A couple of days back, Donald Trump, not my favorite president-elect, took a congratulatory call from the President of Taiwan. Most people would say, what’s the big deal but it seems to have ruffled a hell of a lot of feathers both here and in China. Now I’m going to assume that most of the people reading this blog already know all about Taiwan and China, their history and their difficulties and the fact that the US has stayed out of that disagreement ever since 1972 when Henry Kissenger negotiated an agreement that has held together ever since.
One of the elements of that agreement is that we have managed not to recognize Taiwan, an island of 13,657 square miles with a population of 23 and a half million people as a nation ever since. This has enable the United States and China to engage in any number of negotiations, some fruitful and some not so much.
The big worry is that Trump, in taking the call from the Taiwanese president, miffed the big wigs in China so now they will be less cooperative than they have been. Considering the results of our recent negotiations with China, this seems entirely impossible.
Anyone who has ever done any negotiating with the Chinese understands why I say this. I speak from experience when I say that the Chinese are tough negotiators and that no matter the result of any negotiation with them, it will change the next day in their favor. This is even when the previous days result had been written in stone. Besides being tough hondelers, the Chinese take an element to the table, with which we do not deal well.
It’s called “FACE”. It’s all about respect that is not earned, but to the Chinese mind, entitled. In this country we earn respect. We are entitled to courtesy, but we have to earn respect. In China, the fact of your being entitles you to respect and when someone does not over show resect you become offended. That can be a great offensive weapon. The Chinese, knowing that ew are aware of their embrace of the concept of “face” have long used it to intimidate. It’s up to us to discover when it is real and when it’s use is just a ploy to gain an edge.
There is no question that China has bested us in negotiations of all sorts for quite some time. I won’t get into all the areas but leading the way are currency manipulation and patent infringement. Then there is North Korea and incursions into the South China Sea. Trump has spoken to these issues in his campaign and despite our recognition of how little his statements are worth, it now appears that he actually has some interest in doing something in these areas. There seem to be indications that this call from the Taiwanese President was not accidental. Could it be that Trump is sending a message, amazingly without using Twitter?
I watched, this morning as two men I respect highly for their knowledge of foreign affairs spoke on this subject. Richard Haas and David Ignatius were both outspoken in their agreement that Trump had made a mistake, stumbled into a situation in which he was far over his head and that it would make further negotiations of any kind with the Chinese much more difficult. Could be; these are two men who are as knowledgeable as anyone in the field, but listening to them I couldn’t help but think that up to now, the Chinese have been anything but cooperative, that up to now, we haven’t gotten any cooperation on any of the issues mentioned above. So maybe a new tack is in order.
It is good tactics in negotiations with a hostile entity and China, despite the peace between us, is definitely a hostile entity, to show them your full power and then let them decide how far they are willing to go in provoking you. If their established stance is worth the reward they might not waver against the chance they may be taking, but if it isn’t, some progress might be made. This occasionally leads to a peaceful and functional solution. Currency manipulation and patent invasion are monetary problems and at least at this point, do not figure into this equation, but North Korea which may be our greatest challenge going into the next decade and the Chinese incursions into the South China Sea which threaten the stability of the entire region, are potential military problems that must be solved if w are going to lay the groundwork for a peaceful South East Asia for the rest of the century.
The fact is; we have almost no communication with North Korea and even less information as to what is going on inside that hostile nation. What we do know scares the hell out of us. It is run by an immature, possibly insane dictator who has decided to forge ahead in the field of nuclear warfare and who, we think, in the next few years will have the capability to load a nuclear warhead onto a missal that can reach the west coast of the US.
That scenario is, of course, unacceptable. Given the nature of the military industrial complex’s control over congress, the hair brained decision-making that has come out of the Pentagon and an unstable President with his finger on the button, a first strike nuclear attack from us on North Korea appears inevitable.
The solution to North Korea and its expansionist desires has always been China. They are bordering neighbors. China has always been the main source of North Korea’s trade and supply and they come from a similar mindset but the idea of dealing with the barbaric North Koreans has always been too painful for China to want to engage them. One solution we have never tried, is to make not engaging them even more painful. Perhaps roiling the waters around Taiwan is one answer. In doing so we are nudging them in an area that is foremost in importance to the Chinese. Taiwan is not just a territory. It is a symbol of the post WWII split in China. What remains first in the minds of most Chinese is that Taiwan is part of China and must not be dealt with separately. Of course here are anomalies. The biggest one is how they sit still for us supplying billions in munitions to the island that they think of as part of their nation. Given that, it would seem there is plenty of room to poke the bear.
Completing some version of the TPP which Trump has always been against but which the rest of the Republican Party is drooling over, would certainly help slow the Chinese incursions into the South China Sea. The TPP is anything but perfect as now written but there are parts of it that are just as important to keep for the benefit of our economy, as those that hurt said economy, are important to discard.
Any Republican will tell you that this country benefits from free trade. That’s true but it also suffers from it. It is important that we get some kind of TPP, but in order to do that we will have must recognize the truth in both statements. We will lose jobs to cheap imports but those cheap imports will enable our working citizens to buy cheaper products and boost their local economies.
Just as important to us is our ability to control China’s abusive monetary policies and the only way we will ever be able to do that is to organize the other nations in the area against them. This has been a primary function of the TPP. Another problem is the tendency of all South East Asian countries to ignore patents. This has cost the US and other western countries, nations that develop product, trillions of dollars in lost income thru patent abuse.
Probably the most important aspect of the TPP is, it enable us to organize most of the countries that surround China and circle the South China Sea into an organization that together can be a potent stabilizing force in the face of China’s aggressive incursions in the South China Sea. If we don’t take the step of organizing these nations, China will. We will then be locked out of an area that controls 40% of the world’s trade.
So maybe Trump isn’t all wrong to be rattling China’s cage over Taiwan. Maybe China needs that in order to get over itself and become a more malleable negotiator. Maybe we have been too reticent in our dealings with the bear. Maybe if we push back a little harder they will become more of a cub.