(China Daily)
Updated: 2008-03-28 07:22

China Daily's Jiao Xiaoyang and Zhang Haizhou spoke with former US Secretary of Defense William Cohen on Wednesday in Beijing.

William Cohen served as Secretary of Defense from 1997 to 2001 during the Bill Clinton administration.

Do you expect changes in Washington's China policy under a new president?

I think China is an emerging power, so as China gets bigger and stronger economically and militarily, it's going to be under more and more scrutiny. The more power you have, the greater responsibility you have.

So that's to be expected. That's inevitable I think. And it's not something to be feared, but rather, how do we manage this emerging power, how do we make sure, not only the United States, but the Europeans and other countries make sure that as a nation grows with power it uses that power in a way that is consistent and integrated into an international arrangement, peace and stability, or in a word you would like to use, harmony.

What is China's role in the US grand strategy?

What we have to decide, and I think this is not yet been resolved in the US: Is China a friend, a friendly competitor, or an adversary? And that's what we will have to work at to make sure "yes, we'll want a friendship with China".

We know we are going to be friendly competitors, because you want to compete to sell your goods, your products and generate prosperity for your people. So we know we'll have to compete, and that's the nature of the free enterprise system.

But what we have to avoid is moving from friendship to friendly competitors to hostilities or adversarial relationships and that's where diplomacy comes into play.

You never reach a state of perfection. You never reach a state of pure harmony.

What's your view of the recently built military hotline between Washington and Beijing?

It was a long time in coming. I first raised the issue of having a military hotline back in 1997, so it has taken 10 years to get that done.

But it's really important and I think the thing I always wanted to do is to have more and more engagement, military to military.

We want to have our military officials and members working together on various projects, so I talked about having what is called "table-top" exercises, where we could look at ways in which we could cooperate, and then go well beyond just table-top exercises, how to share responsibility and have communications to be able to keep the peace.

There are a number of ways if we start working together, having more and more military engagements then we can do a lot of things. We can remove any potential obstacles to cooperation and we can actually achieve some things on behalf of humanity. And that's what I hope to see happen.

We've had some very good progress made. Admiral (Timothy J.) Keating has been very much in favor, and his predecessor Admiral (William) Falon who is no longer in the military or serving in our Central Command but they were both very much in favor of having greater and greater engagement on the military basis with China.

What's your view of the recent election in Taiwan and its failure in passing the referendum for UN membership?

I think the outcome was something the US was very much in favor of. We didn't want to interfere with the voting in Taiwan. But we also made very clear that the US did not support a move toward independence.

So it has been since Richard Nixon's days a one-China policy. We want to see a reconciliation but on a peaceful basis. So hopefully that's taking place.

(China Daily 03/28/2008 page9)