Bringing China In From the Cold

he loopiest aspect of the Group of 8 conclave in Évian is the notion that global leaders are confronting the challenges of the 21st century in the absence of the nation that may well dominate the century.

That's right: China.

Even if China's gross domestic product is measured using its official, undervalued exchange rate, its economy is far bigger than those of G-8 members like Canada or Italy — and almost three times the size of Russia's. If one values China's economy using another approach, purchasing power parity, then it is already easily the biggest economy outside the U.S.

As it happens, France invited China's new leader — Hu Jintao — to Évian, where he may have the highest I.Q. in town (he's an engineer with close to a photographic memory, along with a third-rate conscience). But Mr. Hu may be the second most important man in the world, and he deserves a place in a Group of 9.

On short- and long-term issues that the G-8 grapples with — from dealing with North Korea to preventing global warming — the two key players in the world are China and the U.S. And it's ridiculous to include Russia in the G-8 but not China (which adds a Russia's worth of economic output to the world every two years).

Several objections can be raised to expanding the G-8 to include China:

It's a summit meeting for industrialized nations, and China isn't one. It's true that China has more peasants than any country in the world, but it also has more industrialists. Hey, it's China.

China exports more manufactured goods than Canada, Italy or Russia; it is launching a space program to put a man on the moon; its biotechnology is superb (thank goodness it wasn't during the Cultural Revolution, or we would have a billion Mao clones). And while the industrialization of China is still in its early stages, the world needs to wrestle with what that means: if the Chinese come to use as much energy per capita as Americans do, that will amount to more than the total amount of energy now produced worldwide.

China isn't a democracy but a thuggish Communist dictatorship. Yup. I was at Tiananmen Square when troops opened fire in 1989, and all that blood will never be washed from my memory. But today China is not Communist but fascist, in the sense of a nationalistic one-party dictatorship controlling a free-enterprise economy. In any case, the key question is not whether some of China's rulers are thugs but whether they are thugs we can work with. And they are.

China is an irresponsible power that can't be a team player. It's true that China's mishandling of SARS, for example, allowed the disease to spread worldwide. And it has often cheated on agreements and imprisoned dissidents. But China has steadily become more responsible over the years on issues ranging from trade to terror, and in the last few months it has shown real leadership on resolving the North Korean crisis.

President Bush has managed relations with China very well, mostly because Pentagon hawks who had been trying to turn Beijing into The Enemy were distracted by 9/11. There are real risks that we will become enemies — there could be clashes between the U.S. and China over Taiwan, the Senkaku Islands, the South China Sea — but they will be lessened if we give China opportunities for global leadership.

Some experts predict that SARS will be to China what Chernobyl was to the Soviet Union: the crack that eventually brings the entire facade tumbling down. I doubt it. Chinese reformers have long urged (behind closed Politburo doors) a freer press, but the party remains instinctively repressive.

Last week, China sentenced Xu Wei, a journalist, to prison for 10 years just for talking about politics with friends; he said he had been beaten as well. Seok Jae Hyun, a South Korean photographer (who regularly takes pictures for The New York Times) got two years in prison for photographing North Koreans escaping through China.

No, Hu Jintao is no Gorbachev.

He's more like a Franco, a Pinochet, a Park. And, knock wood, the China he rules will follow Spain, Chile and South Korea in fostering the educated middle class that will lead it to democracy.

In the meantime, China is too important to leave out in the cold. As the leaders in Évian struggle over SARS, AIDS, Iran and North Korea, they need China within their ranks, as a member of the G-9.