新中國的三張臉
(聯合報 2010.09.25)：溫家寶撤彈說 總統府肯定務實作法
大陸國務院總理溫家寶發表「撤彈最終會實現」，總統府昨天發布新聞稿表示，這是「一項務實的作法」，並對大陸方面以台海和平與區域安全的角度釋出政治善意表達肯定。
這是為「中國威脅」(是真正的威脅，而非「中國威脅論」)上妝吧！但是與中國友善的台灣領導人對這種曖昧的說法立刻作出友善的回應。一千多枚對著台灣的飛彈，既便撤了500枚，依然是一大威脅，而只是說說，英語叫 "lip service" 卻是「一項務實的作法」(難怪人民滿意度低落！)。說不定溫先生心裡的「最終」是台灣「重回祖國懷抱」之日呢；或是馬先生仍堅信「最終」會是「三民主義統一中國」，所以「撤彈最終會實現」？與其臆測這「最終」，還不如把2000年中國對民進黨剛執政時的評語「聽其言、觀其行」拿來再利用！
套用紐約時報這篇文章所說的三張臉：一千多枚對著台灣的飛彈－China, the neighborhood bully. 溫家寶發表「撤彈最終會實現」－China, the schmoozer. 那 China, the classic realist 的角色呢?－－是總統的國安幕僚近距離觀察得到「溫家寶撤彈說 總統府肯定務實作法」的結論較接近事實？抑或「溫家寶撤彈說 總統府肯定務實作法」根本是唱一齣政治雙簧，好讓馬先生有足夠的理由不追隨其他東亞國家的腳步？
台灣是不是也有好幾張臉？在面對中國，台灣不可能成為nieghborhood bully。但是「溫家寶撤彈說 總統府肯定務實作法」是不是在中國威脅下不得不的回應－Taiwan, the schmoozer？而the classic realist 的角色－是不是看出台灣是「圍堵策略」最大的缺口，欲藉此提高與美談判的籌碼呢？
September 25, 2010
The 3 Faces of New China
By DAVID E. SANGER
DEFLECTION Wen Jiabao fended off President Obama’s pleas on currency.
UNITED NATIONS — In a blur of headlines over the past few days, Americans have been surprised with brief, seemingly contradictory glimpses of how China is wielding its newfound power.
2. to hold sth, ready to use it as a weapon or tool 揮，操，使用（武器、工具等）
There was China the neighborhood bully, cutting off Japan’s access to rare-earth minerals unless Tokyo folded in a minor, but longstanding, territorial dispute. (The Japanese folded.)
There was China the schmoozer, with its prime minister, Wen Jiabao, trying his hardest on Thursday to deflect President Obama’s pressure over the value of China’s currency — really a battle over whether jobs go to workers in Seattle or Shenzhen. The two leaders talked for two hours at the United Nations. The outcome was left unclear.
schmooze /ʃmuz/ to talk in an informal and friendly way about things that are not important 閑談；閑聊
And there was China the classic realist, opting for convenient inconsistency on sanctions against North Korea and Iran in efforts to balance its competing national interests. (The first is to engage the West on the Security Council. The others include securing oil and protecting a client-state from collapse.)
In one sense, there’s nothing surprising about a rising power finding subtle ways to handle complex problems. But before China’s breakout from poverty to arguably the world’s No. 2 economy, its default position on foreign policy was to restate the principle of non-interference in other nations’ affairs and focus largely on its neighborhood.
That was before it had the military resources and the incentive to start thinking of how to secure and defend interests around the globe. Today, its interests include access to oil in places like Sudan and Iran, safe shipping around the Horn of Africa, the ability to manipulate its currency for its own gain.
And for the first time, the world is seeing a distinct range of behaviors, from aggressive to passive-aggressive to diplomatic, in places that 20 years ago China’s leaders rarely thought about.
What American diplomats and analysts now have to figure out is what drives China’s actions and responses, how to try to shape them and, some would argue, what limits to try to set.
“The China that President Obama hoped he was getting a year ago, the one that becomes this great cooperative global power on the biggest issues of the day — that’s not the China he’s dealing with today,” said David Shambaugh, director of the China policy program at George Washington University.
A senior administration official who often deals with the Chinese leadership said: “As they begin to manage their many constituencies, their politics is looking more like ours.”
Here’s a scouting report so far on China’s style of muscle-flexing:
THE NEIGHBORHOOD: TIME FOR THE BIG STICK
For decades countries around Asia have been wary of China’s resurgence — tracking how many ships and missiles it was acquiring, and how it was using its influence as an investor. A decade ago, as President Bush took power, a number of neoconservatives urged him to “contain” China’s presumed ambitions.
But containment would have probably been impossible and it proved, at least in the past decade, unnecessary. So far Beijing has not pressed new territorial claims; it has simply begun to defend old ones in sparsely inhabited places.
The Japanese stepped into one of those when they arrested the captain of a Chinese trawler near a group of islands in the East China Sea, called the Senkaku by the Japanese and the Diaoyu by China. The Japanese said the trawler rammed a Japanese coast guard vessel. A few years ago this might have been sorted out quietly as a consular issue. Not this time.
The Chinese — perhaps driven by the People’s Liberation Army, perhaps eager to begin to declare their equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine — demanded the captain’s return. Japan refused. Pushed by a nationalistic groundswell, China started blocking shipments of the rare earths, an act that threatened Japan’s electronics industry.
（群體情緒的）迅速高漲 noun singular ~ (of sth) written
“This played to the Asia First crowd in China,” said Mr. Shambaugh, referring to a faction in China’s establishment that says the wise course is to dominate the region while avoiding tussles with great powers. In recent months there have been disputes over American exercises in nearby waters and over the border with India.
扭打，爭鬥，爭執（尤指為了爭得物品） ~ (for/over sth)
v. to fight or compete with sb/sth, especially in order to get sth
扭打，爭鬥（尤指為了爭奪物品）
“We’ve begun pushing back,” said a senior administration official, explaining why the United States is sending an aircraft carrier to the area.
But the Japanese, after 20 years of recession, had no push left in them. The prosecutor dropped charges on Friday.
WASHINGTON: THE ART OF DEFLECTION
If China’s strategy with Asia is all sharp elbows, with the United States it is largely politeness and deflection — most of the time.
When Mr. Obama first encountered Hu Jintao, the country’s president, a fire was threatening to consume both their economies, and they pursued the common strategy of massive stimulus. For most of 2009, one of Mr. Obama’s top aides noted, “everything else was set aside.”
Then they narrowly skirted clashes on environmental policy at Copenhagen, and a cyber attack on Google was traced to China. But it is China’s foot-dragging on its promise to gradually let the market determine the value of its currency that has really strained relations. In Congress, rightly or wrongly, China is often accused of manipulating its currency to keep its factories humming, at the expense of American workers. Democrats and Republicans are calling for tariffs.
So far China’s strategy appears to be to maintain the trappings of routine diplomacy while dragging its feet. Prime Minister Wen used the word “cooperation” or “cooperative” six times in just a few minutes when standing beside Mr. Obama here. But when the doors closed, America pressed for immediate action, and, a witness said, Mr. Wen “dodged and weaved,” restating arguments that it takes generations to build an economic powerhouse.
Jeffrey Bader, the National Security Council’s Asia director, said the president noted he was “disappointed that there had not been much movement” since they last met. But his leverage was scant, which is why the White House threatened to to take other steps. Now the Chinese are gauging what he meant.
SPECIAL CASES: NORTH KOREA AND IRAN
North Korea and Iran are where China’s local imperatives and great-power interests collide.
If America’s No. 1 goal is a stripping North Korea of its nuclear weapons, China’s is keeping North Korea stable. Should it collapse, the Chinese suspect, South Korea (and its American allies) will move in, perhaps up to China’s border. As one American intelligence official put it recently, “if the choice is between living with a half-crazed nuclear North or with us on top of them, the Chinese are choosing the first option.”
That doesn’t mean they are happy about it. James Church, pen name of the author of “The Man With the Baltic Stare,” his latest spy novel about North Korea, learned about the country as an intelligence officer. He said in an interview: “The Chinese may not like the North Koreans much. But there is too much geography, history and emotion tying them together and shaping Chinese thinking” for Beijing to jettison its long-time client, particularly if it means North Korea’s absorption by America’s ally, the South.
So in 2009, after the North’s second nuclear test, it suited China’s interests to join sanctions against Pyongyang. This year, when the United States again tried sanctions over the North’s presumed role in sinking a South Korean warship, the situation had changed: Kim Jong Il, the North’s dictator, was ill, and China needed to gain influence over his son and presumed heir, Kim Jong Un, to keep the lid on the North. So the Chinese watered down the sanctions effort here, and, foreign diplomats said, held a small victory party with the North Korean delegation.
Iran is another special case. Twelve percent of China’s oil comes from the country; while it has gone along with sanctions, it has also made sure that energy imports and exports were kept off the United Nations list. There is constant talk of new, long-term energy investments by the Chinese in Iran. But so far, few of those deals have been consummated. And when American officials point out that a confrontation with Iran over its nuclear ambitions would disrupt the flow of oil out of the Persian Gulf, the Chinese say they are certain it won’t come to that.
It is the ultimate three-dimensional chess board, played Chinese style.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/weekinreview/26sanger.html
Banyan
China should worry less about America’s “containment” strategy and more about why the neighbours welcome it
Aug 12th 2010
SYMBOLIC gestures come in all shapes and sizes, but few as imposing as that of the USS George Washington, a ship more than three football-pitches long, and capable of carrying 85 aircraft and more than 6,200 people. But even symbols of such massive heft can be interpreted in various ways. The George Washingtonhas just been in the South China Sea, off the coast of Danang, once home to one of the American army’s biggest bases in Vietnam. Fifteen years after the opening of diplomatic relations, and 35 years since the end of the Vietnam war, the carrier’s visit, and the joint nava lexercises that followed, were striking tokens of reconciliation. But observers in China saw a different sort of gesture: not so much a handshake with a former enemy; more a brandished fist towards a potential one, their own country.
brandish 揮舞
Vituperative Chinese commentators detected an old bogey: an American attempt to“contain” China by bolstering alliances with its neighbours. China’s leaders were more restrained (or perhaps just slower off the mark). But the South China Morning Postreported that Hu Jintao, the president, was in enough of a huff about this and others lights to contemplate delaying a visit to America. Just when the ice that formed after the Sino-American climate-change tiff in Copenhagenin December seemed to have melted, a new chill has set in. “Sweet-mouthed” American politicians, lamented Global Times, an English-language Chinese newspaper, “stab you in the back when you are not looking.”
vituperative 誹謗的
bogey 忌
huff 發怒
tiff 口角
Chinese analysts can point to an impressive array of American “provocations” to justify their fulminations. They cited reports that America is in talks on nuclear co-operation with Vietnam, and that, in an apparent reversal for its non-proliferation efforts, the Obama administration is not insisting that Vietnam forswear enriching its own uranium. As with America’s 2008 nuclear deal with India, China scented double standards.
Before her jaunt to Vietnam, the George Washington had been taking part in joint exercises with South Korean forces. Respecting Chinese sensitivities, she did not exercise in the Yellow Sea, just off China’s coast. But a Pentagon spokesman has said she will do so “in the near future”. This comes as America’s ties with South Korea have been strengthened— and China’s frayed—by the destruction of a naval vessel, the Cheonan, in March. South Korea and America, backed by an international inquiry, have blamed the sinking on a North Korean torpedo. The North has denied responsibility and China has refused to finger its awkward ally.
jaunt 短程遊覽
As the American navy has roamed China’s neighbourhood, senior officials have fanned out over Asia. In Indonesia Robert Gates, the defence secretary, upset human-rights activists and delighted the government by resuming links to Kopassus, the army’s special forces. William Burns,undersecretary of state for political affairs, has been to four South-East Asian countries.
Kopassus 特種部隊
It all amounts to what Douglas Paal of the Carnegie Endowment, a Washington think-tank, has called “the most comprehensive burst of diplomatic and military activity in Asia, particularly South-EastAsia, in decades ”from an American administration. It is not surprising that many in China see all this as part of a new containment doctrine. Many in America do, too. By this analysis, Barack Obama took office committed to good relations with China, and ready to welcome it as a great power in return for China’s accepting the global responsibilities that go with that status. Then a series of setbacks convinced him to stand up to China with a more muscular strategy. The “sweet mouths” spout charm just the same; but containment is now the game.
That is far from how the administration presents it, however. It argues it is merely reasserting a “national interest” and traditional role in East Asia, a region neglected by an America distracted by terrorism and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Absent without leave, America helped foster an overblown perception in the region of America’s decline and China’s ascent. It is now putting that right. In Mr Paal’s phrase, America’s recent Asian diplomacy is “not aimed at China, but has implications for China”.
That may be too nuanced a distinction for the Global Times’ leader-writers. But those implications are indeed worth pondering. China seems to have digested one already: that the swagger, bordering on arrogance, with which Chinese officials were throwing their weight around in the region and in the West in the depths of the financial crisis created unnecessary alarm. These days, courtesy is back in vogue.
Another implication is that rather than simply rail against America, China could do more to prevent its neighbours providing such fertile ground for the“seeds of distrust” it sows. That would demand greater clarity over China’s real strategic aims, and a willingness to discuss them in multilateral forums. On the South China Sea, for example, it is hard to know exactly what its claim is based on. Yet its ships sometimes treat the sea as a Chinese lake; its maps show a great lolling tongue of Chinese sovereignty stuck insolently out at the South-East Asian littoral states. No wonder those countries welcome American aircraft-carriers. The trouble is, of course, that if Chinawere clearer about its aims, they might welcome them even more.http://www.economist.com/node/16791842
The stories were taken from the websites of The New York Times and The Economist, which were not involved with nor endorsed the produciton of this blog. The copyright remains with The New York Times Company and The Economist.
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