Fear of China’s Collapse Is Greatly Exaggerated

Let’s examine one of the main hidden justifications underlying U.S. policy toward China and its Communist regime. We’ll call it the Avoid-China’s-Collapse strategy.

What American officials say to explain their foreign policy in private often does not match what they say on television. Some arguments go over with the American public better than others. The private assumptions are what matter most, not only because they illuminate official thinking but also because they are largely untested by public debate.

On China, one of the unarticulated reasons for the U.S. policy of engagement goes like this: America does not want China to fall apart, to become an economic disaster like today’s Russia. The world does not have the wherewithal to cope with two failed powers at once.

I’m convinced that this line of thinking lies at the heart of current Clinton administration policy toward China. Whatever those who make American policy may say in public about the importance of political change or the need for democracy in China, the truth is that they are reluctant to take actions that might upset political stability in the world’s largest country.

The Avoid-China’s-Collapse theory did not start with Clinton. In reflecting on Bush administration policies in 1990 amid the upheavals in Eastern Europe, Douglas Paal--then a China specialist on the National Security Council staff--observed in an interview: “The whole world was flying down, straining every resource we had. . . . We were not interested in adding China to the list of basket cases. We had no interest in pushing them over the edge.”

What should one think of such reasoning as it applies to China today?

The first point is to note how ironic it is. On China, the administration and Congress are utterly out of sync. At a time when Congress fears that China might be growing too strong, the executive branch and many China scholars are worried that it is becoming too weak.

“If China really slows down economically, that would be a bigger problem for the world than [its] economic success,” said Harvard University professor Ezra Vogel. “China has been the engine of growth for places like Hong Kong and Taiwan and others in Asia.”

The second point is that the Avoid-China’s-Collapse theory equates China and the former Soviet Union in a way that may not be justified.

Look at the unstated assumption: Because Russia’s economy disintegrated after communism collapsed in the Soviet Union, the Chinese economy would suffer the same miserable fate if China’s communist regime fell.

But is that necessarily true? I think this line of argument takes an overly pessimistic view of China’s people, its society and its economy. China has many underlying strengths that would enable it to survive a change in government better than did the former Soviet Union.

“I don’t think it’s likely that China would be as bad as Russia,” Vogel said. “They [the Chinese] have got a lot of things going for them.”

China has an economy that, while currently fragile, has been soaring for most of the decade. It has a growing number of younger leaders educated in or familiar with the outside world. It has the example of nearby Taiwan, which, while much smaller than China, has survived and thrived under a democratic government.

Indeed, one of the successes of America’s China policy in the 1970s was to encourage China to open to the outside world. That enabled it to develop to such an extent that, even if the communist regime collapsed, China would not be likely to behave like the Soviet Union in 1991.

In the current American debate about China policy, those who favor the Clinton policy of engagement regularly admonish their critics not to equate China with the former Soviet Union, because the two countries are different.

Fair enough. But just as the two countries are not the same militarily, they are not the same economically. So why should America base its policy toward China on the exaggerated, unrealistic worry that, if the current regime in Beijing were to fall, the country would look like modern-day Russia?

Ultimately, the Avoid-China’s-Collapse theory seems like rationalization--an excuse to justify strong American ties with the communist leadership in Beijing and to avoid policies aimed at encouraging democracy inside China.

Next month, Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, who is in charge of China’s economy, is scheduled to visit Washington for talks with President Clinton. Many of the issues will be economic: Will there be a deal to bring China into the World Trade Organization? Will China pledge once again not to devalue its currency? What can be done about the huge American trade deficit with China?

But beneath all these economic issues is an important political one: Is it America’s policy to help keep China’s current regime in power? That is a serious question but one that, so far, Washington does not openly discuss.

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Jim Mann’s column appears in this space every Wednesday.