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http://msnbc.com/news/553792.asp

A buildup of irritation in relations Dispute raises fears of wider confrontation

BEIJING, April 2 — The collision of a U.S. reconnaissance plane and a Chinese jet fighter over the South China Sea has added to a growing list of quarrels between Washington and Beijing that has hardened an adversarial tone in U.S.-Chinese relations and raised the possibility of a big-power confrontation in Asia.

DESPITE UNPRECEDENTED bilateral trade and the promise in recent years of an emerging partnership, a sense is growing in Beijing that the U.S. and Chinese governments, driven by accident as well as policy, may drift into the type of standoff that characterized American relations with the Soviet Union for decades during the Cold War.

“U.S.-China relations risk falling into a crisis,” said Shen Dingli, an expert on security issues at Fudan University in Shanghai. “I cannot stress how sensitive the situation is right now.” During the past few months the subjects of discord have become more numerous and dangerous, in the view of experts on both sides of the Pacific. Points of contention include the defection of a high-ranking Chinese military officer, China’s arrests of American and American-based scholars, Bush administration plans for an anti-missile defense system and a soon-to-be announced decision on arms for Taiwan.

U.S. relations with Beijing involve much more than regional competition — for example, an estimated $115 billion in trade last year. But a broad variety of diplomats, security analysts and Chinese officials have expressed concern that developments in both countries, complicated by a new administration in Washington and a leadership succession struggle in Beijing, militate against speedy moves to reverse the momentum toward crisis.

“This episode should be a wake-up call to all involved,” said Bates Gill, an expert on Chinese security issues at the Brookings Institution, speaking about Sunday’s collision between a U.S. Navy EP-3E Aries II surveillance plane and a Chinese naval F-8 fighter jet that scrambled to intercept it. “Conflict with China is not inevitable, but in the absence of active efforts to manage contentious differences, minor incidents will quickly escalate to larger crises.” China’s ability to compromise on such incidents is limited in part by growing Chinese nationalism, which the Communist Party has promoted as a replacement for communism as market-oriented reforms have made Marxist ideology seem more and more unreal. TRADE CAN’T BRIDGE GAP

In addition, the cultural and ideological gaps between Beijing and Washington remain wide despite the exploding trade relationship, creating space for misunderstandings. For instance, many Chinese — civilians and officials — questioned the motivation of the U.S. Pacific Command in releasing information about the collision hours after it occurred. One Chinese official said many of his colleagues would have preferred that the incident remain secret until it was resolved.

“Were you trying to make us lose face?” he asked, and he was not alone.

“What were you Americans up to?” asked Tian En, a graduate student in law. “Reporting this incident only made it harder for China to cooperate.”

The Bush administration also faces constraints in its approach. An important part of President Bush’s constituency distrusts China. And many Bush administration officials are predisposed to a more adversarial relationship than were their counterparts in the Clinton administration. During his campaign, Bush called China a strategic competitor instead of strategic partner, the formulation adopted by the Clinton administration.

The final shape of Bush’s policy has yet to emerge. Bush’s father, a former U.S. envoy to China, was attentive to Chinese sensibilities. The elder Bush’s national security adviser, Brent Scowcroft, attempted to repair U.S.-China relations a few months after the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989. And former secretary of state Henry A. Kissinger remains a powerful voice for close U.S.-China relations. By contrast, some members of the new administration — including some on Vice President Cheney’s staff, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and Deputy Secretary of State Richard L. Armitage — favor more blunt relations with fewer concessions to Beijing, more open support for Taiwan and greater attention to other Asian allies such as Japan and South Korea. Leading members of Congress also favor support for Taiwan and have fanned suspicions of China’s strategic intentions.

The White House, meantime, is pondering a decision to sell a batch of advanced weaponry to Taiwan. That decision, which could be influenced by Sunday’s collision, will shape relations with Beijing more than any other U.S. action — not because of an American grand design but because China will see the decision as Bush’s statement on U.S.-China relations, according to Thomas Christensen, professor of political science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

“The defector story and this collision are classic Cold War events,” said a Washington-based analyst. “Before, conflicts with China were very sui generis ‘China’ conflicts, like Taiwan. Now it feels like [Soviet defector Anatoli] Golitsyn and Francis Gary Powers,” the U.S. pilot shot down in a U-2 spy plane over Russia in 1960. LINGERING FALLOUT OF TIANANMEN

Before the Berlin Wall fell and Chinese troops crushed student-led protests at Tiananmen Square, China and the United States cooperated on a variety of security issues. The United States sold China weapons and launched a program to improve China’s avionics. The two countries helped back anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan. American spy agencies set up a listening post in China’s far northwestern region to monitor communications traffic and nuclear tests in Russia. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reason for this cooperation evaporated. And following the Tiananmen Square crackdown, the whole tenor of U.S.-China relations changed. In the United States, China’s image went from that of an emerging capitalist society to that of a repressive authoritarian regime that sells nuclear weapons-related and missile technology to U.S. enemies around the world.

Over the past two years, China has gone through a similarly significant transition in how it views the United States. In its most recent government white paper on national defense, issued late last year, the Chinese government all but posited the United States as a roadblock on its rise to power in Asia.

Several other factors contribute to China’s feelings of hostility from the United States: allegations of Chinese espionage and illegal campaign donations, the bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade in May 1999, the American move to stop Israel from selling China advanced early-warning radar and continued U.S. sanctions that stop China from obtaining the fastest computers and best weapons.

The Bush administration’s commitment to forging a national missile defense system has also sparked fears that the United States is intent on denying Beijing its small nuclear deterrent. Continued U.S. sales of high-tech weaponry to Taiwan make the Chinese feel that only the United States stands in the way of reuniting it with the Chinese motherland.

China’s military modernization over the last few years has been very much oriented toward challenging a stronger force near its territorial waters. Its weapons acquisition program — Russian anti-ship missiles, Russian submarines, Russian jet fighters — is also aimed at raising the cost to the United States of a war over Taiwan. In 1947, the United States established the Pacific Command as an outgrowth of the military structure used during World War II. Today the command is composed of over 300,000 U.S. military personnel. Their mission: to provide security in a region which hosts six of the world's largest armies -- including the People's Republic of China and North Korea -- and generates over 35 percent of U.S. international trade.

U.S. forces dedicated to the Pacific region:

U.S. Army Pacific: 60,000 soldiers and civilians (two divisions and one brigade) U.S. Pacific Fleet: 130,000 sailors and civilians (170 ships) Pacific Air Forces: 40,000 airmen and civilians (380 aircraft in nine wings) Marine Forces Pacific: 70,000 Marines and civilians (two expeditionary forces)

Major U.S. deployments in Asia include:

U.S. Forces Japan: 47,000 personnel ashore and 12,000 afloat at 90 locations. U.S. Forces Korea: 37,500 personnel at 85 installations

The Pacific Command participates in dozens of joint exercises with allied countries each year, including:

Cobra Gold: The U.S.-Thai exercise is expanding to include Singapore. Foal Eagle: Brings together U.S. and South Korean troops on the Korean peninsula. Crocodile: A training exercise with Australia at Shoalwater Bay. Rim of the Pacific: A biennial exercise that includes the U.S., Australia, Japan and South Korea. Printable version Source: U.S. Pacific Command/Washington Post Ken Allen, a former assistant air attache in Beijing, noted that so far the Chinese government has not sought to whip up nationalist fervor over the incident. Some analysts hypothesized that the government might have learned a lesson from what followed the U.S. bombing of China’s embassy in Yugoslavia, when hundreds of thousands of Chinese took to the streets to protest the U.S. attack in demonstrations encouraged by the government but that soon got out of hand. SIGNS OF MODERATION The official New China News Agency, in its only dispatch on the incident Sunday night, noted that the collision occurred in international airspace. China’s authorities have also taken steps to quell a hot-headed debate in China’s freewheeling Internet chat rooms. In the Strong Country Forum run by the People’s Daily, the mouthpiece of the Communist Party, 16 of 47 entries about the collision had been deleted by government monitors. A similar number were cut from the China Forum bulletin board on the Sina.com site, China’s most popular news Web site.

But Allen also pointed out that China’s government is not a monolith and reaching an agreement between the Foreign Ministry, the military and the party leadership over the fate of the U.S. plane and its crew will not be easy. Senior military officials could attempt to use the incident as a way to get the United States to reduce the number of surveillance flights and conduct them farther away. And in the political realm, Allen predicted Beijing will drag out negotiations for return of the aircraft and the crew as a way to influence the decision on arms sales to Taiwan.

“The problem is that it might backfire,” he said.

-- Anonymous, April 03, 2001