Pleased With Moscow Summit, China Now Looks to America to Influence Japan

Ronald Reagan’s trip to the Soviet Union passed with little official notice in China as the Middle Kingdom quietly went about putting into practice the reforms that so far Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev only preaches. Beijing’s seeming indifference to the superpowers’ warming relations contrasts with the detente of the 1970s, when the Chinese fretted that America would give ground to the Soviets.

In private talks during the Moscow summit meeting, Chinese officials praised Reagan and Gorbachev for the intermediate-range nuclear-forces treaty, expressed hopes for a strategic-arms-reduction treaty this year and wished the superpowers well in all things. Yet there is nothing casual about this benediction. It reflects careful analysis of China’s strategic situation.

Since Richard M. Nixon came here 16 years ago to begin ending China’s isolation, many Americans have talked of playing a “China card” against the Soviets. In fact, this country has benefitted from an “American card,” as the 40-year U.S. policy of containing Soviet expansion has essentially worked. Chinese leaders aren’t sure whether Gorbachev has compromised on foreign-policy issues to buy time for reform or to gain with diplomacy what his predecessors could not do through bluster and war. But they clearly see the advantages for China.

Chinese foreign-policy specialists still harbor doubts about Soviet intentions toward Afghanistan. They also are deeply skeptical that the Soviets’ ally, Vietnam, will implement its announced troop withdrawal from Cambodia, since six previous announcements proved to be propaganda. And they understand that neither the INF treaty nor a 50% cut in the superpowers’ strategic arsenals will have much military effect. Nevertheless, the general improvement in U.S.-Soviet relations also reduces pressures on China.

Thus Beijing sees in the Soviets’ withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan a possible precedent for Cambodia. First, there is the lesson for Vietnam: There is value in reducing burdens and opprobrium in the eyes of the world community. Second, there is the lesson for the Soviet Union: Cambodia is another good place to court Western opinion--with China being the most direct beneficiary.

If the Soviets follow through on their withdrawal from Afghanistan and prevail on Hanoi to stop its aggression in Cambodia, this would fulfill two of China’s three conditions for improving Sino-Soviet relations. The third, reducing tensions and Soviet troops on the Chinese frontier, should be relatively easy to achieve.

But Beijing claims that it has no interest in improving relations with the Soviet Union at the expense of those with the United States. This should not be read as a politics of maneuver, of trying to play Washington and Moscow off against one another. That may be a desirable long-term goal, but for now China needs the United States and the Western world for something far more important: access to capital, technology and markets that can fuel domestic reform. In these areas the Soviet Union has nothing to offer.

Whatever ambitions the Chinese may harbor, for now they crave quiet and stability in their international environment. Beijing argues that peace between the superpowers is likely to mean greater opportunities for all countries swept up in their competition. And an extended breathing space is especially critical for a country that is finally making the Great Leap Forward that was heralded three decades ago but ended in abject failure.

This view makes sense against the background of China’s current economic activity and involvement with the outside world. Two decades ago almost all foreigners were barred from China while the country pursued self-sufficiency even more zealously than did the Soviet Union. Today, however, there is a “y’all come” attitude, and there are feverish efforts to create and advertise a hospitable climate for foreign capital--and ideology is kept firmly out of sight. This change is critical in supporting the efforts of a culture that thrives on industry and initiative.

Yet China’s strategic perspective does not end with the need for U.S. help to reduce the Soviet threat and Western capital to help underwrite the restructuring of an entire economy. There is also apprehension concerning the long-term role of Japan, China’s most potent enemy in the 20th Century.

Much of this apprehension can be discounted as die-hard memory of a brutal 13-year Japanese assault on China. Some may be attributed to exaggerated fears of what so far is a relatively minor right-wing revival. Thoughtful Chinese officials also argue that Japan, the economic superpower, will inevitably play a broader political role than the one carved out for it by the victors in 1945. What that role will be is vital to China’s future.

Beijing looks to the United States to influence Japan’s foreign-policy future, in a non-hostile variant of containing Soviet power. U.S. efforts to push Japan to spend more on defense are viewed here as dangerous for American as well as Chinese interests. In the main, East Asia’s problems are economic and political and will not respond to Japanese military power that, in China’s view, is likely to be of far less help than harm.

With their long-term view of history, the Chinese expect the United States to make its third great post-war commitment to Asia’s security. The first was to contain Soviet expansion, the second to reintroduce China to the outside world. The third is more demanding: to help Japan learn to play a constructive role, commensurate with its economic power but compatible with the interests of its neighbors. As officials in Beijing watch America’s Japan-bashing, they worry that the United States does not understand the strategic nature of the problem, much less U.S. responsibility for helping to solve it.