Gordon G. Chang's Blog, page 22

Is Kim Jong Un's Bluster Really a Prelude to Reform?

On Tuesday, North Korea’s General Department of Atomic Energy announced it was restarting the country’s reactor in Yongbyon, which produces plutonium. It also suggested the North’s uranium enrichment facility there would begin producing fissile material. Previously, Pyongyang said its Yongbyon uranium plant was for peaceful purposes only, specifically, creating low-enriched uranium for the generation of electricity.

The announcement underscores the regime’s commitment to its nuclear weapons program and follows Sunday’s statement that Pyongyang would simultaneously build its nuclear arsenal and develop the North Korean economy. At the same time, a known reformer, Pak Pong Ju, was appointed premier. Some say the regime’s commitment to nukes, which appeases the military, gives Kim Jong Un the political space to pursue economic restructuring.

Can the Kim regime have both guns and butter? Kim Il Sung, the founder of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, thought he could have both, but his program failed miserably. When aid from his big-power sponsors ran out at the end of the Cold War, the North Korean economy tumbled. The country’s gross domestic product fell each year from 1990 through 1998, according to the Bank of Korea, South Korea’s central bank. During this period the North’s economy shrank by about half. 

Kim Il Sung’s economic revitalization plans in the 1990s all failed. There were many factors, of course, but they were doomed from the start because of his refusal to reduce military spending. During the end of his rule—he died of a heart attack in 1994—some 22 million North Koreans supported the world’s fifth-largest armed forces.

Approximately a quarter of the nation’s output had been devoted to the military for several decades up to then, and the army’s share of the economy was probably growing in the mid-1990s. Today, the budget for the Korean People’s Army is at least a third of the nation’s GDP. One estimate put it at a stunning 40 percent in 2004, and from all accounts the military call on the regime’s resources has only grown since then.

Kim Jong Un, the third Kim on the throne and the grandson of Kim Il Sung, is in the unenviable position of having to keep the generals and admirals happy as well as prevent mass starvation. From the first moments of his rule in December 2011, Kim had tried to ditch his father’s songun—“military first”—policy by elevating the status of the Korean Workers’ Party inside the regime. That effort, accompanied by a purge of flag officers loyal to Kim Jong Il (his father and predecessor), appears to have floundered.

Now, to win back the support of the top brass, Kim Jong Un has made recent rhetorical commitments to songun politics—and it is apparent he will not be slashing military budgets in the future.

Yet until Kim can reduce the military’s budget, the North Korean economy will suffer, during which time we can expect Kim to make nuclear threats in order to blackmail the international community for desperately needed aid—a familiar pattern in Pyongyang’s foreign policy. If there are more threats, however, angry nations may be reluctant to come to Kim’s assistance. The economy, therefore, will continue to suffer, trapping Kim Jong Un’s state in a downward economic spiral with geopolitical consequences yet unknown.

 

Photo Credit: Nicor

The Failure of Deterrence in Korea

In a poll released last month by the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, 66 percent of South Koreans said they wanted their country to develop nuclear weapons to ward off attacks from North Korea. In fact, only 48 percent of the population last year believed America would use nukes to retaliate against a North Korean nuclear strike against them, down 7 percent from 2011.

The survey by the private think tank in Seoul is a clear vote of “no confidence” in the US, which has, by treaty, since 1953, pledged to defend the South, with nukes if necessary. If the South Koreans trusted Washington, they would not want to have their own arsenal of the world’s most destructive weapons. 

And if this many South Koreans suspect Washington’s resolve, it’s a safe bet that many policymakers in Beijing and Pyongyang doubt America as well. China and North Korea have increased their war-mongering rhetoric conspicuously of late, and both are behaving arrogantly, as if they think they can push the US out of Asia.

In the Cold War, the Soviets—and the Western Europeans—believed America would counterattack a strike by the Warsaw Pact forces. That deterrent threat maintained an uneasy but enduring peace along the Iron Curtain. Now, it appears that South Koreans’ confidence in the US commitment is eroding, along with their confidence in the security guarantees of the American “nuclear umbrella.”

As local trust in the viability of the US nuclear deterrence has eroded, so has deterrence against conventional attacks. In 2010, the North killed 50 South Koreans in two horrific incidents, the sinking of the Cheonan in March—46 sailors dead—and the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island in November—four killed, two of them civilians.

To prevent further attacks, Washington on Monday announced the signing of a “South Korean-led, US-supported” defense pact to counter hostile acts. Seoul and Washington think that reducing the “combined counterprovocation plan” to paper will help contain Pyongyang’s threat. The concept is that the US, by promising to act against even small provocations, will prevent the North from committing any assaults.  

The Obama administration should to be credited for promising to respond to lower-level Kim regime provocations. This security commitment, however, followed two and a half years of haggling over the treaty, which leaves the impression that the US is more legalistic than resolute.

It would have been much better if President Obama had simply looked into a camera and declared, “The United States of America will immediately respond to any attack on South Korean territory with the use of force.”

We said this in the Cold War, and peace was maintained. We seem now to be less inclined to use these terms and, as a result, risk the breakdown of confidence, if not the failure of deterrence itself. We should not be surprised the South Korean public no longer has faith in our ability to defend their homeland—and wants its own nukes.

Why Missile Defense? Because China Is Arming North Korea

On Friday, US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced the Obama administration’s decision to add 14 inceptors to the nation’s rudimentary missile defense system. The new ground-based missiles, scheduled to go into service in 2017, will be located at Alaska’s Fort Greely. Hagel’s announcement essentially reversed the administration’s 2010 decision to cap the number of anti-missile missiles in Alaska and California at 30.

The 30 currently deployed interceptors are positioned to defend against warheads launched from Asia, one country in particular. “The United States has missile defense systems in place to protect us from limited ICBM attacks,” Hagel said on Friday, “but North Korea in particular has recently made advances in its capabilities and has engaged in a series of irresponsible and reckless provocations.”

But North Korea is constantly irresponsible and recklessly provocative—and making advances in military capabilities. So what caused the change in the administration’s general reluctance to field missile defenses? It was not the North’s longest-range missile, the Taepodong-2, despite the successful test of its civilian variant in December. We can easily destroy that launcher on the pad as it is slowly assembled, fueled, and tested.

What the US really needs to defend against is the KN-08.

We got our first public glimpse of this intermediate-range missile last year in the massive military parade in Pyongyang on April 15th. Then, skeptics said the six KN-08s wheeled through the center of the North Korean capital were poorly manufactured dummies. Maybe they were, but as noted Korea military analyst Bruce Bechtol pointed out at the time, Pyongyang never displays a missile in a parade that is not either in development or already deployed.

Last April, the KN-08 was not deployed, and today it is still in development. But expect its debut soon. Last Tuesday, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified that the North Koreans are about to deploy KN-08s.

The mobile launched KN-08 could be a game-changer. On its carrier, it can be moved and hidden before launch. This means, in short, that the US cannot reliably target and destroy it before it reaches the top of its trajectory. One must assume that the day is not too far off when the North will have the capacity to launch most, if not all, of its KN-08s in a preemptive attack. In short, when operational, the KN-08 substantially increases the Kim regime’s ability to wage long-range nuclear war.

The dominant narrative in Washington policy circles is that China is unsuccessfully trying to rein in its wayward North Korean ally. “There’s been a quickening pace of provocations,” a “senior administration official” told the New York Times last week, in connection with the recent decision to boost missile defense. “But the real accelerant was the fact that the North Koreans seemed more unmoored from their Chinese handlers than even we had feared.”

That analysis is wishful thinking. China sold the KN-08 launchers to Pyongyang. Last April, the New York Times revealed the Obama administration was about to relay its concerns about Beijing’s transfer of six carriers, known as transporter-erector-launchers, or TELs in military lingo, for the KN-08.

So the North Koreans cannot be “unmoored.” On the contrary, Beijing is enabling the behavior, if not directing it. If the Chinese were really trying to restrain North Korea, they would not have transferred the launchers to the Kim regime in the first place. China also has various means of controlling its client state. And while China arms the Kim regime, it is criticizing America for defending itself: the Foreign Ministry on Monday responded to Hagel’s announcement by suggesting the administration’s missile-defense plan would “antagonize” North Korea.

North Korea is a regional menace. Thanks to China’s arms and technology transfers to North Korea—and the reach of its KN-08 missiles, which have sufficient range to hit targets on US soil—the Kim regime is on its way to being a global one. We don’t just have a North Korea problem. We have a China problem.

The Shangpu Revolution

On early Sunday, a reported 3,000 police and security troops surrounded the Chinese village of Shangpu. They fired tear gas, severed communications, shut off the electricity, and removed wrecked vehicles. They cleared off roadblocks that residents had erected. Some 30 to 40 villagers were hurt in fierce fighting. “It’s an extremely serious situation,” one resident told AFP. “They injured many people.”

The incident began in February when villagers fought pitched battles with dozens of thugs sent by Li Baoyu to break up a protest against a seizure of 33 hectares of farmland. Li, the Communist Party chief of the village, had arranged for the land to be transferred to Wanfeng Investment, controlled by businessman Wu Guicun. Wu had planned to build factories making electrical cables.

Residents, after driving off Li’s attackers, set up blockades around Shangpu. This weekend, authorities cleared the barricades and announced the arrest of Li and eight others. Officials say they are also looking for 21 additional suspects. A spokesman for Jiexi County, which includes Shangpu, announced a local court had cancelled the land transaction. The county also revealed it had removed two officials. 

Shangpu residents are skeptical. Said a villager to AFP, “The government uses illegal methods to cheat people. How can we believe them?” 

And that is the reason why the villagers are not content with just the return of their land. At the barricades they have been chanting for local elections—in other words, democracy. The Shangpu standoff bore an eerie resemblance to one in Wukan, about 60 miles away, in late 2011. Wukan villagers protested a similar land seizure and took control of their community, ejecting Communist Party officials. Residents attracted worldwide attention and eventually won a promise of elections.

March 3rd marked the first anniversary of the balloting in Wukan to elect a seven-member committee, which replaced the one that provincial authorities removed after the insurrection. Now, villagers there are not happy with the representatives they elected and are complaining about the way things worked out. Lin Zuluan, the newly elected chief of the village, has said he regretted taking part in the experiment.

Of course, the Communist Party has not given democracy a fair shake in Wukan, as it has deliberately starved the village of funds and has tried to reassert control over residents, putting them under strict surveillance, restricting their travel, and detaining them at will.  

The difficulties in Wukan, however, have not stopped Shangpu’s villagers from fighting for their land—or calling for their own form of government.

The Chinese people are not giving up on governing themselves. The spirit of Wukan continues.

Chinese Missiles Bound for Terrorists Raise Concerns on China

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On Saturday, the New York Times reported that in January US and Yemeni forces seized ten sophisticated heat-seeking Chinese-made antiaircraft missiles on an Iranian dhow bound for a Shiite terror group, an Iranian proxy, in northwestern Yemen. These “extremely worrisome” shoulder-fired weapons are highly sought after by terror groups and represent a major threat to military and civilian aircraft alike.

These weapons, Chinese QW-series man-portable air-defense systems, or manpads, had markings indicating they were manufactured by the China National Precision Machinery Import and Export Corporation, a Chinese state enterprise. American and Yemeni officials also reported finding other weapons hidden on the vessel, including 95 RPG-7 launchers, 17,000 blocks of Iranian C-4 plastic explosives, Russian-made night-vision goggles, and 379,000 cartridges for PK machine guns and Kalashnikov rifles. The Times’s headline read, “Seized Chinese Weapons Raise Concerns on Iran.” It should have read, “Seized Chinese Missiles Raise Concerns on China.”

Up until the middle of last decade, Beijing made sure its manpads did not leave the control of the armed forces of its client states, like Pakistan and Iran. Then, a little more than a half decade ago, Beijing evidently made a strategic decision to play a more aggressive game. Its manpads started showing up in the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan and insurgents in Iraq.

And in the last year or so, Chinese manpads have also been sighted in other locations. In addition to the hold of the Iranian dhow, they have been found in the arsenal of the United Wa State Army in Burma, a private army, and in the hands of Syrian rebels. Images of Syrian rebels holding Chinese FN-6 manpads were shown on CCTV 13, one of the channels of the Chinese state broadcaster. The FN-6 is a new system and few, if any, of them are on the black market, suggesting direct Beijing involvement. The CCTV footage makes it clear Beijing at least knows what is going on.

Anthony Davis, a Thailand-based intelligence analyst writing in Jane’s Intelligence Review, believes the transfers of manpads to the United Wa State Army “could not take place without explicit sanction from senior levels of China’s national security establishment.” Because these high-profile weapons are made by a large Chinese state enterprise, that conclusion seems right. 

Moreover, we know, from WikiLeaks, that the Bush administration repeatedly complained to Beijing about the sale of its small arms to the Iranians and that these sales included manpads used against US forces. In these circumstances, Chinese officials in fact knew about the sales. In any event, they cannot deny responsibility for what their state entities have done—and continue to do—in their top-down authoritarian system.

The international behavior of the Chinese state is getting worse, not better, over time. Beijing increasingly sees itself as an adversary of the existing global order, something evident by its widening sales of dangerous weapons to terrorists and assorted non-state actors. This trend has no happy ending.

Rice Production Records Set with New Method

Is there is a “rice revolution” in India’s poorest state, Bihar? Sumant Kumar claims to have shattered the world’s record for output of the staple.

Kumar, from the village of Darveshpura in the district of Nalanda, usually harvested four to five tons per hectare. In 2011, each stalk was heavier and each grain bigger. The result? The shy young man had grown 22.4 tons on a hectare. That topped the record of 19.4 tons held by China’s Yuan Longping, the elderly agronomist known as the “father of rice.”

And Kumar was not alone in attaining agricultural glory. Nitish Kumar, a friend of the rice king, broke the world’s record for potatoes by harvesting 72.9 tons per hectare last March. His mark, however, was surpassed a few months later when Rakesh Kumar, from another Nalanda village, grew 108.8 tons. Ravindra Kumar, from a nearby field, took India’s record for wheat. 

Do the Kumars practice magic? No. The amazing thing is that they do not even bother with complex science. Sumant Kumar employs nothing more complicated than the System of Rice Intensification, SRI, and the other Kumars use related techniques. SRI farmers avoid the use of herbicides, chemical fertilizers, and genetically modified seeds.

Using SRI, Sumant Kumar did not plant three-week-old rice seedlings in groups of three or four, as he used to do. Instead, he uses a less-is-more system championed by Rajiv Kumar, a Bihar extension worker trained by Anil Verma of Pran, an Indian NGO. To obtain extraordinary yields, Sumant Kumar now plants younger seedlings one-by-one. He also uses manure and much less water. All the simple techniques stimulate root systems. Once again, ingenuity has postponed the Malthusian moment when population growth outruns agricultural production. 

Agricultural scientists, by and large, bristle at SRI, which undercuts their work by making dramatic improvements in yield with simple adjustments in technique. Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz did not help relations between the record-setting Kumars and the world’s scientific community when he visited their Nalanda district last month and said the poor farmers there were “better than scientists.”

Insults aside, SRI is great for subsistence tillers, who may not be able to afford expensive fertilizers or genetically modified seeds. Moreover, it’s terrific for the planet as well. SRI has almost no adverse ecological impact, unlike the “green revolution” of the 1960s, which relied on pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

“SRI is an astonishing win-win for farmers and the environment,” says Robert Chambers of Sussex University to London’s Guardian. “Some scientists have been slow to recognize it, and have even rubbished it in peer-reviewed journals, but its success and spread have been phenomenal.”

Today, some four to five million farmers in 51 countries use SRI, according to Forbes columnist Beth Hoffman, a food expert. More will take up the practice as the Kumars have attracted international attention recently. It’s hard to argue with success.

In the meantime, China’s Yuan, recently dethroned by a dirt farmer in an obscure corner of India, is fuming. Yuan, a SRI pioneer, calls Sumant Kumar a “120 percent fake.” Whether he in fact broke the record, Kumar has dramatically increased yields on his small plot. That means his life—and the lives of tens of millions of farmers—will get better because of SRI.

Yet there could be much more at stake. With substantial advances in output and far fewer inputs, the “resource wars,” which many predict will ravage our century, may not occur.

Nitish Kumar, who lost the world’s potato-growing crown, now wants the record back. In some small way, he and the other Kumars, by striving for even better yields, are advancing the cause of peace.

China: US to Blame for North Korea’s Provocations

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea launches three-stage ballistic missiles, tests nuclear weapons, and sells just about everything in its increasingly destructive arsenal to other dangerous regimes.

Who is to blame for Pyongyang’s behavior? Recent pieces in Chinese state media, in an apparent attempt to deflect criticism from Beijing, contain a surprising answer.

“At a superficial level, it was Pyongyang that has repeatedly breached UN resolutions and used its nuclear program as a weapon to challenge the world community, which was considered to be unwise and regrettable,” states a Xinhua News Agency commentary titled “Time to Address Root Causes of Nuclear Crisis on Korean Peninsula.” “In reality, the DPRK’s defiance was deeply rooted in its strong sense of insecurity after years of confrontation with South Korea, Japan, and a militarily more superior United States.”

The real target of the North’s nuclear test was the US, maintains Liu Jiangyong. “On this issue, the United States, South Korea, and Japan should be blamed for the failure of their policies,” said the Tsinghua University professor to the official Xinhua agency. “Those countries should reflect on what has happened.”

Anyone reflecting on the troubled history between the US and the DPRK would realize that Beijing’s blaming Washington does not stand up to scrutiny. Kim Il Sung, North Korea’s first leader and the current supremo’s grandfather, sought nuclear weapons beginning in the 1950s.

The US, in fact, had little contact with his regime after the Korean War. After signing the 1953 armistice, Washington restrained Seoul and urged limited reconciliation with Pyongyang. Moreover, America had been restrained, some would say to a fault, in dealing with serial provocations. North Korea’s acts of war—the seizing of the Navy’s Pueblo and its crew in 1968 and the downing of the EC-121 reconnaissance plane the following year, for instance—went unpunished.

Moreover, Beijing’s claim of American responsibility is hard to square with subsequent events. President Nixon’s 1969 speech in Guam, where he announced the doctrine that bears his name, made it clear that American allies in Asia could not rely on Washington for their defense. North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, according to some, began in earnest after the fall of Saigon, an event that certainly made America looked less than threatening. 

Ronald Reagan tried to reach out to Kim with his “Modest Initiative.” The diplomatic overtures got caught up in the first North Korean nuclear crisis, which was started by Pyongyang during the presidency of Reagan’s successor. US policy of the second George Bush may have sounded hostile to ears in Pyongyang, but it was far from belligerent in substance, especially considering the historical context. Bush may have talked about regime change, but his words are no justification for North Korean bomb-building efforts that began decades earlier. 

Some analysts argue that the North initiated its nuclear arms program primarily in response to the stationing of US tactical nuclear weapons—gravity bombs, artillery shells, and landmines—in the South, but they were withdrawn beginning in 1991. And even when they were there, these weapons were part of a force structure that was defensive in nature. Both the North Koreans and the Chinese knew this. 

Moreover, Kim Il Sung did not need nukes to keep Americans at bay. His odious regime was protected by the Soviet “nuclear umbrella” every minute of every day. Great Leader Kim had all the security he ever needed—and it was provided without cost. Soviet protection was in addition to North Korea’s conventional and chemical deterrent that was more than sufficient on its own.

Protected by the seemingly invincible Soviets and facing less-than-fearsome Americans, Kim did not need homemade nuclear weapons. The genesis of the DPRK bomb program is found in the martial nature of his regime. It is only natural for the world’s most militarized state to desire the world’s most destructive weaponry.

The historical record, in short, doesn’t support Beijing’s blaming Washington for North Korea’s bomb building. It has never been about America. It has always been about the hostile nature of the Kim family regime. 

Truth or Dare: China's Leader Asks for 'Sharp Criticism'

Last Wednesday, China’s new leader went looking for advice. “The CPC should be able to put up with sharp criticism, correct mistakes if it has committed them and avoid them if it has not,” said Xi Jinping, referring to the Communist Party of China. “Non-CPC personages should meanwhile have the courage to tell the truth, speak words jarring on the ear, and truthfully reflect public aspirations.”

Did Xi, in just a few words, overturn decades of Chinese Communist thinking on social control? Just about no one thinks so. “Sharp criticism?” asked Zhang Xing, a Beijing lawyer. “We cannot even comment on news reports, let alone make sharp criticism.” Zhang, like many others, suggests the party is “enticing the snake out of its cave.”

That’s a reference to Mao Zedong’s Hundred Flowers Campaign, a period beginning in 1956 when the Chinese people were encouraged to voice their views. Yet the Great Helmsman, as Mao was known, changed tack the following year and, with the Anti-Rightist Movement, punished or imprisoned those who had earlier expressed criticism.

Was “letting a hundred flowers bloom and a hundred schools of thoughts contend” a ploy to see who opposed the regime? Many now think so, hence Zhang’s reference to getting the snake to slither out of its nest. Yet others instead believe Mao had misjudged his popularity and had thought that critical views would be directed at his enemies, not at him.

What is Xi Jinping’s motivation for starting a new Hundred Flowers period? He could be emulating Mao and waiting for enemies to expose themselves. He could be completely cynical by using reformist language to hide increasingly harsh repression. He could be merely trying to make his mark by saying something flashy. He could even be hoping public opinion will support an agenda of change.

Whatever he is doing, it looks as if he is also responding to pressures in society. Last year, the mighty Communist Party of China was rocked by the ambition, corruption, intrigue, lust, murder, and treason of its senior officials, and so perhaps it must now appease growing discontent.

Yet as the party does so, the Chinese people are seeing an opening to push their leaders. Microblogger Duan Wanjin, for one, wasted no time. “Mr. Xi, I was encouraged today to hear you say citizens and other civic groups can sharply criticize the ruling party,” the lawyer wrote. “Sharp is a good word, but you would be better served to let those at the Supreme Court give it a legal definition and clearly define the difference between ‘inciting subversion’ and ‘sharp criticism.’” Ai Weiwei, the famed artist-turned-dissident, wasn’t bashful either. “First sentence of the New Year,” he wrote on Twitter, “release all political prisoners.” The Chinese people are responding with gusto, mostly with suggestions antithetical to the notion of one-party rule.

The worst thing for the party is that the Chinese people take Xi seriously. He surely knows his Qing dynasty history. China’s last set of imperial rulers had to pay lip service to constitutional reform to quell popular discontent at the end of the 19th century. When the populace wanted real change, however, conservative elements in Beijing backtracked and cracked down even harder. The failure of the Hundred Days’ Reform initiative then spurred revolutionary forces into action.

We all know what eventually happened to the Qing. 

How Should the US Respond to China's Cyber Attacks?

Last week, the Associated Press reported that the National Intelligence Council is working on a new National Intelligence Estimate that will point the finger at the Chinese government for a multi-year campaign of cyberattacks against American networks. The estimate, according to the wire service, will call for more effective action against Beijing.

The news comes on the heels of a series of revelations that Chinese hackers have been reading e-mails of New York Times reporters as well as attacking the computer systems of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. Reports also suggest the Chinese have hacked Twitter and the Department of Energy.

Hackers in China—associated with government instrumentalities, ministries, state enterprises, the Communist Party, and shadowy associations—have been probing, infecting, stealing from, and disrupting networks around the world in what looks like the largest effort of its kind. Beijing officials, pointing to Chinese government laws against cybercrimes, have repeatedly denied wrongdoing.

President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and senior administration officials have talked with their Chinese counterparts about rampant hacking, but attacks from China nonetheless reportedly spiked in the middle of last year. The apparent failure of dialogue has not stopped the administration from continuing its dialogue with Beijing. Said White House spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden, “We have repeatedly raised our concerns with senior Chinese officials, including in the military, and we will continue to do so.”

Unfortunately, talking even more with China’s leaders is not going to convince them to stop their highly provocative cyber activities. Why not? This is not just a dollars-and-cents—or, more precisely, yuan-and-fen—decision to obtain valuable intellectual property for nothing. The hacking of the Times, for instance, suggests the Communist Party sees its cyber intrusions as an issue of first importance. The paper, in a front-page article on January 31st, noted that Chinese military hackers were interested only in the Times’s reporting last October of the wealth of the family of Premier Wen Jiabao.

The paper’s October article, which stated that Wen’s family members had accumulated at least $2.7 billion in assets, suggested corruption, and corruption always brings down Chinese dynasties. “Grandpa Wen,” as he likes to be called, had been the compassionate face of communism. He was the leader who wept at the scenes of natural disasters, who visited the downtrodden, who called for democracy. Now, however, the Chinese people know, because of the Times’s reporting, that he had undoubtedly abused his official position and was no better than other rapacious Beijing leaders.

But I doubt this was just about Premier Wen. Given that China so fiercely attacked the Times for disclosing the extent of the Wen family’s accumulation of wealth, it’s a good bet that the other leaders wanted to prevent disclosures about themselves. The decision to launch a cyber attack on the Times, therefore, may very well have been a collective decision to circle the wagons.

In the wake of the latest hacking news, China’s political leaders only look more desperate. They have morphed from a threat to their own people to a threat to free institutions and free societies. The unprecedented attack on Western media is part of a campaign to intimidate reporters and affect political discourse in America and elsewhere. The West, and democratic countries everywhere, cannot allow the Chinese to succeed.

Hillary Clinton, before stepping down as secretary of state, worried about what could happen when the US responded to Chinese cyber campaigns. “Obviously this can become a very unwelcome and even dangerous tit-for-tat that could be a crescendo of consequences, here at home and around the world, that no one wants to see happen,” she said. Clinton is right, of course, but Chinese leaders leave us no choice but to defend ourselves. That’s why the administration is about to issue guidelines and policies about the use of the nation’s cyberweapons.

For years, Washington delayed taking action against Chinese cyber activities apparently because policymakers thought that if they did, the efforts would undercut attempts to develop cooperative relations with Beijing. Successive administrations harbored the hope that we could talk to the Communist Party and come to some accommodation. These hopes were never realistic and have not changed Chinese behavior, except perhaps to make it worse by suggesting we were not serious. 

China’s leaders, on the other hand, are serious, and they believe they are entitled to deference. Because they are communists, they feel superior on account of self-pronounced historical destiny. Because of recent economic success, they are arrogant. Because of today’s problems, they are insecure. The result is that they now crave control of not only their nation but ours as well. 

Confrontation or Appeasement in the Senkakus?

During the morning of January 21st, three China Marine Surveillance vessels—the Haijian 23, 46, and 137—entered the territorial waters of Japan north of Kubajima, one of the Senkaku Islands, in the East China Sea. This followed an intrusion by the Haijian 23 and two sister vessels during the preceding Saturday, also in the morning.

The incursion on the 21st was the 24th such incident since September, when Tokyo purchased three of the five barren islands, administered as part of its Okinawa Prefecture, from their Japanese owners (from whom it had previously been renting). China, Japan, and Taiwan all dispute the sovereignty of these East China Sea outcroppings, which have in fact been controlled by Tokyo since 1972, when Washington returned administration of them to Japan (Beijing now scolds America for doing so). Until 1971, the People’s Republic effectively acknowledged that the islands were Japanese, but now Beijing says they have been indisputably China’s for centuries.

Chinese boats have patrolled near the East China Sea islets, which Beijing calls the Diaoyus, almost continuously since last September. Chinese planes have also flown near and over the disputed island chain, which is uninhabited. For instance, Beijing alarmed Tokyo—and Washington—by sending a patrol craft from the State Oceanic Administration over the Senkakus on December 13th.

The Carnegie analyst James Schoff, speaking to the Wall Street Journal, notes that the Chinese incursions are becoming more frequent and are lasing longer. “It fits into the Chinese narrative that we are there to keep you out,” he says. “The narrative has changed to be ‘Not only is it we can go there but you can’t be here.’ That’s a fundamental change.”

What has fundamentally changed in Beijing? It’s not clear what is driving Chinese belligerence at the moment. It could be disarray in Beijing that is allowing the hard-line elements to do what they want or maybe new leader Xi Jinping is the nationalist he is reputed to be and is pushing his country toward a showdown with a projection of force. In any event Xi has just said that China’s territorial claims will not be compromised, and it’s unclear if Beijing can be appeased.

The Japanese keep trying, however. In the last two weeks, no fewer than three of their political figures have made pilgrimages to China in apparent attempts to cool tensions, one of them carrying a message from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. On Tuesday, Abe himself proposed a summit with China. Beijing’s reaction? It sent three of its vessels close to the islands.

Talking to belligerent powers in conciliatory tones is almost always the wrong strategy, as it is at this late moment in the turbulent waters of the East China Sea. China needs to understand that Japan will challenge its belligerence, with force if necessary, and that the US will back Tokyo to the hilt. 

Japan and the US, however, appear desperate to keep peace in Asia and are afraid to anger the Chinese. There were early signs last year, when Washington effectively reneged on its treaty obligations to Manila and allowed Beijing to forcefully take Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines, a low point for American diplomacy. The Obama administration, unfortunately, chose to ignore China’s aggression and in effect invited conflict in Asia.

Today, Henry Kissinger advocates conciliatory policies that have obviously failed to curb Chinese expansionism. There was a time, however, when he understood how to keep hostile powers in check. “Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective of a power or a group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community,” he wrote in A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812–22. “Whenever the international order has acknowledged that certain principles could not be compromised even for the sake of peace, stability based on an equilibrium of forces was at least conceivable.”

Unfortunately, Tokyo and Washington’s alternating policy of avoidance and appeasement in the face of Chinese aggression in the East China Sea is undermining the very stability they seek.

 

Photo Credit: Al Jazeera English