Bush Deftly Plays the Taipei-Beijing Card

Chinese leaders hailed President Bush’s visit to Beijing last month as constructive and positive despite disagreements over proliferation, human rights and Taiwan. In the weeks since, however, Beijing has complained of a new “chill” although it gives no indication of wishing to cancel the upcoming visits of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.

That willingness to continue doing business with Washington reflects the Bush administration’s steady but quiet success in doing what foreign policy experts long declared impossible: regularizing relations with both Taiwan and China at the same time.

Given the Chinese penchant for policy by numbers--”one country, two systems,” “three no’s,” etc.--they now confront some U.S. numerology: the two normalizations.

An indication of the changed policy was the attendance of Taiwan Defense Minister Tang Yiau-ming at an arms sales conference in Florida in early March. It was the first substantive visit of such a Taiwanese official since 1979, when President Carter severed relations with the island and terminated the U.S.-Taiwan defense pact. More important, the visit enabled Tang to meet on U.S. soil with such high-ranking officials as Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly, contacts stringently avoided by prior U.S. administrations.

Neither was the visit disguised as a mere “transit stopover,” the term used for last year’s pair of three-day stays in New York and Houston by Taiwan President Chen Shui-bian. Even under that cover, Chen was allowed to move around in public, meet with U.S. scholars and attend a major league baseball game, in marked contrast to his transit in 2000 when the Clinton administration kept him under virtual house arrest in a Los Angeles hotel.

These manifestations of official respect for representatives of Taiwan’s democracy follow earlier administration moves to bolster Taiwan’s security: the decision to sell sophisticated new weapons systems and Bush’s pledge in April that the U.S. would do “whatever it took” to defend the island against Chinese aggression.

The latter declaration sent shock waves through the academic and think-tank communities and among some in Congress because it finally brushed aside the veil of strategic ambiguity. That antiquated policy was meant to keep Beijing guessing about the U.S. commitment to Taiwan but instead invited Chinese threats and adventurism.

Lest critics succeed in muddying his clarified policy by dismissing it as a slip of the tongue, the president stayed on message during his trip to Asia in February. He told the Japanese parliament that “America will remember its commitments to the people on Taiwan.” Two days later in Beijing, a well-prepared Chinese student asked Bush if he would adhere as faithfully to the three Sino-U.S. communiques that the People’s Republic uses to push its version of a “one-China” principle. The president deftly invoked instead the Taiwan Relations Act, the 1979 U.S. law that guarantees Taiwan’s security.

This unflinching fealty to Taiwan reflects the administration’s decision to upgrade the China relationship as well by finally treating Beijing as a mature, responsible player in world affairs and expecting it to behave as such. The Bush team has made clear that threats and rhetorical tantrums will not deter the U.S. from pursuing its basic national interests in Taiwan or in nonproliferation, human rights, trade and, after the EP-3 plane incident a year ago, the United States’ right to conduct legitimate surveillance in international airspace.

And, while Beijing has complained of developments since the Bush visit, compared with Chinese reactions to lesser “provocations in the past” its protestations against Bush’s no-nonsense approach have been relatively muted and ritualistic. Chinese leaders may well perceive that he is according them the businesslike respect an emerging great power merits. More practically, they recognize how much China has to gain from a more harmonious relationship with Washington.

Atmospherics aside, however, Beijing has yet to meet the most important test of responsible international conduct set by the administration: Chinese sales of dangerous weapons and technology to unsavory regimes. At some point, China will have to reject that camp to earn its place as a full member of the civilized world. That is a normalization that rests in Chinese hands alone.