DISADVANTAGE/CHINA

ANSWERS: WE SHOULD NOT FOLLOW CHINA'S LEAD ON POLICY

BEST POLICY TOWARDS CHINA IS "CONSTRAINMENT" GIVEN ITS MIDDLE POWER STATUS

GERALD SEGAL, Director of Studies at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, Foreign Affairs September, 1999 / October, 1999; Pg. 24 HEADLINE: Does China Matter? // ln-10/99-acs

This notion of approaching China as a normal, medium power is one way to avoid the sterile debates about the virtues of engaging or containing China. Of course, one must engage a middle power, but one should also not be shy about constraining its unwanted actions. Such a strategy of "constrainment" would lead to a new and very different Western approach to China. One would expect robust deterrence of threats to Taiwan, but not pusillanimous efforts to ease Chinese concerns about TMD. One would expect a tough negotiating stand on the terms of China's WTO entry, but not Western concessions merely because China made limited progress toward international transparency standards or made us feel guilty about bombing its embassy in Belgrade. One would expect Western leaders to tell Chinese leaders that their authoritarianism puts them on the wrong side of history, but one would not expect Western countries to stop trying to censure human rights abuses in the United Nations or to fall over themselves to compete for the right to lose money in the China market.

HARD-LINE POLICY IS GOOD - CHINA IS AGGRESSIVE, AND WE MUST NOT TOLERATE IT

Frank J. Gaffney Jr., president of the Center for Security Policy, April 3, 2001 National Review HEADLINE: What to Do about China //VT2002acsln

China is engaged in a determined effort to accelerate what it perceives to have been the United States' waning influence in East Asia over the past decade and to assume the role of regional overseer. Neither American interests nor those of our regional allies - nor, for that matter, those of the Chinese people - will be served by accommodating Chinese aggression.