LONDON- How straightforward it used to be. For twenty two years the U.S. did not recognize communist China. Taiwan occupied the Chinese seat at the United Nations and that was that. Then from the right, quite unexpectedly, came Richard Nixon and turned everything on its head. China was not only recognized and Taiwan ejected from its seat, the American business and journalistic communities were encouraged to fall in love with all things Chinese. As the Russian journalist Vladimir Pozner bitingly wrote at the time, “The Americans found that the Chinese were courteous, industrious, family-orientated, modest to the point of being shy. They had the most wonderful and ancient cultural tradition; they were wizards at ping pong; they loved giant pandas. In less than a year public opinion completely turned around. Everyone loved the so-recently hated and feared China.”

Thus it continued, more or less, until Tiananmen Square when America’s great strategic friend and pro capitalist reformer Deng Xiaoping sent in the tanks and murdered two thousand or more protesting students, armed with nothing more than their bicycles. The Bush administration, determined to keep the relationship on an even keel whatever the cost, dispatched with unseemly haste the president’s National Security Advisor, Brent Scowcroft, to reassure Beijing of Washington’s solid, enduring, relationship. But China had lost for all time what it could not win back- the fawning attention of the American press and the warm feelings of the American people. Now Bill Clinton, when campaigning to unseat Bush, charged that Bush was soft on China and promised, if elected, that the age of conciliation would be over.

But once in office it did not take long for Clinton to fall into line with the Nixon legacy- even though the main geopolitical reason for it- to balance the Soviet Union- was no longer relevant.

Today, however, the line of continuity is beginning to waiver. Part is business as usual in the Nixonian tradition- as with Clinton’s push for Congressional approval for China’s admittance to the World Trade Organization. But part is, if still unclear and uncertain, a sea-change in Washington’s long-time forbearance of Beijing’s decision making. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has in effect admitted that engagement with China has not brought about the promised amelioration in human rights. The situation, says a recent State Department report, if anything has worsened, and now the U.S. is going to vote to condemn China at the current meeting of the UN Human Rights Commission. The indications are, however, that it will not push too hard to line up sufficient European and Third World allies to secure a victory with this vote, but nonetheless it marks the end of a simpler era.

Meanwhile, since 1995, the U.S. Congress has been enlisted in Taiwan’s drive, led by the outgoing president Lee Teng-hui, to overturn long-standing agreements between Beijing and Washington. While the Administration will continue to resist the move led by Senator Jesse Helms to pass the Taiwan Security Enhancement Act which would open the flood gates of arms sales to Taiwan, the Administration itself has presided over a dramatic increase in sales (although one that has diminished sharply the last couple of years). We are a long way from the 1982 Sino-U.S. communique of 1982- The U.S. government has agreed, it said, that it “does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms sales to Taiwan, [and] that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in quantitative or qualitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the U.S., and that it intends to gradually reduce its sales of arms to Taiwan.”

China itself doesn’t make the situation easier. Its increasingly bellicose line towards Taiwan, growing in volume since the day it won back Hong Kong; the continuation of its provocative policy of being the only country in the world whose nuclear missiles are aimed at the U.S.; its sometimes aggressive attitude in the South China Sea; and the apparent disregard for majority world opinion on human rights, give Clinton and his successor less and less room for flexibility.

The U.S.-China boat is now sailing through uncharted waters. While nothing is clear nothing is certain, but undoubtedly there is a risk of it disintegrating on the rocks ahead.

The election result in Taiwan both makes the situation more serious and more easy. It is more serious in that the Taiwanese have made clear their own mind- They don’t want to be bullied by China. At the same time they have given their votes to a leader who breaks with the old order of the Kuomintang, who fought and lost to Mao Zedong, in favour of a more indigenous and more sophisticated Taiwanese political form.

In electing Chen Shui-bian as Taiwan’s next president they have elevated a man who says he wants to be a peacemaker and not a trouble maker. He has already promised not to declare independence unless China attacks and has made it clear he is less inflexible than his predecessor.

Beijing now has an interlocutor with whom they can do business. But the bullying has to stop. That will lead nowhere. For China the best that can be achieved is the status quo ante- that is before President Lee made his infamous remark about the relationship between the two being “state-to-state”.

A period of benign neglect of the Taiwan-China issue would now serve all parties well. Beijing, for its part, besides lowering its voice, needs to tone down its sense of urgency about the need to discuss reunification, and realize there is no point in gaining Taiwan if it loses the world. Make no mistake, an invasion of Taiwan would be widely interpreted as Tiananmen Square on a larger scale. Washington’s contribution must be to resist the pressure to increase its arms sales and realize that its selling policy in the first half of the 1990’s helped ratchet up Chinese anger. It does not exactly help America’s case that it clings like a limpet to its base in Cuba at Guantanomo Bay.

In this exceedingly complex three way relationship, clarity of vision is everything. While it is impossible to wind back the clock to simpler days one thing needs to be kept very clear: conflict will solve nothing. A non-military solution is the only solution. All three leaders must ensure they issue no ultimatums, deadlines or conditions from which they could not subsequently retreat. Grace is everything in the great issues of realpolitik..