China No. 1? Don't hold your breath
Ross Terrill The Boston Globe
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2005


CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts As George W. Bush readies his chopsticks to dine with President Hu Jintao of China this week, he might ponder whether China's rise really means America's eclipse, as so many seem to assume.

Don't count on it. The U.S. economy is seven times the size of China's and the Japanese economy is three times China's. Not least, China is a Leninist regime - the kind that mostly went up in a puff of smoke 15 years ago.

China's foreign policy seeks to maximize stability at home (for example, by keeping the status quo across Xinjiang's borders with Central Asia) and to sustain its impressive economic growth (for example, by safeguarding the huge U.S. market). A third goal is to maintain peace in its complicated geographic situation, with no fewer than 14 abutting neighbors. So far so good. This is a prudent foreign policy.

But China also has two dubious goals. One is to replace the United States as the chief source of influence in East Asia. Hence Chinese efforts to drive a wedge between Japan and the United States and Chinese whispers in Australian ears that Canberra would be better off looking only to Asia and not across the Pacific. The other is to "regain" territories that Beijing feels fall within its sovereignty. These include not only Taiwan but a large number of islands east and south of China and, eventually, portions of the Russian Far East to which Beijing has laid territorial claims in the past.

Whether Beijing can achieve these goals depends on how long its rigid political system can survive, and on the reaction of other powers to China's ambitions. A middle-class push for property rights, rural discontent, the spread of the Internet, unemployment and a suddenly aging population bringing financial and social strains all dramatize the contradictions inherent in "market Leninism." Traveling one road in economics and another in politics does not make for a settled destination.

China's economy may continue to grow at its present rate. Or China may retain its Leninist party state. But it can hardly do both. Either the economic or the political logic will soon gain the upper hand.

The successful rise of a new No. 1 entails not only ambition and capacity on the part of that rising power but also - crucially - acquiescence by other affected powers.

This last condition is extremely unlikely to be fulfilled. The United States will not allow an authoritarian China to become the new world leader and has allies to call on. Japan's new assertiveness and India's weight are major factors. And should Beijing seek to pursue a Chinese version of the Monroe Doctrine in Asia, Washington could also count on Australia, Indonesia and Vietnam for balancing weight.

American interests in Asia lie, as they have for the past century, in keeping China and Japan in balance, and not allowing either one to forge ahead of the other. Equally, a Japan that saw China eclipse the United States, its major ally whose primacy in East Asia explains six decades of Japanese restraint, would surely challenge China.

America's China policy should blend full engagement with preserving an equilibrium in East Asia that discourages Beijing from expansionism. No contradiction exists between these twin stances. There are two Chinas, after all. A command economy that sags and a free economy that soars. A Communist Party that scratches for a raison d'?tre and 1.3 billion individuals with private agendas. Being wary of authoritarian China yet engaging with emerging China is a reasonable dualism.

Beijing's expansionist claims are unique among today's powers. But the regime is a rational dictatorship that has, for the past quarter-century, been patient in fulfilling its goals. It surely realizes that others have a variety of reasons for denying China the opportunity to be a 21st-century Middle Kingdom. If Beijing continues to be faced with a countervailing equilibrium that keeps the peace in East Asia, it will probably act prudently.

In Beijing, Shanghai, Xian and Chongqing, on two recent visits, I found less talk of China being near to eclipsing the United States than I do on U.S. campuses and in the U.S. media. Overall, China may not be the new colossus it appears to its self-made foes or to distant lotus-eaters. A Leninist-ruled Chinese superpower eclipsing the United States is not on the horizon.

(Ross Terrill is the author of ''The New Chinese Empire.'')

Influence peddling
The New York Times
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 16, 2005


Little did Representative Tom DeLay and other lawmakers dream that in frolicking on the golf junkets of Jack Abramoff, the indicted Republican superlobbyist, the influential politicians might, in effect, be caddying for his avaricious lobbying reach.

It turns out that Abramoff, the subject of multiple investigations, initiated a typically brazen $9 million proposal that he use his influence to secure a White House visit for President Omar Bongo of Gabon. In an expansive letter to his target, Abramoff suggested that he could visit Bongo "after my visit to Scotland with the congressmen and senators I take there each year." He said, "It is possible they will want to join me in Gabon, which will be an extra bonus."

President Bongo did visit President George W. Bush, but there is no evidence so far that Abramoff actually played the broker or that he packed his lawmaker playmates off to Gabon. There is indisputable evidence, however, that his braggadocio about feting lawmakers on the links was true - now embarrassingly so, as investigations detail how Abramoff milked those connections to project an aura of political power.

The largely uncontrolled lobbying world of Washington deserves all the attention it is getting by way of Abramoff. A worthy bill to end the scandalous privately financed junketeering - $18 million worth by 600 lawmakers in the last five years - and closely track lobbyists' money and influence is before Congress.

As the Republican majority grows anxious about next year's elections and the public's increasing disapproval of Congress, it would be wise to resort to lobbying reform as the last refuge of ex-junketeers.