What China Wants: Bargaining With Beijing

-ၿမတ္စုိး- ၇.၂၃.၂၀၁၁
"What China Wants: Bargaining With Beijing"  ဒီေဆာင္းပါးမွာ တရုတ္ျပည္ၾကီး ဖံြ႔ျဖိဳးတုိးတက္လာမႈ ေၾကာင့္ အေမရိကန္-တရုတ္ ဆက္ဆံေရးအတြက္ အေမရိကန္ ႏုိင္ငံၿခားေရးမူ၀ါဒမ်ား ေၿပာင္းလဲ သင့္မသင့္ ေဆြးေႏြးတင္ၿပထားမႈပါ။

အေမရိကန္ အစုိးရ ရဲ႕ အမ်ိဳးသား လုံၿခံဳေရး အၾကံေပးအရာရွိေဟာင္း ဟန္နရီ ကစ္ဆင္ဂ်ာ ဟာ “Henry Kissinger on China” ဆုိတဲ့ စာအုပ္ေရးသားထုတ္ေ၀ခဲ့ၿပီး၊ ယင္းစာအုပ္၌ အေမရိကန္ အစုိးရ အေနနဲ႔ အင္အားၾကီးမားလာေနေသာ...
တရုတ္ ႏုိင္ငံ အၾကား ၿဖစ္ေပၚလာႏုိင္သည့္  ထိပ္တုိက္ ရင္ဆုိင္မႈမ်ားကုိ ေရွာင္ၾကဥ္ဖို႔အတြက္ တရုတ္အစုိးရကုိ ခ်ည္းကပ္ၿပီး၊ ဆက္ဆံေရး ေကာင္းမြန္လာေအာင္ ေဖာ္ေဆာင္ဖုိ႔ အၾကံၿပဳထားၿခင္းၿဖစ္တယ္။

တနည္းအားၿဖင့္ ထိပ္တုိက္ရင္ဆုိင္မႈ ကုိ ေရွာင္ပါ။ ဆက္ဆံေရး ေကာင္းမြန္ေအာင္ လုပ္ပါလုိ႔ ဆုိတယ္။ သူဟာ အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံမွာ ၾသဇာၾကီးမားလွတဲ့ အေမရိကန္ အမ်ိဳးသား လုံၿခံဳေရး အၾကံေပးအရာရွိေဟာင္း တေယာက္ၿဖစ္တာေၾကာင့္ သူ႔ရဲ႕ အၾကံၿပဳမႈဟာ အေမရိကန္ ႏုိင္ငံၿခားေရးမူ၀ါဒႏွင့္ ပက္သက္ၿပီး အေခ်အတင္ေဆြးေႏြးမႈမ်ားၿဖစ္လာခဲ့ရတယ္။ အေခ်အတင္ၿဖစ္ခဲ့ရတဲ့ အဓိက အခ်က္အလက္ က အေမရိကန္အစုိးရ ဟာ ႏွစ္ႏုိင္ငံ ဆက္ဆံေရးကုိ ေကာင္းမြန္ဖုိ႔အတြက္ တရုတ္ အစုိးရရဲ႕ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ခ်ိဳးေဖာက္မႈေတြ၊ ေငြေၾကးထိမ္းခ်ဳပ္မႈေၾကာင့္ ကုန္သြယ္မႈ ဆုိင္ရာၿပႆနာေတြ ကုိ ေရငုံႏုတ္ပိတ္ ေနသင့္သလား ဆုိတဲ့ အခ်က္ပါ။ အေမရိကန္အစုိးရ ႏွင့္ အေမရိကန္ ၿပည္သူေတြ အဓိက တန္ဖုိးထားခဲ့တဲ့ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး ကုိ တရုတ္အစုိးရႏွင့္ ဆက္ဆံေရးေကာင္းမြန္ဖုိ႔အတြက္ ဆုံးရွဳံးလက္လႊတ္ဖုိ႔လုပ္ေတာ့ မွာလားဆုိတဲ့ ေမးခြန္းသာ ၿဖစ္တယ္။

သူ႔ရဲ႕ ယူဆခ်က္ကုိ အေခ်အတင္ ေဆြးေႏြးအၾကံၿပဳသူကေတာ့ Aaron Friedberg အယ္ရင္ဖရက္ဘာ့ ၿဖစ္တယ္။ သူဟာ ပရင့္စတန္ ( Princeton ) တကၠသုိလ္က ပါေမာကၡ တစ္ဦးၿဖစ္ၿပီး၊ အေမရိကန္ ဒုတိယ သမၼတ ဒစ္ေခ်နီရဲ႕ ႏုိင္ငံၿခားေရးမူ၀ါဒဆုိင္ရာ အၾကံေပးပုဂၢိဳလ္တစ္ဦးလည္းၿဖစ္ခဲ့တယ္။ သူရဲ႕ ယူဆခ်က္ကေတာ့ တရုတ္ အင္အားၾကီးထြားမႈ ႏွင့္ ေဒသအတြင္းၿပႆနာမ်ား ေၾကာင့္ ေဒသတြင္းႏုိင္ငံမ်ားဟာ အေမရိကန္နဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရး ေကာင္းမြန္ေအာင္ က်ိဳးစားရင္း အေမရိကန္ သုိ႔ ပုိမုိနီးစပ္လာကာ မဟာမိတ္ဖြဲ႔လာပါ လိမ့္မယ္လုိ႔ဆုိတယ္။ အေမရိကန္-တရုတ္ ဆက္ဆံေရးမွာ အေလွ်ာ့ေပးတဲ့ ႏုိင္ငံၿခားေရးဆုိင္ရာမူ၀ါဒမ်ိဳး မၿဖစ္သင့္ဘူးလုိ႔ဆုိတယ္။ အေမရိကန္ရဲ႕ လုံၿခဳံေရးႏွင့္ အက်ိဳးစီးပြားကုိ ကာကြယ္ရမယ္လုိ႔ အၾကံၿပဳထားတယ္။

သူဟာ ေတာင္တရုတ္ပင္လယ္မွာ တရုတ္ရဲ႕ လႊမ္းမုိးဗုိလ္က်မႈေၾကာင့္ လက္ရွိၿဖစ္ေပၚေနတဲ့ ၿပႆနာမ်ားကုိ ရည္ညႊန္းေထာက္ၿပခဲ့တယ္။ အင္ဒုိနီးရွား၊ ဗီယက္နမ္၊ဖိလစ္ပုိင္၊ မေလးရွား၊ စတဲ့ အိမ္နီးခ်င္းႏုိင္ငံေတြဟာ တရုတ္အင္အားၾကီးထြားလာမႈေၾကာင့္ အေမရိကန္ႏုိင္ငံနဲ႔ ဆက္ဆံေရးေကာင္းမြန္ေအာင္ ၾကိဳးစားေနတာကုိ ေထာက္ၿပခဲ့တယ္။ ဒါေၾကာင့္မုိ႔ တရုတ္-အေမရိကန္ ဆက္ဆံေရးမွာ တရုတ္ကုိ အေလ်ွာ့ေပးၿပီး၊ ဆက္ဆံေရးေကာင္မြန္ေအာင္လုပ္ဖုိ႔ မလုိပါဘူးလုိ႔ သုံးသပ္ထားတယ္။

တရုတ္-အေမရိကန္ ဆက္ဆံေရး မွာ အေမရိကန္ ၏ ႏုိင္ငံၿခားေရးမူ၀ါဒ အရ ကုန္သြယ္ေရး အသုံးၿပဳၿပီး ေဒသအတြင္း ၾသဇာအာဏာ သက္ေရာက္မႈ အေပၚ တရုတ္-အေမရိကန္ ဆက္ဆံေရး ခ်ိန္ခြင္ညွိဖုိ႔ အေတြးအေခၚ ပါ။ ဒီ အေတြးအေခၚအရ ကုန္သြယ္ေရးၿဖင့္ တရုတ္ႏုိင္ငံအတြင္း လူ႔အခြင့္အေရး၊ ႏုိင္ငံေရး တုိးတက္ေၿပာင္းလဲလာမႈ ကုိ ဖန္တီး လာႏုိင္မယ္ လုိ႔ ေမွ်ာ္လင့္တယ္။ သမၼတေဟာင္း ကလင္တန္လက္ထပ္မွာ စီးပြားေရး၊ ကုန္သြယ္ေရး ဖြင့္ေပးခဲ့ၿပီး၊ စီးပြားေရးအခြင့္အလမ္းမ်ား ကုိ ေပးခဲ့ကာ၊ ဆက္ဆံေရးတုိးတက္ လာေအာင္က်င့္သုံးခဲ့တယ္။ တရုတ္ႏုိင္ငံဟာ စီးပြားေရးဖြံၿဖိဳးတုိးတက္လာေပမဲ့၊ တပါတီ အာဏာရွင္စနစ္ ကုိေတာ့ ဆက္လက္ က်င့္သုံးေနဆဲပါ။ တရုတ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ တိန္႔ေရွာင္ဖိန္ လက္ထပ္ က စၿပီး တရုတ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ေတြဟာ သက္တမ္း ႏွစ္ၾကိမ္သာ ဆက္ခံႏုိင္ဖုိ႔ ထိေတာ့ ရွိလာခဲ့တာေတြ႔ရတယ္။ လူ႔အခြင့္အေရးဆုိင္ရာ ႏွင့္ ႏုိင္ငံေရးလြတ္လပ္ခြင့္ေတြ အတြက္ေတာ့ ထိေရာက္မႈမရွိခဲ့ဘူးလုိ႔ ဆုိတယ္။

ကုန္သြယ္ေရးၿဖင့္ ႏုိင္ငံၿခားေရး မူ၀ါဒ ကုိ အေၿခခံၿပီး အေမရိကန္ အစုိးရ တုိင္းက က်င့္သုံးလာခဲ့တယ္။ တခ်ိန္တည္းမွာ ပဲ တရုတ္ေခါင္းေဆာင္ တိန္႔ေရွာင္ဖိန္လက္ထက္မွာ ၿပည္တြင္း ဖံြ႔ျဖိဳးတုိးတက္ေအာင္ တည္ေဆာက္ၿပီး၊ ႏုိင္ငံတကာနွင့္ ဆက္ဆံေရး အဆင္ေၿပေအာင္ အေလွ်ာ့အတင္းၿပဳလုပ္ က်င့္သုံးတဲ့မူ၀ါဒ ခ်မွတ္ခဲ့တယ္။ ေဆာင္ပါးထဲမွာ တရုတ္-အေမရိကန္ ဆက္ဆံေရး သမုိင္းေၾကာင္းအေထာက္အထားေတြကုိ လည္း တင္ၿပထားတာေတြ႔ရတယ္။ ႏုိင္ငံၿခားမူ၀ါဒဆုိင္ရာ အေတြးေအခၚေတြကုိလည္း သုံးသပ္ထား တာေတြ႔ရတယ္။

ဒီေဆာင္းပါးဟာ ယေန႔ တရုတ္ျပည္ၾကီး ဖံြ႔ျဖိဳးတုိးတက္လာၿပီး၊ ေဒသတြင္း အင္အားၾကီးထြား လာမႈေၾကာင့္ တရုတ္-အေမရိကန္ ဆက္ဆံေရး ႏွင့္ ႏုိင္ငံၿခားေရးဆုိင္ရာ မူ၀ါဒမ်ား ဆုိင္ရာ ၿပန္လည္ သုံးသပ္ ေဆြးေႏြး ထားတဲ့ ေဆာင္ပါးေကာင္း တပုဒ္ၿဖစ္ေၾကာင္း တင္ၿပလုိက္ ပါတယ္။

ဆက္ဖတ္ပါ. ..

(အဂၤလိပ္လုိ အျပည့္အစံု ဖတ္လိုပါက ေခါင္းစဥ္ ကုိ ႏွိပ္လိုက္ပါ)

What China Wants
Bargaining With Beijing

As a connoisseur of fine diplomacy, Henry Kissinger finds a lot of it to
admire in China. His new book, cast as a history of Chinese foreign
policy, traces the twists and turns of Chinese strategy since the
establishment of the People's Republic in 1949, quoting liberally from
his numerous conversations with Chinese leaders. But On China is
really neither history nor memoir. Its purpose is to argue that the
United States should yield gracefully to China's rise in order to avoid a
tragic conflict.

Aaron Friedberg gives the opposite advice. A Princeton professor and
former foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney, he
analyzes the strategies that China and the United States have used in
dealing with each other since the early 1990s and tries to decipher
China's intentions in the coming decades. In the face of growing
Chinese power and ambition, the United States, he argues, must stand
strong in those many areas in which China's interests are adverse to its
own. Together, the two books offer a window onto the strategic split
over China among mainstream Republicans.

Kissinger likens Chinese diplomacy to the game of wei qi (equivalent to
the Japanese game of go), a patient contest of encirclement in which
victory is only relative. Chinese strategists view the quest for a decisive
outcome as illusory. Instead, they play a game of "combative
coexistence," seeking to improve their relative power position amid the
ever-changing forces of world politics. At the necessary moment, one
may deliver a salutary psychological shock and then withdraw, as the
Chinese did to the Indians in 1962 to put a stop to incursions along
their contested border, and as they did to the Soviets in 1969 to deter
Moscow from probing Chinese positions along their frontier. On other
occasions, one may hide one's light and bide one's time, as Deng
Xiaoping famously advised his colleagues to do in 1991, telling them to
maintain good relations with the United States while building up
China's strength. Or it might be useful to claim hurt dignity and
designate a whole topic as nonnegotiable, as Beijing did in 1993-94
when U.S. President Bill Clinton tried to make favorable tariff rates
conditional on improvements on human rights, and as it is doing today
over territorial issues.

Kissinger sees contrasts here with the usual approach of U.S.
diplomats, which often frustrated him when he was running the show.
Where American negotiators tend to compartmentalize issues and seek
solutions, their Chinese counterparts prefer to integrate issues and
seek understandings. Whereas Americans believe that agreements can
be reached in one sector while disagreements are expressed in another,
Chinese prefer to characterize the whole atmosphere as warm or cold,
friendly or tense, creating an incentive for the other side to put
disagreements on the back burner. Whereas Americans are troubled by
deadlocks, Chinese know how to leverage them to keep pressure on the
other side. American diplomacy is transactional; Chinese diplomacy,
psychological.

Kissinger quotes the advice of the ancient military strategist Sun-tzu,
who argued that one can win a battle before it begins by staking out a
dominant political and psychological position. As far back as the third
century, the military commander Zhuge Liang turned back an enemy
army by opening the city gates and sunning himself on the ramparts;
this looked like a trap and frightened away the opposing general. In
1793-94, the Qianlong emperor fended off the British delegate Lord
George Macartney with smothering hospitality; when Macartney failed
to get the point, the court dismissed him with a note left on a silk
chair. In 1958, Mao Zedong received the Soviet leader Nikita
Khrushchev not just at his private swimming pool but in it, forcing the
Soviet leader to negotiate in water wings. When Kissinger met Zhou
Enlai for the first time, in 1971, the premier had arranged his schedule
to leave only two negotiating slots, totaling 13 hours, available during
Kissinger's time in Beijing, forcing the American envoy to agree to a
presidential visit with few details resolved in advance.

Such tactics make hospitality "an aspect of strategy," Kissinger
explains, leaving a foreign guest awed, discomfited, or wooed by the
host's wealth, generosity, and composure. Chinese diplomats are adept
at the use of friendship, which leaves "the other side . . . flattered by
being admitted to the Chinese 'club' as an 'old friend,' a posture that
makes disagreement more complicated and confrontations painful," Kissinger writes. As the Manchu diplomat Qiying said about dealing with the British "barbarians," it was necessary to "curb them by sincerity."

It helps to come from an ancient civilization. "The duration and scale of the Chinese past allow Chinese leaders to use the mantle of an almost limitless history to evoke a certain modesty in their opposite numbers," Kissinger writes. His occasional digs at the United States -- whose foreign policy culture he describes as "missionary," interventionist, narrow-visioned, and crassly pragmatic -- show how hard it was to represent a nation that lacks that asset. At Kissinger and Zhou's first conversation, Zhou ceded seniority to
the United States by comparing the age of the American republic (some 200 years) to that of the People's Republic (22 years). It was flattering, even though Kissinger knew it was false.

The problem with Kissinger's book is not the facts. These are well grounded in the scholarly literature and, throughout much of the book, in the notes of conversations in which he himself took part. But newer scholarship has long since called into doubt any essentialism about China's "singularity," "centrality," or "strategic patience." Although Kissinger does not use the word, the picture he paints is of an eternal – and very Oriental -- China. And it is not clear why China's long history of diplomacy makes it necessary for the United States to yield to Chinese preferences in the present. What is lacking for such an argument is an
analysis of the material realities of China's relative power, which even after 20 years of spectacular economic growth remain in many ways unfavorable.

CONTENTIOUS INTENTIONS

Friedberg also exaggerates Chinese power, although in pursuit of a different argument. His is the most thoughtful and informative of a stream of China-threat books that have come out since the mid-1990s.

Within that genre, its contribution is to focus on China's strategic intentions. Although Friedberg agrees with the classical realist logic that a change in power relations inevitably generates rivalry, he also believes it is important to figure out what, as he puts it, China wants.

His method is to synthesize the views of Chinese public intellectuals who write in Chinese policy magazines roughly similar in function to Foreign Affairs and in other media. The authors on whom he draws are roughly similar in function to Foreign Affairs and in other media. The authors on whom he draws are professors or fellows (and some graduate students) at universities and think tanks and a few military officers who work in jobs that allow them to write books and articles for the general public. Friedberg argues that these materials "reflect the main currents of 'responsible' opinion" among Chinese writers, "some of [whom]
are known to have access to the inner circles of the party and state." What he reads these experts as saying is that China should seek to "displace the United States as the dominant player in East Asia, and perhaps to extrude it from the region altogether."

But this method of assessing Chinese intentions is full of pitfalls. Authors who write for the Chinese public have to compete for attention the same way that American public intellectuals do, with edgy views and vivid writing. And they do not all agree with one another. In fact, the authors Friedberg cites take varied positions, ranging from that of Senior Colonel Liu Mingfu, who wants China to become "world number one," to that of the scholar Wang Jisi, who emphasizes common interests between China and the United States. The attempt
to synthesize these views creates a false unity, with Friedberg privileging those of the writers who say the sharpest things. Moreover, as pointed out by Thomas Christensen in these pages ("The Advantages of an Assertive China," March/April 2011), Chinese policymakers have consistently been more cautious in practice
than the Chinese media have been in their rhetoric. The proper takeaway from Friedberg's analysis is that the Chinese public has been treated to a rich diet of nationalist sentimentality, which for whatever reason is permitted -- or perhaps even mandated -- by the propaganda department, which ultimately controls the
Chinese media.

By focusing on intentions, Friedberg, like Kissinger, leaves out any serious accounting of China's capability to achieve the goals that various writers propose. Such an audit would show that China is bogged down both internally and in Asia generally. At home, it devotes enormous resources, including military ones, to
maintaining control over the two-fifths of its territory that comprise Xinjiang and greater Tibet, to keeping civil order throughout the densely populated and socially unstable Han heartland, and to deterring Taiwan's
independence. Around its borders, it is surrounded chiefly by two kinds of countries: unstable ones where almost any conceivable change will make life more difficult for Chinese strategists (such as Myanmar, North Korea, and the weak states of Central Asia) and strong ones that are likely to get stronger in the future and compete with China (such as India, Japan, Russia, and Vietnam). And everywhere on its periphery, on land and at sea, China faces the powerful presence of the United States. The U.S. Pacific Command remains the
most muscular of the U.S. military's six regional combatant commands, after the Central Command (which is managing two ongoing wars), and it continues to adjust its strategies as China's military modernizes.
Friedberg is also imprecise. His title, A Contest for Supremacy, means one thing; part of his subtitle, the Struggle for Mastery in Asia, means another -- and neither idea is vindicated by the body of the book. He ison firmer ground when he writes that "if China's power continues to grow, and it continues to be ruled by a
one-party authoritarian regime, its relations with the United States are going to become increasingly tenseand competitive." But friction is not conflict.
And all this assumes that China's rise will continue unabated. Friedberg reasonably enough makes thisassumption for the purposes of argument. But it is unlikely to prove correct in the long run because China's economic and political model faces so many vulnerabilities. To add to the worries of Chinese leaders, as Friedberg points out, there are U.S. intentions: "stripped of diplomatic niceties, the ultimate aim of the American strategy is to hasten a revolution, albeit a peaceful one, that will sweep away China's one-party
authoritarian state." This helps explain why Chinese leaders act more like people under siege than like people on an expansionist warpath.

Even if China does stay on course, it cannot hope for anything that can reasonably be called supremacy, or even regional mastery, unless U.S. power radically declines. Absent that development, it is implausible that,
as Friedberg predicts, "the nations of Asia will choose eventually to follow the lead of a rising China, 'bandwagoning' with it . . . rather than trying to balance against it." Instead, the more China rises, the more most of China's neighbors will want to balance with the United States, not against it.

REACTING TO RISE
Kissinger ends his book with a policy recommendation that is disappointingly brief and imprecise. He urges the creation of a Pacific Community, "to which the United States, China, and other states all belong and in whose peaceful development all participate." But why should the United States yield so much authority to
China? Every other potential member of this community will also ask whether such a project would enhance or reduce its power. The Chinese will wonder why they should bind themselves to U.S. priorities in this way.

Larger Asian powers, such as Japan and South Korea, will doubt the benefit of submerging themselves in a U.S.-Chinese condominium. And smaller states will see themselves at risk of being sold out by their major ally, either China or the United States. The proposal's premise, that a U.S.-Chinese confrontation must be
avoided, is sound, but it fails to take national interests into account.

Friedberg rejects the idea of a two-power condominium in Asia as appeasement. At the other extreme, hediscredits the idea of trying to delay or derail China's rise as too confrontational. A third option, "enhanced engagement," is fine as far as it goes, but it places too much hope in the willingness of Chinese policymakers
to cooperate with an opponent whose interests are not identical to their own. Instead, he recommends that the United States set proper boundaries for China's rise by maintaining a favorable balance of power in Asia.
This will require the United States to undertake "costly and difficult measures," such as maintaining its alliances with Japan and South Korea and its cooperative relations with most of China's other neighbors, continuing to upgrade its military posture to match China's military modernization, and balancing its
transpacific trade relationships. In a version of "we have met the enemy and he is us," Friedberg says that in order to do all this, the United States must restore its economy, keep its scientific edge, protect its advanced technology, and maintain its margin of military advantage.

One can only say amen to the recommendation that the United States pull up its socks. Such proposals are persuasive with or without China in the picture, and it is well to reinforce them in the context of China's rise. But few of them are controversial. That they form the core of Friedberg's strategy is a sign that the United States' future in Asia is not as hostage to China's rise as is implied by the alarmist tone of his earlier chapters.

China cannot displace the United States from Asia; only the United States can. Friedberg's counsel resembles the essence of U.S. policy for at least the last decade. Certainly, the Obama administration has been working
to do what Friedberg suggests. The United States is hardly "on track to lose [its] geopolitical contest with China."

The real target of Friedberg's criticism is not U.S. policy but "China-watchers in academia, commerce, and government," whom he accuses of stifling debate and of "willful, blinkered optimism." Prominent among these is Kissinger, whom Friedberg characterizes as part of a "Shanghai Coalition" (more plainly, a new China lobby) that wants "to avoid criticism of China and to support good relations." Friedberg's strongest disagreement with this group concerns the place of human rights in Washington's China policy.

If a key technique of Sun-tzu-style diplomacy is to convince the other side that certain issues are too culturally and politically sensitive to be discussed, China seems to have secured that part of the wei qi board when it comes to Kissinger's views on human rights. Speaking of the immediate post-Tiananmen period,
Kissinger says that "the American advocates of human rights insisted on values they considered universal" and that such universalism "challenges the element of nuance by which foreign policy is generally obliged to operate." He continues: "If adoption of American principles of governance is made the central condition for
progress in all other areas of the relationship, deadlock is inevitable." These statements combine three fallacies: that the universality of international human rights is a matter of opinion rather than international law, that human rights equals American principles of governance, and that promoting human rights means holding hostage progress in all other areas.

Friedberg's counterargument is persuasive. Showing softness on core values will reinforce the view of many Chinese that the United States is in decline, thus encouraging China to miscalculate U.S. resolve. As Friedberg writes, "Soft-pedaling talk of freedom will not reassure China's leaders as much as it will embolden them." He tellingly applies Kissinger's insight into the emollient effects of friendship to Kissinger himself,arguing that the Shanghai Coalition's members are motivated in part by "the psychic rewards that come from
believing that they are helping to promote peace and the gratification of being revered and well treated byBeijing."

It is no wonder that Chinese statecraft aims to establish the cultural relativity of human rights and to pose talk of human rights as the enemy of friendship. After all, the failure to respect human rights is a glaring weakness of Chinese power both at home and abroad, whereas promoting human rights has been among the
United States' most successful maneuvers on the wei qi board of world politics. What is surprising is that the United States' master strategist wants to play this part of the game by Beijing's rules. Would it not make more sense to emulate Chinese strategy than to yield to it? Emphasizing the principled centrality of the human rights idea to American ideology and keeping the issue active in bilateral relations even though it cannot be solved would seem to be -- along with exercising the United States' strengths in other fields -- a good way to set the boundaries within which a rising Chinese power can operate without threatening U.S. interests.