From conversations with friends and acquaintances in Hong Kong, the damage the Obama administration has done to American interests in the Far East may be far worse than meets the eye. The Bush administration, whatever its other failings, achieved something that no previous US administration had done, namely to reassure China that the United States was committed to preserving its territorial integrity, among other things by defusing the Taiwan issue.
Political stability is the preeminent concern of China’s leaders, and the greatest threat to stability is breakaway provincial rebellions such as the Xinjiang problem of several weeks ago. Although the riots by Muslim Uyghurs were contained quickly, the events rattled the leadership sufficiently to cause Hu Jintao to interrupt what might have been an historically important trip to Italy (efforts were underway to get a meeting with the pope) to return. Monied Chinese began moving assets out of the country after Xinjiang—not in an obvious or panicky fashion, but to hedge bets.
China cannot help but blame the United States for encouraging the Uyghurs. It is not merely that the Uyghurs maintain an organization in Washington—the United States tends to be quite hospitable to emigre organizations claiming oppression—but that the Islamist government of Turkey is involved in proselytizing the Uyghurs. The spiritual force behind Turkish Islamism, the exiled but highly influential leader Fethullah Guelen runs an organization that proselytizes for pan-Turkic Islamism in 80 countries, by its own account. Turkish affinities for the Uyghurs run deep, and Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan qualified China’s very light-handed response to the Uyghur riots as a “genocide.”
Relations with Islam occupy the top spot on Obama’s international agenda, and Obama announced this policy in Turkey, the supposed showcase for moderate Islam— except that this “moderate Islam” wants to destabilize China, which is not a smart thing to do. The Chinese are trying to understand why America is going out of its way to placate a bunch of losers and sacrificing key relationships in order to do so.
Add to this the very well publicized lack of confidence in an economic policy which keep shoving American debt down the throat of the world market, and I would say China is very worried indeed.
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