank you also so much for making this year's Assembly such a success and I hope you'll attend next year. Please travel carefully on your return trips and enjoy the rest of your stay.
Thirty-Ninth Academy Assembly Delegate Final Report
Introduction China's emergence as a regional and global power poses challenges and opportunities for the United States. Challenges arise because China's culture and approach to international affairs differ from that of the United States. Opportunities stem from many mutual economic and security interests shared by the two countries. Our effort, as suggested by the topic of this Assembly, was to identify those areas that would take advantage of opportunities to promote cooperation while minimizing the potential for friction and conflict. To accomplish our task we examined five key questions: China's Role in Asia and the World in 2010 From the standpoint of US interests, a positive role by China would include: Conversely, those characteristics that would not be conducive to US interests in Asia would include a China that: We examined the question of whether a more pluralist China would result in a more nationalistic China that wished to expand its borders and, consequently, posed a growing threat to peace and stability. We agreed that pluralism was not directly linked to the development of nationalism. Pluralism can develop in various ways -- some paths could increase nationalism, others would not necessarily do so. Moreover, the growth of nationalism per se does not increase threat. If nationalism is focused on creating a common identity through reinforcement of positive values it need not be threatening. When it focuses on "enemies" it assumes a threatening dimension. In our view, the type of nationalism that develops in China will be significantly influenced by how the United States and the international community seek to encourage Chinese involvement. An overbearing or dictatorial attitude toward China would most likely produce a negative reaction. We agreed that changes in Chinese policy leading to greater participation and interaction in the region and the international community are desirable. At the same time, we think gradual, rather than precipitous change, would have a greater probability of leading to desired outcomes. Rapid change -- given the context of an adjusting post-Cold War World -- probably would produce the undesirable consequences enumerated above. We believe that the United States can best achieve desired outcomes by acquiring a better understanding and appreciation of China's history, culture and values. This would enable the United States to exercise influence in a manner that would not offend the Chinese. The United States should have respect for China's views on key issues, and Washington should seek partnership rather than assume that it can dictate to Beijing. We think in sensitive bilateral matters, quiet diplomacy by the United States would be the preferred option. We also advocate multilateral approaches -- that is, the United States works together with friends and allies -- when the situation warrants. China's Internal Affairs We agreed that China's internal developments will have an important influence on the regional and international outcomes we discussed above. Consequently, internal developments will be important for US interests. Moreover, US political, economic, and social interests -- notably human rights -- will be affected by how China deals with its domestic issues and challenges. By 2010, we think these conditions would be good for China and for US interests: We also agreed, however, that certain developments would not be good for either China or US interests: We considered specific issues that will be important for US interest in China. On the issue of openness of Chinese markets to US goods we agreed that negotiations to facilitate smooth openings are warranted. The burgeoning US trade deficit with China --calculated at $39 billion in 1996 -- will be a source of friction unless resolved. On the question of foreign direct investment by US firms, we think these firms should be encouraged to consider the social as well as economic implications of their investment plans. China should be encouraged to adhere to the rule of law by enforcing the provisions it has for protecting intellectual property rights and adhering to contracts and treaties. Billions of dollars are presently lost by US firms because of China's failures in this area. Nevertheless, we emphasize the word "encourage." We think that pointing the finger at China or adopting a hectoring approach will be counterproductive. Firmness and consistency, however, will bear fruit because it increasingly will be in China's self interest to adhere to law and agreements as China becomes economically interdependent with other countries. The United States has a strong interest in cooperating with China in reducing the production and transportation of illegal drugs. Washington should continue to search for ways to work with China in this common problem. We note that reducing the demand for illegal narcotics in the United States will be a key component of any solution. We did not achieve consensus on the issue of illegal immigration from China to the United States. We recognize that this is often undertaken by organized criminal groups, and the United States has a shared interest with China in countering such groups. The issues of political refugees, human rights, and the uncertainties of US immigration laws and requirements, however, are often confusing. For example, US immigration policies can constitute an incentive for illegal immigration. Consequently, we could not achieve a unified stand on this issue. We considered human rights (civil, political, social, and economic) issues between the United States and China. Although we believe such rights are important, we doubt the viability of such policies as sanctions and threats in achieving US objectives. Moreover, in some instances, the United States has no moral "high ground" from which to legitimately criticize Chinese policy. We strongly support efforts by the international community to cooperate with China in the improvement of human rights. We agreed that Chinese economic development and the encouragement of a middle class could, in turn, facilitate greater Chinese attention to the rule of law -- including enforcing laws Beijing already has in place -- and respect for human rights. Finally, we examined the issue of how the United States could best achieve its objectives with respect to China's internal developments. We concluded: China's Role In East Asian Security. Relations between the United States, Japan, and China (i.e., the principal powers in East Asia) will constitute the foundation of regional security over the next decade and beyond. We anticipate the US approach to security in the region will emphasize its bilateral relations with Japan, China, South Korea, and countries in Southeast Asia and the Pacific. We further expect that events in South Asia will influence the security situation in East Asia, particularly the extent to which India and Pakistan develop nuclear capabilities. In its alliance relationships -- notably with South Korea and Japan -- the United States will continue to play the dominant role. We agree that the US role has been one of promoting stability and probably will continue to be so. The US-Japan security relationship reduces the risks of an independently militarized Japan that could lead to an arms race between China and Japan. Japan is perceived as a potential military threat by many countries in the region, but the US presence helps to offset this concern. At the same time, the US relationship with Japan helps reassure Tokyo that it will not be threatened by China's nuclear capabilities. China has mixed feelings about the US-Japan security relationship. On one hand, Beijing is wary because it perceives that the United States and Japan are trying to contain China. On the other hand, many Chinese leaders accept the relationship as a necessary evil because it checks potential Japanese militarization and expansionism. We think the risk of serious conflict could erupt in East Asia in certain situations: Nevertheless, the United States can reduce the danger of such conflict by adopting policies that encourage dialogue and communication among various parties. We agree that fostering multilateral exchange in the security arena will encourage increased transparency among countries of the region, notably in the military arena. The United States should continue its bilateral security agreements to maintain the status quo with respect to regional stability, while encouraging multilateral approaches as the security situation unfolds. We think that China can continue to be helpful in resolving conflicts as it did by becoming involved in UN peacekeeping operations in Cambodia and in supporting the Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea. This suggests that the United States can work with China to promote a new security order in East Asia. We anticipate the new regional security order will reflect political, economic, and social components as well as a military component. China should have an equal voice in shaping the evolution of such an order. We generally are positive about the role multilateral organizations can play in promoting stability in East Asia, although we acknowledge that roles vary with specific situations. In some instances--in Cambodia, for example -- the role probably would be positive. We are less certain about the viability of a multilateral role in such cases as the conflict between China and Taiwan. When multilateral endeavors are undertaken to resolve conflicts, they are more likely to be successful when the parties within the multilateral entity have uniform interests and approaches. We think the United States should accept multilateral organizations in which we are not participants, provided such organizations are not specifically directed against US interests. As noted above, US relationships with friends and allies in the region probably will be primarily bilateral over the next few years. How transparent the United States makes these relationships will affect Washington's ability to deal with Beijing. The United States should be open to China about Washington's other bilateral relationships just as it expects Beijing to become more transparent about its goals, intentions, and capabilities. China's Economic Role Should China rapidly continue to grow economically, it will become increasingly significant in the global economy. We anticipate some positive effects from such a development, including: But we recognize several potentially adverse effects, including: The question of China's economic growth is especially relevant to US interests. Here, too, we envision both good and bad possibilities. Some positive outcomes from an export-expanding China would include: The downside for the United States could include: We are uncertain how a growing Chinese demand for capital investment would affect the world supply of capital. Some economists believe that this is not a serious problem because of the nature of capital markets. Furthermore, steps can be taken to reduce a drawdown on the capital available for investment. For example, forming joint ventures between Chinese enterprises and foreign firms often reduces the amount of capital needed. Should the problem of reduced world capital arise, we anticipate that interest rates would increase, making borrowing more expensive and, in turn, reducing the investment capabilities of enterprises. International lending institutions such as the World Bank and Asian Development Bank will play a significant role in adjusting to the development needs of China and other developing states. The United States has significant interest in maintaining access to the Chinese market. The key issue is how this can be achieved. First, the United States should keep global access to its own markets open, thereby setting an example that constitutes the basis for encouraging global access to Chinese markets. Secondly, the United States needs reciprocal policies that benefit China when it opens markets but pressures China in a firm but fair manner when it keeps markets closed. We think movement toward a more "level playing field" in trade is desirable. Beyond this, we believe an increase in China's willingness to enforce its laws with respect to intellectual property rights and movement toward acceptance of international standards would facilitate favorable trading patterns. The United States should continue to work to include China in the World Trade Organization (WTO), particularly by developing a creative approach to resolve the controversy over China's status as a developing or developed state. Washington, further, should: We are not pessimistic that the Chinese demand for resources, especially petroleum and food, will create critical shortages worldwide. Rather, as the Chinese economy develops, additional resources can be developed by the application of technology. No doubt, some shortages in certain sectors will arise in the short term. These can be overcome through the forces of international markets and cooperation in technology and resource sharing. The United States should lead the way in the development of technology to meet resources demands -- for example, research and development of alternative energy technology. China has two views with respect to multilateral organizations, particularly in the economic arena. It supports multilateral endeavors in which it is a full and active partner. In fact, Beijing perceives participation in such forums as an opportunity to blunt pressures from the United States and other great powers. With respect to those organizations in which China perceives that it does not have an equal footing, Beijing is suspicious and even hostile. It often perceives that the United States and other developed countries manipulate these organizations against China's economic and other interests. The implication for the United States is that Beijing is more likely to cooperate with Washington in multilateral institutions when it sees itself as having an equal voice. US Policy Towards China Priorities Priorities may be distinguished as immediate and longer-term, although some will be both. For example, a short-term priority for US interests would be the smooth reincorporation of Hong Kong into China, which would take into account US economic, political, and social interests. A priority with both short-and long term implications is economic cooperation with China. The United States must continue to work with China on such issues as the trade deficit, protection of intellectual property rights, and China's economic reforms. Furthermore, the United States has a crucial interest in China's stability, which will be conducive to peace and stability in the region overall. Security issues came to the fore during the Taiwan straits crisis last year, and we anticipate such issues will be of importance into the next millennium. The United States must encourage China to become more transparent in its military agenda, which would ensure greater stability in the region. Related to the issue of security will be the question of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; Washington will have a strong interest in seeing this as an important component in its dealings with Beijing. Over the longer term, encouragement of China to develop the rule of law and attention to human rights will be important to US interests. As noted above, we think political reform in China over time is important, but not at the price of stability. Overall, we conclude that immediate priorities will change over the next decade and beyond, but such issues as economic exchange and security will endure. Other Priorities in Dealing with China We considered factors that could be useful in sustaining an overall cooperative relationship: Alternatives in Resolving Issues With China Clearly, dialogue, negotiations, and cooperation are the most viable way for the United States to resolve issues with China. On occasion, Washington must be firm in its dealings with Beijing, but this does not mean that the United States must be belligerent. We think that the threat of force, whether by sanctions or military pressure, would be likely to have high costs and probably would be counterproductive in most cases. In certain situations, the United States can achieve its objectives through diplomacy in multilateral institutions. Reestablishing Cooperative Dialogue We agree that cooperative dialogue must be sustained between the two countries. Some steps have been taken with agreements for high level visits. These should be broadened. We think that the development of such dialogue can promote trust and understanding, particularly about the interests and objectives of both sides. The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations Nongovernmental organizations will play an important role in US-China relations. Often, they can be more effective than US government organizations because of their functional approach to engagement with China. For example, on human rights issues, NGOs may be able to have greater influence in China than would US officials. Similarly, when dealing with the environment, NGOs can raise awareness in China without appearing to infringe on China's sovereignty. NGOs often will work with Chinese counterparts in assisting grass-roots organizations to pursue a variety of concerns. We think NGOs can help to increase transparency between the two societies by fostering educational, technological, and other forms of exchange. For example, the Red Cross can contribute significantly to health care and disaster relief in China, which, to some extent, can offset negative Chinese images of the United States. The Role of Multilateral and Global Institutions We observed previously that engagement with China through global and multilateral institutions will be significant. Although we think that such organizations as the United Nations or the IMF are not likely to be a panacea for resolving issues between China and the United States, they can make an important contribution. They can: Improving the Structure of Bilateral Negotiations We reiterate that the key to effective bilateral negotiations is improved understanding. From the US perspective, a better appreciation for Chinese customs and culture would be useful. We think this can come about through more interpersonal contact, including contact beyond elites. The United States should be consistent in its approach to China. When appropriate, the United States must continue to be willing to compromise with China, which will require flexibility. In its dealings with China, the United States must be transparent with allies and friends to ensure that their equities are taken into account. Finally, although we agree that more negotiations and discussion are better, we also think that quantity is no substitute for quality. US negotiators must be well prepared when dealing with Chinese counterparts. How US Domestic Realities Can Limit US Options Because the United States is a democracy, competing interests are likely to limit some US options in dealing with China. These are realities that government and nongovernment entities must take into account as China policy is formulated. We particularly noted these challenges: The Overall US Approach The best approach for dealing with China we would term "constructive engagement." "Constructive" means that the United States approach China with informed, clear objectives that take into account China's situation. It also means that the approach should try to build on favorable aspects of the present relationship to resolve challenges and problems. Dialogue should be frank and realistic. US "engagement" should be multi-level, aimed not only at government leaders but at diverse components of Chinese society. We think a viable US policy will require a new post-Cold War framework that accepts China's growing importance in the world. Conclusion From the perspective of the United States, a China that is stable, prosperous, and increasingly participating in the international community can be of enormous benefit to Asia and the world. China can be encouraged to participate in the global community through trade, investment and other forms of economic exchange, through dialogue and negotiations, and through cultural exchanges. China should soon become a member of the World Trade Organization through mutual compromise. Moreover, the United States should engage China in security dialogue. With respect to China's internal situation, the United States should lead and encourage rather than demand and dictate. China's improving economy probably will promote greater political participation, the rule of law, and perhaps even greater attention to human rights. The United States should support the Chinese government in enforcing its laws pertaining to the intellectual property rights, trade, and the environment. Generally, blandishments will work better than sanctions. Because relations between the United States, Japan, and China will constitute the foundation of regional security over the next decade, the United States should continue to assure both sides that it wants peace and stability in the region. While maintaining an American military presence and supporting US bilateral relations, the United States should facilitate the development of multilateral security entities. These can encourage transparency and mutual understanding and respect. China, while becoming increasingly transparent, also should have a full voice in the development of security relationships. We believe the United States can foster cooperation with China in such areas as scientific and technological exchange, industry, agriculture, trade and other facets of the economy, and in social, cultural, and educational endeavors. In such areas as security and human rights, which have in recent years been conflictual, we think a continuation of dialogue designed to promote understanding will reduce friction. By looking for areas of cooperation and minimizing those of conflict, we think that relations between the United States and China can be moved forward to a new era of cooperation. encouraged to participate i Roundtable A Leader Dr. Nancy Park Dr. Nancy Park graduated from Georgetown University with a Bachelor's Degree in Asian Studies in 1983. After graduation, she spent 2 years as a master's student in Chinese History at Chengchi University in Mucha, Taiwan. She received a Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University in 1993 and later taught at Vassar College in the Department of History. She spent a year doing research in Beijing at the Institute of Qing History of the People's University of China, and in 1995 was made and honorary assistant professor of the Institute. She is currently teaching about contemporary China at the Colorado School of Mines and is completing a book manuscript of official corruption and the law in 18th-century China.
Roundtable B Leader Dr. Timothy Cheek Dr. Timothy Cheek is currently the Associate Professor of History at Colorado College. He has a distinguished teaching career as a teacher, fellow, tutor and teaching assistant at Bowdoin College, Harvard University, and the University of Virginia. Dr. Cheek has also written books, articles and papers on China. He earned his B.A. in Asian Studies from the Australian National University in 1978, his M.A. in History from the University of Virginia in 1980 and his Ph.D. in History and East Asian Languages from Harvard University in 1986. His professional experience includes administration, conference organization, panel organization, a review for manuscripts, a reviewer for grants, and active participant in professional organizations. He speaks and reads Mandarin Chinese and is proficient in Classical Chinese and Japanese for research.
Roundtable C Leader Mrs. Ching Eikenberry Mrs. Ching Eikenberry currently is a columnist and correspondent assigned to the Washington D.C. office of the World Journal, the largest Chinese daily newspaper in North America. She worked in both the private and public sectors in Asian trade and security related areas for over 20 years. Mrs. Eikenberry formerly served as the Asian Trade Representative for the State of Minnesota. Most recently, she accompanied the delegation of General Chi Haotian, the Minister of Defense of China, during his visit to the United States, serving as a representative of the Office of the Secretary of Defense. She is a graduate of Oklahoma State University and has also completed advanced studies at the University of Minnesota and Harvard University's International Trade Institute in Taipei.
Roundtable D Leader Ambassador Julia Chang Bloch Ambassador Julia Bloch is Group Executive Vice President and head of Corporate Relations for BankAmerica Corporations in San Francisco. Prior to joining BankAmerica, Ms. Bloch served as the United States Ambassador to the Kingdom of Nepal, becoming the first Asian American Ambassador for the United States. She was also a Peace Corps volunteer in Malaysia; Chief Minority Counsel for a Senate Select Committee; a Senate professional staff member; and the Deputy Director of the Office of African Affairs at the U.S. Information Agency. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the U.S. National Committee for Pacific Economic Cooperation. She is an author and a recipient of numerous awards including the Hubert Humphrey Award for International Service.
Roundtable E Leader Ms. Jan Carol Berris Ms. Berris has been with the National Committee on U.S.-China relations since 1971 and assumed her current position, Vice President of the National Committee, in 1980. She has traveled to China over 35 times since 1973. Ms. Berris Served as a Foreign Service Officer with the U.S. Information Agency from 1968-1975.
Roundtable F Leader Dr. Anne F. Thurston,br>
Dr. Thurston is an independent scholar and writer as well as a Board Member for Human Rights in China. Her most recent book was written with Li Zhisui, a man who served as Mao Zedong's personal physician for the last 22 years of Mao's life. Dr. Thurston lived in China for five and a half years beginning in 1978, and has long been concerned with questions of human rights and democratization. Dr. Thurston has been a fellow with the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and has received various awards. She served as a consultant to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. Dr. Thurston has a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley.
Roundtable G Leader Dr. Charles D. Lovejoy Charles D. Lovejoy, Jr. is currently Princeton University's Director of Development Operations in Asia. Dr. Lovejoy has a broad-based career in China and Asia affairs including policy development, analysis, and research at the national level. Dr. Lovejoy has traveled and worked throughout East Asia. He has professional competence in Chinese Mandarin and he has completed 23 years of service in the United States Army as a Colonel. Dr. Lovejoy has a B.A. in Liberal Studies from the University of Notre Dame, a Master of Public Affairs with a concentration in East Asia from the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University and a Ph.D. in International Relations from the Catholic University of America.
Roundtable H Leader Dr. Harvey W. Nelsen Dr. Harvey Nelsen is currently a Professor and a student advisor of International Studies at the University of South Florida. He has done contract work with the State Department and Arms Control Disarmament Agency to prepare an assessment of the post-Cultural Revolution political leadership in China. Dr. Nelsen has also been a Chinese research analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency. He has lived in Tianjin China, Hong Kong and Taiwan while conducting research, teaching and pursuing language study. Dr. Nelsen has a B.A. in history and philosophy from Nebraska, an M.A. from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in East Asian History from George Washington University.
Roundtable I Leader Colonel William E. Berry William E. Berry, Jr., is currently the Senior Military Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Air Force Academy. Prior to his current position, Colonel Berry served as an Air Attache to Malaysia. He has served as Director of Field Studies programs and Assistant Director of National Security Policy at the National War College in Washington D.C. Colonel Berry has had extensive experience in Asia with assignments in Vietnam, the Philippines, and the Republic of Korea. Colonel Berry has a Ph.D. from Cornell and has written many journal articles and chapters in edited books on U.S. security interests in Asia and other Asian-related topics.
Roundtable J Leader Colonel Karl W. Eikenberry Colonel Karl W. Eikenberry is the U.S. Department of Defense Senior Country Director for China, Mongolia and Hong Kong. Colonel Eikenberry has been assigned to the Department of Defense since 1994 and has been selected for infantry brigade command. He previously commanded a light infantry battalion and held command and staff positions in mechanized, airborne, and ranger infantry units in the United States, Korea and Europe. Colonel Eikenberry has served as a division chief in the Strategy Plans and Policy Directorate of the Army Staff and as an assistant army attache to the People's Republic of China. He is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, earned his M.A. in East Asian Studies from Harvard, where he was also a national security fellow at the JFK School of Government, and is currently completing his Ph.D. in political science at Stanford University.
Roundtable K Leader Dr. Vera Leigh Fennell Dr. Vera Fennell is currently the Colorado College, Department of Political Science, Minority-Scholar-in-Residence. Dr. Fennell taught courses in conversational English and American culture to adult education students as an instructor at the Beijing Foreign Studies University, Beijing, China, 1993-1995. She has also conducted interviews with women's issues activists and scholars about the status of the women's studies network in Beijing as a research intern for the Ford Foundation in Beijing, China, 1991. She has also co-authored the only comprehensive report on women's studies in Beijing. Dr. Fennell has an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. on East Asian Studies from Princeton University.
by Ambassador James Lilley
21 FEBRUARY 1997
Roundtable Discussion Questions
Session #1
U.S. National Interests with Regard to China's Role in Asia and the World: What Kind of China Would the U.S. Like to See in 2010?
Session #2
U.S. National Interest in the Internal Affairs of China
Session #3
East Asian Security: Can China Assist Rather Tan Threaten Regional Stability?
Session #4
Global Economic Vitality: Chinese Impact on Trade, Investment Funds, Resources, and the Environment
Session #5
U.S. Policy Toward China: How Do we Rank our Priorities?
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