From: craft@mrcnext.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Craft)
Subject: China? What China?
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1992 04:44:14 GMT

>>As some of you may have noticed if you've followed America's
>>Presidential campaign close enough that both Clinton/Gore and
>>Bush/Quayle have repeatedly claimed that the cold war is over,
>>Communism has disappeared from the surface of this earth, etc.
>>I would agree with the first point. But Communism no longer 
>>exists? What about China, then? 

	For that matter, North Korea, Vietnam, etc.  However, I
haven't heard either side say that Communism has disappeared.  Instead,
I have heard both sides speak of its failure and defeat.

>>When Soviet Union was changed color, one may have imagined that
>>China would've probably emerged as a main threat to the ``free 
>>world''. However, it seems to me that US has never taken China 
>>very seriously when it comes to the possible rivalries on the
>>international arena. 

	Why should China pose as a threat in the world?  China,
despite its large geographic and demographic proportions, is a
small power, or somewhere between being a small and great power.
It doesn't pose as a tremendous threat to its East Asian neighbors,
with maybe the exception of Taiwan, in the sense that its East Asian
and Southeast Asian neighbors foresee Chinese troops attacking by
the thousands.  This doesn't mean that its neighbors don't fear China,
but I haven't read anything to suggest otherwise.  As for the world, China
doesn't project hard (military) power.  It doesn't have a navy that can
roam at will to enforce policy in some far off place that it perceives
as vital to its interest.  China does have the "power of diplomacy," but
it is not the kind of power that poses as a threat to countries on some
other continent.  The US did, and possibly still does, treat China's selling 
of arms to Middle Eastern countries, for example Iran, as a serious threat 
because US forces were/are in the area, and before the war, there was fear 
that Iran would use those missiles against the US naval forces in the Persian 
Gulf.  I haven't heard anything on tracking missile sells from China to Iran 
and other places lately, though it may be an example of my ignorance.  But 
it would be difficult for the US to complain too much since it is selling a 
lot of arms in the area.

China's repeated abstantion from UN's
>>resolution (Desert Storm, etc.) has also supported such a claim.
>>And now that Bush has lifted 10+year ban on arms sale to Taiwan 
>>(F-16) and totally ignored China's protest. It again shows yet 
>>another evidence that China has no impact whatsoever in America's 
>>decision-making and play insignificant role in world's politics. 

	I don't totally agree that China plays an insignificant role in the
world.  This is simply a case that China is helpless to stop the sell of arms
to Taiwan by the US or any other country.  China can appeal to these
countries, but in a time when many countries are dealing with a bad
economy, those domestic pressures will sometimes overrule such appeals.
China can try to strike back at the US economically, but not without doing
damage to itself.  Besides, Taiwan is merely updating its aging air force,
and is not planning to invade.  China may not like the fact that Taiwan is
able to do so, but it is something that China can live with.  It has few
options.  But this doesn't entirely mean that China plays an insignificant
role in the world.  The Soviet Union sold arms to Vietnam during the Vietnam
War, and the US was helpless to stop it, and the reverse occurred during
the Afghanistan conflict when the US sold Stinger missiles to the rebels
through Pakistan, much to the Soviet Union's chagrin.

>>I am just wondering how many of you still believe that China is strong
>>enough to have a say in the world.

	This depends on how much say you expect China to have in the world.
Even the Superpowers could not always exert their influence anytime or
anywhere. China exerts more influence in its own backyard (East and Southeast
Asia) for obvious reasons, but even in this case of arms being sold to Taiwan,
China faces normal limits of power.  Look at how the Soviet Union supported
Cuba for all those years until the Soviet Union's demise.  The US only
attempted once to overthrow Castro, and then only in a futile and half-hearted
way. Even though the Cuban Missile crisis seemed serious at the time, the\
two Superpowers were not on the brink of war.  Otherwise, the US lived with
the fact that there was a Soviet combat brigade, when it remembered, in Cuba,
and the fact that the Cuban military had the best of the Soviet military only
a hundred miles off the US coast of Florida.  The US had the power to overthrow
Cuba by force, but didn't.  Taiwan is not a serious threat to China's security, so China can live with the arms sale.

Steve Craft				University of Illinois-Champaign
sgcg9806@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
					Stephen Daedalus "Ulysses"

--
Steve Craft                                  University of Illinois-Champaign
sgcg9806@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu
"History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake."
                                        Stephen Daedalus "Ulysses"

Newsgroups: talk.politics.china