US and China / We take a vacation - HERE'S THE SCORE by Teodoro C. Benigno

While we rarely if ever looked beyond the borders of the Philippines because of the whirlwinds caused by the arrest of Joseph Ejercito Estrada, a grim, ominous and deadly scenario was being played out by the US and China. The latest thrust of the diplomatic blade was effected by US president George Bush, a thrust as unprecedented as it was scary. Mr. Bush, so it seemed, brought America to the brink when he said the US would do "whatever it took – to defend Taiwan against a Chinese attack." Which means the entire panoply of US military power would be brought to bear on China. If.

This was never the US position on Taiwan. Its stance was "strategic ambiguity," never saying yes, never saying no if Washington would secure Taiwan from Chinese aggression. Now Bush has brandished American power which is like spreading political gunpowder on all the layers of China’s power system. Unless Bush takes back what he said – or fudges the issue by saying he was misquoted or misunderstood – the world sits on a powderkeg right smack in the South China sea.

It all started when a US EP-3E spy plane collided with a Chinese fighter plane April 1. The spy plane plunged 7,500 feet, a whirl into the unknown that forced it to go for an emergency landing in Hainan. The plane’s 24 members were held by Chinese intelligence for 11 days before being allowed to return to the US. China, of course, refused to return the EP-3E spy aircraft which it certainly dismantled piece by piece although the plane’s crew had undone and scrambled its top-secret mechanisms before hitting Hainan territory.

Twice, the US government said it was "very, very sorry" for the mishap after Chairman Jian Zhemin demanded an apology. But the "very, very sorry" statement blinked out and got into a US rocket booster once the 24 spy plane airmen returned home. They certainly put their spin on what exactly happened April 1. And now George Bush is loaded for bear. He is seemingly out to give Taiwan all it wants in military assistance except the Aegis radar-bolstered destroyers or submarines which can stop 300 Chinese missiles headed for Taiwan at one time.

The issue is more complex and complicated than what meets the eye.

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Trade between China and the US amounts to more than $116 billion a year. America’s top business giants have long taken root in China. And amounts of $46 billion in short-term US investments slide without much difficulty into China. China is scheduled very shortly to enter the World Trade Organization (WTO), opening it up to virtually unvetted entry of US capital, technology, and knowledge-laden industries. China’s bid for the 2008 Olympics games no longer has any major obstacles unless of course, the US seeks to block it. And if the block does not work, boycott it as America did the Moscow Olympic games.

The canvas of US-China relations expands on even more delicate issues, like America’s fear that one day China may seek to extend its sovereignty over the South China Sea. Remember that approximately 40-50 percent of international trade navigates across this strategic sea. This imbroglio will include the Spratlys and the Paracels and certainly involve the Philippines, one of five claimants to innocent-looking but probably strategic islets in the Spratly group. But this threatened sovereignty coup can only occur if China builds a mighty nuclear arsenal that can checkmate the US in Asia and threaten the US mainland – and all its major cities from New York to Los Angeles – with a hail of intercontinental ballistic missiles.

Then both countries get locked up like two scorpions in a bottle. The bite of one can kill both. The fight will be for hegemony. And the only peaceful solution I can see is for the US and China to lock arms in an international balance of power which would see Japan, Russia and India engaged on a lesser scale.

One thing is also sure as we pick up the Taiwan issue anew, that China will never allow it to be independent. Its One-China policy was sealed internationally in 1972 when US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Chinese Foreign Minister Chou En-lai both agreed in a formal diplomatic document that there was only one China and Taiwan had no claim to being China. Many international experts aver that as Marxist-Maoist ideology disappears in China, nationalism will take or has taken over.

This explains Chinese outrage over the spy plane incident, the increasing sensitivity to America’s surveillance flights, the man-in-the-street protest that the US is a bully and has no respect for Chinese rights. China has angrily protested the US plan or intention to set up a Theatre Missile Defense (TMD) around Taiwan. In the short run, the US can get away with the TMD. But its long-run effects are ominous as the TMD only pours fuel into China’s nuclear bid to catch up with the US, remove the missile gap, and in 20 years perhaps enable China to look at the US eyeball to eyeball in nuclear diplomacy. And nuclear confrontation.

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Certainly, the US and the West are disturbed by China’s relentless advance into eventual world power status.

Andrew J. Nathan and Robert S. Ross (The Great Wall and the Empty Fortress) recall that violent conflict accompanied the rises of Athens and Rome in classical times, of the Hapsburg empire and the Netherlands in the sixteenth century, France in the seventeenth, England in the eighteenth century and Japan and Soviet Russia in the twentieth. And now China. Still and all, many of the countries bordering China want US forces to remain in Asia and the Pacific as a counterbalance to that could be later on a China bent on hegemony.

China’s catchup policy includes the sending of tens of thousands of its best students every year to enroll in the US’s top colleges and universities, particularly those that emphasize courses in science, technology, the latest administrative and managerial techniques. At any one time, there are about 54,000 such Chinese students in the US and – most certainly – they are impressed by segments of American culture and civilization. Particularly an open political system, the rule of law, the emphasis on human rights. A multi-cultural, multi-ethnic society.

These will be the future leaders of China, a far, far cry from the days when Mao’s Red Guards held up his teachings like a bible and built a mental wall against anything capitalist and American. To be sure, in the decades and generation ahead, there will be a lot of America in China, and not just Kentucky fried chicken, McDonald’s, Walmarts, Starbucks. And, in reverse, there will be a lot of China in America. Already, Chinese manufactured goods flood the US market.

How does the Philippines fit in? Already, there is a lot of America and China in our country. And more than anybody else in our part of the world, we have to play catch-up. Our democracy needs much more than flights of rhetoric. We have to erase poverty, join the global community, get into the thick of Information Technology, expand, deepen and enrich our educational system. Expunge ignorance of the electoral process.

It may have escaped many but the crisis of Joseph Estrada’s downfall and disgrace was the crisis of our times – too many Filipinos boxed into a nation with too little technology, too little productivity, too little political will to feed, educate and advance the fortunes of a 75-million citizenry, getting bigger, hungrier, and unhappier with each passing year. We need reformists like Deng Xiaopeng and there are none. We need visionaries like Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and there are none. We need a Shigeru Yoshida and Eisaku Sato whose combined political and economic genius built up Japan from the rubble of World War II and there are none.

But one never knows. One day we’ll light up a match, find our way, and – who knows – shoot up like a runaway rocket.

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TIME FOR TCB VACATION. As is our wont every year, we take a month’s vacation starting Monday, May 7, from our labors as a thrice-weekly columnist of The Philippine STAR. God knows how the year’s events have hit this writer like a berserk avalanche, how we were in the thick of it all, and often dug a foxhole at the edge of the cliff. Honestly, we are very, very tired mentally, psychologically and physically. Our residence was broken into twice in the middle of the night by still unknown or unidentified felons. I suppose, they acted in behalf of the powers-that-be who did not like this column at all. They cut off the telephone lines in the library where I work, disabled my computer. The signal was for me to stop writing or else.

With the passage of the years, we are used to this. Wasn’t I afraid? Did I not fear for my life? And those of my loved ones?

Of course, I was and the members of my family were. But somehow you find and rediscover the energy, the will, the passion to soldier on, leaving everything to God. I know and I have been told that many pray for me, like the Carmelites and the Pink Sisters, and often I receive religious estampitas from affectionate friends and well-wishers and, oh boy, they do replenish my courage. See you back in this space Monday, June 11.