Military Expansion
By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: March 16, 2006
SYDNEY, March 16 – Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the foreign minister of Australia struck markedly different tones Thursday over the rising power of China, with Ms. Rice criticizing its military expansion and the Australian warning against trying to “contain” Chinese ambitions.
The varied comments of Ms. Rice and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer underscored the uneasiness that Ms. Rice has found this week in Asia and Australia, a region that the United States once dominated as a superpower but now has to navigate uneasily amid China’s spreading influence.
Ms. Rice’s criticism of China was unusually tough, especially since she was speaking in China’s front yard and was planning to meet here later in the week with Mr. Downer and the foreign minister of Japan, Taro Aso, to discuss security issues. Mr. Aso has angered leaders in Beijing with his own criticism of China’s military buildup.
“There is no doubt that, as with any complex relationship, there are difficult issues as well as positive elements,” Ms. Rice said of the Chinese, praising American cooperation with Beijing on North Korea and Iran before going on to criticize Chinese military, economic and human rights policies.
Noting that at the recent National Peoples Conference, the Chinese announced a 14 percent increase in military spending, Ms. Rice said: “That’s a lot, and China should undertake to be transparent about what that means.”
She went on to refer to charges in the Bush administration that China has kept its currency artificially high in order to pump out exports, and to say that China had a poor record on protecting intellectual property rights, opening its government-controlled markets to foreign investment and protecting religious freedoms.
The planned meeting with Mr. Downer and Mr. Aso of Japan on Saturday, billed as a “trilateral security forum,” has stirred attention in East Asia as Japan’s relations with China have plummeted amid rising nationalist sentiment on both sides. The two countries are still arguing over issues going back to Japan’s invasion in the 1930’s.
But the three-way meeting, coupled with President Bush’s recently agreeing to condone India’s nuclear weapons program and supply nuclear aid to India, has also underscored concerns in Australia that the United States is trying to forge closer military cooperation countries surrounding that encircle China.
Before Ms. Rice arrived, Mr. Downer told Sky News: “We don’t support a policy of containment of china. I don’t think that’s going to be a productive or constructive policy at all.” His comments were described in the Australian press as an effort to assuage concerns in Beijing about American-Austrlaian policies.
Appearing at his news conference with Ms. Rice, Mr. Downer said that the United States and Australia were in agreement on the issue, however, “we’ve never had a concern that the United States was pursuing a policy of containment with China.” He said Australia felt “comfortable” with American policies on the issue.
Later, Ms. Rice was asked at by a university student about efforts to push against China. She said that if China cooperated economically and politically with other countries, its influence would be “terrific – not just good, terrific.”
The mixed comments about China came on a day in which Ms. Rice sought to reinforce relations with Australia after a period in which some Australians have felt neglected. Ms. Rice cancelled a planned visit here in January, and there has not been a permanent ambassador in Australia since 2004.
After a rousing speech to sailors aboard the U.S.S. Port Royal, a missile cruiser headed for the Persian Gulf, Ms. Rice spoke before an audience of a few hundred students from various universities and was confronted with tough questions about American policies toward Iraq, the Palestinians, China and civil liberties at home.
She had a private dinner Thursday evening with Prime Minister John Howard.
At the university forum, three hecklers – shouting “You’re a war criminal!” and “Iraqi blood is on your hands!” were quickly ejected as Ms. Rice said: “I’m very glad to see that democracy is alive and well at the university. I’m glad that it will also be alive and well at the University of Kabul and the University of Baghdad.”
Addressing Iraq, Ms. Rice said she was confident that Iraqis will forge a democracy and quell the insurgency, “but we must be patient with these people and patient with the course of democracy.”
As she has often in these settings, Ms. Rice spoke in fervent personal terms about democracy, recalling her own coming of age in Birmingham in the 1950’s and 1960’s, when it was in the grip of the Ku Klux Klan, bombings and a sense of hopelessness about the possibility of racial justice.
“In my lifetime, Birmingham transformed,” Ms. Rice added. “America transformed. I stand before you as a black Secretary of State, something that I think 30 or 40 years ago would have been thought impossible.”
The audience applauded warmly when she spoke about herself. But though politely addressed, most of the students’ questions were mostly critical, apparently reflecting polls that in Australia, as in many other countries, the United States has negative poll ratings.
One questioner noted that the United States had a low percentage of its national economy devoted to foreign aid to poor countries, compared to other rich countries, but Ms. Rice said that the Bush administration had increased foreign aid by 50 percent in the last five years and tripled foreign aid to Africa.
Asked about setting a goal of .7 percent of the national economy for foreign aid, Ms. Rice said: “I don’t believe that a specific target is really the appropriate way to think about this.” She explained that in the past American assistance had been wasted and spent on corrupt regimes, and that her government was trying to redirect aid as it increased.