Frank Talk in Beijing

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The source of China's growing strategic power, clearly, is its domestic economic development, a fact that will color Beijing's attitude to how it manages its regional role. A premium will be placed on stability, for the simple reason that major conflicts on its doorstep, or ructions in the global financial system, immediately threaten the very engine of its revival as a great power.

Taiwan challenge

Taiwan remains a red-line issue for Beijing, with any movement toward independence forcing a military confrontation — a position now codified in law by China's legislature, much to the alarm of the U.S. and other regional powers. China has not moved in the direction of using force to restore Beijing's control over Taiwan; it has simply reiterated a longstanding warning that force will be used to prevent Taiwan from abandoning the status quo by moving toward formal independence.

The Taiwan issue is the keystone of the nationalism that has replaced socialism as the basic ideology of the ruling Communist Party, and the move to encode China's position in legislation may have come about in response to grandstanding on the independence issue by Taiwan's nationalist President Chen Shuibian. And Beijing did not hide its pique at the U.S response to the legislation. Taiwan is a domestic issue, said Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. We don't want foreign interference; neither are we afraid of it. That sort of defiant nationalist rhetoric may fire up the citizenry in China, but in the real world of managing the Taiwan issue, China has also signaled the U.S. that it wants to avoid confrontation, and wants the U.S. to help by reining in those forces in Taiwan pushing for independence. (Taiwan's democracy seems to be doing a good job of that, however, with Chen's party having lost control of the legislature in recent elections in what appeared to be a rebuke by the electorate of his confrontational stance towards the mainland.)

Regional realignment

The tone of the Rice visit, and the differences between the U.S. and its partners in the nuclear talks with Korea may point to a wider realignment taking place as the Bush administration seeks a strategy to counterbalance China's growing influence. While the U.S. can generally count on Japan for a more assertive stance against North Korea, China, Russia and South Korea tend to oppose ratcheting up pressure on Pyongyang. South Korea is moving more and more forcefully away from Washington's orbit, with President Roh Moo-hyun declaring his intention to seek a role less tied to U.S. positions. Roh has also signaled that Seoul will try and avoid taking sides in conflicts between the U.S. and China.

In contrast to Seoul's gradual retreat from the U.S. strategic orbit, Japan is fast emerging as the lynchpin of the administration's Asia strategy. The administration has long pushed for Tokyo to relinquish the pacifism that has defined its postwar foreign policy, and Secretary Rice left no doubt that the Bush administration wants a more assertive Japan to balance and limit China's expanding influence. In a policy speech in Japan, she spoke of a values-based alliance with Japan and other countries around China designed to push it in a more democratic direction. Answering questions on the goals of a U.S.-Japanese alliance following a speech in Japan, Rice said it is our responsibility to try and push and prod and persuade China to a more positive course."

Promoting Japanese assertiveness is unlikely to improve U.S. relations with either China or South Korea. As far as Beijing is concerned, Japan has never apologized or atoned for the millions of Chinese killed by Japanese invaders during World War II, and the fact that Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi makes an annual pilgrimage to the Yasukuni Shinto shrine honoring, among others, Japan's wartime leader General Tojo — executed by the Americans after the war — has caused considerable alarm in Beijing. The atmosphere between the two countries is increasingly ugly, and when the U.S. in February concluded an agreement with Tokyo that defined maintaining security in the Taiwan Strait as a common strategic objective for the U.S. and Japan, Beijing became alarmed at what it perceived to be an acknowledgement of a Japanese right to intervene on the Taiwan issue.

Seoul, too, is alarmed at the assertiveness out of Tokyo. President Roh warned, in response to Japanese claims on a set of disputed islets, We will now have no choice but to deal sternly with the Japan's attempts to justify its history of aggression and colonialism and revive regional hegemony. If North Korea can be coaxed back to a new round of six-party talks, they will take place at a table in which new tensions and alignments are increasingly on display as the region's players retool for a new strategic game in a region where China's economic growth has changed the political calculus.