Baucus, also held moderate views supported by others on the committee that
eschewed protectionism.
Leading Democrats in the House Committee on International Relations
had records of vocal opposition to human rights violations, notably by Chi-
na’s authoritarian administration. These meshed well with the views of Rep-
resentative Pelosi but were at odds with the large number of Democratic
members who joined various working groups designed to foster pragmatic
exchanges with, and more informed and effective US policy toward, China.
On balance, these groups moderated the congressional tendency to engage in
“China-bashing” seen during annual congressional debates in the 1990s on
China’s trading status with the United States.
In sum, prevailing circumstances showed why US policy toward China
would not change substantially as a result of the Democratic victory in 2006.
China’s massive trade and foreign exchange surpluses and perceived unfair
currency and trading practices generated legislation and other actions to ap-
ply pressure on the Bush administration to toughen the US approach to
Pragmatism amid Differences during the G. W. Bush Administration
137
China, but they appeared to fall short of forcing significant protectionist
measures against China. Despite congressional pressure, the Bush adminis-
tration’s Treasury Department consistently refused to have China labeled a
currency manipulator in its periodic reports to Congress. An increase in
congressional rhetoric and posturing against Chinese human rights violations
and other practices offending US norms was balanced by growing congres-
sional interest in working pragmatically with China in study groups and
exchanges. Any congressional interest in pressing the Bush administration to
increase support for Taiwan despite China’s objections seemed offset by the
turbulent political situation in Taiwan in the last years of the administration of President Chen Shui-bian and the fracturing of the Taiwan lobby in Washington as a result of partisan and divisive politics in Taiwan.
CHINESE POLICY PRIORITIES
Those endeavoring to understand the priorities that determined the PRC’s
foreign policy, especially its policy toward the United States after the Cold
War and into the twenty-first century, have a wealth of books, articles, and
other assessments and analyses by scholars and specialists in Chinese foreign
policy. These works document ever-expanding Chinese interaction with the
outside world through economic exchanges in an era of globalization, and
broadening Chinese involvement with international organizations dealing
with security, economic, political, cultural, and other matters. They demon-
strate a continuing trend toward greater transparency in Chinese foreign poli-
cy decision making and policy formation since the beginning of the era of
Chinese reforms following the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. As a result,
there is considerable agreement backed by convincing evidence in these
writings about the course and goals of contemporary Chinese foreign policy
and how they affect the United States. 52
In the post-Mao period, Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders focused
on economic reform and development as the basis of their continued survival
as the rulers of China. Support for economic liberalization and openness
waxed and waned, but the overall trend emphasized greater market orienta-
tion and foreign economic interchange as critical in promoting economic
advancement, and by extension, supporting the continued CCP monopoly of
political power. For a time, the leaders were less clear in their attitudes
toward political liberalization and change, with some in the 1980s calling for
substantial reform of the authoritarian Communist system. Since the crack-
down at Tiananmen in 1989, there was a general consensus among the party
elite to control dissent and other political challenges, allowing for only slow, gradual, and often halting political change that can be closely monitored by
the authorities. 53
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Chapter 6
In foreign affairs, post-Mao leaders retreated from the sometimes strident
calls to change the international system, and they worked pragmatically to
establish relationships with important countries, especially the United States
and Japan but also China’s neighbors in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, who
would assist China’s development and enhance Beijing’s overall goal of
developing national wealth and power. The collapse of Soviet communism at
the end of the Cold War posed a major ideological challenge to Chinese
leaders and reduced Western interest in China as a counterweight to the
USSR. But the advance of China’s economy soon attracted Western leaders
once again, while the demise of the USSR gave China a freer hand to pursue
its interests, less encumbered by the long-term Soviet strategic threat. 54
Against this backdrop and following the death of strong-man leader Deng
Xiaoping in 1997, Chinese authorities led by the president and party chief,
Jiang Zemin, were anxious to minimize problems with the United States and
other countries in order to avoid complications in their efforts to appear
successful in completing three major tasks for the year, involving (1) the July 1997 transition of Hong Kong to Chinese rule, (2) the reconfiguration of
Chinese leadership and policy at the Fifteenth CCP Congress in September
1997, and (3) the Sino-American summit of October 1997. 55
Generally pleased with the results of these three endeavors, Chinese lead-
ers began implementing new policy priorities. At the top of the list was an
ambitious multiyear effort to transform tens of thousands of China’s money-
losing state-owned enterprises (SOEs) into more efficient businesses by re-
forming them (e.g., selling them to private concerns, forming large conglom-
erates, or other actions). Beijing also embarked on major programs to pro-
mote economic and administrative efficiency and protect China’s potentially
vulnerable financial systems from any negative fallout from the 1997–98
Asian economic crisis and subsequent uncertainties.
Making collective leadership work was an ongoing challenge for China’s
top leaders. President Jiang Zemin gained in stature and influence, but his
power still did not compare to that exerted by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaop-
ing. When it came time for Jiang and his senior colleagues to retire, there was a distinct possibility of a renewed struggle for power and influential positions by up-and-coming leaders. The leadership transition was handled cautiously,
with Jiang slow to hand over control of military power to the new generation
of party leaders headed by Hu Jintao. Once Hu assumed the leadership of the
Chinese party, government, and military by 2004, he moved carefully in
consolidating his leadership position. He seemed well aware that if a major
economic, political, or foreign policy crisis were to emerge, leadership con-
flict over what to do, how to do it, and who should do it could be intense. Hu
and his associates dealt with such major issues as the crisis caused by the
outbreak of the so-called SARS epidemic in China in 2002–3 and the Nort
h
Korean nuclear crisis beginning in 2003, with generally effective policies
Pragmatism amid Differences during the G. W. Bush Administration
139
that endeavored to support the leadership’s interest in preserving Communist
rule in China. The results of the Seventeenth Congress of the CCP in October
2007 appeared to underline a continuing cautious approach to political
change and international and domestic circumstances, one that was designed
to reinforce Communist Party rule in China. 56
There was little sign of disagreement among senior leaders over recent
broad policy emphasis on economic reform, though sectors affected by re-
form often resisted strenuously. The ambitious plans for economic reform,
especially reform of the SOEs, were needed if China’s economy was to
become sufficiently efficient to sustain the growth rates seen as needed to
justify continued Communist rule and to develop China’s wealth and power.
China’s entrance into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001
strengthened the need for greater economic efficiency and reform.
The reforms also exacerbated social and economic uncertainties, which
reinforced the government’s determination to maintain a firm grip on politi-
cal power and levers of social control. The repression of political dissidents
and related activities begun in 1998 continued into the next decade and
appeared likely to last for the duration of the economic reform efforts.
The results of the Seventeenth Party Congress in October 2007 strongly
underscored the emphasis the Hu Jintao leadership gave to dealing more
attentively than the Jiang Zemin leadership with the many negative conse-
quences of China’s rapid economic growth and social change. These nega-
tive consequences included glaring inequities between urban and rural sec-
tors and coastal and interior areas; pervasive corruption by self-serving
government, party, and military officials; environmental degradation; misuse
of scarce land, water, and energy resources; and the lack of adequate educa-
tion, health care, and social welfare for hundreds of millions of Chinese
citizens. The Hu Jintao leadership emphasized using scientific methods to
promote sustainable development conducive to fostering a harmonious Chi-
nese order under the leadership of the CCP. 57
Against this background, foreign affairs generally remained an area of
less urgent policy priority. Broad international trends—notably at that time,
improved relations with the United States—supported the efforts by the Chi-
nese authorities to pursue policies intended to minimize disruptions and to
assist their domestic reform endeavors. The government remained wary of
the real or potential challenges posed by a possible economic crisis, by
Taiwan, by efforts by Japan and the United States to increase their interna-
tional influence in ways seen as contrary to Beijing’s interests, by India’s
great power aspirations and nuclear capability, by North Korea’s nuclear
weapons development, and by other issues. The PRC voiced special concern
over the implications for China’s interests of actual and reported US plans to
develop and deploy theater ballistic missile defense systems in East Asia and
a national missile defense for the United States. Chinese officials also voiced
140
Chapter 6
concern over the downturn in US-China relations at the outset of the George
W. Bush administration, but appeared determined to cooperate with the US-
led antiterrorism campaign begun in September 2001.
Chinese leaders were seen to be focused on promoting China’s economic
development while maintaining its political and social stability. These efforts undergirded a fundamental determination of the CCP administration to be an
exception to the pattern of collapsing Communist regimes at the end of the
Cold War and to reinvigorate and sustain its one-party rule in China. Foreign
policy was made to serve these objectives by sustaining an international
environment that supported economic growth and stability in China. This
was done partly through active and generally moderate Chinese diplomacy
designed to reassure neighboring countries and other concerned powers—
notably the United States, the dominant world power in Chinese foreign
policy calculations. Chinese efforts tried to demonstrate that rising Chinese
economic, military, and political power and influence should not have been
viewed as a threat, but should have been seen as an opportunity for greater
world development and harmony. In the process, Chinese diplomacy gave
ever-greater emphasis to engagement and conformity with the norms of re-
gional and other multilateral organizations as a means to reassure those con-
cerned over possible negative implications of China’s increased power and
influence. 58
Chinese foreign policy placed great emphasis on seeking international
economic exchange beneficial to Chinese development. A large influx of
foreign direct investment (FDI), foreign aid, foreign technology, and foreign
expertise was critically important in China’s economic growth in the post-
Mao period. China became the center of a variety of intra-Asian and other
international manufacturing and trading networks that saw China emerge as
the world’s second-largest trading nation and the largest consumer of a varie-
ty of key world commodities and raw materials. In stark contrast to the “self-
restricted foreign investment and curbed Chinese economic dependence on
the outside world, China now depended fundamentally on a healthy world
economy in which Chinese entrepreneurs competed for advantage and pro-
moted economic development as an essential foundation for continued rule
of the CCP government.
At the same time, the world economy depended increasingly on China.
Now a member of the WTO and other major international economic organ-
izations, the Chinese government exerted ever-greater influence in interna-
tional economic matters as a key manufacturing center for world markets and
an increasingly prominent trading nation with a positive balance of trade and
the largest foreign exchange reserves in the world.
Chinese nationalism and Chinese security priorities also remained impor-
tant determinants in contemporary Chinese foreign policy. Communism was
Pragmatism amid Differences during the G. W. Bush Administration
141
weakening as a source of ideological unity and legitimacy due to both the
collapse of the Soviet Union and other communist regimes and the Chinese
government’s shift toward free-market economic practices. As a result, the
CCP leaders placed greater emphasis on promoting patriotism among Chi-
nese people. Patriotism and the nationalism it engenders supported the Com-
munist government’s high priority to prevent Taiwan independence and re-
store this and other territory taken from China by foreign powers when China
was weak and vulnerable during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Chi-
nese leaders were forthright in building advanced military p
ower and voicing
determination to take coercive measures to achieve nationalistic goals, espe-
cially regarding Taiwan, even in the face of opposition by the power of the
United States and its allies and associates. More broadly, Chinese leaders
endeavored to build what they called “comprehensive national power”—
particularly economic, military, and political power—as China sought an as
yet not clearly defined leading role as a great power in Asian and world
affairs.
Meanwhile, Chinese leadership and popular attention focused with great
national pride on China’s hosting of the August 2008 Olympic Games. The
Chinese government seemed determined to avoid actions at home or abroad
that might complicate their successful Olympic Games. It used the occasion
to showcase China’s many positive accomplishments to audiences abroad
and to reinforce the legitimacy and power of the Communist rule in the eyes
of the Chinese people and international audiences.
BUSH’S LEGACY: POSITIVE STASIS IN US-CHINA RELATIONS
The positive stasis in US-China relations that emerged in the latter years of
the George W. Bush administration met the near-term priorities of the US
and Chinese governments. Converging US and Chinese engagement policies
tried to broaden common ground; they dealt with differences through policies
fostering ever closer interchange that included respective strategies designed
to constrain each other’s possible disruptive or negative moves.
A pattern of dualism in US-China relations arose as part of the developing
positive stasis. The pattern involved constructive and cooperative engage-
ment on the one hand and contingency planning or hedging on the other. It
reflected the mix noted above of converging and competing interests and
prevailing leadership suspicions and cooperation.
Chinese and US contingency planning and hedging against one another
sometimes involved actions like the respective Chinese and US military
buildups that were separate from and developed in tandem with the respec-
tive engagement policies that the two leaderships pursued with each other. At
the same time, dualism showed as each government used engagement to