US President George W. Bush will visit Japan, South Korea, China and Mongolia on his latest trip to Asia. The Bush administration's China policy has increasingly been influenced by experts who favor economic engagement in terms of huge market and business opportunities, while paying less attention to the constant expansion of Chinese hegemony and its authoritarian structure, which oppresses democratic forces.
These experts emphasize the importance of the economic relationship between the US and China, even as others maintain that without political change, China's economic reforms will ultimately be unsuccessful.
If the US regards Beijing as responsible, on what grounds can it condemn countries such as North Korea and Iran? The threat these nations pose to international security and democracy is limited compared with that posed by a nuclear power such as China.
Former president Lee Teng-hui (
Meanwhile, China has tried to dress itself in democratic language. Its white paper on democracy uses all kinds of ornamental language to defend the Chinese Communist Party's dictatorial rule. The examples and statistics it cites to demonstrate its democratic development compare the current situation with China under the Qing Dynasty and after, when it was being carved up by Western powers.
The paper made no effort to compare democratic development under more than half a century of communist rule with that of other countries in the region, thus making nonsense of its temporal comparisons.
Those US experts who support economic engagement at the expense of human-rights considerations should be asked how this state of affairs reflects on Beijing's credibility.
The white paper also praises China's development on human rights. Such assertions amount to little more than a joke in the international community.
The US has much to lose if Bush continues to rely on those who take an economic view and champion profit at the expense of international security in the construction of his administration's foreign policy.
China stands out in that it is so clearly poised, both by virtue of its size and its nuclear arsenal, to threaten regional and international peace. If it were not for Beijing's support, would a government like North Korea's dare to act in such a high-handed manner?
The US could do worse than to heed Lee's words and draw democratic countries around the world together to pressure Beijing into making substantial progress in its democratic development, thereby defusing the biggest potential crisis of the 21st century.
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