‘Goldilocks’ Policy for China May Be ‘Just Right’

America needs a sense of balance about China. So here’s an idea. Just as the U.S. economy has been called a “Goldilocks” economy--not so overheated as to generate inflation, not so cool as to sink into recession--the United States needs something like a Goldilocks policy for relating to China: neither too chummy nor too aloof, but “just right.”

Balance surely would help, agrees Rand security analyst Michael Swaine, author of an important new monograph on U.S. policy toward Taiwan and co-author of a new Rand book, “Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy.” Yet he gets irritated with politicians, academics and journalists (like me) who try to compress the complex China-relations question into a snappy slogan or catch-all phrase. America should be done with those one-word labels, such as “containment” and “constrainment,” or “strategic alliance” and “strategic competition.”

“We should treat China like a great power, period,” Swaine says, “but without appeasement.”

China is a lot easier for Americans to hate than to love, but it’s hard to know what to feel about the astonishing corruption scandal that surfaced last week. Like China analysts all over the world, Swaine watched with fascination as the international news media reported the mind-boggling story of colossal corruption in the Chinese port city of Xiamen, only 100 miles off Taiwan’s shore. The bootlegging and smuggling network, headed by party and government officials in the southeastern coastal province of Fujian, looks to be the biggest such scandal since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. That it was made public at all appears to be a political achievement for Premier Zhu Rongji, champion of an anti-corruption offensive designed to pare down the rot and make Beijing more competitive in this globalized world. For a preeminent China expert like Swaine, these public revelations offer further proof of the leadership’s preoccupation with economic growth and the de-prioritization of almost everything else.

This even includes the volatile issue of Taiwan, which will elect a new president in March. Beijing regards the island as a disrespectful, wayward son that must--someday--be returned to the family fold. Yet “the disincentives for the Chinese to invade are high,” Swaine reasons. “They will only do it if they have no choice.”

Taiwan doesn’t want war with China either. It could not hold out alone for long, so Taiwan’s survival would ultimately require intervention by U.S. forces, a scenario the U.S. military would much rather avoid.

Swaine believes, however, that the United States will create serious problems for itself with Beijing, now and in decades to come, if it moves into a closer strategic relationship with Taiwan. “It’s not that we shouldn’t get closer to Taiwan simply because Beijing doesn’t like it,” he explains. Instead, we should avoid strategic intimacy because, “in the cost-benefit analysis, we gain more by not doing too much than if we do.”

Transforming the U.S.-Taiwan relationship into an outright, explicit, formal alliance, as some in Congress actually want, would not enhance the island’s security but rather undermine it. That’s because it would uproot Beijing’s stake in improving its relationship with Washington, a Beijing priority that keeps its Taiwan ambitions in check. “Please understand what the Taiwanese authorities are doing when they request more high-profile arms than they can possibly use anyway,” Swaine warns. “It’s a mistake to make them look like a formal ally, like South Korea or Japan. Besides, they’re not.”

That both Taiwan and the United States are electing presidents this year could trigger major debates and policy reviews. We need to convey a consistent and clear message that the American people want to get along with the Chinese people, but at the same time the American people don’t want to see Taiwan kicked around. Yes, the new Taiwan president needs to protect the interests of his people, who on the whole want no part of the Beijing regime. That must be achieved without goading Beijing into a course of action that will lead to tragedy for everyone involved. Swaine argues that China is at least 15 to 20 years of major economic development and military buildup away from having the capability to become anyone’s worst nightmare. That should give the United States and China enough time to get the relationship right or mess it up for time immemorial.

Anticipating the historic upcoming vote in Congress to grant China permanent normal-trading status, a member of Congress involved quipped that the vote would be close, in part because “this is not a date, this is a marriage.” Not quite. We have serious differences with many of nations that have been granted normal trading status. Trying to create a relationship with China is far more an exercise in prudence than polygamy. Yes, the U.S. needs a steady policy without extremes: One that is “just right.”