"Cultural Politics", E. Lampton (2002)

Résumé du document

The book "Cultural Politics"written by E. Lampton addresses two simple questions: Why is the relationship between the United States and China so difficult for Washington and Beijing to manage? And how can it be handled more effectively? The book reaches one simple conclusion: both nations can improve upon the diplomacy of the first post-cold war decade, but their association will always be characterized by a complex mix of cooperation and contention, at best.

In the 1970s and 190s, President Richard Nixon and Chairman Mao Zedong, followed by President Jimmy Carter and Supreme Leader Deng Xiaoping, gradually constructed a grand bargain that helped stabilize Sino-American relations for nearly two decades. With respect to Taiwan, the strategic imperative for Sino-American cooperation led Mao, Den, Xiao, and Carter all to agree that the island's status was an issued to be dealt with later.

Regarding U.S. security alliances, Beijing downplayed its anxieties concerning the U.S-Japan security alliance and American pacts elsewhere because it saw them in the service of containing the Soviet Union throughout much of the 1970s and 1980s. In fact, Beijing actually favored stronger alliances between the United States and its allies.

With regard to human rights, the Soviet threat allowed leaders in Beijing and Washington to downplay the two countries deep differences in this realm in the service of the more immediate objective of opposing Moscow.

Extraits

[...] The key to the Chinese strategy was to isolate America from its traditional allies. After one long year of struggle over the China MFN policy issue and with the deadline for a final decision at hand, May 1994, President Clinton, he announced a en to the linkage policy he had proclaimed 363 days earlier. Turning point three The 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait Confrontation and Its Aftermath In Taipei, from 1993 to 1995, President Lee Teng-hui was looking ahead to his presidential election campaign of 1996, from which he hoped to emerge as Taiwan's first president to be elected by universal suffrage, indeed, the first Chinese head of government to be so elected. [...]

[...] The first seminal event in US-China post-cold war relations was the violence in Beijing and elsewhere in Chin in 1989. The second critical moment was President Clinton's mid-1994 rejection of the link between human rights in China and MFN tariff treatment. The third turning point was the 1995-1996 Taiwan Strait military confrontation. Turning point one George Bush takes office –Tiananmen Preserving the relationship President George Bush closed his inaugural address by saying “America is never wholly herself unless she is engaged in high moral principle.” have decided to come to China soon. [...]

[...] Several domestic developments set the stage for a reversal of Clinton's MFN policy. First, America's major multinational firms, fell they had not been consulted adequately. Second, major foreign policy establishment organizations were criticizing the linkage policy. Finally, by spring 1994 even human rights organizations and Chinese dissidents in the United States were reassessing whether impoverishing Chinese workers through trade sanctions would promote people's rights in China. Consequently, control over China policy was effectively removed firm the Department of State and from the SSG that Winston lord had chaired since the administration's days. [...]

[...] The US consulate general's residence in Chengfu was burned, ton of rocks were hurled at the us Consulate in Shenyang. Among the most disturbing aspects of the Chinese government's response to the bombing and subsequent demonstrations were that the Chinese people were not initially informed of the US apologies the PRC citizenry was not informed about Milosevic's ethnic cleansing and therefore simply saw US/NATO intervention as aggression, and the Chinese authorities not only helped transport demonstrators to the Beijing protest by police seemed indifferent to the damage inflicted on US property. [...]

[...] Thus, the president made himself hostage to Beijing. Second, his threat failed to take into account that he might need Chinese helped on critical international issues such as the North Korean nuclear proliferation problem. Third, by publicly articulating the threat and setting a deadline, Clinton made the standard of his success the public humiliation of the PRC's leaders and the alteration of patterns of internal PRC governance. Fourth, he sent the stage for a battle within his own administration over the primacy of economics versus human rights. [...]