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CIAO DATE: 7/5/2006
Fear of China is overplayed
Victoria Samson
March 2006
This article, “Victoria Samson: Conservatives’ fear of China is overplayed,” first appeared in the Providence Journal on March 12, 2006.
WASHINGTON -China is rapidly becoming, to many U.S. conservatives, the primary menace to U.S. national security. In fact, the attitude seems to be that China is the new Soviet bear.
This mentality would have you believe that any gains by China are directly at the expense of the United States. But this attitude is unsubstantiated and based largely on racism -- which it would behoove the United States to drop immediately.
There have been rumblings for several years about China's military build-up and the lack of clarity of its intentions. Although the Pentagon's plans are built on assuming the worst, there are times when this can create a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Last month, the Pentagon released its latest Quadrennial Defense Review. This review, in which the Pentagon looks at threats that will be facing the United States, is supposed to propose how the Pentagon can best meet those threats in the post-Cold War, post-9/11 era. In it, China is spotlighted:
"Of the major and emerging powers, China has the greatest potential to compete militarily with the United States and field disruptive military technologies that could over time offset traditional U.S. military advantages absent U.S. counter-strategies."
Often used as an example of China's insistence on "catching up" to the United States is the country's manned space program. In 2003, China became only the third country to put a person in space. This immediately unfurled a slew of warnings by paranoid U.S. pundits that China would soon overtake the United States. (Never mind that the United States had beaten China by nearly 35 years.)
Last year, China launched its follow-up mission, which reinstated the debate over what, exactly, the Chinese were planning. Again, this ignored the United States's tremendous advantage in space -- and, indeed, in military matters.
Some may contend that the United States would have this response no matter which country was behind these actions. Fine; then what about Brazil? It has a burgeoning, if struggling, space-launch program. It made an agreement with Russia to launch a Brazilian cosmonaut; the first one is expected soon to be taken to the International Space Station.
Brazil, a powerhouse -- both in its economy and in the size of its population -- once had dreams of a nuclear-weapons program, which it reluctantly gave up in the 1990s. Nevertheless, Brazil has had disputes with the International Atomic Energy Agency over access for agency inspectors to Brazil's nuclear-power plant at Resende, which should be running this spring -- making Brazil one of only nine countries that can, on an industrial scale, enrich uranium.
Yet there is nary a peep out of the U.S. neocons about what Brazil may have up its sleeve.
Then there's India: It has a government-sponsored space program that claims to be considering moon and/or manned space missions. India is one of three unofficial nuclear-weapons countries, and the Bush administration just announced a nuclear deal with India. Moreover, from its science and military programs, India -- whose population nears that of China -- has an economy that is expanding at a breakneck pace. In fact, Indian engineers have fueled much of the recent U.S. economic growth. But where is the U.S. concern over India?
This near hysteria over what China is, and what it could be, is reminiscent of screeds in the '80s warning of the advance of another East Asian country -- Japan. And look what happened: Japan suffered a long recession.
This is not to say that everything China does is benevolent and apolitical. But the opposite is true, too: Not everything China does is intended to harm the United States. If Washington insists on holding the latter mindset, it could lose out on tremendous opportunities for cooperation -- and, in the process, harm only itself.
