THE DOUBT BEHIND THE ANGRY MASK

by Tony Walker

(The Financial Times, 25 August 1995)

Yesterday's decision to expel Mr Harry Wu, the jailed Chinese American human rights campaigner, holds out the prospect of an easing in Sino-US tensions. However, US and Chinese officials meeting in Beijing this weekend will find it difficult to get their troubled relationship back on track.

And there is more at stake than the ties between China and the US. Mr Peter Tarnoff, US under-secretary of state, and his counterpart, vice-foreign minister Mr Li Zhaoxing, will focus on practicalities including a possible meeting later this year between the US and Chinese leaders. They are also likely to discuss broader issues, including the recent actions by Beijing that threaten to cause conflict with its neighbours and to sharpen disagreements with the international community.

China has been rendered unsure of itself by a difficult leadership transition, and wounded by what it perceives as a duplicitous US policy over Taiwan. It has given the appearance of thrashing about in its foreign policy in an attempt to satisfy internal political pressures, and at the same time defend its honour internationally.

Sabre-rattling, in the form of missile tests in the East China Sea north of Taiwan, together with the 15-year jail sentence for spying handed down to Mr Wu yesterday before news of his expulsion, has smacked of over-reaction. All the recent sound and fury, including a propaganda campaign against Taiwan that is reminiscent of an earlier era, have raised doubts about the regime's foreign policy.

Mr Kenneth Lieberthal, professor of political science at the University of Michigan and author of the recently published Governing China from Revolution through Reform, detects, like many other China specialists, serious flaws in the conduct of policy and a worrying lack of sophistication.

"China", he says, "pursued a very skilful foreign policy during the early 1990s when it was seeking to recover from the enormous setback caused by Tianammen [in which the army turned its guns on pro-democracy protesters in Beijing's central square]. But in the past year or so the, Chinese have been much less skilful in dealing with the international community."

Mr Lieberthal believes that the fading from the scene of paramount leader Mr Deng Xiaoping is one of the main factors contributing to the present uncertainty. It was Mr Deng who, since his rehabilitation in 1978, had provided the steadiness in day-to-day affairs and also the strategic view that enabled Beijing to manoeuvre its way back towards the international mainstream.

But in the absence of Mr Deng's guiding hand, Chinese policy has seemed less sure-footed, more febrile, certainly more nationalistic. Its response to the visit to the US in June of Mr Lee Teng-hui, the Taiwanese president, is a case in point. Initially, it appeared that Mr Jiang Zemin, China's president,favoured a tough, though relatively restrained, approach. But under pressure from hardliners in the military he felt the need to sanction a more strident reaction.

All this has added to nervousness in Asia about China's intentions, and raised questions about who is in control of foreign policy in Beijing.

Another worrying indication of China overreaching itself is the handling of its claim to disputed islands in the South China Sea. By constructing buildings earlier this year on reefs within the Philippines' 200 nautical mile exclusion zone, Beijing displayed insensitivity not only towards Manila, but also towards other Asian states with claims over areas of the South

China Sea that conflict with China's.

Last week's nuclear detonation at China's Lop Nor test site, days after the 50th anniversaries of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombs, also seemed inappropriate, especially when world - and in particular Japanese - opinion had been further sensitised to the nuclear issue by France's announcement that it was resuming testing in the Pacific.

These foreign policy missteps come against a background of China's preoccupation with what local writers refer to as "containment". China's media have sought to portray recent US, and to a lesser exent European, policy as motivated partly by a desire to "contain" Chinese economic and political ambitions. US encouragement for Taiwanese independence is part of attempts to "encircle" China, so the theory goes.

While Chinese leaders have not publicly spoken of "containment", there is no doubt that recent commentaries in publications such as the People's Daily, the Communist party newspaper, reflect deep misgivings at the top. These suspicions in turn influence policy, by chipping away at Sino-US trust and feeding the nationalistic tendencies of senior Chinese.

Mr You Ji, a writer on the Chinese military at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, believes it would be foolish for the west to underestimate the effect on Chinese leaders of the re-emergence of old shibboleths. Among the dangers, he says, is that China's perception of a less friendly world could prompt its leadership to divert additional resources to the military and encourage greater militancy on issues such as human rights and territorial claims.

Chinese foreign policy, Mr You believes, is susceptible to outside pressures and unpredictable. "Reactions in Beijing," he says, "depend on how western policy, and US policy in particular, is perceived whether it is seen as constructive engagement or containment.

"On the whole, the leadership is still rational in its responses. But it would be wrong for the west to assume that, because of China's increasing economic interdependence, it would put economic interests above everything else."

Mr Lieberthal says that Beijing may have grounds for believing that in the 1990s the "international arena is tightening up". This is in contrast to the late 1970s and 1980s when China was admitted to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, and Japan and the US were anxious to help "jump start" the Chinese economy, encourage reforms and welcome China into the family of nations.

On the other hand, China has not helped its case with its confrontational approach to human rights, its weapons transfersto rogue states such as Iran, its noisy attempts to enter the World Trade Organisation on terms unacceptable to virtually all the members, and its policy of "creeping assertiveness" in the South China Sea.

Mr Ezra Vogel, until recently east Asia adviser to the US administration in the National Intelligence Council and now director of the Fairbank centre for east Asian research at Harvard, said in Beijing recently the WTO negotiations were a good example of lack of Chinese surefootedness. "China felt that its market was so big that the US and others would cave in," he said. "China overplayed its hand not only with the Americans, but with the Europeans and Japanese."

But Mr Lieberthal and Mr Vogel, who are influential voices in the US on issues relating to China, also criticise American policy. Says Mr Lieberthal: "The reality is that the US is not trying to contain China. There is no coordinated strategy at all. Every agency is following its own China policy, with the result that a lot of little daggers are being stuck into the Chinese dragon.

"The Chinese do a lot to make it very tough to deal with them, but our own failure to co-ordinate and prioritise our policy towards China hasn't helped either."

In the US-China talks in Beijing, Mr Tarnoff and Mr Li will seek to bring a modicum of order to a difficult relationship. But it would be asking a lot to expect them to make much progress in addressing the more complex issue of how China should manage its increasing weight in international affairs.

The scope for continued misunderstanding remains wide, along with the risks of Chinese overreaction to real or imagined slights. China's relations with the outside world, and with the US in particular, are not necessarily about to enter calmer waters.