Engagement made tough diplomacy and sanctions unnecessary, delivering benefits without effort, sacrifice, or confrontation. President Clinton “delinked†trade from human rights and eventually made China’s full, unconditional trade relations with the US permanent. This idea served US business interests, especially the tech industry, and was bipartisan. (The move also damaged human rights as a priority in US foreign policy across the board, a position which the 2012 adoption of visa and financial sanctions for Russia has only begun to turn around.)
It should have been obvious then, and it certainly is now, that Chinese Communist leaders have no interest in abandoning power to this purported sweep of history.
The second difference between Great Britain’s overtures to China and America’s is that Great Britain’s leaders are unburdened by strategic responsibilities, such as the defense of Taiwan or the security of Asia’s sea-lanes, both threatened by Beijing. That was quite obvious when London flirted with helping to lift the EU arms embargo, imposed in response to June 4th massacre of the Tiananmen democracy protesters of 1989.
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