Principles and morals must supersede money. Otherwise it will not only be its position as the world’s largest economy that the United States risks losing in the showdown with China.
At worst, surprise guests will become unwelcome.
Persistent but credible rumors claim that the Chinese dissident and lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, escaped house arrest and sought refuge at the U.S. embassy in Beijing.
This presents the United States with a delicate choice. What comes first when it comes to the crunch: money or morals?
Yesterday U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arrived in Beijing. On Thursday and Friday, the United States and China will hold their annual strategic and trade summit.
One of the main priorities for the United States is to persuade the Chinese government to relax policy so that more American companies can gain access to the Chinese market.
It is important to boost the sluggish American economy — and improving the economy can be decisive for Barack Obama’s possibility of being reelected.
At the same time, Clinton must address the plight of human rights in China.
Chen Guangcheng has, in his role as a lawyer, tried to help victims of state abuse in the form of the sterilization and forced abortions that are performed in order to enforce the Chinese one-child policy. The United States has repeatedly demanded that Chen be released from house arrest.
But China is not likely to take criticism lying down.
When Clinton, just one year ago, criticized the Communist Party’s hard stance on dissidents and — among other things — the treatment artist Ai Weiwei, the regime in Beijing reacted with fury.
The Chinese Ministry for Foreign Affairs accused the United States of exploiting human rights “as a tool for throwing dirt at other nations and for promoting their own strategic interests.”
China is today the world’s largest export nation. Within a decade it may well surpass the United States and become the world’s largest economy.
China’s increasing economic weight corresponds to its growing political power. How the nation conducts itself has great significance in all of the most pressing conflicts in international policy, whether it is the situation in Syria, the developments in North Korea or the increasingly acute situation in Iran.
However, the dependence is not unilateral. China needs the American market. China needs a borrower that can pay its installments and interest. A China that is focused on continued economic development has no interest in provoking conflicts that risk setting the world on fire.
China’s integration into the global economy has made the country’s economic miracle possible. The same dependence on the outside world is strong motivation for Chinese leadership to act responsibly.
Maybe the United States cannot prevent the vast Chinese nation from eventually taking over as the world’s largest economy. However, the United States can choose whether it wants to remain the world’s foremost democracy.
And the world’s foremost democracy cannot leave a champion for freedom and justice to the mercy of the dictatorship’s henchmen. Even if he came uninvited and inopportunely.
China doesn’t have to do much to overtake the US as the world’s largest economy. It just needs to ride out all of the manipulative tricks that Washington has in store for it.
Washington has tried for years to get its hands on all the energy spigots in order to cut China off from the oil and gas it needs for its continued economic expansion. But as the failures in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved — in addition to China’s dominance of Pipelineistan — that plan failed.
Next plan: the “Pacific pivot” and perhaps Cold War II. China needs to keep its cool if it wants to weather these new storms and not get tricked into doing something violent.