Page 34 - Rethinking China Policy

Rethinking China Policy

Detaching PRC from China required more than just diplomacy.

Michael Pillsbury, beginning 1975, initiated relationships with the PRC’s military and intelligence establishment
that ultimately resulted in the transfer and sale of torpedoes, helicopters, and fighter upgrades that
impressed the PLA of the superiority of the US. During the Sino-Vietnam war, the Carter Administration
authorized the transfer of artillery locating radar to the PLA bogged down by determined Vietnamese
resistance.

This strengthened Deng Xiaoping’s hand and enabled him to carry out the “opening” reforms that also saw his
rivals in the PLA eliminated that enabled the Deng reforms.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union that steadily progressed from 1987, it appeared that it is a matter of
time before the tide reached Beijing given the rampant inflation and mismanagement of the economy.
All these efforts came to an abrupt halt as a result of Tiananmen Square in 1989.

The PLA playing a highly visible role in suppressing the uprising resulted in the downgrading of these nascent
ties and an arms embargo imposed on PRC by the US and allies that lasted to this day.

As a result of this, it turned the Beijing regime’s military inwards and increasingly hostile to the US.

What was missed by Western analysts and “China Experts” that focused intensely on Beijing is that
Tiananmen was not a uniform problem throughout China. Most of the relatively prosperous southern coastal
Chinese provinces did not play more than a token part in the opposition to Beijing.

The economic and social forces that resulted in university students in Beijing being mobilized in opposition to
the regime were either not present or weak in these areas. Likewise, there was little sign of the kind of unrest
in the periphery of the Eastern Bloc that presaged the breakup of the Soviet Union.

The southern coastal provinces were doing quite well in the post-Deng “opening” and content to pay off
Beijing to leave them alone.

The way it was always done.

It is fair to say that the US and Allies enacted a post-Tiananmen policy that was flawed from the start by
uncritically and gullibly assuming that what they saw in Beijing represented all of China.

The consequence of being misled by events and dynamics in Beijing was dramatic. The formal ties to the PRC
regime were strained by Tiananmen, but the commercial ties to the southern provinces continued to prosper
uninterrupted. WTO accession negotiations continued and PRC won accession in November, 2001.

Within two decades, southern China became the economic dynamo that made it possible for the Beijing
regime to command the world’s largest foreign exchange reserves, preside over a dynamic economy second
only to the US, and more importantly, fund one of the largest, fastest, and sweeping arms buildup in history.

Western “China Experts”, however, continue to hang onto the Beijing centric view of China in interpretation of
the motives, intention, interests and behavior of different parts of China.
This divergence is clearly visible during the past week with the THAAD and Trump-Tsai call issue.

The Beijing based regime and the PLA/N’s Northern and Central Theater commands behavior toward the
South Korean and Japanese THAAD behavior is suggestive that this cluster has a Nuclear First Strike Policy
and Posture aimed at US and Allied military bases in the Northeast Asian region.
Second Line of Defense

Page 33