Bonding with Beijing

GLOBE EDITORIAL

PRESIDENT BUSH'S friendly reception for China's prime minister, Wen Jiabao, along with his effort to placate Beijing by publicly chastizing the government on Taiwan recalls a frequently forgotten lesson about power politics. Bush's courtship of the businesslike Wen demonstrates that nations have no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests.

While they were out of power, the conservatives who helped place Bush in the Oval Office defined China as America's strategic enemy in the 21st century. They raged against what they called Bill Clinton's appeasing of Beijing. Now one of their own is receiving the Chinese prime minister in the Oval Office and using the occasion to warn the democratically elected president of Taiwan, Chen Shui-bian, not to follow through on his intention to hold a referendum in March that Beijing fears might open the way to an eventual declaration of Taiwan's independence from the mainland.

Speaking yesterday from an Oval Office armchair with Wen at his side, Bush made a statement that could hardly have been more aligned with Beijing's position if it had been written by his visitor. Said Bush: "The comments and actions made by the leader of Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status quo, which we oppose."

Said Wen from the other Oval Office armchair: "We very much appreciate the position adopted by President Bush toward the latest moves and developments in Taiwan." Bush's about-face on China would be more defensible if it were acknowledged for what it is -- and if errors of both omission and commission had not made the placating of Beijing seem a necessity.

For one thing, there was no need to make China a go-between in negotiations to coax North Korea into ceding its nuclear weapons and missile programs. The North Koreans wanted a direct bilateral dialogue with Washington, since only the United States can give Pyongyang the nonaggression pact it has been demanding. But blundering administration hard-liners got Bush to insist that Beijing become the sponsor of a multilateral negotiating forum.

For another, Bush's egregious tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans, by enlarging federal deficits radically, enhanced China's power as a crucial American creditor. Thanks to Bush's fiscal irresponsibility, the dollar's strength depends on the good will of Beijing's central bank. If Bush were an apt practictioner of Realpolitik, he would not have blundered into the role of supplicant to Beijing.

Beyond Realpolitik, China should be asked to respect human rights. Toward that end, Beijing ought to release Brookline's Yang Jianli, a US-educated democracy activist who was arrested in China in April 2002.

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Source: "The Boston Globe".