To what extent have US-China relations since 1989 been affected by globalization?

Throughout the 1990s, China was identified as a major world military power as well as a US rival. Many feared that China’s large and growing population and prosperous economy would aid it in becoming a challenger to the status quo, not unlike Germany in the first half of the 20th century. A late modernizer like Germany, China’s identity is infused with ideas of victimization and the desire to take its “rightful place” in the world. America has continually viewed China with a dual image: a looming threat or a lucrative partner. In the eyes of America, a fat, happy China with stakes in proven international frameworks could be a cooperative and profitable ally; at the same time, a prosperous China, with an expanded and modernized army as well as a highly educated and media-savvy populace, could rise as a challenge to American dominance in both Asia and the rest of the world. Conversely, China, “where the leadership and citizenry alike see themselves as having only recently wrested control of their national destiny from the depredations of foreigners after more than a century of humiliation,” sees influences and demands by outsiders as another attempt to keep China down (Lampton 7). Thus, “America’s demands for market access, a lower trade deficit, and limits on weapons exports are often viewed as … as effort to retard China’s rise” (Lampton 9). America sees China as a valid competitor, yet China proudly bears the cross of the injured party. Thus duality of perception leads to misunderstanding and argument over issues such as trade and the environment since Beijing often wants the preferred treatment of a developing country while Washington insists that “China be judged by a higher standard” (Lampton 9). Over the past fourteen years, one force has driven US-China relations above all others. That force is globalization, something which can be interpreted in a myriad of ways. Some say that globalization is a trend toward integration that has been present since early human society and cannot be controlled by any state, group, or individual. Trade among different societies has been present for thousands of years. Others state that globalization is a system perpetuated by several strong countries, corporations, and individuals. But as Daniel Yergin and Joseph Stanislaw put in their book The Commanding Heights, globalization is not a thing but a process and

“A move to a more connected world in which barriers and borders of many kinds … are coming down, felled both by technological change, especially technologies that bring down the costs of transportation and communication, and by ideas and policies that bring down the barriers to the movement of people, goods and information.”

This new interconnectedness promotes flows not of only technology but also ideas, news, information, entertainment, and people. Thus, globalization has affected a multitude of US-China issues, including trade, intellectual property rights, transnational organized crime, human rights, military opposition and cooperation, nuclear proliferation, media fluidity, and the War on Terrorism. From the period of 1972-1989, US-China relations were orchestrated between individual heads of State, bypassing the constraints and opinions of both congress and the public. By the time of the Tiananmen Square disaster, the public eye was turned toward China and new period of US-China relations had begun. With Russia no longer a cohesive force, the institutional machinery of foreign policy toward China had grown and gotten more complicated. The relationship evolved into a new rapport, which had to address a myriad issues ranging from human rights to the rule of law. This shift also reflected on US-China economic relations. Some specific frictions of the of the 1990s include intellectual property rights (IPR), textiles, market access, human rights, and China’s protracted negotiations with Washington over terms of accession into the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT)/the World Trade Organization (WTO). Over the past two decades, the issue of theft of intellectual property rights, such as software, compact disk, and logo piracy, has become a symbol for the inequity of the trade relationship between the United States and China, as well as “a metaphor for a wide range of Chinese behavior” (Lampton 120). The IPR issue also reflects several current conditions in China: a lack of institutional and legal development to even begin to deal with the legal implications of IPR, an absence of public understanding of and support for the issue, local corruption which hinders prosecution of offenders, and transnational organized crime which disperses the pirated products throughout the world, making the problem extra-national. In terms of human rights, in the early 1990s, emboldened by their recent victory of the Cold War, “Americans viewed China as a weakened regime that could be pushed into more humane treatment of its citizens” (Lampton 31). In contrast, encouraged by their country’s swift economic rise, China’s leaders believed that they were on the right track. They did not believe themselves to be beholden to Washington. Thus on the stumbling block of linking the renewal of China’s MFN status, it was Clinton and the Americans who took the fall. China is now America’s fourth largest trading partner and China’s reliance on American markets and American investment led the Clinton administration to miscalculate the leverage that Washington has over China’s internal policies. Achieving changes concerning human and labor rights, things that are on the margin of key issues such as economics and security, has proved to be exceedingly challenging. Part of the push towards addressing these more amorphous periphery issues is the changing nature of who regulated US-China relations. As mentioned earlier, unlike the decades of the cold war, the 1990s were filled with growing congressional involvement in making China policy. One of the major reasons for this change is the shift in US-China relations from a security-centered policy, where the president had more authority, to an economic-centered policy where there is substantially more congressional input. For example, throughout the 1990s, the legal context of the annual extension of most-favored-nation (MFN, now called normal tariff relations or NTR) status for China opened up “debate for politicians and interest groups to demonstrate their commitment to American values and to promote their concerns” (Lampton 117). In 1992, arguing that the republican president in office was too soft on countries that perpetuated inhumane atrocities, “the central China policy commitment that Bill Clinton made in the election campaign was that he would find a way to link Chinese access to the American market with the improved treatment of its citizens” (Lampton 33). From the very beginning, the MFN/human rights linkage was opposed by the American business community, who felt like they had not been adequately consulted prior to the decision, as well as Chinese intellectuals and even some human rights groups, who believed that impoverishing Chinese peasants through trade sanction would in no way promote people’s rights. Chinese leaders had confidence in the president’s inconstancy and in his need for Chinese help on “critical international issues such as the North Korea nuclear proliferation problem” (Lampton 41). And they were right. Almost exactly a year after he announced the linkage policy, Bill Clinton pronounced it dead. As a direct byproduct of the free flow of information caused by globalization, the leadership of the PRC must now account to its people to a much greater degree than it had to twenty years ago. The free flow of information is often the culprit responsible for this change, for “there is no way you can govern a well informed, large managerial/professional class without taking their views into account” (Nye 49). This flow of information is a main component of globalization and brings with it great political risk, thus “the Chinese government has traditionally discouraged the flow of information among individuals” (Nye 48). Yet, the Chinese cannot ignore the vast economic benefits of the Internet, and are trying to reap the benefits while mitigating the costs through a process of control and censorship that includes the blocking of web sites as well as “forbidding Chinese web sites to use news from web sites outside the country” (Nye 48). This suppression of information has warped American perception of the PRC and has consequently fueled misunderstandings. Not only has the Chinese leadership often been silent during crucial conflicts, but the mistreatment of foreign journalists sent to cover events in the PRC such as “bugging of apartments, harassment of informants [and], withdrawal of credentials” has affected the resulting coverage (Lampton 268). In this way, the PRC disadvantages itself, for “it would receive more knowledgeable and favorable coverage if it lowered the barriers to media entry and increased the access of reporters” (Lampton 270). It is apparent that the US and China view the proper role of mass media in a very different light and the “American press is faulted for not helping to improve the atmosphere of US-China relations – something that American journalists deeply believe is not their role” (Lampton 273). During times of high political pressure foreign journalists are the most in need of information and Chinese are least likely to talk, needing to first understand the party’s official position on the crisis and fearing the severe consequences resulting from a statement expressed not according to party lines. Thus journalists, often starved for any information at all, often listen to dissidents, who are more than eager to talk but who are neither always informed or unbiased. It is this process that aids in America’s distorted view of the PRC and limits China’s own ability to explain its position to the outside world. Also, the “anti-China bias that many Chinese perceive in the America press feeds their image of China as a victim and their deeply held sense that the West always tries to humiliate China” (Lampton 271). The fact remains that “Chinese officials do not value, indeed fear, a free flow of information, having been brought up in a system in which access to information was a privilege not a right” (Lampton 269). In the context of globalization, the strength of China’s military has also become a major issue in US-China relations. The pace of political, economic, and cultural change in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has been astounding considering that the country only opened the doors to transformation in 1978, shortly after Mao Zedong’s death. Since then, the PRC has modernized much faster than any westerner could have predicted, and as a result “China’s interests have rubbed up against those of the United States more frequently and dramatically than was anticipated two decades ago” (Lampton 3). This miraculous renovation is due in part to the fact that economic development became a major priority at every level of leadership in China. Beijing desired American cooperation in its development, while Washington was interested in a “constructive involvement of the PRC in the international community” (Lampton 68). Thus, by the end of the 1980s, “China was becoming an active member of the international community and multilateral organizations, thereby addressing both American desires for integration of the PRC and Chinese aspirations for recognition and international dignity” (Lampton 68). Yet, this very arrangement engendered many of the issues that dominated US-China relations throughout the 1990s. China’s rapid economic growth has raised questions in American minds about how this economic prosperity will be translated into military strength and how that strength will be exercised in the future. It is no secret that China’s army targets its growth towards possible conflicts with Taiwan and the United States, and in 2002 China spent about $65 billion on defense, “giving it the second-largest military budget in the world of after the Unites States and the largest in Asia” (Leob 1). This sum still looks paltry compared to the $390 billion that the Unites States is prepared to spend in 2003, especially since China is at least four times as populace as the United States. Though Beijing favors a peaceful solution of its differences with Taiwan, which it regards as “a renegade province of China,” it has not renounced “the use of force as a possible means of bringing about reunification” (Loeb 1). And though the United States still maintains a “one China” policy, President Bush has abandoned the strategy of six other presidents by moving away from a policy of “strategic ambiguity” on the topic of Taiwan and explicitly stating that the United States would defend Taiwan in the even of a Chinese attack. Recently though, even with President Bush’s often threatening and aggressive stance toward China and the world, the PRC seems to have made the decision to engage America in a way never seen before. Based on China’s recent moves “to establish additional rules to control the export of missile technology and dual-use biological and chemical agents, long-standing irritants in relations with Washington,” the Washington Post has stated that “the curious mixture of insecurity and arrogance with which China’s government used to view the world has been replaced with a sense of possibility” (Pomfret 1). China seems to have used its tumultuous experiences in the 1990s to shed its victim mentality and is now ready to see itself fully as a world leader. Chinese scholars and foreign policy officials are beginning to realize that not everything that the Unites States does near China’s borders is designed to hurt Beijing. In fact, “China’s interests are now more like those of a developed rather than a developing country” (Pomfret 2). In the future, it would be wise for the Bush administration to move towards a friendly relationship with the PRC, especially if it desires China’s aid in America’s multitude of wars. If change is to happen in China, it will happen slowly, but it does happen, as can be witnessed by the past decade. These changes, spurned on by the tide of globalization, have affected everything from agriculture to media to military in China, as well as how we deal with the PRC vis-а-vis all these issues. In the coming years, both America and China will restructure themselves in order to ride the tide of globalization and optimize their relationship toward each other.

Works Cited

Lampton, David M. Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing US-China Relations, 1989-2000. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001.

Loeb, Vernon. “China Buildup Said to Target Taiwan, US.” Washington Post 13 July. 2002: A18.

Nye, Joseph S. The Paradox of American Power: Why The World’s Only Superpower Can’t Go It Alone. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002.

Pomfret, John. “China Embraces More Moderate Foreign Policy.” Washington Post 24 Oct. 2002: A23.

Yergin, Daniel, and Joseph Stanislaw. The Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy. New York: Touchstone, 2002.