American-Chinese relations are at a low ebb, and it concerns all of us in East Asia. This present row between the United States and China has arisen because the Clinton administration, forgetting the past, touched a "neuralgic" area - Taiwan and Tibet. The Chinese have thus responded ferociously. Anything that threatens China's unity is cause for war.
Most Favored Nation trade status, intellectual property disputes, entry into the World Trade Organization - these are all matters China will negotiate and compromise on. But if Beijing's leaders believe the United States is encouraging a split in China, they will respond, and damn the consequences. Unless the United States is prepared for war it must accept that Taiwan is part of China, and so is Tibet.The Chinese leadership believes that the United States abetted Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's efforts to "creep" toward independence by granting him a visa for a "highly publicized" visit to the United States. It was this act that led directly to the worsening of relations between China and the United States and to the fundamental change in China's policy toward Taiwan. And if the Dalai Lama is led to believe through five-minute photo-opportunities with President Clinton that he can act like Lee there will be more trouble. China will not sit idly by.
The present situation introduces even more anxiety into the Western Pacific where large differences in rates of growth among countries of the region are already resulting in shifts of economic power that will redefine political influence. At such a time of transition it is in everyone's strategic interest to have the United States maintain a stable working relationship with China.
Singapore, Thailand, Japan and others have had friction with the United States over the years, but they are trivial compared to that between China and America. Japan can exasperate and even anger the Americans by its multifold trade restrictions and its huge trade surpluses, but Japan cannot threaten America and cannot displace America as a supreme power.
But China is different. What the Japanese have done, mainland China may be able to do in three or four generations. China is 10 times as big as Japan, so it may take much longer. But when it reorders its society and educate its 1.2 billion people, China may become the No. 1 power on the western side of the Pacific - unless America is there as a partner with Japan to balance China.
What is thus at stake in the present confrontation between the United States and China over Taiwan is the very future of stability in all of East Asia.