Former American Institute in Taiwan chairman Richard Bush said in Taipei yesterday that China has played a cooperative and accommodating role in the international system as a whole, but added that there was no guarantee of a benign outcome, as China’s revival is still in its early stages.
“So far, it has seemed that China is a rising power with limited aims and that the cooperative stance can continue for a long time, but remember our theoretical discussion also tell us that China could be a revisionist power, and it’s very skilled at hiding that,” Bush said in a keynote speech at an international academic conference organized by the Association of International Relations of the Republic of China at National Chengchi University.
Addressing the conference’s theme — how the international community should respond to China’s revival and its international impact — Bush said interactions between the world’s major powers and China on specific issues would shape how they view each other’s intentions and fundamental policies.
Bush said that based on his observations of China’s growing power, “it’s hard to conclude that China is acting internationally like a revisionist power, a rising power intent on overturning the system.”
It needs both “time” and a “peaceful international environment” to complete the modernization necessary for China to become a truly great power, Bush said, adding that cross-strait relations may be a “litmus test of what kind of great power China will become.”
Bush said “there is a growing sense in the US” of China’s threat to Taiwan and the consequences of its increasing military power.
Bush said the US has responded to the situation through an approach he called “dual deterrence,” as the US “warned both Taiwan and China not to take unilateral and destabilizing actions” and at the same time sought to “reassure both countries about their basic intentions.”
“There were times that China thought that perhaps the US and China could work together to manage the Taiwan issue or to control leaders in Taiwan. That was an excessive expectation,” he said.
Bush, currently a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and director of its Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies, said “it would be exactly wrong” if China had the intention of challenging the international order.
“It’s also important to remember that we should not overstate how far China has come. We should remember that this is an era of globalization, not one of global geopolitics. Although China’s military power is growing, it is still no match for that of the US,” he said.
Bush said that the growth of Chinese national power is beneficial to the world in some ways.
“But in others, particularly the security area where there is a game of hatching going on,” he said. “Hatching can create problems, although China is not acting like a revisionist power for the moment.”
In the next few years, Bush said the Korean Peninsula issue would be “a severe test” of relations between China and the US as political changes after North Korean leader Kim Jong-il dies will affect the interests of the two countries in different ways.
Bush said the US and China, through interactions over the decades, were learning lessons about each other’s approaches to issues and about their long-term intentions toward each other.
Whether “the rather idealistic vision” formulated by US President Barack Obama that sees the international system prospering as the result of effective cooperation among the major powers, including China, will be realized “remains to be seen,” since “China has a very different approach to power and has reasons to mistrust the US,” he said.
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