China Redux

China signed a new trade agreement on services with the Associations of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Sunday. Here’s a disquieting comment from one of those nation’s leaders, which deserves a place in the annals of misbegotten phrasing:

“We are very happy to have China as our big brother in this region,” President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines said at the opening ceremony of the one-day meeting in Cebu, a central Philippine province.

According to the New York Times’ story on the agreement, two-way trade volume between China and the ASEAN countries last year amounted to more than $160 billion, up 23 percent from 2005. Two-way trade volume between the US and ASEAN nations constituted about $150 billion in 2005. So, the US and China are on roughly equal footing in terms of ASEAN trade volume. But US trade in the region is growing at a slower pace — US-ASEAN trade was up just 9 percent in 2005.

The recently inked US-ASEAN Trade and Investment Framework Agreement is a step forward, but a small one.

China and Russia teamed up on Friday to veto a US-sponsored resolution criticizing Burma’s human rights record. Now we know the Bush Administration’s sense of moral outrage, and willingness to proclaim it at all costs, has not yet been quashed. Even after it became clear the resolution would not pass, they decided to go ahead with it “on a matter of principle.” According to Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns,

“We don’t consider this a defeat,” Burns said. “We did the right thing. We stood up for universal human values.”

Rhetorically, the failed resolution makes the point about the US position on human rights in Burma (which, it should be pointed out, has already been made countless times, in countless other forums). But considering that this failed resolution actually accomplishes nothing, while managing to earn the wrath of China and Russia, one has to wonder whether it is actually an effective tactic for creating change and improving human rights in Burma.

The administration’s acting U.N. ambassador, Alejandro Wolff, said the US voted to assure the Burmese people that “we won’t forget you.” The persecuted Burmese surely are jumping for joy in their prison cells. Democracy is on its way!

China and Russia do not consider Burma much of a security threat, which is a powerful statement considering the fact that Burma borders China on the south.  Here are comments from Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya:

“No country is perfect. Similar problems exist in other countries as well.”

Indeed. In addition to China and Russia, the other countries to oppose the resolution: Sudan, Zimbabwe, Belarus, and South Africa.

This is only the fifth time that China has cast its veto since it joined the United Nations in 1971. In the past, China has tended to abstain rather than vote against resolutions it did not support. The last time China and Russia cast a double veto was in 1972.

This is a very assertive move by China. How does this tie back to last week’s anti-satellite missile test? And are the Burmese merely a pawn in the game?

It’s been said about US policy toward China since 1989: no one much likes it. There is good and there is bad, and no one seems to agree which is which. The incoherence of the foreign policy establishment on China poses great risks — perhaps as great as those posed by China herself.

In the meantime, China continues in its ascent. Destroys an aging satellite in space on January 11, 2007. Metaphor? Bald threat? Gentle expression of sovereignty? From the quiet out there, one suspects there is much more to come.