I strongly recommend that you read the article at The National Interest in which 14 experts give their views on how the relationship between the United States and China will unfold in the years to come. Most are pessimistic. Some of their views are diametrically opposed; they cannot all be right. For example, China permabear Gordon Chang believes that conflict between the U. S. and China is inevitable:
We call China “revisionist,†but “revolutionary†is more precise. Chinese state media outlets these days, like in the 1950s and 1960s, carry revolutionary statements. China’s media now fawn over Xi Jinping’s “unique views on the future development of mankind.â€
What is so unique about the views of the regime’s supremo? In September 2017, Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in Study Times, the Central Party School newspaper, wrote that Xi’s “thought on diplomacy†has “made innovations on and transcended the traditional Western theories of international relations for the past 300 years.â€
Wang’s 300-year reference was almost certainly to the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, now recognized as the basis of the current international system of sovereign nations. Wang’s use of “transcended†indicates Xi is contemplating a world without states other than China, especially because Xi himself often uses language of the imperial era, when Chinese emperors maintained that they—and they alone—ruled tianxia or “all under heaven.â€
This tianxia worldview, increasingly evident in Xi’s and Beijing’s pronouncements, is, of course, fundamentally inconsistent with the existence of a multitude of sovereign states. The Chinese view, breathtakingly ambitious, unfortunately drives many of Beijing’s belligerent actions.
I do not see how that view can be reconciled with Kishore Mahbubani’s:
Unlike America, China is not aiming for global primacy. It only wants to secure peace and prosperity for its 1.4 billion people. As a result, even after China becomes number one, it will not try to dislodge America from its claim of primacy. China is quite happy to uphold the rules-based international order that America and the West have gifted to the world. As Xi Jinping said in Davos in 2017, “We should adhere to multilateralism to uphold the authority and efficacy of multilateral institutions. We should honor promises and abide by rules.â€
They cannot both be right.
I didn’t find that any of the experts’ views mirrored my own particularly well. I think the U. S. has bungled its handling of the relationship with China over the period of the last 30 years bringing us to the point where we are now. We have not insisted that China live up to its commitments; we have let it get away with outrageous behavior; we have insisted on playing by rules that benefit the Chinese authorities. We were in too great a hurry to grant China Most Favored Nation trading status. When the Chinese forced a U. S. military aircraft down in 2001, President Bush reacted with intolerable weakness. He should have closed all Chinese consulates, whittled China’s embassy staff in Washington down to an ambassador and a stenographer, and insisted that the Chinese ambassador enter public buildings via the tradesman’s entrance. Instead he offered a mumbled apology.
We have been tolerating Chinese military, political, and industrial espionage far too leniently for far too long. We have accepted Chinese extortion as the normal cost of doing business. We should be leading a movement to oust China from the WTO for its failure to live up to its commitments.
The latest outrage is that Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, former chair of the Intelligence Committee, and present Vice Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee had a Chinese spy as her driver and gofer over the period of the last 20 years. Heads should roll. His handlers and their superiors should be ousted from the U. S. The Chinese San Francisco consulate should be shuttered. My bet is that we’ll respond with characteristic weakness if at all.
I don’t think the present bad situation was inevitable. I think that the relationship between China and the U. S. could have been collaborative but not so long as the Chinese authorities view diplomacy and business as a zero-sum game which they very obviously do.
Let’s play devils advocate with Sen Feinstein. It seems politicians not vetting who they meet or hire is bi partisan thing; just look at all the Republicans who naively met with Borat. The President hired Paul Manafort.
It’s in some sense a side effect that Americans want their leaders to be accessible.
On the other hand; I am surprised Sen Feinstein stayed on and was permitted to stay on the Senate intelligence committee after she was told about her driver.
That combined with the arrest of another committee staffer caught lying about leaking to a reporter he was having a relationship says the committee needs to be cleaned up.
Blaming the victim? If the rules are that anything goes and if you’re hurt it’s just your hard luck, so be it. The obvious recourse is to end all payments of any kind to Chinese vendors. That they’re out for their expenses would just be their tough luck for being stupid enough to do business with Americans.
More like a sad observation that Sen Feinstein is representative of American elected officials. And that probably these representatives preferred cure for this problem won’t be anything their constituents would like.
As to Chinese relations; I think it’s better to frame the question this way;
Is the CCP and the US natural enemies or friends?
Is China (the people and civilization) and the US natural enemies or friends?
How does one reconcile policy if the answer to the two questions are different?
As to where the course is going; all I can observe is that Congress is getting involved; the defense bill that passed Congress was toughest on China since just after 1989. And the complaint was it was too soft on ZTE. When Congress starts writing policy into law; it has an inertia of its own that can last decades. That’s what the Chinese should pay attention to instead of whether the midterms will affect the so called trade war.
I can only offer my opinion. I think the CCP and the U.S. are natural enemies while the American and Chinese peoples and cultures are naturally on cordial if not outright friendly terms. How that translates into policy when dealing with people as downright vicious as the Chinese authorities eludes me.
Your assessment aligns with mine.
And I think that’s how the CCP thinks as well.
The one policy recommendation I would make is to remind everyone whose business or livelihood depends on China – he who sups with the devil should get a long spoon.
I think both the quoted portions can be reconciled if they are divided across time into the long-term and short-term.
As far as the rest, for a bevy of experts, I find most of their arguments rather weak, based on projection, wishful thinking, or parroting what other elites believe.
China’s words are important, but not more important than their actions. China is purposely building up military capabilities that are objectively designed to fight the United States. China is expanding influence in its littoral, but also throughout the globe. It clearly desires a robust blue-water navy.
To what purpose?
This may be a hedging strategy against an unpredictable United States that has a demonstrated ability and willingness to attack other countries, or it may be a deliberate strategy designed to increase China’s influence via the use of hard power and compete with the US for global dominance. And those goals are also not mutually exclusive across time.
There is also Chinese national pride. Concepts like “honor” are not given much voice anymore in the western secular world, but it cannot be ignored elsewhere, particularly with China. They believe they have the right to reassert themselves as a greater China and to right what they perceive are historic wrongs. This is clear in their published writing on China’s strategic future.
So the South China Sea isn’t merely about potential resource exploitation – it’s a question of national honor. Same with Taiwan. I fear that our leadership, drenched myopic and wrong views about the way the world works, will discount the importance of national honor in dealing with China.
So, yeah, I think we’re adversaries and we will be for a long time. I hope it never comes to war, but I have little faith that our political class can avoid it or even want to avoid it.