WHY WE MUST CONTAIN CHINA

If an ambassador is an honest man sent abroad to lie for his country, a statesman is a man who lies from the comfort of home. Regarding China, American statesmen abound. Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord denies vehemently that America is trying to contain China as it once did the Soviet Union. Our policy is one of engagement not containment, he insists. And Newt Gingrich says on Face the Nation that we should help the Chinese people undermine the Chinese government, then spends the next five minutes explaining that he did not really mean undermining at all.

Why are these diplomatic fibs? Because any rational policy toward a rising, threatening China would have exactly these two components: 1) containing China as it tries relentlessly to expand its reach, and 2) undermining its pseudo-Marxist but still ruthless dictatorship. Responsible statesmen are not allowed to say such things. Essayists are.

Does containment mean cold war II, with China playing the part of the old Soviet Union? Not quite. There is no ideological component to this struggle. Until late in life, the Soviet Union had ideological appeal, with sympathizers around the globe. Today’s China, unlike Mao’s, has no such appeal. China is more an old-style dictatorship, not on a messianic mission, just out for power. It is much more like late 19th century Germany, a country growing too big and too strong for the continent it finds itself on.

Its neighbors are beginning to feel the pressure. China is extending its reach deep into the South China Sea, claiming islets hundreds of miles from China, near four of its neighbors but within the reach of its rapidly growing military. Indeed, while defense spending in Russia and the West has declined, China’s is rising dramatically, doubling in the past 10 years. Those dollars are going to intercontinental rocketry, a modernized army and a blue-water navy.

Nor is China deploying its new might just locally. It is sending missile and nuclear technology to such places as Pakistan and Iran. The Pakistan connection represents a flanking maneuver against China’s traditional enemy, India; Iran, a leapfrog to make trouble for that old imperial master, the West.

Containment of such a bully must begin early in its career. That means building relations with China’s neighbors, starting with Vietnam. For all the emotion surrounding our decision to normalize relations with Vietnam, its significance is coldly geopolitical: Vietnam is China’s traditional enemy (they fought a brief war in 1979). We must therefore make it our friend.

A map tells you the rest of a containment strategy: 1) a new security relationship with democratic India, now freed from its odd, cold war alliance with the Soviets; 2) renewing the U.S.- Japan alliance, now threatened by a U.S. Administration so hell-bent on selling carburetors in Kyoto that it is blithely jeopardizing the keystone of our Pacific security; and 3) cozying up to the Russians, who, however ornery elsewhere, have a common interest in boxing in China.

Containment is not a cold war invention. It is a principle of power politics going back centuries. After the Napoleonic wars, the Congress of Vienna created a system of alliances designed to contain a too dynamic France. In our time the Atlantic Alliance contained an aggressive Soviet Union. In between, the West failed to contain an emergent Germany. The result was two world wars. We cannot let that happen with the emerging giant of the 21st century.

But containing China is not enough. Even more important is what Gingrich found himself unable to advocate clearly: undermining its aggressively dictatorial regime.

Undermining begins with unwavering support of such dissidents as Harry Wu, now imprisoned in China on charges of espionage for his human-rights work. The moral reasons are obvious. But beyond the moral is the political. America contained the Soviet Union, but it was dissidents like Solzhenitsyn, Sharansky and Sakharov who brought down the Soviet system from within. Wu and the unnamed thousands he speaks for represent the ultimate threat to the Chinese dictatorship, which is why it reacts to him with ultimate ferocity. And why we need to stand by him steadfastly.

Economic sanctions will not work. They would be even more useless against China’s robust economy than they once were against the weaker Soviet economy. Better to wage the human-rights fight in the public arena. Denying Beijing the 2000 Olympics was a serious blow. So is keeping China from joining the World Trade Organization on the terms it desires. Next, Hillary Clinton should respond to the pleas of Wu’s wife and lead an ostentatious U.S. boycott of the U.N.’s World Conference on Women, scheduled for Beijing in September. Regimes like China’s crave the legitimacy such events confer. Denying them sends a serious message: Liberalize or be ostracized. It should be a lodestar of our policy to grant such public perks only in exchange for signs of toleration and democratization.

Containment aims to prevent war. But a change in regime to a tolerant, democratic China is the better guarantee of peace. Time to apply the pressure and keep it on.