Protect Your Back and Extend a Hand

For those of us who live in the western United States and Canada, there’s no avoiding the obvious: History, ethnicity and geography all conspire to press our collective noses against the Asia-Pacific glass. Asian immigrants flock to Vancouver, Canada’s PacRim capital; aerospacey Seattle finds itself with do-or-die economic stakes in Asia; more Koreans live in kooky California than anywhere outside Korea. That’s why a belligerent U.S. relationship with China, Asia’s biggest deal, is totally unacceptable to people on this slice of the planet. Two cities that well reflect that common sense and PacRim sensibility are San Diego and Long Beach. They are showing the way to better U.S.-China cooperation.

On Friday, San Diego is to host a remarkable event. With both American and Chinese flags flying, it will welcome a small visiting flotilla of modern Chinese gunships. This will mark the historic first time that any element of the Chinese navy has docked at a mainland U.S. port. The event could lead to more confidence-building measures between the U.S. and Chinese militaries that could ease tensions and suspicions.

Of course, not everyone wants that, do they? U.S. authorities will be taking necessary precautions to watch out for psycho-patriots who would singlehandedly disrupt the festivities. Speaking of loose cannons, America’s one-man-band answer to the shrillest of Beijing’s propagandists has got to be columnist Patrick Buchanan. All but indicting Long Beach for communist fellow-docking, he rails against the city for its plan to refurbish the abandoned U.S. naval base there and then to lease it to the China Ocean Shipping Co., a big-time, state-owned China firm that would employ it as its main U.S. facility. Paranoidly, my fellow American envisions the port metamorphosing into some kind of smuggling and spying entrepot.

Last week, as the debate intensified, our two California senators publicly asked the National Security Council to look the deal over. They reflect that last year U.S. officials seized a Cosco ship for small-arms smuggling, allegedly targeted for sale to L.A. street gangs. They are right to raise the question, but Sandy Berger, the President’s national security advisor, should look but not touch: By the time the facility is actually up and running, America’s spooks will have surrounded it with the best electronic surveillance money can buy. Then let Cosco try something fishy. If they do, send the videotaped highlights to CBS Morning News and cancel the lease. U.S. intelligence could only dream for Chinese activities to be so obvious, so concentrated in a single location.

Long Beach deserves respect, not ridicule. Like much of the rest of the West, it is trying to develop a booming business with China. Already the port of Long Beach takes in about one-fourth of all Chinese goods shipped to the United States. And California’s trade with China keeps increasing. This is a good deal all around: Rooted in ethnic ties as well as mutual economic need, such arrangements can help ease inherent frictions in the larger bilateral relationship.

Not all frictions will go away easily, to be sure. One sore point is China’s modernization of its military. Recently, in a presentation to members of the Pacific Council on International Policy, Michael Swaine, the distinguished analyst from RAND, painted a usefully detailed picture of China’s military establishment. It was scarcely alarmist enough to grist a perfervid Pat Buchanan mill, but it did give pause to any unthinking pan-Pacific peacenikism. China’s increasingly influential military-industrial-commercial complex, he suggested, could become the unpredictable wild card in the Sino-U.S. relationship.

“The absence of a paramount leader since the death of Deng Xiaoping,” warns Swaine, “could provide the Chinese military with increasing leverage over national security strategy. I’m not predicting that the [People’s Liberation Army] will become a swaggering juggernaut. But there are conditions that could draw them into foreign policy.” It turns out that our friends up north in Canada, which also has a huge stake in China’s evolution, have concerns about that, too. Said Canada’s Foreign Minister Lloyd Axworthy in a candid interview Friday: “Canada is also becoming preoccupied with China. What will happen there will make waves for the next 100 years.” Axworthy believes America and its allies absolutely must begin to forge a common approach to China: “I’m worried that the West will fail to get its act together. If we don’t, we will get picked off one by one: You know, if they don’t like the way you blow your nose, you’re going to lose your Airbus contract. It’s time for the Canadians, the Americans and the Europeans to rethink our relationship. We’d better sit down and do some hard work.”

No one will get any richer, wiser or more secure underestimating the diplomatic skills or military potential of the People’s Republic of China. The best advice is the simplest: Keep your powder dry. But keep a welcoming hand outstretched.