Bush to Reposition on China

Though the Hainan surveillance incident left President Bush with kudos, there are many repercussions yet to be addressed. Issues that have a new price attached are Taiwan theatre defence systems, PRC accession to WTO, a further PNTR vote by Congress now expected in July, and the overall strategic disposition of the US toward its "friend" China. The stakes are the 'three nos' China policy so injudiciously endorsed by then president Bill Clinton when he visited Shanghai in 1998.

President Bush reaffirmed in Washington that his administration would continue to adhere to the one-China policy, and set up "constructive and open relations" with China. During a meeting with visiting Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori on March 19, President Bush also said that the United States regards China as a "trading partner," and welcomed its joining the World Trade Organisation.

"We adhere to the one-China policy. It's a policy that we have told the Chinese government directly… We don't get around to predicting what we intend or don't intend to say...But I think I've told you what our policy is, and that's what it remains." State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher March 19 2001

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher declined to comment on whether the Bush Administration would backtrack from the "three nos" (no support to the independence of Taiwan, no support to "two Chinas" or "one China, one Taiwan," no support to Taiwan's entry into any international organizations that are made up of sovereign states).

By April, however, China had become a "strategic competitor" leading to fresh speculation on US Seventh Fleet deployment and disposition in the Pacific. For many years, the decline of projectable US naval power in the region has presented a potential source of geo-political instability in the Pacific.

At the 15th Annual Asia Pacific Roundtable held recently in Kuala Lumpur, the state of US - PRC relations was discussed in the context of the US missile defence plan. There is a clear sense that US - China relations will be tense for the foreseeable future on many fronts. Though a significant cooling in trans-Pacific ardour regarding the PRC's WTO accession is unlikely at this stage, the prospect of China in the WTO before year-end is more unlikely with each passing day.