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China Adjusts to the New World Order
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20414 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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| Issue
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3 / 1992 |
2,907 Words |
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Donald Klein
Donald Klein is professor of political science of Tufts
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China today is a pariah nation in many eyes. Grim images of the Tiananmen massacre still haunt our minds not to mention the problems of political prisoners, persecution in Tibet, and goods in American stores produced by Chinese prison labor. There is also the image of Beijing's gerontocracy, led by 87 year-old Deng Xiaoping, clinging to a communist ideology that seem to be collapsing every where else.
In fact, however these images of China have been over taken by the astounding world events since Tiananmen--from the fall of the Berlin wall to the end of the Soviet Union. China is still whitewashing the Tiananmen massacre, but far more its attention and efforts are focused on adjusting to the New World Order. And, surprisingly, it has adjusted quite well.
If a senor Chinese official were asked to describe Beijing's foreign policy he would probably say that China is a developing nation that continues to pursue the four modernizations (agricultural, industry, defense and science and technology) "Our goal," he would continue "is to quadruple the 1980 GNP by the year 2000. And to achieve this goal, we need peace and stability not only in Asia but throughout the world."
Despite occasional mutterings about self reliance, China's leadership fully understands that its future development depends heavily on continued linkage with the developed world. That is it must continue to maintain and increase its economic ties (trade, aid, investments, and technology transfer) with Japan, North America, Western Europe and the Asian NICs (newly industrialized countries like Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and most especially Hong Kong). Every foreign policy move in recent years (both before and after Tiananmen) underscores this crucial point.
The reasons are not hard to fathom. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that nearly all of China's trade is with the developed nations and the Asian NICs. In 1990 for example roughly 80 percent of its trade was trade with these nations (slightly more than 80 percent in terms of exports and slightly less in terms of imports). To punctuate this point it is worth noting that China's total trade with Africa, the Middle East and Latin America came to a trifling 4 percent. More over, it needs to be emphasized that China is no longer the trading midget that it surely was when President Nixon made his historic journey to Beijing in early 1972. Then China's total trade was a mere $4 billion. By 1990, it had rocketed to $128
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