Done forget lessons-China shows why the West must also engage Russia

China has come a long way since the Tiananmen Square massacre nearly two decades ago. It has opened up to the extent that it hosted this month an Asia-Europe conference that focused in several of its sessions on democratisation and human rights. The old mindset and suspicion of outsiders, of course, haven’t disappeared. After all, power rests with the same party and system responsible for the death of tens of millions of Chinese during the so-called “Great Leap Forward”, “Cultural Revolution” and other state-induced disasters and political witch-hunts. That the communist party continues to monopolise power despite its past gory excesses indeed is remarkable, if not unprecedented in modern world history. Yet today’s China is a far cry from the Mao Zedong era or even the Deng Xiaoping period. What it has achieved in the last generation in terms of economic modernisation and the opening of minds is truly exceptional. The state’s continuing repressive impulse, however, is mirrored in a more tightly-controlled domestic media, the pervasive security apparatus and the brutal crackdown of the monk-led uprising across the vast Tibetan plateau. The key difference is that the Chinese now can relocate within the country, are free to travel overseas, enjoy property rights, have access to the latest communications technology and do other things that were unthinkable a generation ago. China’s opening up owes a lot to the West’s decision not to sustain trade sanctions after Tiananmen Square but instead to try to integrate Beijing with global institutions through the liberalising influence of foreign investment and trade. That the choice made was wise can be seen from the baneful impact of the opposite decision that was taken on Burma in the period following the ruthless suppression of pro-democracy Burmese protests 10 months before Tiananmen Square. Had the Burma-type approach been applied against China, the result would not only have been a lessprosperous and less-open China but also a more-paranoid and destabilising China. With a new chill setting in on relations between the West and Russia, the lesson from the correct choice made on China is in danger of getting lost. The rhetoric in some western quarters for a tougher stance against Moscow is becoming shrill.
Little thought has been given to how the West lost Russia, a nowresurgent power that had in the 1990s sought to cosy up to the US and Europe. Instead, turning a blind eye to the way NATO is being expanded right up to Russia’s front yard and the US-led action in engineering Kosovo’s self-proclamation of independence, the new focus is on how to punish Moscow for intervening in Georgia. The foreign policy-centred first debate between US presidential candidates Barack Obama and John McCain stood out for the way each of them spat fire on Russia, with not a single question being asked about an increasingly assertive China. It is as if the US, not content with setting up military bases and a missile-defence system in Russia’s periphery and seeking to encroach on Russia’s historical dependencies and protectorates, seems intent on rediscovering Moscow as an adversary. A self-fulfilling prophecy that ushers in a second Cold War can only damage US interests. Europe, whose interests are closely tied to peace and cooperation with Moscow, is sadly split and adrift on Russia. If, today, there is a push for a policy of containment, it is not against China but against Russia. Even on the democracy issue, it is Russia, not China, that is the target of constant hectoring. George W Bush, in fact, is leaving the White House in his father’s footsteps — with a China-friendly legacy. Nothing illustrates this better than the way he ignored the bloody suppression of the most powerful Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule since 1959 and showed up at the Beijing Olympics. Little surprise that President Hu Jintao has praised the “good momentum” in Sino-US ties under Bush. China’s rise has been aided by good fortune on multiple strategic fronts. First, Beijing’s reform process benefited from good timing, coming as it did at the start of globalisation. Second, the Soviet Union’s collapse delivered an immense strategic boon, eliminating a menacing empire and opening the way for Beijing to rapidly gain strategic space. And third, there has been a succession of China-friendly US presidents in the past two decades — a period that has coincided with China’s rise. Whether Obama or McCain wins next month’s election, the US will continue to have closer economic and political engagement with China than with India, the nuclear deal notwithstanding. Today, the US economy is inextricably linked with China. The financial meltdown has only increased US reliance on Chinese capital inflows, thus adding to China’s leverage, even if a possible US recession helps slow Chinese exports. Any US-led attempt to contain Russia may mesh well with China’s ambitions but can hardly contribute to international security. If engagement has helped create a moreopen China, does it make sense to apply different standards to Russia, with Moscow’s 13-year effort to join the WTO now in jeopardy and Washington scuppering a nuclear deal with Russia?