By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

The Virtue Of Low Expectations

In the days since U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s highly anticipated visit to Beijing this month, many commentators have lamented the paltry results of the trip. Although it was the first visit to China by a U.S. secretary of state in five years, and Blinken was even accorded an audience with Chinese President Xi Jinping, the trip did not yield any significant breakthroughs or changes in relations between the two countries. Nor were there signs that either side was altering its strategic assessment of the other.

Yet the lack of dramatic breakthroughs or grand gestures may be precisely the point. By now, it is clear that there will not be any reset or major thaw in United States-China relations in the coming months. Neither side will forgo competitive actions or reduce efforts to shore up defenses against the other. Instead, this period will demand what former Secretary of State George Shultz called “constant gardening.” Both sides could develop contacts and clarify mutual intentions with the patient's knowledge that such efforts will put both sides in a stronger position to manage stresses and explore opportunities for common cause on narrow areas of shared concern.  Rather than stirring unreasonable hopes of a U.S.-Chinese rapprochement, the modest framing of the Blinken trip could offer an effective template for dealing with Beijing in the coming months. For the Biden administration, keeping expectations low—even as it works to reduce the risk of conflict and search for a shared agenda with China—will be crucial in breaking the downward trajectory of relations between Washington and Beijing.

 

Less Is More

At present, the U.S.-Chinese relationship is neither improving nor deteriorating. Nor is it locked into a preset or linear trajectory. The relationship is in an exploratory period. Although prospects for a significant breakthrough are slim, Biden and Xi can use contacts to direct the relationship. They will have the occasion to meet this fall when they attend the G-20 summit in New Delhi in September and the gathering of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders in San Francisco in November. These dialogues will be teed up by a series of exchanges between the two leaders’ key advisers, including, on the U.S. side, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and John Kerry, the special presidential envoy for the climate.

Washington could have clear objectives and a plan to take maximum advantage of these contacts. This fall, the measures of strategic success for the United States would be a reduction in the risk of conflict, a shared commitment on both sides to shrink the space for strategic miscalculation, and an increase in Chinese contributions to addressing global challenges. Such an outcome would strengthen Washington’s ability to manage inescapable competition with Beijing without conflict, bringing tangible benefits for health and prosperity in the United States.

Arriving at a more durable and productive bilateral relationship would serve both countries’ long-term interests. Even amid renewed contacts, however, such progress is far from inevitable. To move toward more functional relations, Washington and Beijing could build a shared agenda that adds a common purpose to an otherwise strained relationship. And they will need to avoid several pitfalls.

Above all, the two sides will need to set the bar low. Unrealistic expectations will be the enemy of progress. For example, neither side will acknowledge the errors of its ways and take corrective actions to remedy the downward spiral in relations. There will not be any meeting of the minds on principles to guide links or on a common framework for describing the nature of the relationship. There will not be a full reopening of military-to-military channels of communication. If expectations to the contrary get built and then go unmet, it will embolden opponents of direct diplomacy in both countries, leading them to accuse their leaders of getting caught in an engagement trap: critics will charge that Beijing and Washington are getting locked into an interminable series of bilateral meetings that have become a substitute for actions to strengthen defenses against the other. Such a scenario would bring louder calls in Washington to discard diplomacy with Beijing altogether and instead pursue a strictly punitive agenda to arrest China’s overall development.

 

Avoid History

Even if Washington and Beijing successfully manage expectations, other possible pitfalls lie ahead. It is foreseeable that each side will take actions that may frustrate the other side in the coming months. China’s leaders are currently focused on hardening their country against Western pressure, just as U.S. policymakers are accelerating efforts to limit their country’s vulnerabilities relating to China. The true test will be whether policymakers can manage those stressors through careful diplomacy or induce retaliation.  

Moreover, the U.S. government and the Chinese leadership will not be friendly toward each other soon. The two sides have differing political and economic frameworks and competing global visions. At the same time, there is no permanence in international relations. Past adversaries of the United States, such as Japan and Germany, are now its closest partners. Leaders in both Washington and Beijing could remain modest about their ability to forecast the future. In other words, neither side should foreclose the possibility of a future shift in relations, however unimaginable it seems now.

To avoid strategic miscalculation, American and Chinese leaders should resist the temptation to reach for historical analogies to make sense of the current moment. Currently, no forces are driving the relationship toward a “Guns of August” moment, in which diplomatic blunders and misguided assumptions about the opposing side led to the catastrophic outbreak of war in 1914. Similarly, the United States and China are not testing each other through proxy wars or similar tests of will in a repeat of the early years of the Cold War.

There is no historical parallel to the current dynamic between China and the United States. The world is confronted with heightened tensions between two nuclear-armed, heavily militarized major powers who simultaneously share deep economic, environmental, and social interdependencies. A series of decisions by leaders in both countries have led the relationship to this growing rivalry, just as decisions by leaders in both countries will determine the direction of relations going forward.

In the current political climate, each leader may be tempted to use the other to gain political advantage at home. In February, Biden taunted Xi during his State of the Union address, arguing that no leader would want to trade places with the Chinese leader because of the scale of the problems that China confronts. And just days after Blinken’s visit this month, Biden described Xi at a political fundraiser as a “dictator” who had been unaware that a spy balloon was traversing the United States before it was shot down, a comment that caused purposeless friction with Beijing. In turn, Xi has deflected Chinese anger about mounting domestic problems by blaming the United States and its partners for seeking to “contain, encircle, and suppress” China. Suppose the bilateral relationship remains hostage to domestic political requirements in both countries. In that case, there will be a low ceiling for how much progress is possible in forging a more durable relationship.

Biden and Xi can gain confidence in understanding the other’s requirements to avoid this pitfall. In practice, this means recognizing that Xi has his imperatives for seeking to lower tension with the United States without appearing to compromise or soften his stance toward Washington. Xi is facing sagging economic growth, a real estate crisis, mounting local government debt, rising youth unemployment and declining productivity at home, and tighter coordination between the United States and a large majority of developed countries on issues relating to China. Xi’s big bet on Russia as a bulwark against Western pressure also looks less promising in light of the recent rebellion by Wagner forces. If Putin’s standing unravels from within, it could cause China to seek to reduce strategic stress with the United States, so long as Washington avoids actions that Beijing could perceive as exploiting its growing vulnerabilities.

In other words, now is an inopportune time for Xi to provide the United States and its partners an impetus to ratchet up economic, technological, or financial pressure on his country. Biden, likewise, is entering a political season in which he will want to demonstrate competent management of U.S. competition with China. This would allow him to contrast his administration favorably with his presumptive presidential opponent in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.

Finally, U.S. and Chinese policymakers should avoid getting bogged down in debates over “guardrails” and principles for managing the relationship. Xi believes China can survive by seeking security through struggle and risks perishing if it seeks security through compromise. Against this backdrop, any American pursuit of Chinese assurances that U.S. military forces can safely operate near China’s shores would willfully disregard the incentives that Chinese officials face to limit that access. If American officials want to lower risk, they should instead offer concrete proposals around issues requiring reciprocal restraint, such as proposing that neither country should ever allow a system guided by artificial intelligence to launch a nuclear warhead. It would serve both sides’ interests to build toward an international norm in which decisions on a nuclear launch reside only in the hands of humans.

 

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