20100129 The West’s honeymoon with China appears over

The West’s honeymoon with China appears over
　

By Wang Dan 王丹
Friday, Jan 29, 2010, Page 8

‘I have heard it said that China had thought the West would never walk away, but the West is growing tired of China.’

The last 10 years have been a honeymoon period for China and Western governments. A couple of things have transpired recently, however, that would suggest this is now over. New tensions loom in ways we haven’t seen before.

First, there was the imprisonment of the intellectual Liu Xiaobo (劉曉波). Western governments had been following Liu’s case with interest for some time, and would have preferred to see Beijing improve its human rights image rather than go the other way. This would have been good for their policies toward China.

News of Liu’s heavy sentence was met with dismay in the West, which found his incarceration embarrassing.

Ambassadors of 15 countries in Beijing went to the court to express their concerns, presenting a single united voice with the US acting as spokesperson. It was an unprecedented move, and serves to show just how frustrated the West is becoming. This frustration is sure to affect how these governments revise their policies on China.

The second thing was Google’s break-up with China.

Cracks are appearing in the paintwork. Taken together, these two issues are quite revealing.

By leaving China, Google is turning its back on huge commercial interests. We all know that China won’t give an inch. That being the case, Google’s moral stance against Beijing’s Internet monitoring system flies in the face of what the world has come to expect from Western multinationals’ mercenary behavior.

It shows that there are things going on that are not immediately obvious.

In Google’s case, that happens to be related to the US government. There has been a conspicuous softening of the State Department’s approach to Beijing since US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton took office, but they are taking a rather tough stand over the Google affair. There’s no smoke without fire. I would be willing to bet that the US is in the process of rethinking its China policy. How big a change this is going to be, and the direction it will take, remains to be seen.

The basic conditions for continued cooperation between China and the West are still in place, so we cannot expect Western governments to do a policy aboutface.

It’s important to recognize, however, that these conditions are changing, however imperceptibly.

I have heard it said that China had thought the West would never walk away, but the West is growing tired of China. And herein lies the reason behind the gradual shift we are now seeing in their relations.

In the long term there are going to be four major issues shaping the relationship — the environment, energy, monetary policy and the food crisis — simply because there is an underlying conflict of interest in each case.

Partners by virtue of confluence of interest alone are not worthy of the name, for they will become enemies the moment any conflict arises. Now that the honeymoon is over, I see many tensions on the horizon.

Wang Dan is a visiting assistant professor at the Graduate Institute of Taiwan History at National Chengchi University.