By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers

The U.S.-Chinese Rivalry

As the U.S.-Chinese rivalry intensifies, other countries increasingly confront the dilemma of siding with either Washington or Beijing. This is not a choice that most countries wish to make. Over the past decades, foreign capitals have enjoyed security and economic benefits from association with the United States and China. These countries know that joining a coherent political-economic bloc would mean forgoing major benefits from their ties to the other superpower.

“The vast majority of Indo-Pacific and European countries do not want to be trapped into an impossible choice,” Josep Borrell, the EU’s top diplomat, observed at a 2022 meeting of the Brussels Indo-Pacific Forum. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. noted in 2023 that his country does not “want a world that is split into two camps [and] … where countries should choose what side they would be on.” Many leaders have expressed similar sentiments, including Lawrence Wong, Singapore’s deputy prime minister, and Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud. The message to Washington and Beijing is clear: no country wants to be forced into a binary decision between the two powers.

The United States has hastened to reassure its allies that it feels the same. “We’re not asking anyone to choose between the United States and China,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said at a press conference in June. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, speaking at Singapore’s Shangri-La Dialogue, insisted that Washington doesn’t “ask people to choose or countries to choose between us and another country.” In April, John Kirby, the White House’s foreign policy spokesperson, repeated the same point: “We’re not asking countries to choose between the United States and China, or the West and China.”

Indeed, Washington does not insist on an all-or-nothing, us-versus-them choice from even its closest partners. Given the extensive links that all countries—including the United States—have with China, attempting to forge a coherent anti-China bloc would unlikely succeed. Even the United States would not join such an arrangement if it required ending its economic relationship with China, which would come at a tremendous cost.

But it may not be much easier for countries to sit on the fence. Regarding a host of policy areas, including technology, defense, diplomacy, and trade, Washington and Beijing are, indeed, forcing others to take sides. Countries will inevitably be caught up in superpower rivalry and must step across the line, one way or another. The U.S.-Chinese competition is an inescapable feature of today’s world, and Washington should stop pretending otherwise. Instead, it must work to make the right choices as attractive as possible.

 

Which Side Are You On?

As U.S.-Chinese competition has intensified in recent years, countries have been increasingly placed in the unenviable position of having to choose. Under former U.S. President Donald Trump, the United States pressured its allies not to let Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, build their 5G networks. Beijing naturally wished to secure the telecommunications deals, and multiple governments privately expressed concern that barring Huawei would anger China. In response, Washington played hardball. The Trump administration even went as far as to suggest to Poland that future U.S. troop deployments might be at risk if Warsaw worked with Huawei. The U.S. government warned Germany that Washington would limit intelligence sharing if Berlin welcomed Huawei; not long after, the Chinese ambassador to Germany promised retaliation against German companies if Berlin barred Huawei. Europe’s largest economy was caught between its top two trading partners. 

This dynamic continued under U.S. President Joe Biden. The administration’s 2021 CHIPS and Science Act offered some $50 billion in federal subsidies to American and foreign semiconductor manufacturers produced in the United States—but only if they refrain from any “significant transaction” to expand their chip-making capacity in China for ten years. Later that year, the Biden administration unilaterally imposed export controls on high-end semiconductors used in China for supercomputing. Initially, the Netherlands and Japan—the other leading countries exporting chip manufacturing equipment to China—did not oppose the new approach. But they were soon told to match the restrictions with their limits. By early 2023, Japan and the Netherlands had bowed to U.S. pressure and done so.

The moves and countermoves have since continued. Months after the U.S. restrictions, Beijing retaliated against the United States by barring the use of semiconductors made by Micron, a U.S. company, in key Chinese infrastructure projects. Washington promptly asked South Korea, whose chipmakers operate major “fabs”—chip manufacturing facilities—in China, not to backfill any supply gap. Beijing, in turn, restricted the export of key metals used in semiconductor manufacturing. Chinese state media condemned the Netherlands, one of the countries that use the metals, as it announced.

The zero-sum games are not limited to economic decisions. In 2021, the United States learned that China was constructing a port facility in the United Arab Emirates. The Biden administration, concerned that Beijing intended to build a military base there, pressured Abu Dhabi to stop the project. Biden reportedly warned Emirati President Mohammed bin Zayed that a Chinese military presence in the UAE would damage their countries’ partnership.

Abu Dhabi halted Chinese construction, but recently, leaked documents reported in The Washington Post indicated that work on the facility has restarted. In response, U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, who chairs the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s subcommittee on the Middle East, vowed to oppose the sale of armed drones to the UAE. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Menendez added, “Our friends in the Gulf have to decide who they want to turn to, particularly on the security questions. If it’s China, then I think that’s a huge problem.”

Countries across the Indo-Pacific face their own choices. In 2017, Washington offered South Korea the THAAD missile defense system amid increasing tensions with the North. The missiles were to be stationed on land provided by the South Korean conglomerate Lotte. Beijing warned Seoul not to accept the deployment, fearing its radar would allow the United States to track military movements inside China. Beijing insisted that it “could not understand or accept” the deployment, and China’s ambassador to Seoul warned that allowing the installation of THAAD could destroy bilateral relations. Seoul went through with the THAAD deployment, and, sure enough, Beijing retaliated. Chinese tour groups were banned from traveling to South Korea, Lotte stores in China were closed, South Korean entertainers were denied visas, and South Korean dramas were removed from China’s Internet. Some of the coercive economic measures remain in place today, but so does the missile defense system.

Again and again, governments have been forced to make choices that involved real costs and which they would have preferred had they had the option to avoid. The number of unavoidable dilemmas will only rise as the U.S.-Chinese rivalry intensifies.

The worst dilemmas will likely revolve around the effort to separate and safeguard technology supply chains. The Biden administration has signaled its desire to outstrip China in developing and producing semiconductors, quantum computing, artificial intelligence, biotechnology, biomanufacturing, and clean energy technologies. To do so, Washington must build domestic capacity in each area, limiting China’s ability to race ahead. Countries with niche capabilities will be caught between Beijing, which wants these technologies, and Washington, which intends to minimize Chinese access.

A similar zero-sum arithmetic will apply to Beijing’s moves to increase its international military presence beyond just the UAE. China already has a military base in Djibouti and an installation in Cambodia. It has reportedly pursued additional facilities in Equatorial Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, and elsewhere. As it did in the UAE, Washington will oppose China’s aims and pressure third countries to refuse Chinese construction and deployments. This tug of war will be particularly acute in the Pacific Islands, where expanded Chinese military power could constrain U.S. naval freedom of action. Already, Washington and Beijing are competing for the loyalties of Pacific Island states. However, the contest in countries like the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Papua New Guinea has thus far produced a bidding war rather than a series of forced choices.

 

Better With Or Without The U.S.?

The United States should make it easy for countries to support it on the issues that matter most. Washington should begin by providing realistic alternatives to what China has to offer. U.S. threats to cut countries off from intelligence sharing if they used Huawei—which supplied an all-in-one 5G network at a lower cost than anything the West could provide—were ineffective. However, when Washington worked with allies to provide meaningful alternatives, countries began to reconsider—especially as China became more belligerent. Efforts to diversify away from Chinese supplies in areas including rare earth minerals, solar panels, and certain chemicals will be feasible only if countries have other sources available at a reasonable cost. The United States cannot provide substitutes for everything that China makes and does; in most cases, it need not do so. Instead, Washington should identify the areas with the most significant national security risks and work quickly with partners to develop alternatives.

The United States should also seek, as far as possible, to avoid asking countries to harm their economic relationships with China. Sometimes, doing so will be unavoidable, as when Washington organizes a coalition on semiconductors or leads other governments to impose human rights sanctions on Beijing. But these coalitions should be minimally invasive. The United States will win a few allies if it puts at significant risk other countries’ trade and investment with China. In winning support from friends and partners on export controls, outbound investment reviews, supply chain diversification, and technology bifurcation, less will be more.

Finally, if Washington wants countries to partner with it and stand up to Beijing, it must demonstrate a more significant presence and commitment. Countries may be willing to incur costs and risk Chinese retaliation by partnering with the United States—but only if Washington sides with them on other issues. A sense, however, that the United States will be absent, noncommittal, or incompetent when the going gets tough will tempt them to align with or acquiesce to China’s preferences. So the United States must rely on sustained diplomatic engagement, trade agreements, reiterated defense commitments, military campaigning, and extensive development aid, especially in the Indo-Pacific, to reassure those countries that doubt U.S. staying power and worry about China’s might.

Countries cannot have their cake and eat it, too. The time for choosing has arrived. Governments must decide whether to side with or appear to side with Washington or Beijing. The United States should accept this reality rather than reassure the capitals that no such choice is in the offing and help foreign capitals make the right decisions.

 

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