China's new balancing act

By contrast, the Bush administration has reaffirmed the centrality of both Japan and Taiwan in Washington's Asia policy.

Japan is moving quickly toward its first "out of area" military support role since World War II. The US sale to Taiwan of $288 million in jet-fighter parts, and 360 Javelin anti-tank rockets for more than $500 million, was announced in the past week. In addition, several days ago a US defense team in Taipei suggested the US may build diesel submarines for Taiwan.

And despite assertions to the contrary, experts say that this spring's surveillance plane incident, in which China detained 24 US Air Force personnel after a midair collision with a Chinese fighter jet, has not been entirely forgotten in Washington.

"China is not yet a superpower," one senior White House official told the Monitor. "It doesn't help to feed that belief. Japan has the third-largest economy in the world, and is an ally. China's military is not advanced. This is the reality."

Yet if China is scaling back its internal bluster, Beijing is pushing as never before to become the dominant power in Asia. Under Deng Xiaoping, China, always a continental power, began building to become a maritime power as well. Its submarines now chart the ocean floors of East Asia. China has purchased Russian destroyers. In the past decade, China has made enormous claims in the South China Sea (where the spy plane incident occurred), outlining borders that protrude hundreds of miles outward and down past Vietnam toward Malaysia.

China's east-coast ambitions bump up against states such as South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan, all of which rely on the US Seventh Fleet for security.

In the west, creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - led by China and Russia, and including Central Asian states - is China's attempt to gain some control of an area not yet under a NATO or US-led umbrella and that poses genuine security problems, based on Muslim solidarity and separatist tendencies in the Xinjiang region.

Still, "it is one thing to say China has ambitions," says the first European diplomat "It is probably intolerable to China that it doesn't completely control its coasts. For that matter, it is intolerable that it doesn't control the Pacific and isn't the leading power in the world. But it is another thing to have realized that ambition."

"It is natural that every nation wishes to become a great power," says Liu Zinzhi, professor of international studies at Beijing University. "Each wants development, international prestige, and status. But [to] wish is one thing, and reality is another."

At the same time, US-Chinese relations are much improved, at least for now.

US officials were instrumental in China's WTO accession, and last month at an economic summit in Shanghai, President Bush told Mr. Jiang that his first overseas visit since the Sept. 11 terrorist attack was to China, "because I want to show my regard for your country."

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