It seems that since China apparently ruined the Copenhagen Summit in December and snubbed U.S. President Barack Obama while doing so, America has been on a mission show Beijing that although the U.S. is a mess, they will not be outmaneuvered in foreign policy.
They have done so by striking at some of the country’s most sensitive topics over the last month, namely: censorship, Taiwan, and the Dalai Lama.
It started with Google’s announcement that it would be leaving the Chinese market after suffering a series of sophisticated cyber attacks originating in China in addition to claiming that censoring their search results went against the company motto, “Don’t be evil.”
Google’s announcement came a week after U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had a private dinner with some of America’s top executives, including Google CEO Eric Schmidt. Coincidence?
The Google accusations were the perfect preamble for Mrs. Clinton’s speech the next week, which harshly criticized China’s Internet policy.
“Censorship should not be in any way accepted by any company from anywhere. And in America, American companies need to make a principled stand. This needs to be part of our national brand,” Clinton said during her speech. “This lopsided access to information increases both the likelihood of conflict and the probability that small disagreements could escalate.”
Anyone living in China will know that “lopsided access to information” would be an understatement. Just read the front page of China Daily or Xinhua News.
Then, last Friday, all of China was in a fury over U.S. plans to approve and ship US$6.8 billion worth of arms to Taiwan.
Beijing, in response, has said it will suspend military exchanges between the two countries, review cooperation on key issues, and may enact embargoes against the U.S. companies involved.
While the nature of the deal was bound to make people in China upset, given the sensitivity of Mainlanders to the “One-China” ideology, it was largely ignored that the arms deal was consistent with U.S. foreign policy (Taiwan Relations Act) and primarily included defensive weapons and technology.
Let’s not forget that China has more than one thousand missiles aimed across the Taiwan Strait and has made it clear that they would use military force to bring the island under its control if Taiwan ever moved towards formal independence.
Here’s the Taiwan arms deal breakdown according to the Defense Security Co-operation Agency:
PROPOSED ARMS SALE
114 Patriot missiles ($2.81bn)
60 Black Hawk helicopters ($3.1bn)
Communication equipment ($340m)
2 Osprey mine-hunting ships ($105m)
12 Harpoon missiles ($37m)
Finally, U.S. officials have signaled this week that President Obama will likely be meeting with Tibet’s exiled spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama.
Although President Obama is not doing anything new by dealing with Taiwan or meeting with the Dalai Lama, he is sending a message that if Beijing wants the U.S. to operate with Chinese interests in mind, China will have to reciprocate.
Regardless of the fallout that may come of these moves in Washington, Chinese President Hu Jintao’s anticipated visit to the United States in April will be interesting to watch.