unthreatening in scale, and explicable in terms of general aspiration towards status and People's Liberation Army reaction to the lessons of the Gulf War, rather than aggressive external ambition. We saw advantage if China could be engaged in some coherent multilateral security structure, but we recognised that China's desires were probably for global rather than regional frameworks and status.
We managed to avoid disproportionate discussion- time on Taiwan and Hong Kong; but we noted the inescapable concrete significance of these in policy towards China, most obviously but by no means only for the US and the UK respectively. There was much evidence of growing pragmatic contact between the mainland and Taiwan, but it remained clear that any Taiwanese move towards independence, or sovereign accession to GATT in advance of China's, would be seen in Beijing as acutely provocative. Views nevertheless differed on how far Chinese sensitivities should be allowed to constrain Taiwan's preferences or Western policy towards it; at the least, we agreed, Western countries should think and plan well ahead for alternative contingencies.
Matters at issue with China in the Hong Kong context, we recalled, were not confined to the Governor's proposed legislation on modest pre-1997 democratic advance in response to popular concerns and post-Tiananmen fears, though this was salient at present. We accepted that formal multilateralisation of dealings with China would not be welcome to either China or the UK; but firm and regular reminders to China of the interest of others beside the UK - reflecting, for example, the fact that the US expatriate business community in Hong Kong was now larger than the British could make a valuable contribution. Some were sceptical of any idea of tying Chinese retention of Most-Favoured-Nation status, in US legislation, to good behaviour over Hong Kong; it would be as apparent to China as to others that Hong Kong itself would suffer if MFN status were withheld. In all Hong Kong-related business the reality should be remembered that what mattered most was what happened in the years beyond 1997; and that if China then mishandled Hong Kong the repercussions would stretch widely.
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Our debate focused, at root, upon two central questions of approach: how should Western countries deal with China, and how - if at all - should they concert such
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dealings among themselves? On the first, few of us saw merit in high-profile confrontation or extensive cross- linkage of issues. Japan and other countries of the region were particularly concerned to avoid developments that might force upon them choices as between China and the US. Dealings need not be soft, and Western countries should be ready to stick toughly to bottom lines issue by issue. But for the most part business would be best advanced through dialogue preferably multilateral - wherever possible encouraging China to feel involved rather than targeted, whether on the environment, the arms trade, drugs, nuclear proliferation, the operation of the UN (especially the Security Council), the improvement of legal structures for economic life or China's wary movement towards GATT membership. This last remained much in everyone's long-term interest, but China still had a great deal to do on matters like transparency and law, and had evinced as yet an uncertain enthusiasm for truly open multilateral trade. It was neither feasible nor desirable to select a single over-arching frame- work for all this business - GATT was of limited ambit, and Chinese involvement in the Group of Seven would dilute or even destroy that useful mechanism without offsetting advantage. A pattern of purpose-built dialogues and multiplied contacts at many levels (including perhaps, for example, links with OECD on the model used for the smaller fast-developing Asian countries) seemed best to fit reality, with as much as possible of carrot rather than stick - though a majority of us, even after Manchester-interested votes were disallowed, seemed to doubt the wisdom of any political award of Olympics 2000 to China.
We saw, similarly, no one neat way to coordinate Western dealings (and recognised that risks of perceived ganging-up would anyway have had to be weighed). But we all agreed that in recent years there had been little if any systematic consultation or coordination; that this was a notably undesirable situation, with risks of needless inefficiency, confused signals to China and avoidable scope for Chinese manipulation; and that a serious effort was needed - perhaps through informal but purposeful meetings from time to time between key players from the US, Japan and the EC or its main members - towards better coherence, or at the least better-informed and more sensitive collective awareness, in the conduct of China- related business.
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