The White House could hit Beijing where it hurts: in the money belt. But if Clinton decides to put 100 percent tariffs on Chinese imports – or cut off up to $10 billion in loan guarantees for American business deals in China – he risks irritating an already prickly U.S.-Sino relationship. Doing nothing would leave the president open to election-year charges that he coddles despots – the same accusation candidate Clinton leveled against Bush. Even more problematic would be to punish unevenly by imposing sanctions on copyright infractions but waiving penalties on arms-control violations. That would feed suspicions of a China policy driven more by business interests than by security concerns. It might also smack of politics: the pressure to punish Chinese counterfeiters comes mainly from Hollywood and the Silicon Valley, and California’s 54 electoral votes will be critical come November. More ominously, ignoring China’s nuclear misconduct could spark an arms race with Pakistan’s wary rival, India. The choices for America, says Secretary of State Warren Christopher, are ““extremely sensitive and complicated.''
Chinese politics on both sides of the Taiwan Strait have created complications, too. Beijing, still in the throes of delicate leadership transition, has not yet forgiven Washington for issuing a visa to Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui last June, viewing that move as an abrogation of America’s one-China policy. It regards Taiwan as a miscreant province – a free-market, democratic stepchild at odds with its giant Confucian, socialist parent – and its president as a crypto-separatist. Beijing wants to erode Lee’s support in the March 23 elections, and has had some success; in a recent poll, 44 percent of voters worried about a possible Chinese invasion.
That’s very unlikely. The People’s Liberation Army isn’t yet capable of pulling off an offensive on that scale – a D-Day-size force of up to 400,000, say U.S. military analysts. While China has poured billions of dollars into a modernization of its military, it is still two or three decades behind American capability, hemmed in by a lack of technical sophistication, bureaucratic snares and, ironically, the increased conversion of defense industries to civilian production. There’s another deterrent as well: Washington has privately warned China that an invasion of Taiwan would trigger a U.S. response, a Pentagon source told NEWSWEEK. Publicly, American officials have refused to pin themselves down to any specific scenarios, a stance that one U.S. official calls ““studied ambiguity.’’ But at a Beijing colloquy last summer, a Pentagon analyst told his Chinese counterparts, ““The United States would have to intervene to defend Taiwan.’’ The reason, he said, had little to do with democracy or the free market. ““If we didn’t, the entire credibility of the U.S. forward deployed forces in the western Pacific would go down the tubes, just like that.''
That has the ring of an emerging policy, encompassing security and commercial interests. It argues for a continued U.S. military presence in the region to protect economic prosperity in East Asia. But the coming months – when America will have to vote for or against China in matters of trade, proliferation and human rights – will severely test the White House’s ability to manage a perpetually vexed relationship.
