U.S. and China ‘Stuck With One Another’

As Washington and Beijing grope for an end to their worst confrontation in two years, experts say the dispute presents only a speed bump, not a roadblock, to what could be the most important global relationship in the coming decades.

The standoff over a stranded U.S. spy plane and its crew is likely to add firepower to vocal constituencies, such as the two countries’ militaries, that are extremely distrustful of cozier ties between the world’s most powerful democracy and the most powerful one-party state.

But so multifaceted are the exchanges across the Pacific--encompassing everything from business to education and science--that neither side can now turn its back on the other.

“Whether we like it or not, we’re stuck with one another,” said Jonathan Pollack, a China expert at the Naval War College in Rhode Island. “That doesn’t mean . . . an easy relationship. But after the emotion of an individual incident [like the one] we have now, people have to look past that to say, ‘What are the alternatives?’ ”

Damage to the relationship has undoubtedly been done, which could affect debate over Taiwan and future Sino-U.S. military interaction, analysts say.

But if the standoff concludes soon, especially with the release of the 24 U.S. military personnel being held on Hainan island in southern China, the fallout will be containable. In that case, the situation certainly would not be as bad as the deep freeze that settled on Sino-U.S. relations after North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes bombed the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia in May 1999.

Even after that bombing--which many in China considered a premeditated attack but which U.S. officials called unintentional--most of the diplomatic exchanges that Beijing suspended were quietly revived within a year.

This time, “enough people believe this incident was just an accident,” Jin Canrong, a specialist here in relations between the two countries, said of last Sunday’s collision between a U.S. Navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane and a Chinese F-8 fighter jet.

If history is any guide, relations should rebound to a large degree--part of the usual cycle between Beijing and Washington, said Suisheng Zhao, a political scientist at Washington College in Maryland.

“This is just another downturn,” Zhao said. “It should be followed by an upturn if past experiences can tell us anything about this relationship.”

He added: “It is true that hard-liners in both countries would want to make U.S.-China relations a hostage of their domestic politics. But this relationship is too important and too big to be totally subject to any country’s domestic politics.”

The question is how much leverage the hard-liners will gain from the current situation, which in China has allowed conservatives to argue more forcefully that the U.S. is an unfriendly power not to be trusted.

Although many outside China view the Communist leadership as a monolith, factionalism bedevils even the highest levels of government here. President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji are seen as more reform-minded, at least in the economic realm, while some ranking military generals and other entrenched interests advocate stronger opposition to the West and liberalization.

The slow pace of Chinese diplomatic reaction after Sunday’s collision suggested indecision or infighting over what line to take, analysts said.

That the dispute is at the core a military confrontation strengthens the hand of the People’s Liberation Army, which can claim greater authority over what to do in response.

“The PLA couldn’t really do anything about the embassy bombing in 1999, but this time China holds a stronger hand since it has the crew and plane,” said Phillip C. Saunders, a security expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in Northern California. “So there is also pressure to draw a line that the U.S. won’t cross again.”

The military has been clamoring for a bigger share of China’s resources in recent years, particularly after the central government ordered the armed forces in 1998 to give up lucrative private businesses they had counted on to supplement their income.

In China’s latest budget, annual defense spending increased by 18%, to the consternation of Western security officials--although overall, defense spending by China is far below that of the U.S.

With the sophisticated EP-3 spy plane on Chinese soil and some of its equipment likely in the PLA’s hands as well, the military will probably press its case even harder for a bigger piece of the spending pie so that it can counter U.S. technical superiority.

This is especially true because Beijing regards the U.S. as its single biggest obstacle to reunifying with the island of Taiwan, which China considers a rogue territory. The latest incident has allowed the PLA to take its measure of the U.S. military.

That could mean a chill in Sino-U.S. military exchanges, a program that the Clinton administration had tried hard to promote. Dialogue could wither or turn more adversarial.

“There will be pressure on both sides not to compromise on security issues,” Saunders said, “which will make it harder to deal with difficult issues like [theater missile defense, national missile defense] and Taiwan, which are coming down the pike.”

Likewise in the U.S., more hawkish politicians suspicious of Beijing have pointed to the current standoff as proof of the Communist regime’s threat to American interests.

In recent days, opponents of China on Capitol Hill have called for dramatic increases in weapons sales to Taiwan--a decision by President Bush on the matter is expected this month--and a revocation of normal trading rights.

But the Bush administration, while less rhetoric-friendly toward Beijing than was the Clinton administration, is well aware that the Sino-U.S. relationship does not turn merely on defense issues, analysts said.

Unlike the situation during the Cold War, where defense dominated relations with the Soviet Union to the exclusion of almost all else, the U.S. and China are connected at too many points to allow a policy driven by a single issue. Think of the 50,000 Chinese students studying in the U.S., experts say. Or the major investment made by U.S. businesses in China.

“We’re not trying to fashion a defense policy toward China,” said Pollack of the Naval War College. “We’re trying to fashion a larger policy toward China of which defense is a part.”

And that policy will have to factor in the needs of U.S. allies in Asia. The Bush administration had made clear that it wants to emphasize the importance of ties with friends while de-emphasizing relations with China to some extent.

The irony now is both that Sunday’s collision has pushed China to the front and center of Bush’s foreign policy and that America’s regional allies--Japan and South Korea and to some extent Taiwan--all want to see Sino-U.S. ties grow, for their own safety and prosperity.

“If this relationship goes down the toilet, there is nothing that would worry all of our allies in Asia more,” Pollack said. “They’re the ones who have to live with China. They live in the neighborhood.”