A Yellow Peril? No : Excesses of the new anti-China lobby.

IN recent years, China has become the focus of conservative discontents in foreign policy. The Christian Right accuses it of persecuting religious minorities; "trade hawks" oppose it on behalf of the American worker; what remains of the old "China Lobby" support those Taiwanese who want independence; and defense conservatives argue that China is preparing to challenge Ameri can power in the Far East.

This "anti-China Lobby" has been given a great boost in the last few years by the criminal misbehavior of the Clinton administration. But the roots of conservative opposition to the gerontocrats in Beijing go deeper. China is viewed by the Right as a strategic threat and an ideological competitor in the international sphere, as well as a political opportunity in the domestic sphere. These various aspects of the China syndrome are, of course, dependent on one another. If mainland China were not at least a potential strategic threat, it could hardly mount a serious ideological challenge; no one lies awake worrying about the ideological impact of Burma. Nor would there be political dividends if it were not possible to warn American voters, as William Kristol and Robert Kagan do in the current issue of The National Interest, that China is hostile to the U.S.

The problem with this interrelated argument is that not enough people are buying it. Take China as an issue to rally the Right. It has the smell of illegitimate opportunism about it. As Owen Harries has pointed out in these pages, foreign policy should be determined by the national interests of the U.S., not by the partisan advantage of the GOP. Even it we discount that objection, however, the polls suggest that though Americans are today more critical of China than at any other time since Tiananmen-and reasonably so-they are not especially worried about the threat it poses. (Nor, indeed, about any foreign-policy threat.) Those candidates such as Gary Bauer and Steve Forbes who sought to capitalize on anti-China sentiment failed to gain much traction from it; and those who broadly favor engagement with Beijing, such as George W. Bush, were not much harmed by that. If anti-China noises failed to win support in the immediate wake of the Clinton-China campaign-finance scandal, they are hardly likely to succeed politically in the coming years unless China makes them credible.

Which brings us to another question: Is China an ideological competitor of America's? Here the answer is clear: The Right's attempt to present the current Chinese regime as the Soviet Union's ideological heir is absurd. Indeed, China is no longer a Com munist country in any real sense. It is authoritarian, not totalitarian, in politics, and capitalist in economics. Though its persecution of minorities and dissidents has clearly worsened just recently, it is still a much freer country than it was when it was our ally against the Soviet Union (though expanding the economic freedom that benefits ordinary Chinese does not seem to interest the new anti-China hands). Above all, China does not possess an ideological model that it believes is in principle applicable to the whole world. On the contrary, it looks abroad to Singapore for a successful authoritarianism that might justify its own morally bankrupt regime. And it does not have the Soviet Union's missionary zeal to challenge the U.S. in every corner of the globe. Curiously, it is the new anti-China hands who preach a worldwide mission, arguing that the United States cannot live in a world "half-slave, half-free" and must therefore aim at the "transformation" (in more candid terms, overthrow) of China and other undemocratic regimes. We are told that undemocratic regimes like China cannot restrain themselves from provocative foreign adventures since that serves to justify their rule at home. There is some sleight of hand in this argument, however. It does not seem to require the transformation of Saudi Arabia.

Consider China's position: It is a country of modest economic strength, political instability, and military power. Its average annual income is less than $1,000; its economy is growing, but unequally across the country; it is surrounded by strong and potentially hostile powers, notably Japan and India, with which the U.S. has warm relationships; it has the capacity, at best, to fire a small handful of rockets at the U.S. and its main allies, yet is vulnerable to a devastating nuclear response; and there are increasing signs of internal discontent such as the Christian and Falun Gong movements, which the authorities have suppressed in heavy-handed ways. Not surprisingly. For, as the new anti-China hands argue when they are not stressing China's strategic threat, the government in Beijing is nervously authoritarian rather than self- confidently totalitarian. And if it is systematically rearming and seeking to modernize its economy with outside help, almost any government would do the same in these circumstances. The U.S. should, of course, seek to restrain Beijing's program of strategic rearmament, forge whatever defensive alliances seem sensible in response to any regional displays of power by Beijing, and seek political concessions in return for economic and other forms of cooperation. That is strategic common sense.

But the policies proposed by the anti-China Lobby go well beyond such cautious blocking moves. They would promise, in effect, to protect Taiwan against a Chinese military response to any declaration of independence; they seek to prevent "permanent normal trade relations" with China and its entry into the World Trade Organization; and they aim to aggravate any difficulties faced by Beijing in the hope of effecting its democratic "transformation."

From the most Americo-centric standpoint, these are curious policies. To begin with, the status quo of "one China" has been American (and Taiwanese) policy for the last 50 years. It keeps the peace. And it preserves the legitimate interests of Taiwan. Though the American people might be prepared to defend Taiwan against an unprovoked attack, they show no desire to be dragged into a war with China by Taiwanese voters seeking a merely legal gloss on their already existing independence. And if Chinese officials occasionally issue bloodcurdling threats against Taiwan, these are either glossed over very quickly, or made in response to hints of Taiwanese independence, or expressions of a great-power nostalgia that have yet to determine policy-and that the new anti-China hands discount as rhetorical excess when issued by Russian leaders.

The new anti-China hands dismiss American corporate expectations of big profits from Chinese trade as wildly exaggerated. They are quite right. For the same reason, however, their warnings about the dangers of permanent normal trade relations and Chinese membership in the WTO are equally overdone. China is a modest contributor to world trade; its share is less than that of Holland. All of the current evils (slave labor, very low wages, etc.) have occurred with China outside the WTO. And its membership would give some leverage to other member-states and WTO officials not only to regulate such practices but also to force Beijing to open up parts of the economy now closed to foreigners. Of course, China will not comply with these rules unless the WTO compels it. Nor will France. If we are to surrender the power to intervene that WTO membership gives us, however, what will replace it? At least Pat Buchanan has such a lever: namely, a variable tariff based on reciprocal arrangements; but somehow the anti-China Lobby seems unlikely to embrace Buchananism, however logically.

It is the general strategy of aggravating China's difficulties that is most self-contradictory, however. As the new anti-China hands argue in a different context, the nervous authoritarians in Beijing may well be tempted to launch foreign adventures as a solution to domestic difficulties. Maximizing those difficulties is therefore to maximize China's incentive to seize Quemoy or Matsu, lob a rocket at Taiwan, or saber-rattle towards Japan or some other U.S. ally. Such adventures, once begun, often lead in unexpected directions. Is it really sensible to court a war with China because you calculate that China may court a war with you? Or should the new anti-China hands perhaps have a nice quiet lie-down?