Partners or competitors? Containment by means of engagement, or engagement by means of containment? While the US Congress debates endlessly about how to define US-China relations, the US is giving China more bargaining chips by the day through its handling of the Tibet issue and even the Taiwan issue. The US believes almost superstitiously in the power of economic liberalization but has been forced to decouple the problem of human rights from economic issues, thereby losing its biggest bargaining chip in relations with China.
At present, China is taking advantage of its enormous economic potential to take the initiative and obtain further strategic depth in handling the Tibet and Taiwan issues. If the policies of the US aren't adjusted in a fundamental way and all hope is placed on a break-up of political authority in China, then US interests will suffer. The US will also find it more difficult to have a hand in the Tibet and Taiwan issues.
Ambiguity and playing it by ear have been the limits revealed by the US in its handling of the Taiwan and Tibet issues all along. At times, there has even been the expedient of turning the Taiwan and Tibet issues into a tool. Consider the US' handling of the Tibet issue, for example.
When former president Bill Clinton took office in 1993, he followed Jimmy Carter's example by placing human rights at a premium and declaring that if China didn't improve its human-rights record, the US wouldn't give China most-favored-nation (MFN) status. Moreover, he put protection of Tibet's unique religious and cultural legacy on the human-rights list and even arranged for a "chance encounter" with the Dalai Lama in the White House.
The next year in a report on the Tibet issue, however, the US once again recognized China's authority over Tibet and refused to establish diplomatic relations with the Tibetan government-in-exile. Although there was no lack of support in Congress for the view that improvement of China's human rights record and MFN treatment shouldn't be decoupled, in the end Congress couldn't stand up to its own highly-touted doctrine of the free market. It passed measures to normalize trade relations with China and caused the US to lose the powerful bargaining chip of imposing sanctions on China for human rights abuses.
The ambiguity of US policy has also caused the Dalai Lama to face a dilemma in his handling of dialogue with China. The Dalai Lama stirred up a wave of enthusiasm for Tibet in the West and successfully associated the Tibet issue with other general Western values such as cultural self-determination, environmental protection, human rights, and peace. Despite pressure being applied on China from many countries for years, however, he has never managed to resume dialogue with China about the Tibet issue.
Although more than 30 Tibet Houses around the globe frequently sponsor events and the government-in-exile has established an office at the UN and representatives have been assigned to London, Tokyo and other cities, China's powerful influence in the international community grows by the day.
Although the Dalai Lama opposes violence, he is facing internal pressure from the younger generation's urgent demands for Tibetan independence. In the parliament of the government-in-exile, 30 of the 45 seats are occupied by delegates from Qinghai and western Sichuan. Thus they advocate independence not only for the current Tibetan Autonomous Region but also for Qinghai, western Sichuan, and other regions inhabited by Tibetans.
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