China Has Moved Toward Center Stage in Year of Turning Points

World citizen China or world threat China?

At the conclusion of a year marked by milestone events--the death of a powerful leader, the repatriation of Hong Kong, a crucial Communist Party meeting and a historic summit in the United States--some diplomats and scholars contend that China is showing signs of a new maturity and engagement in world affairs.

“China had a very big year domestically,” says a senior Western diplomat here. “You get the sense they really feel themselves setting things right. The trend line is much more responsible behavior.”

The most recent example was China’s statesmanlike pledge to fellow Asian countries this month that it would not take advantage of their economic miseries by devaluing its currency, the renminbi, a move that could have spurred Chinese exports.

In the Asian community, such an act would have been viewed as kicking an opponent after he is already down.

Instead, leaders attending the summit of the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, in Singapore heard Chinese President Jiang Zemin speak of peace, brotherhood and cooperation.

“On the eve of the new century,” Jiang said Dec. 17, “we should approach and handle our relations from a long-range strategic perspective and forge a China-ASEAN good-neighborly partnership of mutual trust.”

Earlier, China had demonstrated its cooperative spirit with an unprecedented offer to contribute $1 billion to the International Monetary Fund’s bailout of Thailand.

The relief of the beleaguered Asian community has been palpable, pleasing Chinese leaders who are clearly enjoying their new role as a responsible big brother rather than an unpredictable ideological giant.

“The other countries were very worried about what we might do,” Assistant Foreign Minister Chen Jian said at a recent holiday party in the capital. “They were very relieved when we reassured them on the currency.”

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, scholars and security analysts have pondered what role China will play in the “new world order.”

In recent years, the debate has surfaced in several books, most notably “The Coming Conflict With China” by Ross H. Munro and Richard Bernstein, a recent effort that portrayed China as potentially the “next Evil Empire.”

At the same time, many other China specialists, led by the U.S. business community, have argued that this picture is too dark and that China’s economic reforms and newfound consumer freedoms will cause an inevitable change for the better.

In describing recent efforts by Beijing to improve its image, diplomats point to China’s active participation in Korean peninsula peace negotiations and the pledge by Beijing that it will no longer provide Iran and Pakistan with components for nuclear weapons as positive examples of a China on its best behavior.

Skeptics contend that the new global good behavior is nothing more than enlightened self-interest. For example, Columbia University scholar Andrew Nathan argues that China promised President Clinton that it will halt exports of C-802 cruise missiles to Iran because it hopes to harvest an array of high-tech American hardware, including nuclear power plants.

“This was the quid pro quo for the resumption of high-tech exports to China, specifically nuclear power plants, but they hope [to extend] it later to computers, airplanes, etc.,” Nathan says.

China’s positive role in the revived Korean peace talks, Nathan also contends, is simply a cold calculation that “peace talks are the best way to protect North Korea over a longer haul than otherwise. They are in favor of a divided Korea as long as possible.”

As for Beijing’s willingness to conduct joint U.S.-Chinese military exercises, Nathan says, “again this is their interests. It gives them international face, provides access to the thinking of the country that poses the largest military threat and gives them a wonderful chance to lobby Washington.”

Gerald Segal, a China expert at the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies, says China’s comportment is a case of the Beijing regime lying low while it sorts out the consequences of the Asian economic meltdown.

“For the moment,” Segal says, “China is scared out of its wits by the events of the past six months since the Asian currency crisis. What it sees is a dominant United States calling the shots in the global economy.”

Whatever the motives, however, the shift toward cooperation has been noted by a wide range of China specialists.

China’s actions may be serving its own national interests, says Michael D. Swaine, a China specialist at the Rand Corp. in Santa Monica, “but so do every other power’s actions.”

“China’s shift toward engagement,” Swaine says, “reflects a determination by the Chinese leadership that cooperation in specific areas will strengthen their hand.”

On one level, Swaine says, stabilizing relations with the West, especially the United States, will allow China to “concentrate greater efforts on--and perhaps receive outside assistance for--their mounting domestic problems, particularly in the economic area.”

In early March, the National People’s Congress will convene to appoint a new government. The man most likely to be installed as China’s new premier is economic czar Zhu Rongji. Zhu has already identified the reform of China’s banks and state-owned enterprises as his No. 1 priority.

China’s big year began in February, when “paramount leader” Deng Xiaoping died at age 92. Although Deng had not directly participated in ruling China for several years, his death was a critical test for Jiang, his handpicked successor.

Jiang passed the test by delivering a eulogy that praised the late leader, father of China’s economic reforms, while establishing himself as Deng’s successor at the helm of power. Jiang passed another test by presiding over the smooth transfer of Hong Kong from British to Chinese sovereignty July 1.

At the 15th Communist Party congress in September, the 71-year-old Jiang watched as the party “retired” one of his chief rivals for leadership, National People’s Congress Chairman Qiao Shi. Finally, in late October, Jiang--an affable former mayor of Shanghai--capped a good year with a state visit to the United States, where he met with Clinton at the White House and was the guest of honor at a glittering state dinner.

At each step in this year of challenges, Jiang--and the Chinese diplomatic apparatus with him--appeared to be gaining confidence.

Probably the highest-profile manifestation of the newfound confidence came earlier this month when Chinese authorities finally freed the country’s most famous dissident, democracy crusader Wei Jingsheng. Wei, who spent most of the past two decades in prison for his political beliefs, is now in the United States, where he is a scholar in residence at Columbia University.

Another Western diplomat here recalls a low point last spring in the uncertain period after Deng’s death.

For the past several years, U.S.-Chinese relations have been seasonal, ebbing in the spring when the U.S. Congress debates giving China most-favored-nation trading status.

This year was no exception: Relations between the nations reached a peculiar low when state newspapers and radio focused on a complaint by a Chinese passenger on Northwest Airlines that he had been insulted by a flight attendant when he asked for second helpings of a hot meal.

The man claimed that he was racially insulted when the flight attendant allegedly asked him, “Why are you Chinese people always hungry?”

“Somehow this became a big issue in the press. Officials at the Foreign Ministry would even bring it up,” the diplomat says.

But for several months now, this kind of petty vitriol has been notably absent.

“All the propaganda loudspeakers have been virtually silent,” the diplomat says.