Published by: World Tibet Network News 96/04/02 18:00 GMT

Editorial, The Seattle Times, Monday, March 25, 1996

by Charles Krauthammer

WASHINGTON, D.C. - The semi-communist rulers of China like to assign numbers to things. They particularly like the number 4. There was the Gang of Four. There were the Four Modernizations (agriculture, industry, technology and national defense). And now, I dare say, we have the Four Slaps: four dramatic demonstrations of Chinese contempt for expressed American interests and for the Clinton administration's ability to do anything to defend them.

1. Proliferation. The Clinton administration makes clear to China that it strongly object to the export of nuclear and other mass-destruction military technology. What does China do? Last month, report the CIA, China secretly sent 5,000 ring magnets to Pakistan for nuclear bomb-making and sent ready-made poison gas factories to Iran.

2. Human Rights. Clinton comes into office chiding Bush for "coddling dictators." In March 1994, Secretary of State Warren Christopher goes to China wagging his finger about human rights. The Chinese respond by placing more than a dozen dissidents under house arrest while Christopher is there, then declare that human rights in China are none of his business. Christopher slinks away.

3. Trade. The administration signs agreements with China under which it pledges to halt its massive pirating of American software and other intellectual property. China flouts the agreements. Two years later, the piracy thrives.

4. And now Taiwan. For the last two weeks, China has been conducting the most-threatening military demonstration against Taiwan in 40 years: firing M-9 surface-to-surface missiles within miles of the island, holding huge live-fire war games with practice invasions, closing shipping in the Taiwan Strait.

Slap four is the logical outcome of the first three, each of which was met with a supine American response, some sputtering expression of concern backed by nothing.

"Our policy is one of engagement, not containment," says Winston Lord, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs. This is neither. This is encouragement.

There are two issues at stake here. The first is the fate of Taiwan and its democracy. Taiwan is important not just because it is our eighth-largest trading partner. Saturday's presidential elections made Taiwan the first Chinese state in history to become a full-fledged democracy. It thus constitutes the definitive rebuff to the claim of Asian dictators from Beijing to Singapore that democracy is alien to Confucian societies. Hence, Beijing's furious bullying response.

The second issue has nothing to do with Taiwan. It is freedom of the seas. Living on an island continent, America is a maritime trading nation with allies and interests and commerce across the seas. If the United States has any vital interests at all - forget for the moment Taiwan or even democracy - it is freedom of navigation.

Chinese Premier Li Peng warns Washington not to make a show of force - i.e., send our navy - through the Taiwan Strait. Secretary of Defense William Perry responds with a boast that while the Chinese "are a great military power, the premier - the strongest - military power in the Western Pacific is the United States."

Fine words. But Perry has been keeping his navy away from the Strait. This is to talk loudly and carry a twig. If we have, in Perry's words, "the best damned navy in the world," why are its movements being dictated by Li Peng? The Taiwan Strait is not a Chinese lake. It is indisputably international water and a vital shipping lane. Send the fleet through it.

And tell China that its continued flouting of the rules of civil international conduct - everything from commercial piracy to nuclear proliferation, culminating with its intimidation of Taiwan - means the cancellation of Most Favored Nation trading status with the United States.

Yes, canceling MFN will hurt the United States somewhat. But U.S.-China trade amounts to a mere two-thirds of 1 percent of U.S. GDP. It amounts to fully 9 percent of Chinese GDP. Cancellation would be a major blow to China.

Yet astonishingly, with live Chinese fire lighting up the Taiwan Strait, Treasury Secretary Rubin said last week that the Clinton administration supports continued MFN for China. This is timorousness compounded. Canceling MFN is the least we should do in response to China's provocations.

Quite diplomacy is one thing. But this is craven diplomacy. What does it take to get this administration to act? The actual invasion of Taiwan? You wait for war, you invite war.