China Redux

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s rancorous remarks on China during a speech on Thursday in Australia point to potential dangers ahead for the US-China relationship. Cheney’s embittered attitude towards China typifies the Bush Administration’s roller-coaster diplomacy and constant mixed signals for its Chinese counterparts.

One day the administration talks about the need for increased cooperation and partnership with China (and helping China to become a “responsible stakeholder”) ; the next day, a senior US official is publicly reprimanding China for its policies and chiding it for its most cherished strategic goal (the peaceful rise). No wonder China is wary of dealing with the US; it doesn’t know what to think.

The Bush Administration’s bipolar approach to China is emblematic of a broader foreign policy narrative which has plagued the president: the deep tension between the neoconservatives, including Cheney, and realist conservatives such as former Deputy Sectretary of State Robert Zoellick and current Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Both camps share some suspicions towards China, including its military goals and its human rights record.

The difference is that neoconservatives unabashedly view China as a major “threat.” The neoconservative policy network has spent many years, going back to the early 1990’s, putting together plans aimed at stopping China’s rise as part of their goal to solidify US global power in the “unipolar” world (for a fascinating intro to this issue, see excerpts from the once-classified Defense Planning Guidance, written by Paul Wolfowitz in 1992). They make outsized claims about China’s “military build-up,” which itself is greatly exaggerated, and use fear-mongering about China’s rise to justify increased US military spending and hardball diplomacy.

With close ally Donald Rumsfeld out at the Pentagon, Cheney is taking up the mantle of chief China critic at the highest levels of the Bush Administration. In fact, Cheney’s comment that “China’s continued fast-paced military buildup [is] less constructive and not consistent with China’s stated goal of a peaceful rise” is nearly identical to the statements (via IISS) made by Rumsfeld himself in June 2005 at a defense conference in Singapore.

But this has been Cheney’s MO for the past 8 years on every major foreign policy issue including Iraq, Iran, homeland security terrorism, etc etc (funny that you rarely, if ever, hear him talk about the US economy, or jobs, or trade, or the environment, etc etc). And now he’s picking this fight with China. Let’s hope no one is paying attention.