How Would Democracy Change China?



Democratization and Greater China
How Would Democracy Change China?
by Arthur Waldron
Arthur Waldron (awaldron2@aol.com) is a Senior Fellow of FPRI and the Lauder Professor of
International Relations at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include From War to
Nationalism: China's turning Point, 1924-1925 (Cambridge University Press, 1995) and The
Great Wall of China: From History to Myth (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
Given the requirements of China's increasingly affluent and wellinformed
society and its dynamic economy, political change in the
People's Republic of China is probably coming sooner than many
would expect and may well take the form of steps toward democracy. Key
among the reasons for this is the situation in Hong Kong. Since the mass
demonstrations held there on July 1, 2003, a swelling chorus of voices has
been calling for democracy in the Special Administrative Region. Influential
businessmen such as Sir Gordon Wu, who has long been skeptical about
democracy, have now joined the human rights and democratic activists'
cause.1
Remarkably, until July 1 placed the issue of ``democracy, yes or no?''
squarely in Beijing's lap, many observers treated the possibility of genuine
change as remote.2 Hence Beijing's response, several months after the
demonstrations, that local leaders ``must reiterate their support for [chief
executive Tung Chee-hwa] in public because it is crucial to preserve stability
in Hong Kong,''3 despite the near universal disapproval being expressed for
him. (An October 2003 poll indicated that Tung enjoyed the support of only
25 percent of the public.)4
The inexplicable conviction that democratization for China proper
was not an issue, let alone a possibility, was remarkably durable: it survived
the end of communism in the West and the pluralization of the Soviet Union,
as well as the wave of political change in Asia that began in the Philippines in
2004 Published by Elsevier Limited on behalf of Foreign Policy Research Institute.
1 ``Start talking on direct polls, says Gordon Wu,'' South China Morning Post, Sept. 16, 2003.
2 BBC correspondent Fergal Keene, for example, recently estimated that China ``is perhaps
one generation away from a major upheaval,'' Independent, Sept. 6, 2003.
3 ``We're listening, say leaders, but stability is key,'' South China Morning Post, Sept. 22,
2003.
4 ``Trust in government hits low point,'' South China Morning Post, Oct. 15, 2003.
Spring 2004 | 247
the 1980s. Today, China is surrounded almost entirely by democratic states,
from India to Mongolia to South Korea and Japan to Taiwan and into
Southeast Asia. It is one of only five remaining communist dictatorships in the
world: the overwhelming majority of the world's nations are democratic or
democratizing. Some political scientists have taken to explaining how
autocracy has survived in China, by implication suggesting that it will
continue.5
Now the people of Hong Kong have made their preferences clear, not
only through the summer demonstrations but also, even more powerfully, in
the record voter turnout and crushing victory of the democrats in this past
autumn's district council elections. Beijing must decide whether to go with
the clear trend or somehow try to stop it. The decision point is 2007 for
whether or not to permit universal suffrage and genuine democracy, as the
Basic Law suggests is possible.
If democracy is permitted in the Hong Kong SAR, then pressure for
similar dispensations elsewhere in China will prove difficult to resist (as
happened with economic reform, which was initially limited to a few special
zones). Unlike economic reform, however, which in certain respects has
strengthened the Party's control over business and wealth, democracy will
certainly undermine Party control of politics--and for that reason is a most
unwelcome possibility for many Party members.
What if Beijing decides against democracy for Hong Kong? In that
case, Hong Kong voters may punish the current, partially democratic
government by electing enough opposition legislators to create a deadlock
that will prevent the Beijing-appointed chief executive from securing
approval for his programs even under the current, Beijing-designed system.
Beijing is trying to stop this disastrous, for it, outcome by means of
rationalization and manipulation. Thus it stresses that economic, and not
political, grievances are at the root of the present situation and professes to
believe that if somehow Hong Kong's economy can be gotten back on track,
democratization will fade away. Thus State Councilor Tang Jiaxuan was
quoted as saying in September 2003 that ``we should recognize that boosting
Hong Kong's economy is the key to addressing the problems facing the city
and helping ease the grievances of the middle class.''6 If this strategy fails, as
is likely, only a very hard option will remain: rewriting the Basic Law and
somehow imposing dictatorial rule. Xu Kuangdi, a vice chairman of the
Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, condemned the summer
protest as ``a bad thing.''7 Leaders of the democratic movement such as
Bishop Zen and legislator Emily Lau Wai-hing have already been vilified in
5 Perhaps the best example is Andrew J. Nathan, ``China's Changing of the Guard:
Authoritarian Resilience,'' Journal of Democracy, Jan. 2003, pp. 6-17.
6 ``A revived economy will ease grievances, delegations told,'' South China Morning Post,
Sept. 16, 2003.
7 ``Beijing has never been so worried about HK,'' South China Morning Post, Sept. 11, 2003.
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the official media.8 No doubt Beijing is of two minds about what to do next,
but it must do something soon.
What happens in 2007 is not going to be clean or neat. Democratization
is a difficult process that can go terribly wrong. In country after country,
the interim period when the old system is breaking down but the new one
has not yet taken root has proved to be a time of suffering, violence, and
often political extremism. The Soviet Union took its strong medicine in 1989:
abolishing the communist system, freeing the press and media, legalizing
opposition parties, introducing parliamentary rule, making the ruble into a
convertible currency, and liberating the Soviet empire. At first, many
observers felt that the cure was worse than the disease.
Economic Consequences
In the first few years after the end of communismin Russia and the Cold
War, poverty seemed to rise, the ruble collapsed, pensioners were wiped out, a
coup was attempted, and many regretted the loss of empire and superpower
status. But Russia has in the last few years begun to reap some benefits. While
authoritarian tendencies continue in government, the police, and the media,
the gloom of the late 1990s has lifted. The economy is developing at a
respectable rate, foreign exchange reserves are growing, the Russian media is
incomparably freer than either its Soviet or Chinese counterparts, and elections
continue to be scheduled and held. Russia's still incomplete democratization
has generally been beneficial to all Russians, and Moscow is emerging from
seven decades of grime as one of the most beautiful cities in Europe.
Regime type and regime change made a huge difference in the Cold
War and its end. During the Cold War, Kremlin-watchers would often
maintain that Soviet foreign policy was in keeping with Russian traditions.
Indeed, some blurred the line between the ancien regime and the USSR. This
sense that Russia somehow had a set of national interests that both tsar and
commissar held in common was widespread, and it was supported by the
then-current political science theory, which paid little attention to regime
type. Such arguments are nearly impossible to make for Russia today, but we
still hear them for China: that what is important is not the fact that the
government in Beijing is communist but that it is a Chinese regime, a rather
stable one at that, and that China has a set of rationally defined national
interests that any regime can be expected to further.9
8 ``Bishop Zen willing to talk to Beijing,'' South China Morning Post, Sept. 21, 2003; ``Do not
show toleration of Emily Lau's offence,'' China Daily (Hong Kong edition), Sept. 2, 2003.
9 ``In all, the preponderance of evidence indicates that the Chinese regime is relatively
stable at present [and] that its foreign policy is primarily motivated by rational national
interests.'' Letter to the editor signed by Michael D. Swaine and eleven others, Commentary,
Oct. 2003, pp. 10-11.
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Spring 2004 | 249
If this were the case, then China would be an even more exceptional
country than has been imagined. For in every other country, regime type has
made an immense difference in both domestic and foreign policy. In France,
the Bourbons sought power, glory, and territorial aggrandizement, but
Napoleon was something altogether different. In Germany, the foreign policy
of the Prussian (later imperial) government supervised by Bismarck was very
different from that of the Weimar Republic or National Socialism. In Britain, a
single election that threw out the Tories and brought in Labour meant rapid
independence for India. The United States has no single set of foreign policy
goals that are equally supported by Democrats and Republicans. Likewise,
the regime type in China has made a difference in the past and will continue
to do so in the future. Furthermore, fully democratic countries with
entrenched constitutions and regular elections (not states in the midst of
transition) have a low proclivity to make war on one another.
Nevertheless, many people in both China and the West are explicitly
hostile to the idea of Chinese democracy, even though the PRC's current
constitution does provide (even if only on paper) for elections and the
associated constitutional structures and independent judicial institutions.
Who would benefit from such elections? First, farmers. Rural residents
constitute 70 to 80 percent of China's population. They will dominate any
fairly elected parliament and change policies. Thus they might allocate funds
for rural infrastructure, such as irrigation systems and secondary roads, and
for education, health care, and social insurance for rural populations. They
would demand equality of treatment with the residents of the urban areas,
which today boast far higher standards of living and account for some 80
percent of government expenditures. They would call for trade policies that
made it easier for them to specialize in high-value crops and protect them
against subsidized exports from the developed world.
Such an electoral result would be nothing short of a revolution.
China's current economic ruling class is an interlocking directorate of Party
members, Chinese who have acquired foreign citizenship and then returned
to China to work with them, and foreign investors. As Hugo Restall writes,
``the most productive sector of the economy is largely run by foreigners, for
the benefit of foreigners.''10
The current economic system favors cities, especially coastal cities,
over countryside; state-owned enterprises (SOEs), communist officials (who
comprise some 80 percent of private business owners, though a small fraction
of the population), and foreigners over ordinary Chinese; and high
technology over agricultural development. The rural majority of a democratic
China would probably force the government to give them greater economic
opportunity and a larger voice in major projects. They might disapprove
massive projects like the Three Gorges Dam.
10 Hugo Restall, ``Why China Is a Paper Tiger,'' Asian Wall Street Journal, Aug. 1, 2003.
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Providing money for rural areas would further strain China's budget,
which portends trouble ahead. Foreign Policy's Moises Naim notes that ``no
country has ever been able to go through the social, economic and political
change that China will undergo without accidents that derail even the best
laid plans.''11 Billions of dollars will be needed even to begin to address the
rural areas' problems. Where will the money come from?
The Chinese government currently runs a chronic fiscal deficit and
has rendered insolvent the banking system it controls by forcing it to make
massive loans to money-losing SOEs, which use the borrowed money to cover
current employment and other costs and to increase capacity. Most industrial
products are therefore oversupplied, which drives prices down and creates
chronic deflation.12 But the debt thus created--as well as the expansion of
the money supply as the government prints currency (RMB) with which to buy
dollars at a fixed rate and then issues bonds to soak up the excess liquidity--
plants the seeds for inflation. The only possible way to cover China's current
loan obligations is by means of the printing press. So here is the critical point:
new money for rural needs can only come from the redirection of current
resource flows.
It is estimated that the 2008 Beijing Olympics will cost more than $20
billion. The cost of launching the PRC's first manned space mission in October
2003 was comparable. China is also spending massively on missiles,
warships, and a new air force, much of which is imported.13 Democratization
would almost certainly change Chinese foreign policy.
Foreign Policy Consequences
China's current foreign policy is inconsistent and often self-defeating.
For instance, it is obviously in China's interest to have fewer, not more,
nuclear-armed neighbors. But China's military build-up and its nuclear
proliferation, especially to Pakistan, were the reason for India's decision to
become a declared and competent nuclear power. Perhaps Beijing imagined
that Washington would somehow squelch India and prevent it from
becoming a military rival to China. If so, it was mistaken. The result is
arguably the greatest setback to Chinese interests since 1949-50, when the
new government in Beijing failed to establish formal relations with the United
States and then entered the Korean War. If the infant PRC had dealt more
11 ``Only a Miracle Can Save China from Itself,'' Financial Times, Sept. 15, 2003.
12 At present China's central government is borrowing simply to keep the economy where it
is, grossly misallocating scarce resources and undermining its banks in the process. See
William Pesak, ``Commentary: Fragile Finances are the Real China Story,'' International Herald
Tribune, Aug. 27, 2003; ``Second Thoughts about Amazing China,'' Jane's Foreign Report no.
2755, Oct 2, 2003.
13 See ``China's Military Build-up,'' Jane's Intelligence Digest, Aug. 8, 2003.
Democratization
Spring 2004 | 251
deftly with Washington, or had it not humiliated Mr. Nehru in 1962 and
provided nuclear weapon technology to Pakistan, its current strategic
situation would be far better than it is.
The situation may be worsening. From Pakistan, nuclear technology
(mostly Chinese) has now spread to North Korea, where (along with Russian
missiles apparently obtained from the Middle East) they create an enormously
difficult and potentially dangerous situation. If the two Koreas are united, that
new state will surely also be nuclear. This development, like the Indian
decision for nuclear weapons, will be an enormous setback for Beijing: the
Korean peninsula controls access by sea to the ports of southern Liaoning
and northern Shandong, as well as Tianjin and the sea lanes to the Chinese
capital. Yet Beijing is accepting this with apparent nonchalance.
Above all, good relations with the United States are surely in Beijing's
interest. Whatever stability and wealth the Chinese government has achieved
to date ultimately rest on massive exports, of which the United States is by far
the largest buyer. Chinese involvement in any sort of hostilities in Asia would
certainly lead to the closing of the American market and the sequestration of
Chinese assets in the United States. Yet China not only keeps its distance from
Washington (seeking, for example, to create room for maneuver by aligning
itself with Germany, France, Russia, or even Serbia), it is also the only country
in the world today configuring its military to attack American forces--witness
its purchase of ex-Soviet supersonic missiles having as their sole target
American carrier battle groups.
These examples of China's foreign policy--towards India, North
Korea, and the United States--cannot be explained by rational calculations of
Chinese national interest. Each creates something new and bad for China: a
suspicious and militarily capable India; a nuclear-armed Korea in a position
to frustrate all sorts of possible Chinese actions; possibly a rearmed Japan that
would quickly outstrip China in military competence; and a United States
that, despite its desire for good relations with Beijing, has to devote more and
more time and money to countering Chinese threats to its friends and allies
and itself. Regime type is the explanation.
Chinese National Interest
How would a democratic Chinese parliament assess Chinese national
interests? First, it would be interested in improving the living standards of the
country's hundreds of millions of impoverished people. The only way to free
resources for this would be to change the foreign policy that demands, for
example, such vast military expenditures. This would entail shifting friendships
away from the few countries that seek to counter U.S. dominance in the
world and reorienting toward the countries that provide the most to China
economically. In other words, Beijing would have to become friendly with
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the United States, its biggest market; Japan, another major trading partner
and, to a lesser extent, investor; South Korea and Taiwan, both important
trading partners and major investors (China's info-tech industry is owned
roughly 70 percent by Taiwan and 15 percent by South Korea); Europe (a
major market and investor); and Australia (a major trading partner,
particularly in raw materials). And being rid of its empire, it could enter
into genuine friendship, or at least correct relations, with peoples who had
previously despised it for its colonial rule.
Hitherto, Beijing has placed disproportionate stress on supporting
other dictatorships. It is deeply involved in Myanmar (whose human rights
record, it must be admitted, is somewhat better than China's). It continues to
subsidize North Korea, providing Pyongyang with items of trade that can be
used for military programs. It has supported Pakistan's nuclear program. Its
support for Serbia as NATO attempted to dislodge Slobodan Milosevic in
1999 was massive. Beijing continues to undermine its relationship with
Washington through its rigid14 approach to Taiwan, which should be its
partner, and its interest in Cuba, in particular in the former Soviet signals
intelligence facilities there. China has been reported, at least in the past, to be
involved in supporting a range of unsavory regimes in the Middle East and to
maintain a close clandestine military relationship with Israel. This political
and military club is not one to which China should want to belong.
Under conditions of freedom and democracy, China would move to
non-belligerence toward the West, cooperation, and increasing openness.
This would of course greatly benefit China's neighbors and the United States,
ending the accelerating arms race that wastes so much money and creates so
much danger in Asia today. But for now China remains a dictatorship, and as
such it cannot welcome the prospect of other dictatorships' becoming free.
China is an odd fit: its culture, from the time of Confucius, has contained
plenty of liberal elements, and in the past century, democracy was the shared
demand of most of the intelligentsia, some of whom imagined that
communism would be democratic.15 Not only that, until 1949 China was,
politically, far freer than it is today. True, it was ruled autocratically, but ideas
could be published and discussed, universities harbored genuinely free
thought, and entrepreneurship was relatively untrammeled. So China's
current global policies, far from being a natural consequence of Chinese
tradition and national interest, are anomalous.
14 The term is from Douglas Paal, in effect the American ambassador. ``Washington's Taiwan
envoy Paal bemoans rigid China,'' China Post, Sept. 17, 2003.
15 May believed this based on the famous Mao interview with a Reuters correspondent on
Sept. 27, 1945. See ``Answers to Questions Raised by Reuters News Agency Correspondent
Gamble'' published in the Chongqing Xinhua ribao and on October 8 in the Jiefang ribao.
Translation in Stuart R. Schram, ed., Arthur Waldron, assistant editor, Mao's Road to Power:
Revolutionary Writings 1912-1949, vol. 9 (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, forthcoming).
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Spring 2004 | 253
Greater China
This is even more evident when one looks at greater China--the
world of the huaren, or Chinese living outside China proper, from Hong
Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and Malaysia to the United States. Hong Kong is
now part of the PRC, but no one there calls the SAR's inhabitants ``Chinese''
(Zhongguoren); they are Xiangangren (Hong Kong people), a usage that
recognizes the deep difference. Hong Kong people are proud of their
Chinese heritage, but they are southerners, speaking a distinct language and
instinctively distrustful of the crude and strident patriotic propaganda that
Beijing produces. They are also cosmopolitan, having their backs firmly to
China, as one longtime resident put it to me. Much the same is true for
Taiwan, though it has not until quite recently had anything like the degree of
contact with China that Hong Kong enjoyed from its cession to Britain until
1949, and then again since the 1980s. In Taiwan, even those having recent
mainland ancestry are lumped together in PRC-Chinese speech as Taiwanren
(Taiwan people). Taiwan is an amalgam of cultures and peoples: its pre-1945
population is exactly between Fujian and the Philippines, being an island
peopled by Chinese male immigrants who married local women related to
the Filipinos. Culturally, it bears the imprint of early Western colonization and
a very large dose of Japanese. Since 1949 it has followed its own course. It
now differs from China not only ethnically, but also politically (as a
democracy) and linguistically (using standard Chinese, not the simplified PRC
version). Still, it is Chinese enough that its rocky but so far steady progress
toward democratization demonstrates that such things could happen in China
as well.
Singapore, with a population that is more than 70 percent composed
of huaren, has lagged far behind Taiwan in political change.16 Its
political system is gerrymandered, its press anemic, and its economy
lagging. But its people are superbly educated and enterprising, and it is
difficult to imagine that the present Lee family dynasty is going to last much
longer--at which point Singapore will have to face democratic transition,
which will be agonizing notwithstanding that the country is well prepared
with institutions for this. In Malaysia, the huaren are enormously active
politically and, as the Malay-Islamic bloc begins to splinter, may come to
hold the decisive weight.
Paradoxically, those Asian states that are of Chinese heritage (Taiwan,
Singapore) and those where ethnic Chinese have real influence on national
security policy (Indonesia) tend to be far more distrusting of China than are
the states (Malaysia or Myanmar) where indigenous non-huaren run security
16 For an evocation of Singapore's once vigorous parliamentary life, see Chan Heng Chee, A
Sensation of Independence: A Political Biography of David Marshall (Singapore: Oxford
University Press, 1984).
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policy, even though those indigenous people may be powerfully hostile to
the local huaren. Some of China's most serious problems are with their
huaren rather than with genuine foreigners--not just those nearby but the
many of them in the West, some of whom pose a major threat to Beijing's
political control. Thus the Falungong overseas, which consists overwhelmingly
of huaren, has repeatedly managed to hijack the Sinosat, China's official
communications relay satellite, and substitute for the regular programming
films about meditation and their religion.
Other huaren take a different approach and, like e?migre?s since time
immemorial, identify strongly with their country of origin. The profits to be
made have intensified this trend. The strong American business lobby that
supports Beijing, various distinguished former members of U.S. governments,
and the U.S. diplomatic corps increasingly drive the United States to identify
its interests not with those of the Chinese people but with those of the present
Chinese government and the Sino-foreign oligarchy that controls much of
China's economy.
Indeed, foreign support is increasingly vital to the survival of the
Chinese regime: not only foreign investment and foreign markets, but foreign
acknowledgment of the legitimacy of regime leaders through state and
ceremonial visits. After all, if the president of the United States and the prime
minister of Japan agree that an individual is China's legitimate ruler, who are
local Chinese to disagree? This again is a long-standing pattern in Chinese
politics: foreign support as flying buttresses, keeping the political system
from collapsing.
Steady Change
For a decade or more after the indignation of 1989 had cooled,
American policy toward China was guided by the approach described above:
one that favored the status quo and saw China as an increasingly ``normal''
power, stable and, in the long run, vital to American interests. Over the same
years, the degree of U.S. concern about both its own security and that of its
friends and allies was rising steadily. But it was increasingly accepted that
somehow economics would trump freedom and that the Party was here to
stay. Even such remarkable events as Taiwan's democratization had little
impact on those who held to this view, who found that example irritating
rather than illuminating. That is all beginning to change, for reasons both
domestic and having to do with greater China.
Steady change is audible in China's political rhetoric. Political reform
has long been under discussion, but now there are actually small signs of
motion. President Hu has called for strengthening democracy within the Party.
This arguably is a tactical move, designed to move the locus of final power
from the nine-member Standing Committee of the Politburo (which former
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President Jiang Zemin packed with his followers before stepping down) to the
Central Committee (which numbers 356 members and alternates) and even to
the Party membership as a whole (66 million in 2002). Even a small step in the
direction of freer speech and political participation within the Party would
almost inevitably lead to arguments--at first hidden from the public--about
what policy should be. That would be a substantial step forward from what has
characterized intra-Party politics up to now: namely, argument over who
should rule rather than what they should do. As happened with the formation
of factions in the British parliament in the eighteenth century, issues would
start to replace personalities as the focus of discussion. Content would be
injected into what China-watcher Roger Uren has termed China's ``endless,
contentless politics.''17
More surprisingly, Hu has at least paid lip service to democracy for
the citizenry as well. On the eve of National Day, October 1, he made a
speech that asserted: ``We must enrich the forms of democracy, make
democratic procedures complete, expand citizens' orderly political participation
and ensure that the people can exercise democratic elections, democratic
decision making, democratic administration, and democratic scrutiny.''18 Why
is Hu saying this?
Other Chinese have been forthright in their demands that their
country adopt what journalists still often refer to as Western-style
democracy--even though Japan, India, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines,
and other Asian states have democratic lineages in many cases far longer than
many of the West's ``new democracies.'' Thus, on the eve of a Party meeting
called for mid-October to discuss amending the constitution, the respected
Beijing constitutional scholar and economist Cao Siyuan published China's
Constitution Revision--Protect Everyone's Legal Rights, which he sent to
every member of the Politburo. In it he advocates immediate steps to discard
Marxist rhetoric, give priority to citizens' rights, and enforce the presumption
of innocence in court proceedings. He urges holding direct elections at all
levels, empowering local and provincial legislatures, privatizing the media,
and guaranteeing freedom of speech, press, and religion.19 The immediate
official response to these suggestions was to place Cao under 24-hour
security police surveillance (now lifted). Almost simultaneously with Cao's
calls came news that an experimental, directly elected community council
may be envisaged for a Beijing neighborhood.20 Reporters did not expect a
dramatic democratic breakthrough, but was this a straw in the wind?
17 Personal communication to author.
18 ``Hu Invokes Democracy As a Shield,'' Far Eastern Economic Review, Oct. 16, 2003.
19 Points as summarized by Amy Gadsden in a manuscript shared with the author. Some of
Cao's views may be found in ``Five Recommendations for Chinese Constitutional Reform,''
Harvard Asia Quarterly, Mar. 22, 2001.
20 ``Beijing Community Council: Democratic model may be toothless tiger,'' Financial Times
(North American Edition) Oct. 14, 2003.
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This is not to suggest that the Communist Party has changed its colors
and is preparing to lead China through a transformation to democracy. But
evidently the issue is alive in China and the Party is attempting to deal with it.
Almost inevitably, that will lead to experiments in limited opening--and
those, as we saw in the late 1980s and early 1990s, usually lead to far greater
changes than their authors envisage. The reason that the Party is playing with
democratic fire is simple: popular pressure, at home and from the Chinese
diaspora, and the knowledge within the political class that whoever succeeds
in channeling into democratic institutions the aspirations and free-floating
resentments of today's China will emerge as a winner.
Taiwan and Hong Kong
As has been the pattern in China since the mid-nineteenth century,
overseas pressures, particularly from the huaren, have a disproportionate
impact in the country. Thus, although Taiwan's international profile is so low
as to approach invisibility, thanks to de-recognition by all but a handful of
states, it nevertheless enjoys substantive relations with countries ranging from
Russia to France and India to the United States that have large and wellinformed
(if well-concealed) diplomatic presences there. Furthermore,
leaving aside the difficult issue of international status, Taiwan also enjoys
the best of both worlds with respect to China. Politically, it is master in its
own house: electing its own parliament and president, having its own
military, and governing itself. Yet economically it is increasingly involved in
trade and investment with China, now owning great swaths of the most
advanced productive capacity there and selling far more to China than it
buys. Its political example is well known and admired in China, but because
it is politically independent of Beijing it cannot exert the sort of influence that
Hong Kong is now showing.
Hong Kong's status is, by contrast, internationally recognized. It is
sovereign Chinese territory, having a close economic relationship with China
and a government structure designed to appear to permit local self rule
(Gangren zhi Gan--Hong Kong people running Hong Kong, though the
chief executive is in fact from Shanghai via the United States) while in fact
allowing Beijing to run things behind the scenes. It is the sudden instability of
this arrangement, so clear in the November 2003 district council elections,
and the lack of any obvious way to muddle through, that may occasion
genuine democratization in Hong Kong and then in China. For while Beijing
may regularly scold Taiwan, no timetable, no current crisis in which it is
directly involved, forces it to do anything. The same is not true for Hong
Kong.
The Hong Kong SAR is part of China, and Beijing ultimately bears
responsibility for what happens there. Yet there is clearly no consensus in
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Beijing about how to deal with the problems in Hong Kong except through
exhortation, financial incentives, and a hope that the issue will somehow go
away. The stakes are very high. So Hong Kong can be an entering wedge,
potentially dividing the Beijing leadership in a way that Taiwan can never
match.
For Beijing, the path of least resistance is not to crack down--which
could begin an economic and financial panic that might unravel the whole
PRC economy--but rather to permit Hong Kong to democratize (even though
that process must ultimately threaten Communist rule in China itself).
At present it looks as if Beijing has decided that it has no alternative
but to play the democratic game, at least in Hong Kong. The man in charge of
policy in the SAR, Vice President Zeng Qinghong, has called for much closer
economic cooperation between Hong Kong and China, the hope being that if
the economy picks up, voters will support pro-Beijing candidates.21 The chief
secretary of Tung's administration, Donald Tsang Yam-kuen, has termed
universal suffrage a ``clear goal.''22 In Beijing, Premier Wen Jiabao has called
for ``gradual development of democracy'' in the SAR.23 But even while
enunciating pro-democratic sentiments, the governments in the SAR and in
Beijing appear to be scrambling to win the elections that, according to their
own rules, they must carry out.
Thus, in the run-up to the first test, district council elections last
November, the Electoral Affairs Commission in Hong Kong cut voting time by
three hours, a move intended to deny 200,000 people the opportunity to cast
a ballot.24 Meanwhile, in private, pro-Beijing groups attempted to cobble
together a coalition of local employees of Chinese enterprises, pro-Beijing
trade unionists, members of clan and civic associations, and staff and family
members of companies that have invested in China--or about 40 percent of
total registered voters.25 But as the result showed, all such efforts failed.
What next? When mainland Chinese poured out in the millions to
demand democracy in 1989, a handful of officials at the top of the Party made
the decision (not even following Party procedures) to order the People's
Liberation Army, in effect, to sack Beijing. That option simply does not exist
in Hong Kong--but as was true in China itself fifteen years ago, nothing
anything short of such brutal repression will conceivably halt the slide toward
democracy even temporarily. So the possibility cannot be excluded that the
Party will, for want of other options, grudgingly accept the outcome. In other
words, the Party will show that although it will not of itself promote
democracy, it will yield to pressure. If and when that is demonstrated,
pressure for democracy will only increase--inside China.
21 ``We Must Get Even Closer, Says Beijing,'' South China Morning Post, Sept. 18, 2003.
22 ``One Man, One Vote For HK Is `A Clear Goal','' South China Morning Post, Sept. 19, 2003.
23 ``Gradual Democracy Right for HK: Wen,'' South China Morning Post, Oct. 9, 2003.
24 ``Poll Hours Cut `To Stop 200,000 Voting,'' South China Morning Post, Sept. 26, 2003.
25 ``Beijing Expected To Intervene in HK Elections Next Year,'' Straits Times, Oct. 1, 2003.
WALDRON
258 | Orbis
Consequences
Should democratization be completed in China, everyone--Chinese
and foreigner alike--will benefit. But the path will be difficult and frightening
at times, and much as one would hope that the United States and other
foreign governments would shout encouragement, the high degree of official
identification of U.S. interests with ``stability'' in China may well muffle that
sound.
Since President Nixon fundamentally reversed U.S. policy toward
China in 1972, the United States has been working things in a way that is
intellectually inside-out. Washington's premise is that China is unified,
uniform, and reliably controlled by Beijing. Therefore it focuses on official
Beijing and judges its relations by examining that single linkage. It pays
relatively little attention to China outside of Beijing, and even less to the
world of the huaren outside of China and their potential linkages to and
influences on China proper. The U.S. consulate in Hong Kong was, until
recently, a cheering section for ``one country, two systems,'' devoting its
attention chiefly to gathering information and intelligence about China, not
about Hong Kong. The U.S. diplomatic presence in Taipei is disguised and far
smaller than it would be if the posting were judged by its importance. For the
United States, it is arguably one of the top ten places of greatest potential
importance; for Japan, one of the top five. In Singapore, Washington pays
scant attention to the large portion of the population that does not speak
English. It has taken as fact the PRC's self-presentation and acted on it, paying
considerable attention to the ostensible ``center'' and little or none to the
``periphery.'' (The United States is not alone; most other countries do the
same.)
Based on Chinese history over the last century and a half, this
approach is extremely ill-considered. Every major political change in China
since the late Qing (except the coup d'etat and short rule of Yuan Shikai
from 1912 to 1916) came from the periphery: from the south (the 1898
reformers, Sun Yat-sen, and the Nationalists) or the far northwest (the
Communists) and the corresponding diasporas (in Southeast Asia in the first
case, and in Moscow and the communist world in the second). The
democracy movement of 1989 started at the center in Beijing and spread
across the country. It was crushed. But in 2003, when people in the
marginal SAR of Hong Kong demanded change, they succeeded in getting
it--at least so far.
Of course, the center is not irrelevant to political change. The margins
can exert influence best when the center is divided. Time and again, political
disorder or change has begun in China when the succession was disputed (at
the end of the Qing) or when the rulers in Beijing split among themselves and
went to war (clearing the way for the Nationalists in 1924-25 and for
economic opening and social liberalization in the Cultural Revolution).
Democratization
Spring 2004 | 259
Beijing's Dilemmas
The same stars are coming into alignment today. In Beijing, among
the recognized leaders and Party members, there are several powerful
figures, some older, some younger, none of whom has complete authority,
and who disagree among themselves. Then there is a kind of ghost
population, embodied in former Prime Minister Zhao Ziyang, who favored
political reform and whose house arrest has recently been relaxed a bit. In
addition, there are the tens of thousands of Party members who supported
the democracy movement that brought about Zhao's ouster but who
managed to return to government. And among the post-1989 group, a clear
division exists between Jiang and his circle and that of the current official
authorities, Hu and Wen. No one of these leaders looks set to become even as
powerful as Jiang was over his long tenure, during which he stayed in place
by avoiding rather than indulging in the exercise of power. The last strong
man, Deng Xiaoping, is in his grave, and China will probably see no more.
The issues the Party faces today, moreover, are complex, interlocking,
and intractable. Take the current debate about the value of the RMB. The
reason China is under pressure to raise the value of the currency is that it has
run such an enormous trade surplus with the United States and other
countries that a political reaction has begun against it. In fact, the growing
U.S. trade deficit, combined with internal deficits, threatens a possible
collapse of the dollar. Were this to happen, it would be, in part, the result of
Chinese mercantalist trade policies--but it would hurt China by greatly
reducing the value of its foreign exchange holdings. So it is in China's interest
to avoid a dollar collapse. To help do that it will have to increase the
exchange value of the RMB, which will also reduce the value of its dollar
holdings, though probably by not as much. Why does it not do this? Because
even a small revaluation of the RMB might lead to a crisis in the insolvent
Chinese banking system. Why is the banking system insolvent? This has
nothing to do with trade. Rather, it is because the government has forced the
banks to turn over money, in the form of non-recoverable loans, to SOEs. And
why has the state thus corrupted its own banking system? Because it has
made a strategic decision to maintain the SOEs, rather than close or privatize
them, and since it lacks the ability to subsidize itself through taxes, it has
turned to loans. And why is it essential to maintain control of the SOEs?
Because a genuinely private economy in China would be a very difficult
environment for the Communist Party. So if we trace the chain of causes
back, it is the Communist Party's insistence on maintaining control that--
passed through several stages--is threatening the world financial order. It
would make much more sense for China to make the domestic adjustments
necessary to keep the world economy upon which it depends functioning,
rather than straining it to the breaking point for reasons having everything to
do with power and nothing to do with economics.
WALDRON
260 | Orbis
How does one fix this? Opinions are divided in Beijing. But the stakes
are high, so the arguments will be long and divisive. Consensus will prove
elusive, and muddling through impossible. Under such circumstances,
players around the edges begin to have weight, even decisive weight. And
if the center splits, as has happened before, outsiders can move in to change
things.
``Greater China'' and the Emergence of Chinese Democracy
``Greater China,'' which until lately usually referred largely to Taiwan,
has regularly in history exerted decisive influence on China proper, and its
importance on China's future cannot be overstated. But Hong Kong has
suddenly come to life. It seemingly had been becoming less important,
overshadowed by Shanghai, its economy doing badly, its people demoralized.
Now it is back at the center of things. Just how things will work out is difficult to
say. But one can be realistically optimistic and even identify Hong Kong as the
potential starting point for a process of change in China that many people have
long acknowledged would come, but who have been unable to pinpoint just
where and how. If the process unfolds in a way even remotely resembling what
I have described, the gain in security and living standards for the people of
China will be vast. But the process of getting there will be hair-raising at times.
One hopes that those who will play a role--the peoples and governments of
the huaren states outside of China, the international businesses upon which
Beijing now depends so much, and the ever-cautious China diplomats in the
world's foreign ministries--will recognize, as they did not when change began
in the USSR, that something is happening, and that the old ways no
longer apply. The time to start thinking about what new ways might
be appropriate is now.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Democratization in Greater China
Democracy and Federalism in Greater China
by Tahirih V. Lee
Tahirih V. Lee (tlee@law.fsu.ed) is associate professor of law at Florida State University
College of Law.
I n the past decade, federalism has become popular as a way to make
sense of the evolving relationship among the legal systems of the
People's Republic of China, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan, and
even to describe the internal dynamics of the PRC's decentralization of
lawmaking authority since the early 1980s. What lurks behind almost all of
the various uses of the concept of federalism in this ``greater China'' region,
which for certain purposes includes Singapore (whose government is
largely comprised of ethnic Chinese, even though its population is not)
is one or another assumption about the relationship of democracy to
federalism.
The assumptions are not explicitly articulated, but they seem to
strike out in a variety of directions. In Taiwan, the two ideas, democracy
and federalism, have become opposed to one another; the one-country,
two-systems framework is viewed as a straightjacket that inhibits
Taiwan's autonomy. In a similar way, though perhaps less ubiquitously,
Hong Kong residents juxtapose one-country, two-systems with Hong
Kong's autonomy, and therefore portray federalism as diminishing Hong
Kong's ability to remain a democracy or to become more democratic. By
contrast, PRC scholars critical of the PRC's leadership depict democracy as
either not far behind the transition to, or a precondition for, a federal
structure.
Because these assumptions about the relationship between federalism
and democracy may be driving the very decision to adopt, reject, or
promote the concept of federalism in greater China, it is worth examining that
relationship more closely. It is a complex one, encompassing myriad local
variations. Here we will look, first, at the relationship between democracy
and greater China's legal, political, and economic structure, and then to the
concept of federalism, in order to make sense of the federalism/democracy
relationship.
2004 Published by Elsevier Limited on behalf of Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Spring 2004 | 275
Democracy and the Structure of Greater China
From the late nineteenth century to the mid-1980s, the states of
greater China were almost completely separate: legally, politically, and
economically. Since the mid-1980s, however, these states have felt pressures
toward interdependency. After nearly two decades of negotiations between
Great Britain and the PRC, Hong Kong became a Special Administrative
Region of the PRC on July 1, 1997. The document that enshrined this
extension of the PRC's sovereignty, the Basic Law of the Hong Kong SAR,
allowed Hong Kong certain freedoms not enjoyed by other parts of the PRC,
such as the freedom to maintain its own currency, flag, and most of the laws
that had evolved under British colonial rule there. Macao followed the same
path in 1999, and although its constitution gives the people of Macao the
same freedoms as those of Hong Kongers, in practice Macao enjoys less
autonomy from the PRC. For its part, Taiwan has remained officially
independent but has been subject to intensive diplomatic and even military
pressure to join the PRC as yet another SAR. While resisting these pressures
toward unification, Taiwan's residents have nonetheless invested huge sums
in mainland China and reaped some of the benefits of the mainland's
economic growth since the mid-1980s. Singapore escaped pressure from
the PRC to unify with it legally and politically, but has cooperated in several
economic initiatives to develop parts of the PRC in collaboration with the
PRC's leadership.
Democracy and Separation Among the Units. Both the goals and the
methods of democracy's proponents in Hong Kong and Taiwan have led
them to call for separation of the units of greater China. This can be seen in
the demonstrations in Hong Kong against a security law slated for enactment
last summer. Purportedly initiated by the PRC, the law would have augmented
coordination between Beijing and the local administration.1 A half million
residents of Hong Kong demonstrated to prevent its enactment. In seeking to
stop the PRC-Hong Kong rapprochement called for in the proposed law, the
protestors were pushing for greater separation between the two units. Their
exercising their right to speak out expanded the democratic component of
the lawmaking process in Hong Kong, thereby distancing it from the
lawmaking process in the PRC, which involves only a few thousand out of
1.3 billion people.
The demonstrations were a shock to the Hong Kong administration.
After all, the public had voiced little outcry when the administration laid the
1 See Joseph Kahn, ``2 Key Hong Kong Posts are Filled after Protests,'' New York Times, Aug.
5, 2003. The planned law was principally going to amend the Crimes Ordinance, the Official
Secrets Ordinance, and the Societies Ordinance.
LEE
276 | Orbis
legislative groundwork for this law in 1997.2 Just days before the 1997 round
of legislation, Martin Lee Chu-ming led his Democratic Party and others in a
theatrical protest against the legislative body, calling it a step backward for
democracy because a mere 400 or so elected it. Lee's critique thus
encompassed the notion that for democracy to survive or flourish in Hong
Kong, the PRC needed to recede as a legal and political presence there. But
this protest, like the few others that followed during the next several months,
exerted no visible effect on the legislative agenda of that body in 1997.
Lee's position became more popular six years later, however, when
the Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong, one of the local
political parties favoring coordination between the mainland and Hong
Kong, lost ground in the District Council elections held November 23, 2003.
This led to the resignation of its chair, Tsang Yok-sing. Analyzing why the
party fared poorly in the election, Hong Kong political commentator Christine
Loh pointed to its ``staunch support'' for the national security law that would
have strengthened the PRC's grip on Hong Kong. She suggested that the party
demote all of its leaders, particularly those who were more in league with
large corporations than with labor, because of their ``longstanding personal
and family associations with Beijing.'' Her recommendation supports the
view that Hong Kongers see big business as anathema to democracy.3
In a July 2000 interview, Lee stressed that Hong Kong's Chief Executive,
Tung Chee-hwa, and his cabinet had repeatedly attempted to undercut the
democratic process laid out in Hong Kong's Basic Law by seeking Beijing's
direct intervention in Hong Kong's affairs. One example of this was Tung's trip
to Beijing a few months after the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal ruled that
Articles 22 and 24 of the Basic Law did not prevent children of mainland
Chinese parents from seeking permanent residency in Hong Kong.4 This trip
resulted in a ruling from the PRC's National People's Congress Standing
Committee reversing the Court of Final Appeal's interpretation of those Articles.
In Taiwan, too, democracy promoters emphasize the importance of
the country's remaining independent from mainland China. One of their
2 In spring 1997, the soon-to-be-instituted Provisional Legislature drafted two laws that
restricted public demonstrations and gatherings in the name of ``national security, public
safety, public order, and protection of rights and freedoms of others.'' The legislature then
enacted them into law on July 9, 1997 to take retroactive effect on July 1, 1997. See
amendments to Sections 2, 6, 9, 11, 13, and 15, Hong Kong SAR Public Order (Amendment)
Ordinance, July 1, 1997, Order No. 119 of 1997; amendments to Sections 5 and 8 of the
Societies (Amendment) Ordinance, July 1, 1997, Order No. 118 of 1997. The latter law required
all organizations to register the names and addresses of all members with the government of
Hong Kong as a quid pro quo for the right to meet and for the right of the organization to
legally exist. Provisions of the law singled out organizations with ties to Taiwan as particularly
susceptible to the reporting requirement. See amendments to Sections 2 and 5.
3 Enewsletter, Dec. 2, 2003, sponsored by the think tank Civic Exchange, www.civicexchange.
org.
4 Author interview, July 28, 2000, Hong Kong (``Lee Interview'').
Federalism
Spring 2004 | 277
strategies is to downplay of the idea of a ``Chinese'' ethnicity, because it
causes Taiwanese and mainlanders to identify with one another. Taiwan's
first democratically elected president, Lee Teng-hui (1988-2000), went to
great lengths to distinguish Taiwan's culture and ethnicity from those of the
PRC. In the late 1990s he organized Taiwan's youth into focus groups aimed at
instilling a sense of local ethnicity, using terminology for ethnic groups on
Taiwan that was not used in mainland China. Members of the Democratic
Progressive Party tried to heighten Taiwanese's sense of difference from
mainlanders, beginning a ``New Taiwan Independent-ism'' campaign5 and
sponsoring a variety of publications to support its platform of Taiwanese
independence by directly questioning the existence of a Chinese ethnicity.6
Democracy and Separation Within the Units. Taiwanese party leaders
pander to divisive tendencies within the country during presidential
campaigns in order to win votes. They aim to slice the population into
smaller interest groups than are normally formed absent a presidential
campaign. Edward I-hsin Chen has shown how ethnic mixing over the past
century in Taiwan led to a breakdown in the distinctiveness of the various
populations, which primarily consist of the Southern Fujianese Chinese,
Haaka Chinese, recent mainland Chinese e?migre?s, and the aboriginal
Taiwanese natives who predate China's conquest of the island early in the
Qing dynasty. Taiwanese are not only ethnically indistinct from one another,
argues Chen, but also they are politically unified around the desire to
maintain the status quo, namely the present independence of Taiwan
from mainland China without international statehood. In the 1996 presidential
election, Lee's winning strategy attempted to separate Taiwanese
from one another by emphasizing ethnic differences and slight differences of
opinion about the proper relationship between Taiwan and mainland China,
and then persuading about half of each of the artificial subgroups to vote
for him.7
Influential dissent is one measure of democracy, making the July 2003
demonstrations in Hong Kong particularly noteworthy. The demonstrations
succeeded in getting the security law withdrawn from consideration and
caused the resignation and replacement of two top government officials.8
5 Chen Shiyao, ``Taiwan `du' deqilai ma?'' [Will Taiwan's ``Independence'' Be Realized?]
Shijie zhoukan, Nov. 2-8, 1997; Jonathan Moore, ``Prosperity is a Double-edged Sword,''
BusinessWeek, Sept. 15, 1997.
6 E.g., Li Xiaofeng, ed., Taiwan, wode xuanze! Guojia rentong de juanzhe [Taiwan, My
Choice! The Complications of National Identity] (Taibei: Zhushan she chuban, 1995), pp. 148-
52.
7 Edward I-hsin Chen, ``The Impact of Democratic Politics on ROC's Crisis Decision-Making
Before Presidential Elections'' (Conference paper, Sept. 18-19, 2003, University of
Pennsylvania, Philadelphia), pp. 5-7 (``[I]f [Lee] did not divide the traditional provincial votes
into new categories and attract more votes from each of them and even from the Traditional
DPP supporters, he would have lost his re-election bid.'').
8 Kahn, ``2 Key Hong Kong Posts.''
LEE
278 | Orbis
Before that, the impact of protests in Hong Kong was less measurable, but the
size of the dissent registered gradually larger beginning in 1989. Smaller
groups had gathered in Victoria Park to commemorate anniversaries of the
violence in Tiananmen Square, implicitly criticizing the PRC government for
its handling of that demonstration. Other gatherings in 1997 and 1998
protested various changes in Hong Kong's government after the handover to
the PRC.9
Authoritarian Moves Emphasize Union Among and Within Units.
Democracy opponents within greater China similarly link potential moves
toward democracy, such as the freedom of assembly and exercise of religion,
with separation among local units. Beijing seems to see local variety in
worship as a threat to the unity of the realm, judging by its propaganda on
Tibet and Xinjiang and the religious populations native to those regions, as
well as by its handling of Falungong and Christian worship services held in
China. Similarly, local elections could cut the locality loose from the unified
communication and command network of the government and the Chinese
Communist Party.
Beijing portrays the separation of localities, both from one another
and from the central administration, negatively, as leading to ``chaos'' or
``rebellion.'' Conversely, it portrays the centralization of control over
mainland territories or greater China as ``unification'' and fostering ``stability''
and associates it with ``patriotism,'' ``loyalty,'' ``local economic prosperity,''
and even with sentiments like ``love.''10
Beijing has worked hard behind-the-scenes to centralize and stymie
budding democratic processes within greater China. It pressured British
diplomats in the 1980s to ignore, and even to circumvent and reshape, public
opinion in Hong Kong when working out the logistics of how Hong Kong
would be transferred to Chinese sovereignty. This pressure continued
unabated even when it shifted from British negotiators to Hong Kong
negotiators in the later stages of the transition toward 1997.11
The Winner-Take-All Principle
Yan Jiaqi and other PRC scholars portray federalism as concurrent or
compatible with democracy. They do not, however, spell out the precise
relationship between the two, because for them, federalism is virtually
9 Stella Lee, ``Complaint Lodged Over Blast of Beethoven,'' South China Morning Post, July
12, 1997; Stella Lee, ``Extended Bail for Protesters,'' South China Morning Post, Aug. 29, 1997.
10 See Tahirih V. Lee, ``The Media and the Legal Bureaucracy of the People's Republic of
China,'' in Chin-Chuan Lee, ed., Power, Money, and Media: Communication Patterns and
Bureaucratic Control in Cultural China (Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press, 2000),
pp. 208, 224-28; Mark Roberti, The Fall of Hong Kong: China's Triumph and Britain's Betrayal
(New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1994, 1996), p. 192.
11 Mark Roberti, The Fall of Hong Kong.
Federalism
Spring 2004 | 279
synonymous with democracy. It is also a codeword for democracy. Scholars
in the PRC endanger themselves if they discuss proposals for democratizing
China, and so use proxy words.12
If federalism means unification, however, visions of federalism put
forward by Yan and others may not spell democracy. The type of federations
that join previously separate units unleash anti-democratic forces within
those areas. If, however, federalism means decentralization, then federalism
indeed has a direct relationship with democracy.
On the whole, these scholars' visions are of a federation that
decentralizes government within the PRC. Yan also includes Taiwan and Hong
Kong in his blueprint, which calls for centralizing the government of greater
China, but this portion of his plan is less important than the part that sets out
the relationship among the provincial governments of the PRC and between
them and the center. The federalist frameworks that are discussed in
mainland China promote a push toward the decentralization of law-making
authority and the full gamut of economic decisions, ranging from what loans
banks make to what goods factories will produce and to which countries
Chinese goods will be exported.13
Not all proposals for federal-type structures in greater China
emphasize decentralization, however. In Taiwan and Hong Kong, the
one-country, two-systems framework offered by the PRC and all the variations
thereon that are discussed unofficially--including those with the names
``federation'' or ``confederation''--provide a means to become part of a larger
centralizing structure.
Many citizens of Hong Kong and Taiwan view these centralizing
federal structures as jeopardizing democracy. Indeed, Beijing offers these
structures as a way of bringing Taiwan and Hong Kong into greater political
12 See e.g. Yan Jiaqi, Lianbang Zhongguo gouxiang [A conception of a federal China] (Hong
Kong: Mingbao chubanshe, 1992), esp. p. 123; Zheng Yongnian and Wu Guoguang, ``Tanpan
jizhi yu `xingweixing lianbang''' [Bargaining and the formation of ``behavioral federalism''],
Dangdai Zhongguo yanjiu, 1994, pp. 26, 32-37; Yongnian and Guoguang, `` `Chanquan difang
hua': Yilun zhongyang yu difang de jingji guanxi'' [Property rights localization: A discussion of
central and local economic relations], Dangdai Zhongguo yanjiu, 1994, pp. 39-51; Wang
Shaoguang, ``Fenquan de dixian,'' [The bottom line of the division of powers], Dangdai
Zhongguo yanjiu, nos. 1 and 2 (1995), pp. 39-68; Zhang Zin, ``Lunyi lianbangzhi xianfa zuowei
Zhongguo tongyi de falu tiaojian,'' [Discussing the legal provisions of a constitutional federal
system for a united China], Zhongguo xianzheng yanjiu tongxun, June 1994, p. 2; and Dali
Yang, ``The Politics of Fiscal Rationalization and Its Implications for Central Local Relations in
China'' (paper given at the ABA Section on International Law and Practice annual spring
meeting, Mar. 31, 1994), p. 17.
13 In addition to those cited above, other discussions of federalism as a way to decentralize
mainland China include Sen Lin, ``A New Pattern of Decentralization in China: The increase of
Provincial Powers in Economic Legislation,'' China Information, Winter 1992-93, pp. 27-33;
and Wang Xi, ``Cong Meiguo lianbangzhi de fazhan kan Zhongguo de fenquan wenti''
[Looking at the problem of division of powers in China from the development of the United
States federal system], Dangdai Zhongguo yanjiu, nos. 1 and 2 (1995), pp. 168-69, 191-93.
LEE
280 | Orbis
and legal alignment with the PRC. This necessarily calls for some degree of
harmonization of the legal systems. While all the participating entities may
exert some pull in the transformation, arriving at some meeting in the middle
of the great divide, Taiwanese consider it more likely that the PRC--with its
overwhelmingly larger population and political might and greater need of
wealth to shore up its sagging industrial sector and social welfare system--
would exert the greater pull. Just as it has been in the PRC before, where the
leadership argues that democracy is a luxury affordable only by wealthy
nations, democracy in the Taiwan SAR would be sacrificed in the name of the
economic needs of hundreds of millions of new compatriots.
Apart from a general pressure toward lopsided harmonization is the
fact that the moment Hong Kong became a part of the PRC, it became less
democratic. Hong Kong's new constitution, which came into effect at
midnight of June 30, 1997, cut back the franchise for legislative elections
from 2.7 million to about 400. The government of Hong Kong also
immediately set about curtailing the franchise in elections of district urban
councils, which were created in the early 1980s to involve Hong Kong
citizens in the improvement of their neighborhoods. Less than three years
later, the Hong Kong SAR administration circumvented Hong Kong's new
constitutional procedures. It sought to convince Beijing to overturn the
HKSAR Court of Final Appeal's 1999 decision in Ng Ka Ling, Ng Tan Tan v.
Director of Immigration and two other cases consolidated with it, a
decision that had opened the floodgates to citizens of mainland China to
emigrate to Hong Kong.14
Why should a decentralizing structure promote democracy and a
unifying structure inhibit it? It is because of what I call the winner-take-all
nature of unification. If an entity is unified, it is more likely to be taken over,
more acquirable, than if it is splintered. It is easier to negotiate with one entity
than with many. It is easier to persuade one mind than many. Thus, discord
leads to or preserves not centralized (in the form of a takeover by an outside
power) but decentralized authority.
Take, for example, the case of Hong Kong's reversion to mainland
China in 1997. In the few years leading up to that constitutional event, Hong
Kong's government centralized. Local government became more focused on
winning the support of the wealthiest. Business elites and government
officials cooperated as never before, even to the point of subverting
governmental formalities and bureaucratic practices. One week before the
reversion, reports surfaced that soon-to-be Chief Executive Tung's close
business associates from his career as a shipping magnate enjoyed more
access to him than did chief secretary Anson Chan. Newspaper reports
accused Tung and his new Secretary of Justice, Elsie Leung, of putting their
personal secretaries from their private sector firms directly into government
14 2 HKCFAR 141 (HKSAR Court of Final Appeal, Jan. 29, 1999); Lee Interview.
Federalism
Spring 2004 | 281
posts. In its first week the new government also moved to freeze pro-union
labor laws enacted on the eve of the reversion, and six weeks later it
scrapped the two of those laws that most threatened big business, namely
those that introduced collective bargaining and protected workers from
termination for union activities.15
Dissent among the professions and the ranks of large companies was
quelled by signals sent by their respective leaders. Shortly before and after
Hong Kong's reversion, the heads of several local universities and university
departments indicated in various ways to their faculties that criticism of the
PRC or the new government of the Hong Kong SAR would be frowned upon.
The new head of a local bar association used language reminiscent of the
Chinese Communist Party to emphasize to the members of the association the
importance of presenting a positive and unified face to the public. Principal
officers of Hong Kong's new government encouraged such self-censorship.16
Recent Taiwanese presidential elections are an example of the
converse of the winner-take-all nature of unification, namely the divide-andstay-
locally-autonomous nature of decentralization. What at first glance
looked like politicians attempting to rally their electorate around an anti-PRC
stance was, in fact, a concerted effort to divide public opinion. During
periods when there was no campaigning, 80 percent of the public preferred
the status quo, a return to internal unification.17
The interplay between the legislature and the president of Taiwan
illustrates how local disunity makes takeover by outsiders more difficult
because it slows change, including the changes necessary to reorient the
locality toward the outsider. Scholar Yuan-kang Wang has concluded that
freeing the legislature from the control of the Taiwan executive results in
``gridlock'' and ``deadlock.''18 Taiwan may yet join the PRC, but for the
moment, it is doing an effective job of staying outside of it, and its promotion
of democratic elections within it borders is helping with its effort to stay
independent.
A locality unifies with another territory either by negotiating with an
outside power or by willingly surrendering to an outside power that it
admires or views as advantageous. Local unity facilitates the process of
inviting in outsiders because this invitation is a local decision and such unity
15 See South China Morning Post, July 12-19, July 26, and Aug. 22, 1997.
16 The Provisional Legislature's president, Rita Fan condemned the counsel for the PRC
citizens seeking to emigrate to Hong Kong by saying that paying them out of public funds was
a ``waste of money.'' Other members of the legislature voiced their disapproval of any kind of
public criticism of the legislature. Michael Davis, ``Threat to Integrity,'' South China Morning
Post, July 20, 1997; May Sin-Mi Hon, ``HK Ruling on Children `Vital for Autonomy,''' South
China Morning Post, July 18, 1997.
17 See Chen, ``The Impact of Democratic Politics,'' p. 5.
18 Yuan-kang Wang, ``Taiwan's Democratization and Cross-Strait Security'' (paper presented
to the Sino-American Conference on Contemporary Chinese Affairs, Philadelphia, Sept. 18-19,
2003), p. 11.
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282 | Orbis
facilitates the local community's decision-making process. ``Divide and
conquer'' flies in the face of this idea, and it is mistaken to use it to explain
what is happening in greater China today, or even to describe any
process of unifying territories, whether or not in the guise of a
federation. In this case, division creates strength, not weakness.
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The Implications of Missile Defense for
Northeast Asia
by Amy L. Freedman and Robert C. Gray
Amy L. Freedman (amy.freedman@fandm.edu) is assistant professor of government and
Robert C. Gray (robert.gray@fandm.edu) is professor of government at Franklin and Marshall
College. They thank Michael DeGrande for his research assistance.
Congress and the Bush administration are committed to building a
defense against ballistic missiles. The current U.S. plan calls for
fielding ground-based interceptor missiles in Alaska and California,
with the first ten missiles scheduled to be operational in October 2004. These
will be used to conduct research and development testing, although the
administration maintains that they will have some capability to intercept
missiles launched from North Korea. Work will also continue on ship-based
interceptor missiles and other systems. With the planned fall deployment,
missile defense is certain to be an issue in this year's presidential election,
although the Democrats' candidate is more likely to criticize the specifics of
the Bush administration's plan than the wisdom of building some type of
defense.
This article assesses the implications of U.S. ballistic missile defense
for security relations in Northeast Asia. While relations among the great
powers in Europe have become more cooperative and institutionalized over
the last forty years, relations in Asia are still marked by territorial disputes
involving the Koreas, Taiwan, China, Vietnam, Brunei, the Philippines,
Malaysia, and Japan; an unclear distribution of power; and potentially
disruptive power ambitions by major actors. The United States is a significant
player in the region, but U.S. interests and commitments often seem difficult
for Asian countries to perceive accurately. This is especially true with
Washington's decision to move forward with missile defense.
The near-term missile defense programs announced by the Bush
administration in December 2002 are prudent, but they create the potential
for an inadvertent offensive-defensive arms race with China and/or a Chinese
perception of a window of opportunity in which to coerce Taiwan before
missile defense is operational. To reduce the probability of these outcomes,
2004 Published by Elsevier Limited on behalf of Foreign Policy Research Institute.
Spring 2004 | 335
we recommend that the United States incorporate the maximum possible
amount of transparency into its pursuit of missile defense.
The Evolution of American Missile Defense
Since the American search for a defense against ballistic missiles
began in the late 1940s, there have been three rounds of public debate. The
first, focused on the Sentinel-Safeguard system, ended with the Anti-Ballistic
Missile Treaty of 1972. Missile defense then disappeared as a political issue
until 1983, when President Ronald Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense
Initiative. The vigorous debate about SDI ended when the Soviet Union
collapsed, taking with it the rationale for the system.1
Research and development efforts on missile defense continued in
the Bush Sr. and Clinton administrations. Especially during the Clinton years,
U.S. programs were reoriented from defending the United States toward
theater missile defense (TMD)--defending U.S. troops overseas. Given the
Iraqi use of SCUD missiles against American forces during the 1991 Gulf War,
developing such a defense was uncontroversial, and the missile defense issue
again largely receded from public view.
This began to change in 1995, when the National Intelligence
Estimate concluded that it was unlikely the United States would face such a
threat in the next fifteen years. A skeptical Congress created the Commission
to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States, chaired by Donald
Rumsfeld. Reporting in July 1998, the Commission concluded that the threat
was much greater than that forecast by the NIE. In July 1998, it reported that
North Korea and Iran ``would be able to inflict major destruction on the U.S.
within about five years of a decision to acquire such a capability.'' Moreover,
``during several of those years, the U.S. might not be aware that such a
decision had been made.'' That month, Iran tested its medium-range Shahab-
3 missile, and in August North Korea tested its Taepo Dong missile. Missile
defense was back on Washington's agenda.
The 1999 NIE projected that ``during the next 15 years the United
States most likely will face ICBM threats from Russia, China, North Korea,
probably from Iran, and possibly from Iraq.'' Reflecting the heightened sense
of a ballistic missile threat, Congress passed the Missile Defense Act of 1999,
calling on the United States ``to deploy as soon as is technologically possible
an effective National Missile Defense system capable of defending the
1 David N. Schwartz, ``Past and Present: The Historical Legacy,'' in Ashton B. Carter and
David N. Schwartz, eds., Ballistic Missile Defense (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution,
1984); John Newhouse, Cold Dawn: The Story of SALT (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1973); Robert Joseph, ``The Changing Political-Military Environment,'' in James J. Wirtz and
Jeffrey A. Larsen, eds., Rocket's Red Glare: Missile Defenses and the Future of World Politics
(Boulder: Westview Press, 2001); Donald R. Baucom, ``Ballistic Missile Defense: A Brief
History'' (Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, May 2000).
FREEDMAN AND GRAY
336 | Orbis
territory of the United States against limited ballistic missile attack.'' Research
and development intensified over the remainder of the Clinton administration,
with the objective of deploying ground-based missiles to intercept a
small number of ICBMs. In September 2000, however, President Clinton
decided that the time was not right to make a decision to deploy.2
Candidate George W. Bush pledged in the 2000 presidential campaign
to pursue missile defense. In late 2001 President Bush's administration gave the
six months' notice required to abrogate the ABM Treaty, and in June 2002 the
constraints imposed by that treaty on the development and testing of missile
defense systems disappeared. The administration also changed the defense
acquisition process for missile defense in order to expedite the development,
testing, and deployment of missile defense.
The current controversy is similar to the missile defense debates of
the past in many respects.3 As in the past, believers and skeptics offer
contrasting assessments of the technical feasibility of missile defense. The
cost/benefit calculations for missile defense systems, which will consume
tens of billions of dollars while leaving the United States vulnerable to nuclear
or biological attack by other means, are also the subject of disagreement.
Many analysts are concerned about vertical proliferation. If the United States
deploys missile defense, other countries will undoubtedly respond, and one
option would be the deployment by other countries of additional missiles
and warheads. Finally, in this debate as in previous ones, the potential
diplomatic costs remain a concern.
Despite these similarities, the environment of this third missile
defense debate differs in important ways from that of previous rounds.
During the Cold War, missile defense opponents argued that active defenses
would undermine the strategic balance and might even provide incentives in
a crisis for one side to strike first. This was a powerful argument at a time
when uncontained crises might have led to the detonation of thousands of
warheads in the United States and the Soviet Union. Although it is still the
case that Russia is the only country that could annihilate the United States,
relations between the two are sufficiently improved that the crisis-stability
argument has little force in the U.S.-Russian context. Also, unlike the SDI,
current plans do not involve deploying a defense against the entire Russian
2 National Intelligence Council, ``Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat
to the United States Through 2015 (Sept. 1999)''; Public Law 106-38; ``National Missile Defense
Act of 1999,'' July 22, 1999; Joseph Cirincione, ``Assessing the Assessment: The 1999 National
Intelligence Estimate of the Ballistic Missile Threat,'' Nonproliferation Review, Spring 2000.
3 For arguments in favor of missile defense, see James M. Lindsay and Michael E. O'Hanlon,
Defending America: The Case for Limited National Missile Defense (Washington: Brookings
Institution Press, 2001), and Keith B. Payne, ``The Case for National Missile Defense,'' Orbis,
Spring 2000. For arguments against, see Steven E. Miller, ``The Flawed Case for Missile
Defense,'' Survival, Autumn 2001, and Craig Eisendrath, Melvin A. Goodman, and Gerald E.
Marsh, The Phantom Defense: America's Pursuit of the Star Wars Illusion (Westport, Conn.:
Praeger, 2001).
Missile Defense
Spring 2004 | 337
ICBM force. The main focus is on North Korea and Iran. Moreover, advances
in computers, micro-miniaturization, and related technologies make the
missile defense advocates' arguments seem more plausible than they did in
the 1960s and 1980s, especially against a limited threat.4
Iran has neither nuclear weapons nor missiles capable of striking the
United States. North Korea may have nuclear weapons and has tested a
missile that might eventually have sufficient range to attack targets in North
America. It is this possible threat from North Korea that has accelerated
American missile defense efforts.
In October 2002, Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly confronted
North Korea with knowledge that it had been covertly enriching uranium for
nuclear weapon production, thus violating the Agreed Framework signed in
1994. North Korea promised under the Framework to halt nuclear weapons
development in exchange for oil shipments and help in building light-water
reactors for power generation. In January 2003, North Korea withdrew from
the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and that summer North Korean officials
claimed that enough spent nuclear rods had been reprocessed to construct
six nuclear weapons and that they ``intended to move ahead quickly to turn
the material into weapons.''5
In addition to an active nuclear weapons program, North Korea has a
substantial capability to deliver WMD, including hundreds of No Dong and
SCUD missiles, to targets in the region. In 1998 North Korea flight tested the
Taepo Dong 1 over Japan. Some reports conclude that with an additional
stage, a Taepo Dong 2 could hit targets in the United States. In exchange for
increased food aid, North Korea agreed not to continue tests of the Taepo
Dong, but in March 2003 North Korea suggested that it might end its flight
moratorium. Consequently, North Korea is largely responsible for the revival
of serious American programs for missile defense.
Types of Missile Defense
Three important definitional categories are used in discussing ballistic
missiles and defenses against them. The first describes the range of the
missile: short-range (less than 1,000 km), medium-range (1,000 to 3,000 km),
4 National Intelligence Council, ``Foreign Missile Developments and the Ballistic Missile Threat
Through 2015,'' Dec. 2001. For a comprehensive review of possible missile defense systems, see
Steven A. Hildreth and Amy F. Woolf, ``Missile Defense: The Current Debate,'' Congressional
Research Service Report RL 31111, updated periodically. The Feb. 5, 2003 version is used here.
5 Seth Mydans, ``Threats and Responses: Nuclear Standoff North Korea Says it is Withdrawing
From Arms Treaty,'' New York Times, Jan. 10, 2003; Murray Hiebert, ``North Korea--Two Steps
Forward,'' Far Eastern Economic Review, Jan. 16, 2003, p. 20; and David E. Sanger, ``North Korea
Says It Has Made Fuel for Atom Bombs,'' New York Times, July 15, 2003. For a comprehensive
account of recent developments, see Jonathan D. Pollack, ``The United States, North Korea, and
the End of the Agreed Framework,'' Naval War College Review, Summer 2003.
FREEDMAN AND GRAY
338 | Orbis
intermediate-range (3,000 to 5,500 km), and intercontinental (ICBM), with a
range of more than 5,500 km.
The second marks the three distinct phases of a ballistic missile's flight
path. The boost phase refers to the first few minutes after a missile is
launched, during which it is powered by its engines. Once the missile is in a
ballistic trajectory, the engines stop and the midcourse phase begins. During
this phase, which can last as long as twenty minutes for an ICBM, the warhead
separates from the missile. The final phase is the shortest, lasting less than a
minute. In this terminal phase the warhead reenters the atmosphere and
streaks toward its target.6
Third, missiles are characterized according to the intent of those who
wish to intercept them. TMD programs, for example, are designed to protect
American forces and allies overseas. The goal of the Clinton administration's
national missile defense (NMD) program was to defend U.S. territory. Because
these terms depend on intent, they can be confusing. Some U.S. systems
being developed for the Middle East, for example, would provide TMD for
U.S. forces in the region but national missile defense for Israel. The Bush
administration has abandoned use of the TMD/NMD dichotomy, although
much of the literature still uses the distinction.
The Bush administration now presents the possible components of a
missile defense system simply as functions of the three phases of the ballistic
trajectory: terminal, midcourse, and boost.
Terminal Defense. The Patriot PAC-3, designed to intercept incoming
aircraft, cruise missiles, or short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, is a
ground-based terminal system that is considered lower-tier because it engages
an enemy missile within the atmosphere. As with all U.S. missile defense
systems currently under development, the interceptor collides with the enemy
missile rather than detonating an explosion in its path. This is called ``hit-to-kill''
or ``kinetic kill.''7 The PAC-3 is the only missile defense system that is currently
deployed. In the 2003 Gulf War, it was used to intercept Iraqi missiles, but a
complete analysis of its effectiveness is not yet available.
The second ground-based system, the Theater High-Altitude Area
Defense system (THAAD), was designed to intercept short-, medium-, and
intermediate-range missiles at a higher altitude than the PAC-3 and is
considered an upper-tier system. It engages the enemy missile as it reenters
the atmosphere (at the end of the midcourse phase) and so is capable of
defending a wider area than PAC-3.8 Flight testing of this truck-mounted,
mobile missile will resume at the end of 2004.
6 Arms Control Association, ``U.S. Missile Defense Programs At a Glance,'' www.armscontrol.
org
7 The Israeli Arrow-2 uses a blast fragmentation warhead. Although this was developed in a
joint program with the U.S., the United States is not using that approach.
8 CRS, ``Missile Defense,'' pp. 44-45. A description of missile defense programs can be
found at the Missile Defense Agency website, www.acq.osd.mil.
Missile Defense
Spring 2004 | 339
Ground-based Midcourse Defense. When the Bush administration
announced its missile defense plans for the immediate future in December
2002, the focus was on ground- and sea-based interceptors.9 The Ground-
Based Midcourse Defense system is designed to intercept long-range ballistic
missiles. The immediate objective is to intercept missiles launched from North
Korea at the United States. The administration plans to field 20 interceptor
missiles in 2004-05. Sixteen of them will be at Ft. Greeley, Alaska and four at
Vandenberg Air Force Base, California. These interceptors will obtain the
warning and tracking information necessary to guide the kill vehicle to the
incoming warhead from several types of sensors: existing Defense Support
Satellites, upgraded early-warning radars in Alaska and elsewhere, and a new
sea-based X-Band radar. The new systems will be part of the Pacific Missile
Defense Test Bed, although the administration plans to use the interceptor
missiles in both test and operational roles.10 In the latter, the interceptors are
supposed to provide an interim capability against ICBMs until more mature
systems are available.
Sea-based Midcourse Defense. The Bush administration plans to field
a sea-based system in 2004-06. To be placed on destroyers and cruisers with
the Aegis air-defense system, the interceptor missiles would be guided to
their targets by improved Aegis radars. The Aegis ballistic-missile defense
system is intended to intercept medium-range missiles as they are ascending,
initially using modified SPY-1 radars and the SM-3 missile. The components of
this program were originally designed to intercept short- and intermediaterange
missiles, but the administration hopes to adapt it for use against ICBMs
in the future.11
Boost-Phase Defense. Although there are preliminary programs for
space- and sea-based boost-phase systems, the only clearly defined one in
development at this time is the Air-Based Boost program, which places an
Airborne Laser on a Boeing 747. Originally designed to intercept theater
ballistic missiles in their first few minutes of flight, this system may be
adapted to target ICBMs as well.12 The Missile Defense Agency hopes to have
``an initial emergency capability'' as soon as 2005, but a recent report by the
9 ``Missile Defense Deployment Announcement Briefing,'' Dec. 17, 2002, available at
www.defenselink.mil.
10 As Undersecretary of Defense E. C. Aldridge described it, ``We are talking about the
construction of a test bed . . . which will be augmented with some limited operational
capability.'' Some senators expressed concern about the plan to deploy a system that has not
been fully tested. In fact, a booster rocket for the ground-based system has not yet been
chosen. See Senate Armed Services Committee Hearing, Mar. 18, 2003 (GPO). The Pentagon's
Director of Operational Test and Evaluation, Thomas P. Christie, has conceded that the
ground-based system ``has not yet demonstrated operational capability'' because ``many
essential components of the ground-based midcourse defense have not yet been built.'' Ibid.,
p. 9.
11 Ibid., p. 38.
12 Federation of American Scientists, ``Airborne Laser,'' at www.fas.org.
FREEDMAN AND GRAY
340 | Orbis
American Physical Society questions the feasibility of boost-phase
technologies.13
Sensors and System Integration. The successful operation of all the
above systems depends on the ability to detect the launch of a hostile missile,
to track its course, and to guide missiles to the point of interception.14 To
increase the probability of destroying an incoming warhead, more than one
interceptor may be fired. But a hostile country would do everything possible
to defeat U.S. missile defense.
One obvious countermeasure, for example, involves placing decoys
along with the warhead on the missile.15 The warheads and decoys separate
from the missile in the midcourse phase, so if the missile is not destroyed in
the boost phase it becomes necessary to track a larger number of objects in
space. Discriminating between warheads and decoys is important because
the defending side does not want to waste its finite number of interceptors on
decoys. This task requires sophisticated sensors, and programs have been
designed to provide them. The main one of interest here is the Space
Tracking and Surveillance System.16
The necessity to integrate sensors with the various interceptors for all
three phases of a ballistic missile's flight adds great complexity to the layered
missile defense system to which the Bush administration is committed. It leads
some observers to question the feasibility of missile defense. For our purposes,
we assume that at least some defensive systems will be deployed. It is
impossible, however, to describe what the eventual system will look like,
because the missile defense program has been removed from the normal
weapons acquisition process. The spiral process that has been adopted gives
the administration considerable flexibility to pursue research and development
on all of the missile defense options described above. The director of the
Missile Defense Agency, Gen. Ronald Kadish, has argued that it is not possible
to describe the precise system to be built. As he put it, ``Five years ago, nobody
could have written a requirement for today's Internet and gotten it exactly
right.''17 We therefore illustrate here the range of possibilities the administration
may deploy in the next decade by discussing three levels of defense.
13 The report concluded that although boost-phase technologies might be useful against
liquid-fuelled ICBMs, those technologies would not work against solid-propellant ones.
Because intelligence reports estimate that North Korea and Iran could have solid-fueled
missiles within the same timeframe that boost-phase defenses could be deployed, the latter
``risk being obsolete when deployed.'' American Physical Society, ``Boost-Phase Intercept
Systems for National Missile Defense'' (July 2003), p. xxxv, at www.aps.org.
14 For a summary of the current state of American efforts to design an integrated system, see
Glenn W. Goodman, Jr., ``Focus on the Boost Phase: U.S. Layered Ballistic Missile-Defense
Plans Now Emphasize Early Intercepts,'' Armed Forces Journal, June 2003.
15 An adversary could also put more warheads on each missile, but that requires more
advanced technology than North Korea or Iran is likely to have in the next decade.
16 CRS, ``Missile Defense,'' p. 52.
17 House Armed Services Committee Hearing, Feb. 27, 2002.
Missile Defense
Spring 2004 | 341
Lower-Tier Missile Defense. The United States could provide PAC-3 for
its forces abroad and allies (e.g., South Korea, Japan, and Taiwan) while
taking no action to defend the United States. In light of the bipartisan support
for some form of defense of U.S. territory, this option is likely to be chosen
only if the other systems are demonstrable failures. This is the most
technologically conservative option in that PAC-3 is the only system that
currently exists.
Limited Layered Missile Defense. This option parallels the Bush
administration plan announced in December 2002: PAC-3 for lower-tier
terminal defense; the Aegis sea-based system for short-, medium-, and
intermediate-range missiles; and ground-based midcourse interceptors for
ICBMs. This would be designed initially to defend against North Korean
missiles and to provide eventual protection against Iran as well.
Extensive Layered Missile Defense. This option would include
everything above and also a sea-based midcourse system upgraded to
engage ICBMs, THAAD forward deployed to intercept missiles of intermediate
range, and perhaps boost-phase systems. This would be designed to defend
against North Korea and Iran and would also provide defense against
Chinese missiles including ICBMs. Depending on its size and design, the
system might also have a capability against some level of Russian attack.
Implications for Northeast Asia
South Korea. The most important near-term justification for U.S.
missile defense is the North Korean effort to develop ballistic missiles and
nuclear weapons. A casual observer might therefore assume that South Korea
would be a fervent supporter of an active defense against a WMD missile
attack. In fact, South Korea has been less interested in missile defense than
the United States, Japan, or Taiwan.
In security terms, South Korea faces a large threat from North Korean
conventional forces near the demilitarized zone. Seoul's proximity to the DMZ
means that it could be largely destroyed by attacks from Pyongyang's 11,500
artillery systems. This vulnerability to attack by existing artillery may reduce
the salience in South Korea of a future nuclear threat delivered by ballistic
missile.18
In addition, South Korean threat perceptions differ from those in
Japan and the United States. An Atlantic Council report based on November
2002 interviews in South Korea concluded that South Koreans do not believe
that Pyongyang has any ``serious plans for aggression.'' They view the
18 Taeho Kim, ``East Asian Reactions to U.S. Missile Defense: Torn Between Tacit Support
and Overt Opposition,'' in Andrew Scobell and Larry M. Wortzel, eds., China's Growing
Military Power: Perspectives on Security, Ballistic Missiles, and Conventional Capabilities
(Carlisle, Pa.: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002), pp. 209-10.
FREEDMAN AND GRAY
342 | Orbis
objective of North Korean WMD/missile programs as giving the North ``some
means to threaten Japan and ultimately the United States, but not as a serious
increase in the threat to South Korea itself.''19
Finally, political dynamics in South Korea emphasize conciliation
with the North rather than constructing elaborate defenses. Its ``sunshine,'' or
``peace and prosperity,'' policy has caused serious tensions with the Bush
administration, and if the policy survives North Korea's current campaign of
saber-rattling, it is likely to perpetuate a climate in which substantial missile
defenses will be avoided.20
While the South Koreans seem unlikely to move toward the limited or
extensive layered systems described earlier, the nuclear boasts of North
Korea may be forcing movement on lower-tier defenses. South Korea should
have no problem with the U.S. deployment of PAC-3 missiles to defend U.S.
bases. Moreover, there are reports that South Korea wants to acquire its own
PAC-3 missiles, presumably to defend high-value political or military targets.
The ROK Ministry of Defense has proposed buying PAC-3, and a report to the
National Assembly argued that ``South Korea needs to secure anti-air defense
capabilities of its own to defend against possible North Korean missile
attack.''21
In light of these South Korean attitudes, it seems unlikely that the ROK
would participate in the Aegis sea-based system. If the United States pursues
boost-phase defense, however, it might seek ROK help, because South Korea
is a logical place to base some of the Airborne Laser planes and support
equipment.22
Japan. Japan's missile defense deliberations are motivated by three
areas of concern. The most immediate threat is from North Korea, whose No
Dong missiles are capable of striking Japan. A longer-range Taepo Dong-1
missile was flight tested over Japan in 1998. North Korea's recent claims about
its nuclear weapons programs have further exacerbated concerns about that
country.
A second area of concern is China. Japanese-Chinese animosity
stretches far back in history. The presence of U.S. forces in Japan means that a
Chinese-Taiwanese conflict in which the United States intervened might
19 Walter B. Slocombe, et al., ``Missile Defense in Asia,'' Atlantic Council of the United States,
June 2003, pp. 16-17.
20 Seongji Woo, ``South Korea's Search for a Unification Strategy,'' Orbis, Summer 2003,
pp. 511-25.
21 ``Seoul to Review Missile Defense System,'' Korea Times, June 19, 2003. This is consistent
with a 2001 statement by ROK Defense Minister Cho Seong-Tae: ``Over the long term, given
the current North Korean missile threat and future battle environment, we are reviewing to
construct a missile defense system suitable to our own [security] environment.'' Quoted in Kim,
``Asian Reactions,'' p. 211.
22 Michael J. Green and Toby F. Dalton, ``Asian Reactions To U.S. Missile Defense,'' National
Bureau of Asian Research Analysis, vol. 11, no. 3 (1999), p. 9.
Missile Defense
Spring 2004 | 343
involve Japan as well. Finally, Japan remains mindful of the possibility of a
unified Korea in possession of nuclear weapons.23
Japan and the United States agreed to pursue joint research and
development of sea-based BMD technologies in 1999. This was intended to be
a lower-tier system, and Japan was comfortable participating because of the
limited utility and range of the program.24 Pointing to ``a spread of missiles
and a rise in weapons of mass destruction,'' the Japanese cabinet in
December 2003 decided to deploy missile defense using elements of the
Aegis sea-based system (including the SM-3 missile) along with PAC-3.25
As it goes forward with missile defense, Japan will confront several
political and constitutional issues. One of the members of the Liberal
Democratic Party-led coalition currently in power is New Komeito, a
Buddhist party with pacifist leanings. The government will need to maintain
support for missile defense among its coalition parties, including New
Komeito. It will also need to decide where to place missile defense systems
within Japan's defense apparatus and to devise decision rules for authorization
to launch the missiles.26 Lastly, Japan may have to revisit the
constitution's prohibition against defending anything other than the home
islands. This prohibition has precluded participation in ``collective defense.''
An integral part of an operational missile defense system, however, is
cueing--``a battle management function coordinating information between
sensors, control locations, and launchers.''27 The Japanese Aegis system
would be dependant on some U.S. assets in order to function. Would this
constitute ``collective defense''? Couldn't missile defense be used to shoot
down missiles headed for an allied nation? These questions are bound to stir
up conflict within the government.28
The most serious question for Japan, eventually, will be participation
in an Aegis system that has been upgraded to intercept ICBMs, for that system
would make the Japanese partners in a missile defense system that has the
capability to negate the Chinese ICBM force. As the United States works with
Japan on Aegis missile defense, it needs to be sensitive to Japanese concerns
about the future growth of the system.
The missile defense decisions facing Japan must be viewed against
the larger background of U.S.-Japanese relations. Princeton's Gilbert Rozman
has argued that Japan's desire for somewhat greater independence from the
23 Slocombe, ``Missile Defense,'' p. 10, note 13.
24 Patrick M. O'Donogue, Theater Missile Defense in Japan: Implications for the U.S.-China-
Japan Strategic Relationship, Letort Papers, U.S. Army War College, Carlisle, Pa., Sept. 2000;
and Report to Congress on Theater Missile Defense Architecture Options for the Asia-Pacific
Region, U.S. Dept. of Defense, May 1999, at www.dod.gov.
25 ``Japan Go-Ahead on Missile Defense,'' CNN.com, Dec. 19, 2003.
26 Slocombe, ``Missile Defense,'' p. 11.
27 Green and Dalton, ``Asian Reactions,'' p. 5.
28 ``A Joint Research Project Won't Stop An Incoming Missile,'' Asahi Shimbun, June 6, 2003.
FREEDMAN AND GRAY
344 | Orbis
United States is rooted in the Japanese ``quest for national identity.''29 Japan
has been cooperative with the United States since 9/11 and is clearly sobered
by developments in North Korea. Two and a half years after 9/11, if the North
Korean crisis is somehow resolved, it is not clear how committed Japan is to
the long-term deployment of missile defense.
Taiwan. Of all the countries discussed here, Taiwan faces the most
immediate and serious dilemma about what, if any, role it should play in U.S.
plans for missile defense. Taiwan might gain the most from the development
of a system that could protect it from Chinese missiles. But if China perceives
a prospective Taiwanese missile defense as providing sufficient protection to
permit it to move toward greater autonomy, missile defense might provoke a
military confrontation.
The Atlantic Council report suggests that there are two main
Taiwanese views about the feasibility and desirability of missile defense.
The first is that although the 400 Chinese missiles in Fujian, opposite Taiwan,
are a genuine threat, missile defense ``would not give a military security
benefit commensurate with the political costs of the confrontation with the
PRC that a decision to proceed . . . would entail.'' The advocates of this view
are also concerned that the cost of missile defense would prevent Taiwan
from investing in other military capabilities more urgently needed for the next
decade. The second view accepts much of the first but argues that the
``psychological and morale benefits'' of a defense justify having it. To avoid
the provocation of buying an American system, advocates of this view
suggest that Taiwan could instead accept American assistance in building an
indigenous system.30 Despite this debate, at the level of partisan politics
neither the Democratic Progressive Party nor the Kuomintang can afford to
ignore Chinese military threats.31 Thus, missile defense is likely to remain an
active political issue.
Taiwan already possesses upgraded PAC-2 missiles and is moving
toward buying PAC-3. It has expressed interest in buying Arleigh Burke-class
destroyers with the Aegis missile defense system, although the United States
has not yet agreed to the sale. If the United States did provide sea-based
defenses, the Chinese reaction might be severe. The presence of U.S.-
provided interceptor missiles in the waters around Taiwan would reduce the
punitive threat posed by the missiles in Fujian and, in the Chinese view,
might increase the Taiwanese willingness to assert its independence.32 In
addition, the web of electronic relationships required for the Aegis system to
29 Gilbert Rozman, ``Japan's North Korea Initiative and U.S.-Japanese Relations,'' Orbis,
Summer 2003.
30 Slocombe, ``Missile Defense,'' pp. 21-22.
31 Adam Segal, ``East Asian Responses to Theater Missile Defense,'' in Matthew Evangelista
and Judith Reppy, eds., The United States and Asian Security (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University
Peace Studies Program, Occasional Paper #26, May 2002), pp. 119-20.
32 Kim, ``Asian Reactions,'' pp. 207-8.
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Spring 2004 | 345
work might raise in the mind of Chinese leaders the specter of a Taiwan-
Japan-U.S. alliance, thereby worsening diplomatic relations in the region or
even precipitating a crisis.33
Much of the U.S.-Taiwanese relationship rests on reciprocal issues of
credibility. Taiwan feels more secure by forging ties that demonstrate greater
American support for its defense. It wants to increase the credibility of the
American commitment in the minds of Chinese leaders. For the United States,
credibility matters too: in the event of an attack, a failure to aid Taiwan ``would
be seen all over Asia as a lack of American resolve and would damage, and
possibly destroy, the United States as a power in the Western Pacific.''34
China. The most important implications of the U.S. decision to deploy
missile defense relate to China, which is America's fourth largest trading
partner but is also viewed as a possible geopolitical rival in the decades
ahead. While Washington does not mention Chinese missiles as a justification
for missile defense, some private analysts do.35
Although the Bush administration no longer distinguishes between
defense of the United States (NMD) and of allies (TMD), the Chinese find the
distinction helpful. The attitude of Chinese officials toward the U.S. NMD
effort is ``one of studied indifference and even scorn.'' The project is
viewed as more of ``a waste of U.S. effort than it is a great problem for
China.''36 While diminishing the significance of NMD on the one hand,
some Chinese officials also believe that an NMD of 100 interceptors would
undermine the Chinese nuclear deterrent. One report characterizes the
majority view among Chinese officials as advocating a moderate, threepronged
response to missile defense: (1) increase the total number of
warheads deployed to a level just beyond the saturation point; (2) develop
MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles that can overwhelm
missile defense); and (3) pursue other effective countermeasures to
defeat the U.S. system. Perhaps the most interesting Chinese reaction to
U.S. plans is the idea that missile defense is ``a trick to convince China
to spend more money on defense, thereby causing the growing economy
to collapse.'' Those Chinese who believe this are determined to avoid the
``overreaction to [Star Wars] which contributed to the downfall of the
U.S.S.R.''37
33 See, e.g., Thomas J. Christensen's conclusion that ``Taiwan's potential inclusion in the
future upper-tier system could contribute to Beijing's sense that it is facing a closing window of
vulnerability or opportunity to settle the Taiwan problem before it becomes more intractable.''
``Posing Problems without Catching Up: China's Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy,''
International Security, Spring 2001, p. 38.
34 Richard Halloran, ``Taiwan,'' Parameters, Spring 2003, p. 33.
35 Larry M. Wortzel, testimony before Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Mar. 19, 2003.
36 Slocombe, ``Missile Defense,'' p. 24.
37 Joanne Tomkins, ``How U.S. Strategic Policy Is Changing China's Nuclear Plans,'' Arms
Control Today, Jan./Feb. 2003, p. 3.
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346 | Orbis
While Chinese views of U.S. efforts to defend its homeland are mixed
and even muted, those reactions are stronger and clearer on the prospect of
missile defenses in Northeast Asia. Not surprisingly, China vigorously
opposes extending missile defense to Taiwan and expresses grave concerns
about Japanese participation in missile defense.38
Chinese Concerns About Taiwan. Although Taiwan has already
received defense technology (e.g., PAC-2 and advanced radar equipment)
from the United States, China would like to prevent further missile defense
systems from including Taiwan. Beijing argues that its missiles in Fujian are
``only for deterrence of a Taiwan move toward autonomy, not for use as
weapons.''39 Thus the Chinese argue that missile defense for Taiwan is
unjustified.
The United States would risk China's anger if it sells PAC-3 to Taiwan
or brings Taiwan under the protection of the Aegis program now under
development. Some argue that Chinese military capabilities would be able to
overwhelm a lower-tier system on Taiwan, or one that includes Taiwan in the
footprint,40 while others deem Chinese forces to be so small that they would
be seriously impacted by any missile defense system that would intercept
even some of their missiles.41 Either way, China would certainly oppose a
U.S. decision to extend even lower-tiered systems to Taiwan, both because it
would signal increased military ties between the United States and Taiwan
and because Taiwan's government would ``reap political benefits from TMD
deployment.''42
Taiwan's possession of PAC-3 would not alter the current deterrence
equation. The United States would feel some hesitation to fully support
Taiwan should it ``provoke'' China into attacking and, in turn, China would be
dissuaded from attacking Taiwan both by Taiwan's own military capabilities
and by China's uncertainty as to how vigorously the United States would
defend Taiwan.
Chinese reactions might be much stronger if Taiwan acquires the
Aegis sea-based system, however. China might view this option as a serious
threat undermining its position toward Taiwan. If provocation by Taiwan
occurred between the decision to deploy such a program and its operability,
then China might see a window of opportunity to coerce Taiwan before the
38 ``China Slams Missile-Defense Plans,'' Japan Times, Sept. 4, 2003.
39 Eric A. McVadon, ``Chinese Reactions to New U.S. Initiatives on Missile Defense,'' in
Andrew Scobell and Larry M. Wortzel, eds., China's Growing Military Power: Perspectives on
Security, Ballistic Missiles, and Conventional Capabilities (Carlisle, Pa: Strategic Studies
Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2002), p. 186.
40 Stanley Foundation and Monterey Institute of International Studies, Ballistic Missile
Defense and Northeast Asia (2001), p. 6.
41 Alastair Iain Johnston, ``A Compendium of Potential Chinese Responses to U.S. Ballistic
Missile Defense,'' written transcript of prepared remarks for a conference on Chinese military
capability at Stanford University, Mar. 3, 2000.
42 Ballistic Missile Defense and Northeast Asia (2001), p. 6.
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Spring 2004 | 347
system was ready. China's temptations to coerce might be further enhanced if
the Taiwanese provocation occurred before U.S. deployment of ground- and
sea-based systems to protect the American homeland. Under this scenario,
the Chinese would hope that the United States would remain on the sidelines
of a conflict with Taiwan due to the deterrent power of China's small ICBM
force.
Chinese Concerns About Japan. Beijing is strongly opposed to Japan's
possession of the Aegis missile defense system, by which Japan ``would be
interlinked with the United States and Taiwan to form a regional ballistic
missile defense system, directed not at North Korea or other `rogue states', but
at China.''43 It is also concerned that U.S. assistance to Japan's missile defense
program will transfer knowledge that will expedite Japan's capability to build
its own ballistic missiles.44
Beijing's possible reactions to limited, layered missile defense could
also have serious consequences for regional security due to the triangular
relations between the United States, Japan, and China. While Japan has
cooperated with the United States in research and development on Aegis
missile defense, Japan is more concerned than the United States over Chinese
perceptions. If China believes that a sea-based system in which Japan is a
participant could be used to protect Taiwan, then relations between Japan
and China could worsen.
China's reactions to the various missile defense scenarios are difficult
to predict. It is moving toward solid-fueled, mobile systems and smaller, more
sophisticated payloads with multiple warheads. In light of the July 2003
American Physical Society report expressing doubt about the feasibility of
boost-phase intercept of solid-fueled missiles, the more likely extensive
layered missile defense may be an Aegis system upgraded to intercept ICBMs.
But China is also focusing on developing countermeasures that will make
interception of ICBMs by the Aegis system more difficult. China may also react
by moving part of its nuclear arsenal to sea, thereby complicating the design
of a U.S. defense. All of this raises the specter of an arms race between China
and the United States.
In addition to the almost certain vertical proliferation that China
would embark on as a result of BMD, it could also respond by retreating from
nonproliferation commitments and selling ballistic missiles to other countries.
Because this course of action would conflict with the Chinese goal of
economic growth through trade, however, it seems less likely than the
modernization of the Chinese ICBM force.
Since the days of Mao, China has believed strongly in the value and
effectiveness of nuclear deterrence. If effective ballistic missile defense
systems become operational, deterrence will become asymmetrical, forcing
43 Slocombe, ``Missile Defense,'' p. 25.
44 McVadon, ``Chinese Reactions,'' p. 18.
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348 | Orbis
China to reexamine its nuclear and defense doctrine. An increase in Chinese
ICBMs could impact the arms race between China and India. Thus Pakistan too
would feel pressure to increase and improve its nuclear arsenal.
The current Beijing regime bases its legitimacy on economic growth
and renewed nationalism. In the wake of recent personnel changes, there is a
great deal of uncertainty surrounding the top leadership. While Jiang Zemin
has retired from the presidency and Party leadership, he remains chairman of
the military bureaucracy. It is not at all clear whether his handpicked
successor, Hu Jintao, has enough allies in positions of power to challenge
Jiang's behind-the-scenes influence. If U.S. missile defense is perceived as
being aimed at containing China, Hu may feel domestic pressure (both from
the military and from the public) to react strongly. Similarly, if Taiwan is
either included in the footprint of the system that evolves out of cooperation
with Japan or if Taiwan participates more directly in U.S. research and
deployment, then Hu might feel enormous pressure to act decisively before
missile defense is operational. This could mean simply greater military
spending or, in an extreme case, an attempt to coerce Taiwan. The
incomplete transfer of power further complicates predictions of how China
might react to different scenarios.
Conclusion
Given the North Korean threat, the muted international reaction to
American missile defense plans, and strong support within the United States,
we believe it is prudent to continue the missile defense plans outlined by the
Bush administration in December 2002: PAC-3, ground-based interceptors,
and development and testing of an Aegis sea-based system. But we remain
concerned about the ramifications of a future Aegis system that is upgraded
with faster interceptors and enhanced warning and tracking systems to
intercept ICBMs. It is the prospect of a substantial defense against Chinese
ICBMs that is most likely to provoke an arms race.
The United States should provide as much transparency as possible as
it proceeds with missile defense. The Atlantic Council report is optimistic that
such an approach can avert potential problems: ``The long lead times for
developing and deploying missile defenses, combined with the transparency
of programs and regular briefings abroad by U.S. officials, suggest that
deployment of missile defenses in East Asia need not be destabilizing.''45 But
it also warns about the possibility of ``erroneous assumptions about what
kinds of missile defenses may be deployed, where, and in what timeframe.''
A key American objective should be to avoid creating for the Chinese
a window of opportunity wherein they believe they must coerce Taiwan
before missile defenses of a certain magnitude are operational. A second
45 Slocombe, ``Missile Defense,'' p. 29.
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objective should be to avoid a Chinese overreaction to a system that the
United States intends to be limited. Let us assume that the United States
deploys limited layered missile defense. Even if Chinese assessments of the
capabilities of that system indicate that it poses little threat to the Chinese
ICBM force, Chinese planners would have to consider the growth potential of
the system. Perhaps additional Aegis-equipped ships in the Pacific would
enable a limited system to become an extensive one that would negate the
Chinese ICBM force.
Problems such as a system's growth potential may test the limits of
transparency. This has led some analysts to recommend other approaches.
Adam Segal suggests that the United States and China ``may be able to
negotiate an informal `rules of the game' for missiles and defenses.''46 Michael
Sheehan proposes an Asian analogue of the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe.47 The specific approach is less important than
Washington's paying careful attention to the implications for the wider web
of security relations.
Northeast Asia is but a small part of the total picture. The decision to
deploy--and the specific configuration of the systems that are deployed--
will, of course, be based on many factors: whether particular components can
be successfully tested, whether the integrated missile defense system is
affordable in light of other pressing national needs, how the threat
assessment evolves, and whether future leaders and the U.S. public continue
to support this project. Missile defense may have a brighter future
now than ever before, but there are still vital questions that must be
answered before making final deployment decisions.
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