Nicholas Kristof scores again, but the victim of his dagger prose in today's The New York Times is the American political scene, not the Chinese. He takes a number of liberal Democrats in Congress to the whipping post over bad foreign policy towards Beijing. And he gives credit--mostly correctly--to Bush for five years of good foreign policy towards Beijing.
It is undoubtedly true that a mind that can work both sides of the street and the intersection too without missing a beat of intellectual honesty is a mind of genius. It is premature to permanently tag Mr. Kristof with the genius sobriquet in either literary or PoliSci realms, but it is not too early to salute him for working the "streets"--all sides of them--as well as any American columnist writing today.
The most important diplomatic relationship in the world is between the U.S. and China. It's souring and could get much worse.
Alas, the U.S. is mostly to blame for this. And the biggest culprit of all is the demagoguery of some Democrats in Congress.
There are plenty of legitimate reasons to be angry with China's leaders, but its trade success and exchange rate policy are not among them. The country that is distorting global capital flows and destabilizing the world economy is not China but the U.S. American fiscal recklessness is a genuine international problem, while blaming Chinese for making shoes efficiently amounts to a protectionist assault on the global trade system.
In fact, China's pegged exchange rate has brought stability to Asia, and the Chinese boom has tugged Japan out of recession and increased prosperity worldwide. In recent years, China has supplied almost one-third of the growth in the global economy (measured by purchasing power), compared with the 13 percent that came from the U.S.
Moreover, the U.S. has a history of offering Asia economic advice that proves awful. U.S. pressure helped produce Japan's disastrous bubble economy and aggravated the 1997-98 Asian financial crisis. So when American officials urge an adjustment in the yuan exchange rate, the Chinese should keep a hand on their wallets.
Over the last five years, President Bush has done an excellent job in managing relations with China - it's one of his very few successes in foreign policy - but lately he has engaged in protectionism. This month he reimposed quotas on certain Chinese textiles, and the Treasury warned China that it had better adjust its exchange rate or else.
Mr. Bush abandoned his principles because he was under attack from Democrats waving the bloody shirt of lost jobs. Sure, China's cheap yuan has cost us manufacturing jobs - but it has also led to a flood of Chinese capital to America, keeping interest rates low. If we blame China for lost American jobs in making shirts, we should credit it for new American jobs in banking and construction.
Americans are also unfair in accusing China of not stopping North Korea's nuclear program. The reality is that the North Koreans don't listen to the Chinese about anything, and many on each side look down on the other. Privately, some Chinese dismiss the North Koreans as "Gaoli bangzi" or Korean hillbillies. And fortified by a bit of liquor, North Koreans denounce Chinese as unscrupulous, money-grubbing traitors. Whenever I meet North Koreans, I tell them that the Chinese government doesn't like me - and my status soars.
China has been pushing hard in the last two years for a negotiated solution to the North Korean crisis, and it at least has a coherent policy on North Korea. That's more than you can say for the Bush administration.
One of the biggest risks for U.S.-China relations is the - very outside - chance that President Bush will order a military strike on the North Korean nuclear complex at Yongbyon. Most experts say that the resulting radiation leakage would probably not harm nearby countries, and in any case South Korea and Japan would be more at risk than China. But any hint that radiation had reached the Chinese coast would provoke anti-American fury across China.
There's a third big danger for U.S.-China relations, and this one is Beijing's fault: China's schools teach hatred of Japan, resulting in last month's street demonstrations in which Chinese protesters screamed slogans such as "Japanese must die."
The next act in the drama will unfold at sea. Japanese ships may start exploring disputed waters for oil and gas in the late summer or fall, perhaps with military escorts. China's leaders will then be under tremendous popular pressure to send China's own military vessels to block what Chinese will see as an armed Japanese incursion. And then Japan will ask the U.S. for help under the U.S.-Japan security treaty. ...
In the past, President Jiang Zemin protected the U.S.-Chinese relationship. But many Chinese scorned him as "qin Mei," or soft on the U.S. The new president, Hu Jintao, seems much less likely to go out on a limb to preserve good relations with the U.S.
So it's time for Americans to take a deep breath. Poisonous trade disputes with China will only aggravate the risks ahead, strengthen the hard- liners in Beijing and leave ordinary Chinese feeling that Americans are turning into China-bashers. Sadly, they'll have a point.
