Engagement rather than confrontation with China has been signalled by the latest round of European and United States dialogues with its leaders over trade and human rights issues. The Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, emphasised such concerns in his recent meeting with the Chinese Prime Minister, Mr Li Peng, and they have been the main themes discussed with the US Secretary of State, Mr Warren Christopher, in Beijing this week, which will be amplified during the APEC summit in Manila.
Once the basic decision to engage rather than to confront has been taken, it follows that such a dialogue is necessary and urgent. The tone was set by Mr Clinton speaking in the Australian parliament, where he said the US "has no interest in containing China. That is a negative strategy". He added that engagement "will increase the chances that there will be more liberty and more prosperity". The approach is based on the assumption that more trade and more prosperity will relieve the harshness of one party rule in China, allowing its government and society to open up to democratic participation and freedoms. Economic change will force the pace of political transformation.
The Chinese, for their part, take a not dissimilar line of evolutionary argument which allows them to engage in such a dialogue. Certainly, they say, China is developing; but it has not yet reached the stage at which Western style dissidence and public criticism can be sustained, or such standards of human rights tolerated. Occasionally, it is hinted, that were circumstances to be changed substantially, for example by opening up the Chinese political system to multi party politics or by a more radical embrace of a universal human rights agenda, there would be a danger of disintegration, which would be a greater evil than the current regime.
The virtue of engaged dialogue is that it seeks continually to review and enlarge such an agenda and to conduct it in parallel with the opening up of the immense trade and investment opportunities that are undoubtedly presented to European and US businesses as China's modernisation proceeds apace. Next year is set to be particularly auspicious in these respects. Hong Kong is to revert to Chinese sovereignty, the National People's Congress is to meet in the spring and the Communist Party's 15th Congress in the autumn. Running through these events will be the long transition in China's leadership from Deng Xiaoping to a new and probably more collective group, which is already well under way and nearly consolidated. China's international partners are well aware of these changes and of the need to steer a careful and constructive way through them.
The more contentious issues raised with Mr Christopher revolved largely around human rights, trade liberalisation and the Taiwan question. The US has refused to curtail its arms sales to Taiwan but has emphasised that its armed presence in the Pacific will remain at about the same level as in Europe and that - it is intended, in President Clinton's words, "to advance security and stability for everyone so that we can grow together and work together, all of us, in the new century". It would be as well for all concerned to realise that engagement carries its own responsibility for serious dialogue, a constructive alternative to confrontation. This must be shown to produce results that can justify necessary compromise on deeper matters of principle.