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Fareed Zakaria: U.S.-China Growing Pains
In the Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria writes that the recent tensions between China and the U.S. are merely political posturing. But he continues:
…There are two trends that could take a manageable situation and make it something more worrisome. The first is a growing perception in China that it is no longer as reliant on the West, and in particular the United States, as it was. In the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping brought China out of the cold by embracing America and opening up to foreign investment. This was different from the somewhat predatory, export-driven strategy of Japan and South Korea. But, the China scholar Minxin Pei argues, this was not an ideological conversion to free-market capitalism. Ravaged by the Cultural Revolution, Beijing desperately needed Western managerial know-how, technology and capital to develop its economy.
Today, China is awash in capital; it has many top-notch local companies; and this year for the first time, the primary engine of Chinese growth has been its domestic market, not exports. As China expands, that internal market will probably become its dominant concern.
A similar reality applies in foreign policy. Mao restored relations with the United States in some measure to buy himself an ally against the Soviet Union. China has needed the United States as a political ally ever since; Jiang Zemin’s fuzzy embrace of the United States was part of a strategy whose goal was concrete: membership in the World Trade Organization. Today, China commands respect across the globe. It is confident, even cocky, in bilateral and multilateral fora.
None of this is nefarious. But Beijing’s newfound arrogance is not joined with a broader vision. The country does not appear ready to play a global role. In international summits Beijing has been largely focused on pursuing its interests in a fairly narrow sense. At the April Group of 20 summit, for example, China participated actively on only one issue: to make sure that Hong Kong was kept off the list of offshore tax havens being investigated.
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- February 7, 2010 10:48 PM
China’s Hawks Demand Cold War on the US
Due to recent tensions over Taiwan, Tibet, and a host of other issues, the majority of people in China think their country and the U.S. are headed for another cold war, according to a survey by Global Times. From The Times:
In China’s eyes, the American response — which includes a pledge by Obama to get tougher on trade — is a reaction against its rising power.
Now almost 55% of those questioned for Global Times, a state-run newspaper, agree that “a cold war will break out between the US and China”.
An independent survey of Chinese-language media for The Sunday Times has found army and navy officers predicting a military showdown and political leaders calling for China to sell more arms to America’s foes. The trigger for their fury was Obama’s decision to sell $6.4 billion (£4 billion) worth of weapons to Taiwan, the thriving democratic island that has ruled itself since 1949.
“We should retaliate with an eye for an eye and sell arms to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela,” declared Liu Menxiong, a member of the Chinese people’s political consultative conference.
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- February 6, 2010 6:30 PM
US in Line of Fire as China Toughens up Foreign Policy
The Guardian reports on comments made by Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi at a conference in Germany:
The country’s foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, threatened retaliation for American arms sales to Taiwan, and made it clear that China was prepared to stand alone among the permanent members of the UN security council in opposing sanctions against Iran.
He insisted Iran had not closed the door on negotiations over the export of its uranium, and called for patience and “a more flexible, pragmatic and proactive policy” towards talks with Iran.
Speaking at a global security conference in Munich, Yang also rejected western criticism on internet freedoms and China’s role at the Copenhagen global warming summit in December.
He said it was time for China’s voice to be listened to with more respect on the world stage.
Also from the Christian Science Monitor:
Today Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi, speaking with unusual bluntness in front of 300 leading diplomats – including senior US officials – here in Munich publicly stated that China is getting stronger on the international stage. He said the US was violating international law by a proposed arms sale to Taiwan, offered that China’s TV and radio news service contains “more solid” and reliable news than Western media, and that China is not ready to address sanctions on Iran’s nuclear program, stating instead that the Islamic Republic “has not totally closed the door on the IAEA.”
Transatlantic – meet the Pacific.
Foreign Minister Yang is the first Chinese official to speak at the annual Munich Security Conference, the premier transatlantic security meeting, in its 46 year history. He turned heads in the group at a time when the People’s Republic and the US have come to loggerheads over Taiwan arms sales, Internet freedom, currency rates, and climate policy coming out of the Copenhagen meeting in December.
“I haven’t heard a high-ranking Chinese official say, ‘Yes, we are strong,’ in a public setting before,” said a senior German diplomat. “It was a very assertive message, different, and it means we will soon see a different Chinese policy.”
See also a Xinhua report on Yang’s remarks and “China sees how the West was won” from The Australian.
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- February 5, 2010 2:50 PM
Changing China Tied to Rough Ride with U.S.
While some observers say too much is being made in the media of recent tensions between China and the U.S., Reuters reports that conflicting pressures make it difficult for the Chinese government to back down:
In past decades, a poorer, more cautious China greeted U.S. weapons sales to the disputed island with angry words and little else.
Not now, as China enters the Year of the Tiger in its traditional lunar calendar cycle of talismanic animals.
The Obama administration last week announced plans to ship $6.4 billion of missiles, helicopters and weapons control systems to the self-ruled island Beijing calls its own. China threatened to downgrade cooperation with Washington and for the first time sanction companies involved in such sales.
Beijing this week also condemned Obama’s plan to meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader reviled by China.
China’s loud ire adds to signs the country is becoming surer about throwing around its political weight, growing along with an economy soon likely to whir past Japan’s as the world’s second biggest, though it will still trail far behind the United States.
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- February 4, 2010 12:36 PM
Obama Vows ‘Much Tougher’ Stance on US-China Trade
In a question and answer session with Senate Democrats today, President Obama vowed to take a tougher stance on trade with China but said he opposed becoming protectionist. From BBC:
At a meeting with Senate Democrats, Mr Obama was asked whether the US would cut ties with Beijing over ongoing trade disputes.
The president said he would continue to make sure that China and other countries lived up to abide by trade agreements, but warned it would be a mistake for the US to become protectionist.
“The approach that we’re taking is to try to get much tougher about the enforcement of existing rules, putting constant pressure on China and other countries to open up their markets in reciprocal ways,” he said.
“But what I don’t want to do is for us as a country or as a party, to shy away from the prospects of international competition.”
Watch the full video of Obama’s meeting via C-SPAN. A question about China is the first one asked:

See also “Currency Dispute Likely to Further Fray U.S.-China Ties” and “Who Needs Whom More?” by Philip Bowring, both from the New York Times.
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- February 3, 2010 10:10 PM
Elizabeth Economy: The U.S. and China Have at it Again; But it’s Much Ado About Nothing
For the Council on Foreign Relations blog, Elizabeth Economy writes that the recent uproar over tensions between the U.S. and China over Tibet, Taiwan, and a host of other issues, is overblown:
There is nothing new here. We are merely witnessing the reality of the U.S.-China relationship, which is marked by almost no trust, a weak foundation of real cooperation, and a lack of shared values and commitment to true compromise. China and the United States have never achieved full agreement on how to approach climate change; we have regular disputes over Taiwan arms sales and the Dalai Lama; and we have never had a truly common approach to Iran. The only “new” issue on the table is the Chinese cyberhacking of Google, a number of major American companies and think tanks, and Chinese dissidents…and even that is probably not all that new. We just didn’t know about it.
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- February 3, 2010 3:37 PM
China-US Tensions Spiking Over Taiwan, Dalai Lama
President Obama’s announcement that he will meet with the Dalai Lama and sell arms to Taiwan is stoking tensions with Beijing, AP reports:
There’s likely to be even more turbulence ahead: Trade friction, currency rate woes and allegations of cyber-spying are already roiling relations.
The rhetoric also is sharpening in a disagreement over new sanctions against Iran, with Beijing refusing U.S. calls to push Tehran harder to cooperate with nuclear inspectors.
Yet the sheer number and variety of current disputes also reflects a newly combative approach by Beijing, emboldened by its $2.4 trillion in foreign holdings — about $800 billion of which is invested in U.S. Treasury securities — and relative success handling the impact of the global financial crisis.
See also “US Sees No Fundamental Change in China Relations Despite Problem Issues” from VOA.
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- February 2, 2010 1:53 PM
U.S. Seeks Calm as China Fumes over Taiwan Arms
The White House responded to the angry reaction from Beijing over the planned arms sale to Taiwan. Reuters reports:
The official China Daily said U.S. weapons sales to the self-ruled island, which China claims as its own, “inevitably cast a long shadow on Sino-U.S. relations.”
“China’s response, no matter how vehement, is justified. No country worthy of respect can sit idle while its national security is endangered and core interests damaged,” the English-language newspaper said in an editorial.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the U.S.-China relationship was important and “I don’t think that either country can afford to simply walk away from the other.”
Gibbs said any sanctions against the companies involved in the arms sales, a move threatened by China for the first time, would not be warranted.
chinaSMACK has translated a piece from the Chinese media about the arms sale and several comments from readers here.
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- February 1, 2010 10:12 PM
U.S. Arms for Taiwan Send Beijing a Message
The New York Times argues that the recent announcement from the Obama administration of an arms sale to Taiwan was a calculated pushback against China’s “increasingly muscular position toward the United States”:
The arms package was doubly infuriating to Beijing coming so soon after the Bush administration announced a similar arms package for Taiwan in 2008, and right as tensions were easing somewhat in Beijing and Taipei’s own relations. China’s immediate, and outraged, reaction — cancellation of some military exchanges and announcement of punitive sanctions against American companies — demonstrates, China experts said, that Beijing is feeling a little burned, particularly because the Taiwan arms announcement came on the same day that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton publicly berated China for not taking a stronger position on holding Iran accountable for its nuclear program.
While administration officials sounded a uniform public note, cautioning Beijing not to allow this latest tiff to damage overall relations, some administration officials suggested privately that the timing of the arms sales and the tougher language on Iran was calculated to send a message to Beijing to avoid assumptions that President Obama would be deferential to China over American security concerns and existing agreements.
“This was a case of making sure that there was no misunderstanding that we will act in our own national security interests,” one senior administration official said. A second Obama administration official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said pointedly: “Unlike the previous administration, we did not wait until the end of our administration to go ahead with the arms sales to Taiwan. We did it early.”
But larger questions remain about where the Obama administration is heading on China policy, and whether the new toughness signals a fundamentally new direction and will yield results that last year’s softer approach did not.
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- February 1, 2010 2:32 PM
U.S. Deal With Taiwan Has China Retaliating (Updated)
The Chinese government has reacted quickly to an announcement from the Obama administration of a $6 billion arms sale to Taiwan. From the New York Times:
The Chinese government announced late Saturday an unusually broad series of retaliatory measures in response to the latest United States arms sales to Taiwan, including sanctions against American companies that supply the weapon systems for the arms sales.
The Foreign Ministry announced in a pair of statements from Beijing that some military exchange programs between the United States and China would be canceled in addition to the commercial sanctions. Furthermore, a vice foreign minister, He Yafei, has called in Jon M. Huntsman Jr., the United States ambassador to China, to protest the sales.
The American decision to sell more weapons to Taiwan “constitutes a gross intervention into China’s internal affairs, seriously endangers China’s national security and harms China’s peaceful reunification efforts,” Mr. He said in the ministry’s statement.
See also this report from ITN:

And from Xinhua: “Arms sale causes severe damage to overall China-U.S. cooperation”
Update: In the Washington Post, John Pomfret reports that Beijing’s reaction to the deal is part of a “a new triumphalist attitude from Beijing.” The report continues:
From the Copenhagen climate change conference to Internet freedom to China’s border with India, China observers have noticed a tough tone emanating from its government, its representatives and influential analysts from its state-funded think tanks.
…”There has been a change in China’s attitude,” said Kenneth G. Lieberthal, a former senior National Security Council official who is currently at the Brookings Institution. “The Chinese find with startling speed that people have come to view them as a major global player. And that has fed a sense of confidence.”
Lieberthal said another factor in China’s new tone is a sense that after two centuries of exploitation by the West, China is resuming its role as one of the great nations of the world.
This new posture has befuddled Western officials and analysts: Is it just China’s tone that is changing or are its policies changing as well?
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- January 30, 2010 5:32 PM
Geremie R. Barmé: The Harmonious Evolution of Information in China
For China Beat, Geremie R. Barmé puts Hillary Clinton’s recent remarks about Internet freedom in a historical context:
Hillary Clinton’s recent speech on freedom of information and the Internet is a clear enunciation of the long-term rhetorical and ideological divide between various authoritarian states and the liberal democracies. One such state, China, was in 1959 in the grip of a new phase of ideological and nationalistic fervour that would play out with tragic consequences in the 1960s and ’70s. Again, in 1989, the old Maoist strategic response to US policies espousing various basic freedoms served both a familiar, and a new purpose. The effect since—carefully honed patriotic education, the increasingly sophisticated use of the semi-independent media, the guided commentariat on TV and radio—have melded together both as a result of careful planning and sheer happenstance to form a continued response to “Western” efforts and hopes to see China evolve into a more pluralistic society. Since 2005, the Hu-Wen leadership of the Communist Party has pursued a policy underpinned by a strategy to create and maintain a “harmonious society.” It is a kind of harmony that is policed with overt rigour. So much is “harmonized” (和谐掉 hexie diao) in the process of creating a quiescent socio-economic environment in which authoritarianism and plutocracy hold sway, that “to harmonise” has become a common verb in colloquial Chinese meaning “to censor,” “elide” or “expunge.” Under the Party China eschews the old strategy of peaceful evolution and its recent upgrades in favour of what I would call “harmonious evolution” (hexie yanbian 和谐演变).
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- January 29, 2010 7:11 PM
US Announces $6B Arms Sale to Taiwan
President Obama has approved a new arms package for Taiwan, AP reports:
In a move sure to aggravate China, the Obama administration announced on Friday plans for more than $6 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, the self-governing island the Chinese claim as their own.
The sale would include Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot missiles, mine-hunting ships and information technology. Lawmakers have 30 days to comment before the plan proceeds; senior lawmakers have traditionally supported arms sales to Taiwan.
See also a Q & A on U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, via Reuters, and an AP report on China’s reaction.
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- January 29, 2010 3:27 PM
China Hits Back at Clinton on Net Freedom
The Chinese government has responded quickly and strongly to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s speech on Internet freedom yesterday. From Information Week:
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu called remarks Thursday by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton “harmful to Sino-American relations.”
Clinton called on the Chinese to conduct a “thorough investigation of the cyber intrusions” that hit Google and other Western companies in recent weeks that are believed to have emanated from China.
“We also look for that investigation and its results to be transparent,” Clinton said, during a speech in which Clinton called on world governments to establish policies toward a more open Internet.
But Zhaoxu said Clinton’s singling out of China was inappropriate and misguided, and constituted an inappropriate meddling in Chinese affairs. “The Chinese Internet is open,” Zhaoxu said in a statement posted on the Foreign Ministry’s Web site.
The Wall Street Journal looks at reactions from Chinese bloggers and other supporters of free expression:
Mrs. Clinton’s speech was closely watched by opponents of government censorship in China, which U.S. diplomats promoted in discussion sessions with Chinese bloggers Friday at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing and at consulates in Shanghai and Guangzhou. Wen Yunchao, a Guangzhou-based blogger, on Twitter called the speech “a declaration of war from a free nation to an autarchy,” and compared it to Winston Churchill’s anti-Soviet speech decrying the Iron Curtain.
Chinese blogger Zhou Shuguang said in an interview, “The Clinton speech is for sure to have positive effect. It’s welcomed by China’s Internet users, especially the active ones on Twitter, regarding the censorship situation in China.”
Others were less impressed. Novelist and blogger Yang Hengjun said on Twitter the speech was positive but that Chinese Web users should not expect too much from it. “The U.S. government has been talking about supporting world-wide Internet freedom for ages, but it hasn’t done much yet.”
The English edition of the official Global Times issued an especially harsh editorial:
The US campaign for uncensored and free flow of information on an unrestricted Internet is a disguised attempt to impose its values on other cultures in the name of democracy.
The hard fact that Clinton has failed to highlight in her speech is that bulk of the information flowing from the US and other Western countries is loaded with aggressive rhetoric against those countries that do not follow their lead.
In contrast, in the global information order, countries that are disadvantaged could not produce the massive flow of information required, and could never rival the Western countries in terms of information control and dissemination.
Keeping that in mind, it must be realized that when it comes to information content, quantity, direction and flow, there is absolutely no equality and fairness.
Meanwhile, in Forbes, Beijing Bureau Chief Gady Epstein argues that Chinese propaganda linking Google’s actions with U.S. foreign policy may divert the debate to one over bilateral squabbling rather than one over freedom of expression. Yet, he continues:
…The U.S. government and Google both have taken the right stand, and that counts for something in the long sweep of history. If Chinese critics lump Google and the U.S. together on Internet freedom, that is because they are onto something: The values that both Google and Clinton expressed this month are rooted in American, Bill of Rights principles.
That’s the good news: The world’s leading superpower and the world’s leading Internet company have made a clear statement that fundamental freedoms–of expression, of assembly–must apply in cyberspace. They have taken note that, as Clinton said Thursday, these freedoms won’t flourish on their own, despite techno-Utopian predictions to the contrary.
See also “The Internet Freedom Agenda” from Foreign Policy.
And the New York Times writes:
In an editorial, the English-language edition of a Chinese newspaper, Global Times, said that the demand for an unfettered Internet was a form of “information imperialism,” because less developed nations could not compete with Western countries in the arena of information flow.
One big question is whether ordinary Chinese will, to any large degree, accept China’s arguments. Although urban, middle-class Chinese often support government policies on sovereignty issues such as Tibet or Taiwan, they generally deride media censorship.
That feeling is especially pronounced among Chinese who refer to themselves as netizens. China has the most Internet users of any country, 384 million by official count, but also the most sophisticated system of Internet censorship, nicknamed the Great Firewall.
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- January 22, 2010 10:40 AM
Hillary Clinton Calls on China to Probe Google Attack (Updated with Photo & Video)
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton delivered an address this morning on Internet freedom around the world, in which she called on Chinese authorities to launch an investigation into the cyber attacks on Google and other U.S. corporations. From BBC:
In a wide-ranging speech at the Newseum journalism museum in Washington, Mrs Clinton said the internet had been a “source of tremendous progress” in China, but that Beijing should investigate the attacks on Google.
“We look to Chinese authorities to conduct a thorough investigation of the cyber intrusions,” she said.
“We also look for that investigation and its results to be transparent.”
Again in reference to China, she said that any country which restricted free access to information risked “walling themselves off from the progress of the next century”.
The US intended to address issues of internet freedom within its relationship with Beijing, she added.
The prepared text of Clinton’s remarks is here, or just read the highlights of the talk via Reuters. See reactions from Evgeny Morozov in Foreign Policy; Ethan Zuckerman; and James Fallows.
Follow tweets about the speech @netfreedom.
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- January 21, 2010 10:45 AM
China and the West: Full Circle
An analysis piece in the Financial Times looks at the relationship between China and the West and asks whether a policy of engagement is bringing about the changes that the U.S. and other Western nations had aimed for:
In Google’s experience, for example, the longer it operated in China, the more search words it was forced to ban and the greater the number of cyberattacks it fielded from Chinese sources.
In fact, in the opinion of several Chinese officials, the process of engagement in which successive US and other western governments have invested so much time and effort, may not have enamoured the Chinese public to the west at all. One senior Communist party official, speaking on condition of anonymity several weeks prior to Google’s move, said he saw a general regression in public disposition to the west.
“Even though Chinese, and especially Chinese youth, know the west better than ever before and there are many more exchanges and contacts between China and your countries than in the past, the west is less popular now among Chinese people than at any time since ‘reform and opening’ began [in 1978],” the official said. Indeed, anyone who regularly reads the postings of Chinese netizens will notice that comments critical of the west frequently far outnumber those that are positive.
Against this backdrop, Google’s decision prompts one of the simplest but furthest-reaching questions of all: how should the west deal with China? Or, to put a finer point on it, how can an international system created under Pax Americana to serve the interests of the west accommodate a rising giant that is set to remain different in almost every aspect – politics, values, history, natural endowments and per capita wealth – from the incumbent ruling order?
Even posing the question can elicit shock. James Mann, a former Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times, notes in his 2007 book, The China Fantasy, that although it is still theoretically possible that the country may yet morph into a democracy that promotes civil liberties and fosters an independent judiciary, the belief that this is a likely outcome is sheer self-delusion.
For more on these ideas, see an interview with James Mann.
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- January 16, 2010 8:41 PM