Fear and folly in China

Ah, the Bush administration -- pinnacle of diplomacy! Having finished his grand tour of burning bridges across Europe and the Middle East, it looks like President Bush is turning his attention to China. In America, China is regarded with a skeptical eye: What are those shifty Chinese up to this time? With booming economic growth and an expanding military, as well as an increasingly active role in diplomacy, it appears China is posturing to become a world superpower.\nPrior to making his own trip to China in November, Bush sent bulldog Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to China to soften up the ground. Rumsfeld's ham-handed visit represents another of Bush's foreign policy bungles. China is just as skeptical of American intentions, and Rumsfeld's rather ridiculous visit points out the unnecessary posturing by both sides.\nDespite unprecedented access to Chinese military facilities, including its nuclear weapons sites, Rumsfeld still managed to get in a jab at China's military budget, complaining that while the Chinese declared to have spent only $30 billion on defense, Pentagon estimates put that number at $90 billion. Sounds like a lot, right? Yet, despite its gargantuan military, that still puts China in second place in defense spending to our fair nation, which last year spent $440 billion on defense. And China's the one posing the threat?\nIt's probably important to note here that just because I have slanted eyes doesn't mean I love China. In fact, my parents immigrated to America from Taiwan, a territory at which China has pointed a few hundred ballistic missiles, and is a nice place to visit every now and then. China has piles of human rights violations and just issued a statement reasserting the will of the Communist Party as the will of the people. By essentially ignoring existing trade laws, China has aggressively pursued economic growth at the expense of just about everything else.\nRegardless, America's policy toward China is still flawed. Rather than viewing China as a threat, as it is being framed by chicken-hawk Huntington devotees, America should see China as an opportunity. Yes, China is building a stronger military and economy. Who are we, though, to complain about an ascendent China? Can't a country do what it wants to stabilize its region, just as we do in our neck of the woods?\nThe problem with America's China policy is that we have no China policy, at least nothing coherent, as evident by Rumsfeld's cryptic comments about China's "mixed signals." As long as we vacillate between threats and incentives, we will never be able to attain a more meaningful dialogue with China. How can we expect anything but mixed signals from China when mixed signals are all we ever send?\nWhat happens to China and other nascent first-class nations in the next 25 years will be paramount to the security and well-being of the United States. Opening up China economically and politically should be a priority, and when the secretary of defense makes vague comments about the possibility of a Chinese threat, Bush's historic visit to China stumbles prematurely. No matter what our China policy ends up being, can't we have something better than Rumsfeld's "we'll see"?