A Note by the Director
Ditchley 93/4
WESTERN RELATIONS WITH
THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF CHINA
19-21 March 1993
Our conference was mounted in cooperation with the Atlantic Council of the United States; and the circulation of an impressive draft report, prepared under the Council's auspices, on US relations with the People's Republic of China gave us a flying start.
Two dramatic events had re-shaped the PRC's external relations since the mid-1980s: the Tiananmen massacre had shocked world opinion and repelled free- world countries, and the end of the Cold War had removed the special purchase which a bipolar framework had given to Chinese leverage. The initial chill of Tiananmen had penetrated policy among all Western governments; but the gradual ensuing thaw had so far least reached the US, where deep popular outrage articulated through the Congress perhaps reflected the historic US semi- missionary concern for the conversion of China. The new congruence of executive and legislature might make for more coherent US policy, but by no means necessarily less frosty policy.
Within China itself the scene was, as almost always, complex, shifting and opaque. Massive economic change most vividly but not only in regions like Guang Dong - had yielded sweeping growth on the back of surging individual enterprise and de facto privatisation. There were grounds for doubting whether the present pace could last inflation risks were mounting, with the possibility accordingly of renewed central clamp-down; deficiencies in energy supply and transport infrastructure would bite with increasing sharpness; there were problems in agriculture, in unemployment levels and in the lack of dependable legal frameworks for commercial activity. But, saving the spectre of political chaos, the prospect overall was of continued expansion, with trade and investment opportunities keenly attractive to the US as to others.
Economic change of this kind and on this scale made social and eventually therefore political change inescapable, albeit perhaps in Chinese rather than Western timeframes; and the process was moreover welling up massively from below, not imposed by central design. But its central management and control placed a difficult agenda, amid conflicting pressures, in front of an aged leadership whose ideology had foundered and who brought to bear reactive attitudes largely marked by suspicion, face-conscious nationalism and deep fear that lost control might lead to China's break-up. Their legitimacy with the people was questionable, the quality of likely successors unimpressive (despite some shift towards more technocratic and provisionally-representative
membership) and the structures for ordered transition uncertain.
The stance of the armed forces had been crucial at Tiananmen and could be so again; but the West was not well informed about their outlook and cohesion. They had wide financial and operating independence, and it was by no means certain that, under national stress, they would again stand by and rescue the central political élite.
We came to no ready prediction of the likely course of China's political development. Simple reversion to closed and rigid Marxist authoritarianism seemed out of the question, but a smooth, peaceful and imaginative advance towards mature political pluralism was almost equally so, given leadership inadequacy and apprehension. Views differed on whether there was a real risk of major explosion. There were the elements of combustion, especially if crudely mishandled from the centre; as against that, China had almost always managed to live with a degree of local disorder, and there was a profound horror of chaos, perhaps all the stronger now that growing prosperity had given people more to lose.
In this situation the West's bottom-line concern, most of us agreed, must be for a coherent and stable China. Break-up or even serious weakness could have widely damaging regional and global consequences - and the worst scenario for human rights would be the collapse of order. The West should not imagine that its own ability to influence outcomes was other than marginal, and history enjoined humility about the ability of outside interventions, of any kind, to yield intended effects. All this pointed to a flexibility in policy choice, and a modest basic aim of seeking to help reduce the likelihood of bad
outcomes.
There was some diversity of view on human rights. We noted that though the US was not alone in its proven concern, US opinion felt a stronger urge than others (and especially than neighbours within the region) to keep China under pressure in this field. We were disinclined to concede abatement of the universality of basic rights; but we noted that priorities among them were not seen identically by the US and by Asian states, and that the latter were the more disposed to give China credit for improvements already achieved (albeit from a low start- point).
We mostly took a relatively relaxed view of the current regional-security aspects of policy towards China, on the key proviso that underlying US engagement was not to be seriously eroded. We saw recent Chinese acquisitions of advanced military equipment as (in its context)