Post Scripts: Can China ever achieve its aims?

How will we deal with China in the years ahead? Do we try to ignore China or can America and other nations coax it into our international community? The U.S. must stand firm on freedom. America represents a beacon of hope for a new generation of Chinese who live (or survive) in a Leninist regime overseeing a semi-capitalist society, an arrangement that has never lasted for a sustained period.

If we and other nations plan to deal with China in the years ahead, we have to face this problem.

Whether desirable or not, China is rising. Try to spend a day shopping without coming home with Chinese products. Adopt a baby and it may well be from China. Asian-American students make up half or more of the students in many U.S. colleges. China’s economy has been growing at least 10 to 11 percent each year. Their booming economy has lead to military expansion, diplomatic sophistication, plus a relentless search for markets, enormous oil consumption, plus an enhanced capacity to import and growing nationalism.

Who knows what motivates China’s leaders? What is China trying to do and to be?

America advertises its goals while China tends to hide its goals. Its known aims are peace and growth. Its real goals are to sustain that growth and have peaceful borders since it has 14 borders! It also wants to eclipse the U.S. in East Asia and regain "lost territory."

Taiwan is one of the territories that, because it once belonged to a Chinese emperor, the Chinese government believes it ought to be returned to China.

While Beijing does enormous business with us, it does not hesitate to launch anti-American diatribes and even as it advocates a world free of arms and wars, it has 800 missiles lined up against Taiwan.

Can China ever achieve its aims? It depends on two things – the future of its political system and whether the United States and its Allies permit China to continue on its present path. The idea that China is in transition from communism to freedom, as we heard President Clinton went to China in 1998 and said: "China is moving to join the thriving community of free democracies." Communism hasn’t yet been abandoned in China but what is called a "seamless" transition is in the works. All I can say here is: "Keep your fingers crossed."

Perhaps there are three possible developments for China. One is there will be no change in their political system. What we see now is commercialized Leninism and that is what we’ll see for sometime. The communist party will eventually buy off the Chinese people with a better lifestyle. The second possibility is democracy. Those clinging to this view see a new society and the new economy will produce a new liberalized politics. The third possibility is that problems within China today will lead to fracture. If this occurs the world will see major explosions down the road.