Democracy in China
KRISTOL, WILLIAM
Democracy in China How about promoting democracy instead of engaging with dictators? BY WILLIAM KRISTOL Taipei, Taiwan ALL New York Times editorials are annoying, but a few manage to annoy in a...
...The Times doesn't pause to explain why it would be illegitimate to deny China the ability to blow us up...
...We turn a blind eye to Beijing's weapons proliferation abroad and human rights abuses at home...
...Bush's fault" that the spy plane collision highlighted "military aspects of the relationship...
...But they worry that "the administration has done little to get the relationship back on course...
...This led to some talk of Wang Zhizhi, the 7-foot-tall basketball player from China now playing for the Dallas Mavericks...
...She seemed puzzled by my failure to chuckle at this anecdote...
...The Times, you may be surprised to hear, believes the United States needs "a realistic China policy," and "a balanced approach to trade, diplomacy and geopolitics...
...It was a contentious discussion...
...It's one you almost never hear anymore: one-child policy...
...So economic engagement becomes an excuse for appeasement...
...So in an attempt to move the conversation onto a more positive plane, she asked about my family...
...This is a project worthy of a great power...
...They want us to avoid any activities in the strategic, political, or diplomatic spheres that might offend Beijing...
...Certain forms of American engagement with Beijing may well be justified...
...But surely the goal of American foreign policy should be to help bring about the peaceful transformation of Beijing's dictatorship into a democracy like Taipei's...
...There's another phrase that doesn't appear...
...We accede to Beijing's wishes and limit our contacts with democratic Taiwan...
...Indeed, Wang is so popular, Ms...
...foreign policy in its entirety to the goal of making the Chinese dictators blissfully happy...
...The editors do generously allow that "it was not Mr...
...Zhang's son is a huge fan of Wang, as apparently are millions of Chinese...
...We discovered we each had 13-year-old sons who were basketball fans...
...What would the Times prefer...
...Apparently, well-educated and sophisticated Chinese government officials nowadays so take for granted Beijing's tyrannical and inhumane one-child policy that they joke about it...
...And that's the point...
...The former is something the Bush administration is already pursuing vigorously, and apparently successfully, with the completion of negotiations for China's accession to the World Trade Organization...
...The Times is worried that the Bush administration has been focusing too much on military issues rather than keeping them "in perspective...
...And the administration's pursuit of missile defense has been heedless of China's "legitimate concerns that its relatively small nuclear missile force could be blunted by an American shield...
...That "military issues" not impede "active engagement with China on economic and arms control issues...
...I'm grateful to Zhang Qiyue, deputy director general of the Information Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, for reminding me of it last week...
...They don't simply want a policy of economic engagement...
...Zhang had launched into a defense of China's legal system, refusing to concede the legitimacy of my concern...
...It's hard to see what the Times is fretting about—except that we have not yet subordinated U.S...
...The latter William Kristol is editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD...
...We don't make a fuss about the detention of American citizens...
...It would require a foreign policy of military strength, political boldness, and moral clarity...
...BY WILLIAM KRISTOL Taipei, Taiwan ALL New York Times editorials are annoying, but a few manage to annoy in a distinctive way...
...If I hadn't just come from Beijing, and weren't now in Taipei, I probably wouldn't have given a second thought to last Sunday's 778 words on "China Viewed Narrowly" (reprinted in Thursday's Taiwan News, where I read it...
...I had asked why China had jailed professor Li Shaomin and other Americans...
...The Times, to be fair, is faithfully echoing the American business and foreign policy establishments...
...One thing's for sure: The Times won't approve...
...Most of the editorial is the usual pabulum...
...presumably refers to the various non-proliferation agreements Beijing routinely agrees to and then routinely breaks...
...Zhang told me laughing, that the government offered his parents an exemption to the one-child policy so they could produce another basketball star...
...Rather, the Rumsfeld defense review, with its reorientation towards Asia, is causing "friction" with Beijing...
...There are a few words that you won't find in the Times editorial: freedom, democracy, self-determination, self-government, dictatorship...
Vol. 6 • June 2001 • No. 39
