| BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : MARCH 1, 1999 ISSUE | ||||||||
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| BOOKS
The Wild Mood Swings in U.S. China Policy ABOUT FACE A History of America's Curious Relationship with China, from Nixon to Clinton By James Mann Knopf 433pp $30 In the strange world of U.S.-China diplomacy, nothing is predictable. Red-baiter Richard M. Nixon establishes ties with Mao Zedong's brutal regime in 1972. Human rights advocate Jimmy Carter fails to notice any such abuses in China, a country that cracks down on democracy activists. Hawkish Ronald Reagan pushes state-of-the-art military technology to Chinese Communists. And George Bush, an ''old friend'' of China, sells sophisticated military hardware to Beijing's rival, Taiwan. James Mann's illuminating book, About Face, describes all such bizarre flip-flops in U.S. policy toward China, inconsistencies that are still apparent today. Having come up with a great idea for a book, Mann executes it well. As the diplomatic correspondent and former Beijing bureau chief of the Los Angeles Times, Mann could rely on firsthand sources. Many of the key players involved in shaping U.S. policy toward China over the past three decades are still alive. (Mann is also author of Beijing Jeep, a classic on a troubled U.S.-China joint venture.) What's more, he got access to never-before-disclosed government documents, notably papers covering Nixon's secret diplomacy with China in the early 1970s. In that period, Nixon and National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger hoped their overture with China would balance relations with Moscow and help provide ways to get the U.S. out of Vietnam. Later, the Carter and Reagan Administrations toughened their stances toward Moscow while cozying up to Beijing. Throughout the 1980s, U.S. Administrations wooed China, offered it arms and technology, and, as Mann says, ''largely ignored evidence of the darker side of the Chinese regime.'' This led to a policy of ''uncritical favoritism,'' says Mann, to the point where Kissinger, in a secret memo to Nixon, noted that ''with the exception of the United Kingdom, [China] might well be closest to us in its global perceptions.'' Relations between the U.S. and China were also ''secretive in nature,'' says Mann, forged by a small group of top U.S. and Chinese officials. Kissinger set the tone for future Administrations. He was, ''in effect, a godfather, the leader of a small cadre of men serving under him who were to guide American policy toward China for the next quarter-century,'' says Mann. Kissinger's style was to conduct such personalized diplomacy that many senior officials in the executive branch, including the State Dept., were kept in the dark on China policy. The 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre and the later collapse of the Soviet Union changed all that. Suddenly, there was no burning need to use China against Russia. At the same time, China's repressive policies at home upset many Americans. From then on, both Congress and American public opinion had to figure prominently in U.S. policymaking. Mann does a good job of showing the Clinton Administration's many about-faces. The President starts out as a critic of China, calling its leaders ''butchers,'' and winds up going further than any of his predecessors in recognizing China's sovereignty over Taiwan. Credit Beijing with handling Washington adroitly. Mann dismisses the notion that China's leaders fail to understand U.S. politics. ''Nothing could be further from the truth,'' he claims. To advance their agenda, China's leaders routinely play competing factions in the U.S. government against one another. In 1977, Republican Presidential aspirant Bush got ''lavish treatment'' in China after Carter's overtures to normalize relations fell short of Beijing's expectations. Many former U.S. officials also sought commercial ties with China after they were out of office. That wasn't lost on Beijing, which treated them well, realizing many were still influential players ''and might be back in office someday,'' says Mann. But Mann doesn't mention that China's leaders remain largely inept at public relations. That prevents them from improving their dismal image among the American public at large. Premier Zhu Rongji, the Chinese leader who most effectively deals with the West, will get a crack at it when he visits the U.S. in April. Surprisingly, Mann fails to discuss how the massive economic changes sweeping China since 1989 figure in U.S. policy. The Clinton Administration, he says, began a new policy that put U.S. commercial interests in China first. But that's only half the equation: With China's leaders committed to economic transformation, they must join the world community and start playing by its rules or risk lagging behind. Mann also assumes the U.S. can force China to change its human rights record. But that's naive. Beijing isn't likely to overhaul its political system to suit Washington. The U.S. should press Beijing to honor individual liberties, but that should not be the sole focus of foreign policy. China, a nuclear power, is simply too vital to world stability to treat like some tin-pot dictatorship. To avoid the vast mood swings in U.S. policy toward China during the past three decades requires ''sustained attention at the highest levels of the U.S. government,'' says Mann. It is also important for the U.S. to deal with China with its eyes wide open. America can ill afford to gloss over China's ''darker side,'' but neither can it afford to allow ties to unravel. The stakes are simply too high. BY JOYCE BARNATHAN _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP |
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