By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
Competition with China has begun to consume U.S. foreign policy. Seized
with the challenge of a near-peer rival whose interests and values diverge
sharply from those of the United States, U.S. politicians and policymakers are
becoming so focused on countering China that they risk losing sight of the
affirmative interests and values and U.S. strategy. The current course will not
just bring indefinite deterioration of the U.S.-Chinese relationship and a
growing danger of catastrophic conflict; it also threatens to undermine the
sustainability of American leadership in the world and the vitality of American
society and democracy at home.
There is, of course, a good reason why a more assertive China has
become the central concern of policymakers and strategists in Washington (and
plenty of other capitals). Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has grown more
authoritarian at home and more coercive abroad. It has brutally repressed
Uyghurs in Xinjiang, crushed democratic freedoms in Hong Kong, rapidly expanded
its conventional and nuclear arsenals, aggressively intercepted foreign
military aircraft in the East and South China Seas,
and condoned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Amplified Russian disinformation, exported censorship and
surveillance technology, denigrated democracies, worked to reshape
international norms—the list could go on and will likely only get longer,
especially if Xi secures a third five-year term and further solidifies
his control later this year.
Yet well-warranted alarm risks morphing into a reflexive fear that
could reshape American policy and society in counterproductive and ultimately
harmful ways. In attempting to craft a national strategy suited to a more
assertive and more powerful China, Washington has struggled
to define success, or even a steady state, short of total victory or total
defeat, that both governments could eventually accept and at a cost that
citizens, businesses, and other stakeholders would be willing to bear. Without
a clear sense of what it seeks or any semblance of a domestic consensus on how
the United States should relate to the world, U.S. foreign policy has become
reactive, spinning in circles rather than steering toward the desired
destination.
To its credit, the Biden administration has acknowledged that the
United States and its partners must provide an attractive alternative to what
China is offering. It has taken some steps in the right direction, such as
multilateral initiatives on climate and hunger. Yet the instinct to counter
every Chinese initiative, project, and provocation remains predominant,
crowding efforts to revitalize an inclusive international system that would
protect U.S. interests and values even as global power shifts and evolves. Even
with the war in Ukraine claiming considerable
U.S. attention and resources, the conflict’s broader effect has been to
intensify focus on geopolitical competition, reinforced by Chinese-Russian
convergence.
Leaders in both Washington and Beijing claim to want to avoid a new
Cold War. The fact is that their countries are already engaged in a global
struggle. The United States seeks to perpetuate its preeminence and an
international system that privileges its interests and values; China sees U.S.
leadership as weakened by hypocrisy and neglect, providing an opening to force
others to accept its influence and legitimacy. On both sides, there is growing
fatalism that a crisis is unavoidable and perhaps even necessary: that mutually
accepted rules of fair play and coexistence will come only after the kind of
eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation that characterized the early years of the Cold
War—survival of which was not guaranteed then and would be even less assured
now.
Even in the absence of a crisis, a reactive posture has begun to drive
a range of U.S. policies. Washington frequently falls into the trap of trying
to counter Chinese efforts around the world without appreciating what local
governments and populations want. Lacking a forward-looking vision aligned with
a realistic assessment of the resources at its disposal, it struggles to
prioritize across domains and regions. It too often compromises its broader
interests as fractious geopolitics make necessary progress on global challenges
impossible. The long-term risk is that the United States cannot manage a
decades-long competition without falling into habits of intolerance at
home and overextension abroad. In attempting to out-China, the United States
could undermine the strengths and obscure the vision that should be the basis
for sustained American leadership.
The lodestar for a better approach must be the world that the United
States seeks: what it wants rather than what it fears. Whether sanctions or
tariffs or military moves, policies should be judged based on whether they
further progress toward that world rather than undermine some Chinese interests
or provide some advantage over Beijing. They should represent U.S. power at its
best rather than mirroring the behavior it aims to avert. And rather than
looking back nostalgically at its past preeminence, Washington must commit,
with actions and words, to a positive-sum vision of a reformed international
system that includes China and meets the existential need to tackle shared
challenges.
That does not mean giving up well-calibrated efforts to deter Chinese
aggression, enhance resilience against Chinese coercion, and reinforce U.S.
alliances. But these must be paired with meaningful discussions with Beijing,
not only about crisis communications and risk reduction but also about
plausible terms of coexistence and the future of the international system—a
future that Beijing will necessarily have some role in shaping. An inclusive
and affirmative global vision would discipline competition and
clarify what Beijing has to lose. Otherwise, as the relationship
deteriorates and the sense of threat grows, the logic of zero-sum competition
will become even more overwhelming, and the resulting escalatory spiral will
undermine American interests and values. That logic will warp global priorities
and erode the international system. It will fuel pervasive insecurity and
reinforce a tendency toward groupthink, damaging the pluralism and civic
inclusion bedrock of liberal democracy. And if not altered, it will perpetuate
a vicious cycle that will eventually bring catastrophe.
The inevitable rivalry?
In Washington, the standard account for why the relationship has gotten
so bad is that China has changed. In the past decade or two, Beijing has
stopped “biding its time,” becoming more repressive at home and assertive abroad while taking
advantage of the relationships and institutions that have enabled China’s
economic growth.
That change is undoubtedly part of the story and is a product of
China’s growing clout as Xi’s way of using it. But a complete account must also
acknowledge corresponding changes in U.S. politics and policy as the United
States has reacted to developments in China. Washington has met Beijing’s
actions with various punitive and protective policies, from tariffs and
sanctions to restrictions on commercial and scientific exchanges. In the
process, the United States has drifted further from the principles of openness
and nondiscrimination that have long been a comparative advantage while
reinforcing Beijing’s conviction that the United States will never tolerate a
more assertive China. Meanwhile, the United States has wavered in its support
for the international institutions and agreements that have long structured
global interdependence, driven partly by consternation over China’s growing
influence within the international system.
The more combative approach on both sides has produced a mirroring
dynamic. While Beijing believes that only through protracted struggle will
Americans be persuaded to coexist with an assertive China, Washington believes
that it must check Chinese power and influence to defend U.S. primacy. The
result is a downward spiral, with each side’s efforts to enhance its security
prompting the other to take further steps to enhance its own.
In explaining growing U.S.-Chinese tensions, some scholars point to
structural shifts in the balance of power. Graham Allison has written of “the
Thucydides trap”: the notion that when a rising state challenges an established
power, a war for hegemony frequently results. Yet a focus on capabilities alone
has trouble accounting for the twists and turns in U.S.-Chinese relations,
which are also driven by shifting perceptions of threat, opportunity, and
purpose. Following President Richard Nixon’s 1972 visit to Beijing, Washington
came to view China as a strategic partner in containing the Soviet Union. And
as the post–Cold War era dawned, U.S.
policymakers began hedging against growing Chinese military power while seeking
to encourage the country’s economic and political liberalization through
greater integration.
Throughout this period, Chinese leaders saw a strategic opportunity to
prioritize China’s development in a stable international environment. They
opened the country’s doors to foreign investment and capitalist practices,
seeking to learn from foreign expertise while periodically campaigning against
“spiritual pollution” and “bourgeois liberalization.” Despite occasional
attempts to signal resolve, including during the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis
and after the 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia, Chinese leaders adhered
mainly to the former leader Deng Xiaoping’s lying-low strategy to avoid
triggering the sense of threat that could precipitate efforts to strangle
China’s rise.
If a year marked an inflection point in China’s approach to the world,
it is not 2012, when Xi came to power, but 2008. The global financial crisis
prompted Beijing to discard any notion that China was the student and the
United States’s teacher regarding economic
governance. And the Beijing Olympics that year were meant to mark China’s
arrival on the world stage, but much of the world was focused instead on riots
in Tibet, which Chinese officials chalked up to outside meddling, and on
China’s subsequent crackdown. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) became
increasingly fixated on the idea that foreign forces were intent on thwarting China’s
rise.
In the years that followed, the halting movement toward liberalization
went into reverse: the party cracked down on the teaching of liberal ideas and
the activities of foreign nongovernmental organizations, crushed pro-democracy
protests in Hong Kong, and built a sprawling surveillance state and system of
internment camps in Xinjiang—all manifestations of a broader conception of
“national security,” animated by fears of unrest. Internationally, China gave
up any semblance of strategic humility. It became more assertive in defending
its territorial and maritime claims (along the Indian border, in the East and
South China Seas, and concerning Taiwan). Having surpassed Japan as the world’s
second-largest economy in 2010, it began wielding its economic power to compel
deference to CCP interests. It ramped up the development of military
capabilities that could counter U.S. intervention in the region, including
expanding its once limited nuclear arsenal. The decision to develop many of
these capabilities predated Xi, but it was under his leadership that Beijing
embraced a more coercive and intolerant approach.
As it registered China’s growing capabilities and willingness to use them,
Washington increased its hedging. The Obama
administration announced that it would “pivot” to Asia. Even
as Washington sought a constructive role for China in the international system,
the pace of China’s rise quickly outstripped U.S. willingness to grant it a
correspondingly powerful voice. With Donald Trump’s election as president,
Washington’s assessment became especially extreme: a Marxist-Leninist regime
was, in Trump’s telling, out to “rape” the United States, dominate the world,
and subvert democracy. In response, the Trump administration started a trade
war, began to talk of “decoupling” the U.S. and Chinese economies, and launched
a series of initiatives aimed at countering Chinese influence and undermining
the CCP. In speeches, senior U.S. officials hinted at regime change, calling
for steps to “empower the Chinese people” to seek a different form of
government and stressing that “Chinese history contains another path for
China’s people.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor
Jake Sullivan concluding talks with Chinese counterparts in Anchorage, United
States, March 2021
The Biden
administration has stopped any talk of regime change in
China and coordinated its approach closely with allies and partners,
contrasting with Trump’s unilateralism. But it has continued many of its
predecessor’s policies and endorsed the assessment that China’s growing influence
must be checked. Some lines of effort have been modified, such as the Justice
Department’s China Initiative, which sought to prosecute intellectual property
theft and economic espionage. But others have been sustained, including
tariffs, export controls, and visa restrictions, or expanded, such as sanctions
against Chinese officials and companies. In Congress, meanwhile, ever more
vehement opposition to China may be the sole thing that Democrats and
Republicans can agree on, though even this shared concern has produced only
limited agreement (such as recent legislation on domestic semiconductor
investments) on how the United States should compete.
Over five decades, the United States tried a combination of engagement
and deterrence to bring China into an international system that broadly
sustains U.S. interests and values. American policymakers knew well that their
Chinese counterparts were committed to defending CCP rule. Still, Washington
calculated that the world would be less dangerous with China inside than
outside the system. That bet largely succeeded—and is still better than the
alternative. Yet many in Washington always hoped for, and to varying degrees
sought to promote, China’s liberal evolution as well. China’s growing authoritarianism
has thus fed the narrative of a comprehensive U.S. policy failure. The focus on
correcting that failure has entrenched Beijing’s insecurity and belief that the
United States and its allies will not accept China as a superpower.
Both countries are intent on doing whatever is necessary to demonstrate
that any move by the other will not go unmet. Both U.S. and Chinese
decision-makers believe that the other side respects only strength and
interprets restraint as weakness. At this year’s Shangri-La Dialogue in
Singapore in June, China’s defense minister, General Wei Fenghe,
pledged to “fight to the very end” over Taiwan a day after meeting with U.S.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.
Tell me how this ends
Where the current trajectory leads is clear: a more dangerous and less habitable
world defined by an ever-present risk of confrontation and crisis, with
preparation for conflict taking precedence over tackling common challenges.
Most policymakers, at least those in Washington, are not seeking a
crisis between the United States and China. But there is growing acceptance
that a crisis is more or less
inevitable. Its consequences would be enormous. Even if both sides want to
avoid war, crises, by definition, offer little time for response amid intense
public scrutiny, making it difficult to find pathways to de-escalation. Even
the limited application of force or coercion could set in motion an
unpredictable set of responses across multiple domains—military, economic,
diplomatic, and informational. As leaders maneuver to resolve and protect their
domestic reputations, a crisis could be challenging to contain.
Taiwan is the most likely
flash point, as changes in both Taipei and Beijing have increasingly put the
island at the center of U.S.-Chinese tensions. Demographic and generational
shifts in Taiwan, combined with China’s crackdown in Hong Kong, have heightened
Taiwan’s resistance to the idea of
Beijing’s control and made peaceful unification seem increasingly fanciful.
After Taiwan’s traditionally pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party
(DPP) won the presidency in 2016, Beijing took a hard line against the new
president, Tsai Ing-wen, despite her careful
efforts to avoid moves toward formal independence. Cross-strait communication
channels shut down, and Beijing relied on increasingly coercive measures to
punish and deter what it perceived as incremental moves toward Taiwan’s
permanent separation.
In response, the United States increased military patrols in and around
the Taiwan Strait, loosened guidelines for
interacting with Taiwanese officials, broadened U.S. declaratory policy to
emphasize support for Taiwan, and continued to advocate for Taiwan’s meaningful
participation in international organizations, including the United Nations. Yet
many well-intentioned U.S. efforts to support the island and deter China have
instead fueled Beijing’s sense of urgency about the need to send a shot across
the bow to deter steadily growing U.S.-Taiwanese ties.
Even with an official U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” on whether
the United States would intervene in the event of an attack on Taiwan, Chinese military planners
expect U.S. involvement. Indeed, the anticipated difficulty of seizing Taiwan
while also holding the United States at bay has long underpinned deterrence
across the Taiwan Strait. But many U.S. actions intended to bolster the
island’s ability to resist coercion have been symbolic rather than substantive,
doing more to provoke than deter Beijing. For example, the Trump administration’s efforts to upend
norms around U.S. engagement with Taiwan—in August 2020, Secretary for Health
and Human Services Alex Azar became the highest-ranking cabinet member to visit
Taiwan since the full normalization of U.S.-Chinese relations in 1979—prompted
China to send combat aircraft across the center line of the Taiwan Strait,
ignoring an unofficial guardrail that had long served to facilitate safe
operations in the waterway. Intrusions into Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification
Zone (ADIZ) have become a frequent means for Beijing to register displeasure
with growing U.S. support. In October 2021, Chinese intrusions into Taiwan’s
ADIZ hit a new high—93 aircraft over three days—in response to nearby U.S.-led
military exercises.
This action-reaction cycle, driven by mutually reinforcing developments
in Beijing, Taipei, and Washington, is accelerating the deterioration of peace
and stability across the Taiwan Strait. In recent months, Chinese official
rhetoric has become increasingly threatening, using phrases that have
historically signaled China’s intent to escalate. “Whoever plays with fire will
get burnt,” Xi has repeatedly told U.S. President Joe Biden. In May, after
Biden implied an unconditional commitment to defend Taiwan, rather than simply
expressing the longstanding U.S. obligation to provide the island with the
military means to defend itself and to maintain the U.S. capacity to resist any
use of force, the Chinese Foreign Ministry stressed that Beijing “will take
firm actions to safeguard its sovereignty and security interests.”
Although Beijing continues to prefer peaceful unification, it is coming
to believe that coercive measures may be necessary to halt moves toward
Taiwan’s permanent separation and compel steps toward unification, particularly
given the Chinese perception that Washington’s support for Taiwan is a means to
contain China. Even if confidence in China’s military and economic trajectory
leads Beijing to believe that “time and momentum” remain on its side, political
trends in Taiwan and in the United States make officials increasingly
pessimistic about prospects for peaceful unification. Beijing has not set a
timetable for seizing Taiwan and does not appear to be looking for an excuse.
Still, as the political scientist Taylor Fravel has shown, China has
used force when it thinks its sovereignty claims are being challenged.
High-profile symbolic gestures of U.S. support for Taiwan are likely to be
construed as an affront that must be answered. (As of this writing, Nancy
Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, the first trip by a U.S. speaker of the house since
1997, has prompted Chinese warnings that “the Chinese military will never sit
idly by,” followed by unprecedently threatening military exercises and missile
tests around Taiwan.)
As both the United States and Taiwan head into presidential elections
in 2024, party politics could prompt more efforts to push the envelope on Taiwan’s political status and
de jure independence. It is far from clear whether Tsai’s successor as
president will be as steadfast as she has been in resisting pressure from
strident advocates of ifreedom Even under Tsai, there
have been troubling signs that DPP leaders are not content with the status quo
despite its popularity with voters. DPP leaders have lobbied Washington to
refrain from stating that the United States does not support Taiwan’s
independence. In March, Taipei’s representative office in Washington gave
former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a hefty honorarium to
visit Taiwan, where he called on the United States to offer the island
“diplomatic recognition as a free and sovereign country.”
The risk of a fatal collision in the air or at sea also rises outside
the Taiwan Strait. With the Chinese and U.S. militaries
operating in proximity in the East and South China Seas,
with both intents to demonstrate their willingness to fight, pilots and
operators are employing dangerous tactics that raise the risk of an inadvertent
clash. In 2001, a Chinese fighter jet collided with a U.S. reconnaissance plane
over the South China Sea, killing the Chinese pilot and leading to the 11-day
detention of the U.S. crew. After initial grandstanding, the Chinese worked to
head off a full-blown crisis, even cracking down on displays of
anti-Americanism in the streets. It is much harder to imagine such a resolution
today: the desire to display resolve and avoid showing weakness would make it
exceedingly challenging to defuse a standoff.
The center can not hold
Even if the two sides can avoid a crisis, continuing the current course
will reinforce geopolitical divisions while inhibiting cooperation on global
problems. The United States is increasingly focused on rallying countries
worldwide to stand against China. But to the extent that a coalition to counter
China forms, especially given the ideological framing that both the Trump and
Biden administrations have adopted, that coalition is unlikely to include the
range of partners that might defend universal laws and institutions. “Asian
countries do not want to be forced to choose between the two,” Singaporean
Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong wrote of China and
the United States in these pages in 2020. “And if
either attempts to force such a choice—if Washington tries to contain China’s
rise or Beijing seeks to build an exclusive sphere of influence in Asia—they
will begin a course of confrontation that will last decades and put the
long-heralded Asian century in jeopardy.”
The current approach to competition is also likely to strengthen the
alignment between China and Russia. The Biden
administration has managed to deter Chinese military assistance to Russia in
Ukraine. China has complied chiefly with sanctions, demonstrating that there
are limits to Beijing and Moscow’s “no limits” partnership. But as long
as the two governments believe they cannot be secure in a U.S.-led system, they
will continue to deepen their cooperation. In the months since the invasion of Ukraine, they have
carried out joint military patrols in the Pacific Ocean and worked to develop
alternatives to the U.S.-controlled financial system.
Ultimately, Chinese-Russian relations will be shaped by how
Beijing weighs its need to resist the United States against its need to
preserve ties to international capital and technology that foster growth.
China’s alignment with Russia is not historically determined. There is an
ongoing high-level debate within Beijing over how close to get to Moscow, with
the costs of full-fledged alignment producing consternation among some Chinese
analysts. Yet unless Washington can credibly suggest that Beijing will see
strategic benefits, not only strategic risks, from distancing itself from
Moscow, advocates of closer Chinese-Russian cooperation will continue to win
the argument.
Growing geopolitical tension also crowds out progress on common
challenges, regardless of the Biden administration’s desire to compartmentalize
specific issues. Although U.S. climate envoy John Kerry has made some headway
on climate cooperation with China, including a joint declaration at last year’s
climate summit in Glasgow, progress has been outweighed by acrimony in previous
joint areas efforts had borne fruit, including counternarcotics,
nonproliferation, and North Korea. On both sides, too many
policymakers fear that willingness to cooperate will be interpreted as a lack
of resolve.
Such tensions are further eroding the already weak foundations of global
governance. It is unclear how much longer the center of the international
rules-based order can hold without a broad-based effort at its renewal. But as
Beijing has grown more concerned that the United States seeks to contain or
roll back its influence—by, for example, denying it a more significant say in
international economic governance—the more it has invested in alternative
institutions, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. Meanwhile,
China’s engagement with the multilateral system is increasingly aimed at
discrediting U.S. leadership within it. Even though Beijing has not precisely
demonstrated fealty to many of the principles it supports, the divide between
the haves and have-nots has allowed it to cast the United States as protecting
the privileges of a minority of powerful states. At the United Nations, Beijing and Washington
too often strive to undercut each other’s initiatives, launching symbolic
battles that require third countries to choose between the two.
Lastly, a fixation on competition brings costs and
dangers to the United States. Aggressive U.S. efforts to protect research
security, combined with increased attacks against Asian Americans, are chilling
on scientific research and international collaboration and jeopardizing the United
States’s appeal as a magnet for iglobaltalent.
A 2021 survey by the American Physical Society found that 43 percent of
international physics graduate students and early career scientists in the
United States considered the country unwelcoming; around half of international
early career scientists in the United States thought the government’s approach
to research security made them less likely to stay there over the long term.
These effects are particularly pronounced among scientists of Chinese descent.
A recent study by the Asian American Scholar Forum found that 67 percent of
faculty of Chinese origin (including naturalized citizens and permanent
residents) reported having considered leaving the United States.
As the United States has sought to shield
itself from Chinese espionage, theft, and unfair trading practices, it has
often insisted on reciprocity as a precondition for commercial, educational,
and diplomatic exchanges with Beijing. But strict reciprocity with an
increasingly closed system like China’s comes at a cost to the United States
comparative advantage: the traditional openness, transparency, and equal
opportunity of its society and economy, which drive innovation, productivity,
and scientific progress.
Watching a CCTV news broadcast about naval operations near Taiwan by the
Chinese military, Beijing, August 2022
The climate of insecurity and fear also has pernicious effects on
democracy and the quality of public debate about China and U.S. policy. The
desire to avoid appearing “soft” on China permeates private and public policy
discussions. The echo chamber encourages analysts, bureaucrats, and officials
to be politically rather than analytically correct—groupthink results when
individuals feel the need to out-hawk one another to protect themselves and
advance professionally. A policy environment incentivizes self-censorship, and
reflexive positioning forecloses pluralistic debate and a vibrant marketplace
for ideas, ingredients critical to the United States’ national competitiveness.
From the World War II internment of
Japanese Americans to the McCarthyism of the 1950s to hate crimes against
Muslim and Sikh Americans after September 11, U.S. history is replete with
examples of innocent Americans caught in the crossfire of exaggerated fears of
the “enemy within.” In each case, overreaction did as much as or more than the
adversary to undermine U.S. democracy and unity. Although the Biden
administration has condemned anti-Asian hate and stressed that policy must
target behavior rather than ethnicity, some government agencies and U.S.
politicians have continued to imply that an individual’s ethnicity and ties to
family abroad are grounds for heightened scrutiny.
Before catastrophe
If the United States and Soviet Union could arrive at détente, there is
no reason that Washington and Beijing cannot do so. Early in the Cold War,
President John F.
Kennedy, hailing the need to “make the world safe for diversity,” stressed
that “our attitude is as essential as theirs.” He warned Americans “not to see
conflict as inevitable, accommodation as impossible, and communication as
nothing more than an exchange of threats.”
Even while making clear that Beijing will pay a high price if it resorts
to force or other forms of coercion, Washington must present China with a
natural choice. Deterrence requires that threats be paired with assurances. To
that end, U.S. policymakers should not be afraid to engage directly with their
Chinese counterparts to discuss terms on which the United States and China
could coexist, including mutual bounds on the competition. It was relatively
easy for Americans to imagine coexistence with a China thought to be on a
one-way path of liberalization. The United States and its partners now have the
more challenging task of imagining coexistence with an authoritarian
superpower, finding a new basis for bilateral interaction that focuses on
shaping outward behavior rather than changing China’s domestic system.
The most pressing need relates to Taiwan, where the United States must
bolster deterrence while clarifying that its “one China” policy has not
changed. This means ensuring that Beijing knows how costly a crisis over Taiwan
would be, putting at risk its broader development and modernization
objectives—but also that if it refrains from coercive action, neither
Washington nor Taipei will exploit the opportunity to push the envelope
further. While Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other senior
officials have affirmed that the United States does not support Taiwan’s
independence, other actions by the administration (especially Biden’s repeated
statements suggesting an end to “strategic ambiguity”) have sown doubt.
While helping bolster Taiwan’s resilience to Chinese coercion, Washington should avoid
characterizing Taiwan as a vital asset for U.S. interests. Such statements feed
Beijing’s belief that the United States seeks to “use Taiwan to contain China,”
as China’s ambassador to Washington put it in May. The United States should
instead make its abiding interest in a peaceful process for resolving
cross-strait differences rather than in a particular outcome. And as they
highlight the costs, Beijing can expect if it escalates its coercive campaign
against Taiwan, U.S. policymakers should also stress to Taipei that unilateral
efforts to change Taiwan’s political status, including calls for de jure
independence, U.S. diplomatic recognition, or other symbolic steps to signal
Taiwan’s permanent separation from China, are counterproductive.
These steps will be necessary but not sufficient to pierce the growing
fatalism regarding a crisis, given Beijing’s hardening belief that the United
States seeks to contain China and will use Taiwan to that end. To put a floor
beneath the collapsing U.S.-China relationship will require a more robust effort
to establish bounds of fair competition and a willingness to discuss terms of
coexistence. Despite recent meetings and calls, senior U.S. officials do not
yet have regular engagements with their counterparts that would facilitate such
discussions. These discussions should be coordinated with U.S. allies and
partners to prevent Beijing from trying to drive a wedge between the United
States and others in Europe and Asia. But Washington should also forge a common
understanding with its allies and partners around potential forms of coexistence with China.
Skeptics may say that there is no reason for the leadership in Beijing
to play along, given its triumphalism and distrust. These are significant
obstacles, but it is worth testing the proposition that Washington can take
steps to stabilize escalating tensions without first experiencing multiple
crises with a nuclear-armed competitor. There is reason to believe Beijing
cares enough about stabilizing relations to reciprocate. Despite its claim that
the “East is rising, and the West is declining,” China remains the weaker
party, especially given its uncertain economic trajectory. Domestic challenges have
tended to restrain China’s behavior rather than, as some Western commentators
have speculated, prompting risky gambles. The political scientist Andrew Chubb
has shown that when Chinese leaders have faced challenges to their legitimacy,
they have acted less assertively in areas such as the South China Sea.
Because Beijing and Washington are loath to make unilateral
concessions, fearing that they will be interpreted as a sign of weakness at
home. On the other side, détente will require reciprocity. Both sides must take
coordinated but unilateral steps to combat a militarized crisis. For example, a
tacit understanding could reduce Chinese and U.S. operations in and around the
Taiwan Strait, lowering the temperature without signaling weakness. Military
operations are necessary to demonstrate that the United States will continue to
fly and sail wherever international law allows, including the Taiwan Strait.
But ultimately, the United States’ ability to deter and Taiwan’s ability to
defend against an attempt at armed unification by Beijing has little to do with
whether the U.S. military transits the Taiwan Strait four, eight, 12, or 24 times
a year.
In the current atmosphere of distrust, words must be matched by
actions. In his November 2021 virtual meeting with Biden, Xi said, “We have
patience and will strive for the prospect of peaceful reunification with utmost
sincerity and efforts.” But Beijing’s actions have undercut its credibility in
Taipei and Washington. Biden likewise told Xi that the United States does not
seek a new Cold War or want to change
Beijing’s system. Yet subsequent U.S. actions (including efforts to diversify
supply chains away from China and new visa restrictions on CCP officials) have
undermined Washington’s credibility among leaders in Beijing and others in the
region. It does not help that some administration officials continue to invoke
Cold War parallels.
To bolster its credibility, the Biden administration should also do
more to preempt charges of hypocrisy and double standards. Consider U.S. policy
to combat digital authoritarianism: Washington has targeted Chinese
surveillance technology firms more harshly than similar companies based in the
United States, Israel, and other Western democracies.
The world that ought to be
So far, the Biden administration’s order-building efforts have centered
on arrangements that exclude China, such as the Quad (Quadrilateral
Security Dialogue) and the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. Although officials
have been careful to insist that these initiatives are not targeted at any one
country, there is little sign of any corresponding effort to negotiate
Beijing’s role in the international or regional order. At the margins, there
have been signs that inclusive groupings can still deliver. (The World Trade
Organization has struck agreements on fishing subsidies and COVID-19 vaccines.) But
suppose investments in narrower, fit-for-purpose coalitions continue to
prioritize broader, inclusive agreements and institutions, including those in
which China and the United States both have significant roles. In that case,
geopolitical tensions will break rather than reinvigorate the international
system.
Renewing U.S. leadership will also require doing more to address
criticism that a U.S.-led order means “rules for thee but not for me.” Explicit
and humble acknowledgment of instances where the United States has violated the
UN Charter, such as the invasion of Iraq, would be an essential step to
overcoming that resentment. And Washington must deliver value for citizens in
developing countries, whether on COVID-19, climate, hunger, or technology,
rather than simply urging them not to work with China. At home, Washington must
work to rebuild bipartisan support for U.S. engagement with the international
system.
As the United States reimagines its
domestic and international purpose, it should do so on its terms, not for the
sake of besting China. Yet fleshing out an inclusive, affirmative vision of the
world it seeks would also be a first step toward clarifying the conditions
under which the United States would welcome or accept Chinese initiatives
rather than reflexively opposing them. The countries’ divergent interests and
values would still result in the United States opposing many of Beijing’s
activities. Still, that opposition would be accompanied by an apparent
willingness to negotiate the terms of China’s growing influence. The United
States cannot cede so much influence to Beijing that international rules and
institutions no longer reflect U.S. interests and values. But the greater risk
today is that overzealous efforts to counter China’s influence will undermine
the system itself through a combination of paralysis and the promotion of
alternate arrangements by significant powers.
Finally, the United States must do much more to invest in its example’s
power and ensure that steps taken to counter China do not undermine that
example by falling into the trap of trying to out-China China. Protective or
punitive actions, whether military, economic, or diplomatic, should be assessed
based on whether they counter China, how they affect the broader system, and
whether they reflect fidelity to U.S. principles.
Competition cannot become an end in itself. Washington will continue to
measure success on its own. Rankings are a symbolic construct, not objective.
If pursuing human progress, peace, and prosperity is the ultimate objective,
the United States does not need to beat China.
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