Naming Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the "axis of evil," US President George W. Bush warned that "these regimes have been pretty quiet since Sept. 11, but we know their true nature."
In late April, Chinese President Jiang Zemin (江澤民) visited Iran, where he concluded five commercial agreements. Having mentioned the now globally fashionable anti-terrorism phrase, he declared, "China opposes various forms of hegemony" and "Bei-jing's policy is to oppose the stationing of troops by the US in Central Asia and the Middle East."
Since Sept. 11, China has gone along with the US fight against terrorism. At the same time, it seems to have skillfully begun a campaign of creeping defiance against the US by continuing to befriend the rogue states that Washington despises. That, in fact, is a part of Beijing's broad foreign-policy response to the largely unfavorable impact on China of the Sept. 11 attacks. And this sophisticated response contains both defensive self-restraint and counteroffensive measures.
Beijing seems to many to be pretty quiet. But there is more going on under the surface.
Take Iraq, for instance, a major recipient of China's arms transfers. Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji (朱鎔基) received Iraqi Vice Premier Tariq Aziz in Beijing on Jan. 28 and stressed that anti-terrorism should not allow "arbitrary expansion of the targets for military attacks." Li Peng (李鵬), chairman of the Chinese National People's Congress, said during an April 18 meeting with his Iraqi counterpart, Saadoun Hamadi, that "China always opposes hegemony, unilateralism and big-power politics." The target of his oblique remarks was more than apparent.
North Korea has for years received weapons from China and then exported some abroad. In February, Bush asked Jiang to persuade North Korea to resume talks with Washington on curbing arms proliferation. But he was rebuffed. Since March, waves of North Korean refugees seeking political asylum in Western embassies and consulates in China have been arrested by security forces, who in some cases intruded into the foreign compounds and in at least one case assaulted diplomats. To protect its relations with Pyongyang, Beijing ignored international indignation about it violating the diplomatic convention of extraterritoriality.
One country that indirectly received weapons of mass des-truction from China via North Korea is Libya. Although not in the original "axis of evil," Libya was mentioned by the US State Department on an expanded list on May 6, and for a good reason. Libya's behavior as a rogue state has a long history. So do China-Libya relations.
In April 1993, China was caught shipping arms to Tripoli shortly after UN sanctions against Libya took effect. Beijing claimed the ship set out for Libya before the sanctions took effect. It was widely reported in 1999 and 2000 that China assisted Libya in developing long-range ballistic missiles. By the end of 2000, Libya had received 36 North Korean Rodong missiles, with a range of 1,000km, which China had helped North Korea build, according to an Israeli source mentioned in the US Internet Magazine on Aug. 8, 2001.
On April 13, Jiang met with Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi as the first Chinese head of state to ever visit Libya, and delivered the same "anti-hegemony" message he would later repeat in Iran.
Beijing's post-Sept. 11 activities with rogue states have been accompanied by diplomatic circumspection. While the Sept. 11 tragedy prompted celebration on the streets of Beijing, Jiang halted such activities and called Bush to offer his condolences. For the next few months, Beijing showed unprecedented restraint toward Washington and its friends in Tokyo and Taipei:
Japan's parliament passed a bill last October that allowed the government to send five naval ships abroad for logistical support in the campaign against terror, the first time since World War II that Japan had sent its military overseas.
Vice President Annette Lu (
Washington allowed Minister of National Defense Tang Yao-ming (
Beijing's post-Sept. 11 diplomatic aplomb is a reaction to the new international environment in which its position is weakened.
First, Russia's unexpected tilt toward the West has left China on a limb in the Washington-Moscow-Beijing triangle, which had been more or less balanced before.
Second, the US has strength-ened its alliance with countries around China's periphery, including Pakistan. Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, members of the Shanghai Cooperative Organization headed by Beijing, have allowed the US to station its troops on their soil and use their airports for 25 years. South Korea and the US recently held the largest joint military exercise in 50 years. And Washington and Manila recovered from their estranged relations of the past 10 years . In short, China has been encircled.
Third, Beijing's immediate voicing of support for the US-led war on terror might have tainted China's image as a leader of the Third World and compromised its "independent foreign policy" in pursuit of a multi-polar world.
With Beijing's self-restraint serving as a defense in a world now dominated by a single superpower, Beijing launched diplomatic counteroffensives beginning late last year to regain its influence in two phases.
From November to March, Beijing's leaders were busily stabilizing relations with their neighbors. Vietnam received first US$40 million and then US$3.6 million in aid in late November. Burma received US$100 million in aid and investment in mid-December. Mongolia received US$4.8 million in aid and US$4.5 million worth of oil in January. India's top high-tech company was invited to open facilities in Shanghai. Indonesia received a US$400 million loan and US$6 million in aid.
Though these amounts might not be extraordinary, Beijing's concentrated efforts in the region were quite unusual.
Having done as much as they could to shore up the country's borders, China's leaders then ventured out to visit Japan, Germany and Russia. They also went to the Baltic states and Iceland, and a long list of developing countries such as Nigeria, Turkey, Tunisia, Egypt and Kenya. As Beijing began to feel more sure of itself, its support for rogue states became more noticeable.
For Beijing, it may be noble, if not also necessary, to look after its old friends when others despise them. Yet for Washington, that may make Beijing a patron of the "axis of evil."
Lin Chong-Pin is adjunct professor in the Graduate Institute of Mainland China Studies at National Sun Yat-sen University.
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