To Get Along, Go Along With Beijing : China: Our agenda must mesh with what the leadership of 1 billion people requires.

With the release of Chinese American rights activist Harry Wu, the latest U.S./China/Taiwan crisis has begun to recede. However, extremists in each nation who set off the recent tensions may yet set in motion vicious circles undermining the peaceful development of the Beijing-Washington-Taipei triangle.

In Taipei, demagogues assured a credulous public tired of international humiliation that Taiwan can play a proud, independent role on the world stage without having to fear China’s wrath.

In Washington, human rights activists insisting that the Beijing regime promptly implement their vision of universally proper political behavior were joined by Republicans more eager to embarrass the President than to listen to what their own elder statesmen had to say about how to deal with China. As for Beijing, it has never suffered a shortage of obtusely nationalistic hard-liners, especially during periods of leadership power struggle.

To keep these extremists in check, Washington and the U.S. public need a better understanding of Chinese realities and of American capabilities relative to these realities.

In the past, many American leaders and intellectuals swung erratically between contempt for Chinese backwardness and enthusiastic endorsement of Maoism as fulfilling the promise of “the great Chinese revolution.” In fact, Maoism was an aberration that put more than 1 billion people into an ideological and institutional straitjacket that to this day has impeded modernization, not to mention democratization. Today, finally aware of this disaster, many Americans are swinging back to the view that the Chinese government is simply a corrupt, tyrannical one. Once again, reality is eluding us.

Tyranny and corruption exist in China, but the problem is how to move past that. Major reforms are under way, and there is no Chinese political group that could peacefully replace and do better than the current leaders. Moreover, an anarchic breakdown of law and order in China would be disastrous not only for these leaders but also for the Chinese people, as well as Washington and Taipei. Nor would conditions in China improve if the United States confronted these leaders, not to mention the reluctance of the American public to bear the economic and other burdens that such an ambitious, crisis-provoking foreign policy would entail.

Getting along with China’s current regime, therefore, is our best bet. It’s also Taiwan’s best bet, since Taiwan’s security, absent a U.S. defense treaty, depends on harmony between Beijing and Washington.

Getting along with the Beijing leadership is not enough, however. We also need sympathetic understanding of them. Their determination to modernize and their deeply held beliefs--especially their idea that history is a matter of rational, unified global trends, not a matter of clashing civilizations--incline them toward peaceful participation in the world system centered in Europe, the United States and Japan. Yet they also want the respect accorded to a world power. Many of them believe that the 21st Century will be a Chinese century.

The nationalistic dreams of the Chinese cannot be the same as ours. Yet, since we are not able and willing to take responsibility for the behavior and well-being of the 1.2 billion human beings in China, we need to treat with respect those leaders who do assume this responsibility. This is understood by many China experts but not by most journalists and politicians.

China and the United States will continue on a collision course unless both sides learn to treat each other with respect. If we want the Chinese to stop regarding us as their imperialistic enemies, we must stop defining them as a wayward nation subject to our correction. For a start, regular summit meetings, such as those between the United States and Russia, should become integral to the U.S.-China relationship.

To be sure, U.S. foreign policy should pursue morality. Yet the practicable pursuit of moral goals with regard to China has to be based on a balanced understanding of the conditions enhancing the well-being of more than 1 billion people there, not on a simplistic demand that China promptly institutionalize political and civil rights.