China's Political Strategy Exposed
China’s Political Strategy Exposed By J. Michael Waller [EMAIL PROTECTED] April 2, 2001
Communist China is using sophisticated methods to try to manipulate the Bush
administration into doing its will, including mobilizing influential Republicans
on its behalf. President George W. Bush and his national-security team are in
the crosshairs of an aggressive Chinese influence operation to manipulate the
administration’s decisions about security interests in Asia. Through a
combination of high diplomacy, personal contacts, media campaigns, threats and
money, Beijing is exploiting divisions within the Bush camp and the Republican
Party. The immediate goal is to prevent the White House from authorizing sales
of defensive military equipment to Taiwan and from deploying effective defenses
against China’s small but growing arsenal of tactical and strategic ballistic
missiles. Beijing rapidly is modernizing its primitive military from an almost
purely defensive armed force to one that can project offensive power throughout
the region and hold the United States hostage to nuclear blackmail. First on its
list of objectives is the retaking of Taiwan, which it views as a renegade
province. The trump card of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in its campaign
against the island is its formidable buildup of ballistic missiles across the
Taiwan Strait — a move that easily would be checkmated if the United States were
to sell Taiwan four Arleigh Burke-class destroyers equipped with the
supersophisticated Aegis air-defense and battle-management system. This would
allow Taiwan to knock out missile attacks from the mainland. Not only that, but
the ships would enable the United States to include Taiwan in a regional
theater-missile-defense system with other allies, including South Korea and
Japan. Similarly, Beijing wants to make sure the United States never deploys an
antiballistic-missile system that would eliminate the threat of its small but
growing force of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) aimed at the
American heartland. The game for Beijing is to leave Taiwan and the United
States vulnerable to missile blackmail. The Chinese campaign bears all the
hallmarks of a Soviet-era “active-measures” operation except that it is far more
sophisticated and likely to have a higher degree of success. Whereas the Soviets
tried to exploit naïve liberals and moderates to do their bidding, the PRC is
mobilizing worldly Republicans and businessmen drawn into situations where their
profits depend on keeping China’s Communist rulers happy. Beijing’s previous
major influence operations concentrated on the annual certification for “most
favored nation” (MFN) trading status — a name that so embarrassed policymakers
that they changed it to something more bland. Now, that sophisticated
active-measures machine is focusing on military matters that directly affect
U.S. national security. In an orchestrated campaign of good cop/bad cop, Chinese
officials have gone directly to U.S. public opinion, trying to appeal to
sentimental feelings of cooperation and partnership while literally threatening
war. The operation is aimed at five levels: the American public at large,
journalists who influence the public and decisionmakers, business elites,
Congress and the president and his inner circle. “It’s a remarkable campaign,” a
savvy administration official tells Insight. “We haven’t even settled in here
and the Chinese have sent three high-level groups of emissaries to lobby the
president, his national-security team and even members of his family.” The
regime has sharply focused its message. Rather than a blanket condemnation of
all U.S. arms sales to Taipei, as had been its pattern, the PRC took a more
nuanced approach to target only certain weapons systems, namely those key Aegis
warships. It made relatively few objections to the sale of less-capable
Kidd-class destroyers that have no missile-defense role. The first PRC
delegation visit, in February, consisted of former ambassadors to Washington and
Ottawa who were well-connected in both capitals. The second, in late February
and early March, included a senior official responsible for Taiwan affairs. The
third was a high-level visit of Vice Premier Qian Qichen, who is responsible for
coordinating foreign policy and dealing with Taiwan. All three visited
Washington without an invitation, which diplomatic sources say is a sharp break
with PRC protocol that always had been to await an official invitation. The
timing was exquisite, coming as it did just before President Bush was to decide
which weapons the United States would sell to Taiwan. Official PRC sources say
that Qian had four items on his agenda: concern about the administration’s
criticism of the Chinese human-rights situation, Beijing’s weapons proliferation
to Iraq, upcoming sales of U.S. arms to help Taiwan defend itself and opposition
to a U.S. national missile-defense system. While Qian and others focused on
trying to influence the decisionmakers one-on-one, others (including PRC
President Jiang Zemin) sought to influence the American public and the
Washington body politic by courting prominent news organizations with rare,
exclusive interviews. In a Beijing interview with the Washington Post that
avoided the shrillness on display from his colleagues, Jiang labored to project
a folksy and humorous image while being careful to be firm about the Aegis
warships, rejecting a U.S. proposal to forego the sale if the PRC withdraws its
missile force aimed at Taiwan. Jiang spoke of an influence network that rivals
anything he had under the Clinton/Gore administration. In a remarkable article
based on its interview with Jiang, the Post reported that senior Communist Party
officials had directed the emissaries visiting the United States “to seek out
‘old friends’ of China in the United States as well as current officials, part
of Jiang’s belief that Republican Party elders can be persuaded to weigh in on
China’s behalf.” Jiang told the Post, “In terms of private friendships, I think
I have more friends in the Republican Party.” He cited former national-security
advisers Henry Kissinger and Brent Scowcroft and former president George Bush.
“We believe that Bush Sr. will definitely push Bush Jr. to bring U.S.-China
relations to a new level,” the Communist leader said. That’s apparently why some
of the PRC emissaries paid personal visits to the former president at his home
in Texas. Insight sources say these visits were designed to fortify certain
elements in the current administration who had served in the White House under
the senior Bush and who hold views that Beijing considers favorable to its
interests. Within a week of the visit to Texas, Chinese newspapers reported that
Yang Jiechi, a Foreign Ministry specialist in U.S. affairs, would be the new
ambassador to Washington. Comrade Yang was chosen because he has a long
relationship with the elder Bush, whom he escorted during a visit to Tibet and
who has been described as a “friend” of the family. Sources close to the elder
Bush tell Insight he is of a generation that still views China, in Cold War
terms, as a counterbalance to the far more formidable Russia, with its bristling
nuclear arsenal. That generation, which came of age during the Nixon presidency,
has split in two directions. Bush senior, who briefly was U.S. ambassador to
Beijing, maintained his contacts with Chinese leaders but is not known to have
exploited those contacts for financial gain. His opinions, even when wrong, have
integrity. Going in the other direction, however, are individuals such as
Kissinger and Scowcroft, who aggressively made money from Chinese contacts and,
in so doing, tainted themselves and their acolytes indelibly in the China
debate, say analysts. U.S. business maintains a considerable role in the
formulation of policy toward China, and here Beijing craftily has tied business
relations to political activity. In early March, a Chinese official hinted in
the official Communist Party newspaper People’s Daily that Beijing might
retaliate against U.S. companies in Asia if Washington went through with the
Taiwan arms sale. Zhou Mingwei, a senior PRC official responsible for activity
directed at Taiwan, said on the eve of his visit to the United States that
Beijing might exploit U.S. companies doing business in China to pressure the
Bush administration. Qian did just that during his March visit to New York City
and Washington. He gave an awkwardly worded but well-received speech on March 23
to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations and the U.S.-China Business
Council. He told his applauding audience and viewers coast-to-coast via C-SPAN
that Beijing’s rapid absorption of Taiwan “is conducive to a healthy development
of our bilateral ties and to the peace of the Asia Pacific and the world at
large.” If the communists did not succeed in taking over Taiwan soon, Qian said,
that peace would be threatened. Earlier, another top Communist Party official,
Liu Huaqiu, named Kissinger and Scowcroft as people on whom Beijing could count
to keep the younger Bush in line, according to a separate Washington Post
account. The Post reported that Liu “said he has received personal assurances
that American ‘friends of China’ who surround President Bush’s father would step
in to ‘teach Bush’ if relations hit a crisis.” The crisis, though, appears to be
originating in Beijing. At the annual meeting of the National People’s Congress
in March, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan warned the United States in the bluntest
language to stop selling arms to Taiwan. Using words that are extremely harsh in
the diplomatic world, Tang said the United States must “rein in its wild horse
on this side of the precipice” and slammed the Bush administration as
“perverted” for sponsoring a U.N. resolution on human rights that criticized
Chinese Communist policy. A report from Hong Kong said that Tang tried to sound
“relatively restrained.” The message is that the Chinese leadership has
difficulty restraining itself as it tries to project a reasonable, moderate
image. Qian’s threat of war over an Aegis sale, made over dinner with New York
media executives and hinted at in his Washington speech, is a case in point.
Adm. Dennis C. Blair, commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific and not known as a
hawk, said that Communist China’s in-your-face weapons buildup could justify
sales to Taiwan of the very weapons systems Beijing so shrilly opposes. “It’s
important that the Chinese make the connection between what they deploy on their
side of the strait and the types of technologies that the U.S. might make
available to Taiwan to provide for its sufficient defense,” Blair told reporters
while visiting Beijing. “And certainly a future sea-based, Aegis-based,
missile-defense program would have to be part of that.” Stages of Communist
China’s Influence Campaign Low: Constant themes in party- and state-controlled
media outlets, which are picked up by Western journalists. Low-level diplomatic
messages conveyed to Western leaders. Medium: Pressure on U.S. businesses
seeking access to Chinese markets. Many of these businesses, in turn, lobby
policymakers in Washington and make pro-China public statements for the press.
Public diplomacy of second-echelon People’s Republic of China (PRC) leaders who
bring messages to kept groups in the United States and to Washington-based
media, both in a confidential setting and for public consumption. At the
diplomatic level, routine communications that are conveyed to the leadership.
The message diverges between the conciliatory and the threatening. High:
Personal diplomacy of visits by senior PRC leaders to U.S. figures in and out of
government who can apply pressure personally on the president and his inner
circle. These visits break protocol by being uninvited; the PRC officials impose
themselves on their U.S. hosts and make statements of both public and
confidential nature to influence top U.S. decisionmakers, including the
president. What Beijing Wants From Its New Influence Campaign Previously, the
People’s Republic of China focused its major influence operations on economic
and trade issues. Now, Beijing is mobilizing its machinery to influence U.S.
defense and national-security decisions. China’s present campaign seeks three
main objectives: Limit the sale of defensive weapons to Taiwan; Stop the sale of
Aegis-equipped destroyers to Taiwan, thus keeping the island vulnerable to
missile attack; and Undermine U.S. theater-missile defenses in Asia and national
missile defense of the U.S. mainland, keeping the United States hostage to
China’s small but growing nuclear arsenal.
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