Download China`s Search for Stability With America

China's Search for Stability With America
Author: Wang Jisi (School of International Studies at Peking University)
Source: Foreign Affairs (USA), September/October 2005
Summary: No country can affect China’s fortunes more directly than the United States.
Many potential flashpoints -- such as Taiwan, Japan, and North Korea -- remain, and true
friendship between Washington and Beijing is unlikely. But their interests have grown so
intertwined that cooperation is the best way to serve both countries.
AFTER 9/11
The United States is currently the only country with the capacity and the ambition to
exercise global primacy, and it will remain so for a long time to come. This means that
the United States is the country that can exert the greatest strategic pressure on China.
Although in recent years Beijing has refrained from identifying Washington as an
adversary or criticizing its "hegemonism" -- a pejorative Chinese code word for U.S.
dominance -- many Chinese still view the United States as a major threat to their nation’s
security and domestic stability.
Yet the United States is a global leader in economics, education, culture, technology, and
science. China, therefore, must maintain a close relationship with the United States if its
modernization efforts are to succeed. Indeed, a cooperative partnership with Washington
is of primary importance to Beijing, where economic prosperity and social stability are
now top concerns.
Fortunately, greater cooperation with China is also in the United States’ interests -especially since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The United States now needs China’s
help on issues such as counterterrorism, nonproliferation, the reconstruction of Iraq, and
the maintenance of stability in the Middle East. More and more, Washington has also
started to seek China’s cooperation in fields such as trade and finance, despite increased
friction over currency exchange rates, intellectual property rights, and the textile trade.
Although there is room for further improvement in the relationship, the framework of
basic stability established since September 11 should be sustainable. At least for the next
several years, Washington will not regard Beijing as its main security threat, and China
will avoid antagonizing the United States.
THE LONELY SUPERPOWER
To understand the forces that govern U.S.-Chinese relations, it helps first to understand
U.S. power and Washington’s current global strategy. Here is a Chinese view: in the long
term, the decline of U.S. primacy and the subsequent transition to a multipolar world are
inevitable; but in the short term, Washington’s power is unlikely to decline, and its
position in world affairs is unlikely to change.
Consider that the United States continues to lead other developed countries in economic
growth, technological innovation, productivity, research and development, and the ability
to cultivate human talent. Despite serious problems such as swelling trade and fiscal
deficits, illegal immigration, inadequate health care, violent crime, major income
disparities, a declining educational system, and a deeply divided electorate, the U.S.
economy is healthy: last year, U.S. GDP grew an estimated 4.4 percent, and this year the
growth rate is expected to be 3.5 percent, much greater than the corresponding figures for
the eurozone (2.0 percent and 1.6 percent). Barring an unexpected sharp economic
downturn, the size of the U.S. economy as a proportion of the global economy is likely to
increase in the years to come.
Many other indexes of U.S. "hard power" are also on the rise. The U.S. defense budget,
for example, has increased considerably in recent years. In 2004, it hit $437 billion, or
roughly half of all military spending around the world. Yet as a percentage of U.S. GDP,
the figure was lower than it was during the Cold War.
Further bolstering U.S. primacy is the fact that many of the country’s potential
competitors, such as the European Union, Russia, and Japan, face internal problems that
will make it difficult for them to overtake the United States anytime soon. For a long time
to come, the United States is likely to remain dominant, with sufficient hard power to
back up aggressive diplomatic and military policies.
From a Chinese perspective, the United States’ geopolitical superiority was strengthened
in 2001 by Washington’s victory in the Afghan war. The United States has now
established political, military, and economic footholds in Central Asia and strengthened
its military presence in Southeast Asia, in the Persian Gulf, and on the Arabian Peninsula.
These moves have been part of a global security strategy that can be understood as
having one center, two emphases. Fighting terrorism is the center. And the two emphases
are securing the Middle East and preventing the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction.
The greater Middle East, a region stretching from Kashmir to Morocco and from the Red
Sea to the Caucasus, is vital to U.S. interests. Rich in oil and natural gas, the region is
also beset by ethnic and religious conflicts and is a base for rampant international
terrorism. None of the countries in the area is politically stable, and chaos there can affect
the United States directly, as the country learned on September 11.
On the nonproliferation front, the United States’ main concerns are Iran and North Korea,
two states that are striving to develop nuclear technology and have long been antagonistic
toward Washington. In 2004, the United States carried out the largest redeployment of its
overseas forces since World War II in order to meet these challenges.
NOT INVULNERABLE
Despite its many advantages, the United States is not invincible. The war in Iraq, for
example, resulted in international isolation of a sort that Washington had not faced since
the beginning of the Cold War. The invasion was strongly condemned by people all over
the world and explicitly opposed by the great majority of nations. Washington split with
many of its traditional allies, such as Paris and Berlin, which refused to take part in the
operation. And tensions with Islamic countries, especially in the Arab world, increased
dramatically.
Since then, the extent of armed resistance to the U.S. occupation of Iraq has exceeded the
Bush administration’s expectations. Meanwhile, revelations of prisoner abuse by U.S.
personnel in Iraq and elsewhere have undermined the credibility of U.S. rhetoric on
human rights and further damaged the United States’ image in the world. U.S. "soft
power" -- the country’s ability to influence indirectly the actions of other states -- has
been weakened. The United States also faces serious competition and disagreement from
Europe, Japan, and Russia on many economic and development-related issues, and there
have been disputes on arms control, regional policies, and the role of the United Nations
and other international organizations.
Nonetheless, the points in common between these powers and the United States in terms
of ideology and strategic interests outweigh the differences. A pattern of coordination and
cooperation among the world’s major powers, institutionalized through the G-8 (the
group of leading industrialized countries), has taken shape, and no great change in this
pattern is likely in the next five to ten years. To be sure, some of the differences between
the United States and the EU, Japan, Russia, and others will deepen, and Washington will
at times face coordinated French, German, and Russian opposition, as it did during the
war in Iraq. But no lasting united front aimed at confronting Washington is likely to
emerge.
Meanwhile, many developing countries now boast higher growth rates than those found
in the industrialized world, and they have enhanced their role in global affairs by
strengthening themselves and coordinating their stances on major international issues.
Rich countries, however -- especially the United States -- still occupy dominant positions
in the UN, the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, the International Monetary
Fund, and other global institutions. Moreover, they continue to maintain the
contemporary international order and rules that serve their economic and security
interests.
All of the changes described above have provided China with new, albeit limited,
opportunities for maneuver. So long as the United States’ image remains tainted, China
will have greater leverage in multilateral settings. It would be foolhardy, however, for
Beijing to challenge directly the international order and the institutions favored by the
Western world -- and, indeed, such a challenge is unlikely.
EYE ON ASIA
There is one region where the United States is most likely to come into close contact with
China, leading to either major conflicts of interest or real cooperation (or both): in Asia
and the Pacific. Divining the direction of relations between the two countries therefore
requires a comprehensive analysis of the forces in the region. Of all the recent
developments in Asia, China’s rise is attracting the most attention at the moment. But
several other important developments are occurring simultaneously.
Thanks to a period of internal reform, Japan has recovered from the doldrums of the
1990s and is reinforcing its status as Northeast Asia’s most powerful economy.
Meanwhile, India’s economy is growing very rapidly, and New Delhi has sought
rapprochement with Islamabad and improved relations with Washington and Beijing. The
Russian economy is growing fast as well, due in large part to the surge in world energy
prices. As a result of these and other forces, most Asia-Pacific countries are growing
closer diplomatically, and economic cooperation in eastern Asia is speeding up. Two
worrisome security problems remain, however: the North Korean nuclear program and
the question of Taiwan.
Among all the nations in the region, Japan has the biggest effect on the Chinese-U.S.
relationship. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S.-Japanese security alliance has
strengthened, not weakened (as China once hoped it would). Unlike some other
traditional U.S. allies, Tokyo has sent troops to support the occupation of Iraq and given
substantive reconstruction assistance to Iraq and Afghanistan. In return, Washington has
praised Tokyo’s international role and endorsed (at least diplomatically) Japan’s bid for a
permanent seat on the UN Security Council. The prospect of conflict between the two
allies, which many in the media once predicted, seems to have disappeared from the
scene.
In sharp contrast, Tokyo’s ties to Beijing have cooled significantly. A series of recent
irritants have exacerbated a relationship already strained by Japanese Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi’s repeated visits to the Yasukuni Shrine (where Japan’s war dead,
including a number of war criminals, are commemorated). These incidents have included
the accidental intrusion of a Chinese submarine into Japanese territorial waters in
November 2004; a visit by former Taiwanese leader and independence activist Lee Tenghui to Japan in December 2004; Japan’s ongoing publication of textbooks that downplay
its World War II atrocities; and, this spring, anti-Japan demonstrations in a number of
major Chinese cities. As such cases show, the historical conflicts between China and
Japan and the mutual antagonism of their peoples can easily become political problems.
Unless the issues are handled with care, they can evolve into serious crises.
Rather than play a helpful role, the United States has pushed China and Japan further
apart. Beijing fears that the consolidation of the U.S.-Japanese alliance is coming at its
expense and that the growing closeness is motivated by the allies’ common concern about
the increase of China’s power. As the "China threat" theory gains followers in Japan,
right-wing forces there are becoming more assertive by the day and turning increasingly
toward the United States as their protector. Japan has also used the United States to
exchange military intelligence with Taiwan; indeed, Japanese right-wing forces no longer
shrink from offending Beijing by making overtures to pro-separation forces in Taipei.
Japan has also failed to respond warmly to China’s sponsorship of more institutionalized
economic cooperation in eastern Asia. As its reluctance suggests, Tokyo is wary of
Beijing’s growing role in the region and does not want to cooperate with any attempts to
create regional structures that would exclude the United States. Hard-liners in
Washington may think that the United States benefits from a souring of the ChineseJapanese relationship. In the long run, however, conflict between Beijing and Tokyo
helps no one, since it could destabilize Asia’s existing economic and security
arrangements, many of which benefit the United States.
In the field of international security, the primary focal point in Chinese-U.S. relations is
the North Korean nuclear issue. On this question, the Bush administration has little
choice but to act cautiously, relying on the six-party talks to exert pressure on Pyongyang
and using various mechanisms (such as the U.S.-sponsored Proliferation Security
Initiative) to stop North Korea from exporting nuclear materials or technology. China, in
its own way, has tried to dissuade North Korea from developing nuclear weapons but so
far has declined to support multilateral blockades or sanctions on Pyongyang. If North
Korea ever publicly, explicitly, and unmistakably demonstrates that it does possess
nuclear weapons, the policies of the United States, China, South Korea, Japan, and Russia
-- all of which favor a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula -- will have failed. The United
States might then call for much tougher actions against North Korea, which would
increase tension and narrow China’s options. The result could be new friction between
China and the United States and a serious test of their relationship.
If, on the other hand, the six-party talks are resumed, tensions between the United States
and North Korea may ease, and China’s role will then be more favorably recognized.
Should that occur, the countries involved in the process might even consider expanding
the six-party mechanism into a permanent Northeast Asian security arrangement, a
development that would serve the interests of all the countries concerned and one that
China should favor. Under the current circumstances, however, such a possibility is slim.
The more likely outcome is that tensions between Washington and Pyongyang will
persist, although without an actual war breaking out.
Meanwhile, at a time when political relations between China and the United States are
basically stable and economic and trade links are expanding, Taiwan remains a major
source of unease. War between China and the United States over Taiwan would be a
nightmare, and both sides will try hard to avoid it. Despite their differences, there is no
reason the two sides should have to resort to force to resolve the matter. Yet some people
in Taiwan, looking out for their own interests and supported by outsiders -- notably parts
of the U.S. defense establishment and certain members of the U.S. Congress -- continue
stubbornly to push for independence, ignoring the will of most Taiwanese. It is a mistake
for Americans to support such separatists. If a clash occurs, these parties will be
responsible.
China views the status of Taiwan as an internal matter. But only by coordinating its U.S.
policy with its policy toward Taiwan can Beijing curb the separatist forces on the island.
Despite U.S. displeasure at China’s passage of an antisecession law in March 2005,
policymakers in Washington have reiterated their opposition to Taiwan’s independence
and viewed favorably the spring 2005 visits by Taiwanese opposition leaders to the
mainland, which eased cross-strait relations. Nonetheless, Washington has now asked
Beijing to talk directly to Taipei’s ruling party and its leader, Chen Shui-bian. To
improve matters, Chinese and U.S. government agencies and their foreign policy think
tanks should launch a sustained and thorough dialogue on the issue and explore ways to
prevent separatist forces from making a rash move, dragging both countries toward a
confrontation neither wants.
LONG-TERM INTERESTS
The Chinese-U.S. relationship remains beset by more profound differences than any other
bilateral relationship between major powers in the world today. It is an extremely
complex and highly paradoxical unity of opposites. It is not a relationship of
confrontation and rivalry for primacy, as the U.S.-Soviet relationship was during the Cold
War, but it does contain some of the same characteristics. In its pattern of interactions, it
is a relationship between equals. But the tremendous gap between the two countries in
national power and international status and the fundamental differences between their
political systems and ideology have prevented the United States from viewing China as a
peer. China’s political, economic, social, and diplomatic influences on the United States
are far smaller than the United States’ influences on China. It is thus only natural that in
their exchanges, the United States should take the offensive role and China the defensive
one.
In terms of state-to-state affairs, China and the United States cannot hope to establish
truly friendly relations. Yet the countries should be able to build friendly ties on
nongovernmental and individual levels. Like all relations between states, the ChineseU.S. relationship is fundamentally based on interests. But it also involves more intense,
love-hate feelings than do the majority of state-to-state ties. The positive and negative
factors in the links between China and the United States are closely interwoven and often
run into one another.
As this complex dynamic suggests, trying to view the Chinese-U.S. relationship in
traditional zero-sum terms is a mistake and will not guide policy well; indeed, such a
simplistic view may threaten both countries’ national interests. Black-and-white analyses
inevitably fail to capture the nuances of the situation. If, for instance, the United States
really aimed to hamper China’s economic modernization -- as the University of
Chicago’s John Mearsheimer has argued should be done -- China would not be the only
one to suffer. Many U.S. enterprises in China would lose the returns on their investments,
and the American people would no longer be able to buy inexpensive high-quality
Chinese products. On the other hand, although Americans’ motives for developing
economic and trade ties with China may be to help themselves, these ties have also
helped China, spurring its economic prosperity and technological advancement.
This prosperity and advancement will naturally strengthen China’s military power -something that worries the United States. Indeed, this issue represents a paradox at the
heart of Washington’s long-term strategy toward Beijing. Unless China’s economy
collapses, its defense spending will continue to rise. Washington should recognize,
however, that the important question is not how much China spends on its national
defense but where it aims its military machine, which is still only a fraction of the size of
the United States’ own forces. The best way to reduce tensions is through candid and
comprehensive strategic conversations; for this reason, military-to-military exchanges
should be resumed.
China faces a similar paradox: only a U.S. economic decline would reduce Washington’s
strength (including its military muscle) and ease the strategic pressure on Beijing. Such a
slide, however, would also harm China’s economy. In addition, the increased U.S. sense
of insecurity that might result could have other consequences that would not necessarily
benefit China. If, for example, Washington’s influence in the Middle East diminished,
this could lead to instability there that might threaten China’s oil supplies. Similarly,
increased religious fundamentalism and terrorism in Central and South Asia could
threaten China’s own security, especially along its western borders, where ethnic
relations have become tense and separatist tendencies remain a danger.
The potential Chinese-U.S. conflict over energy supplies can be seen in a similar light.
Each country should be sensitive to the other’s energy needs and security interests
worldwide. China is currently purchasing oil from countries such as Venezuela and
Sudan, whose relations with the United States are far from amicable. Washington,
meanwhile, is now thought to be eying Central Asian oil fields near China’s border. Both
Beijing and Washington should try to make sure that the other side understands its
intentions and should explore ways to cooperate on energy issues through joint projects,
such as building nuclear power plants in China.
History has already proved that the United States is not China’s permanent enemy. Nor
does China want the United States to see it as a foe. Deng Xiaoping’s prediction that
"things will be all right when Sino-U.S. relations eventually improve" was a cool
judgment based on China’s long-term interests. To be sure, aspirations cannot replace
reality. The improvement of Chinese-U.S. relations will be slow, tortuous, limited, and
conditional, and could even be reversed in the case of certain provocations (such as a
Taiwanese declaration of independence). It is precisely for this reason that the thorny
problems in the bilateral relationship must be handled delicately, and a stable new
framework established to prevent troubles from disrupting an international environment
favorable for building prosperous societies. China’s leadership is set on achieving such
prosperity by the middle of the twenty-first century; with Washington’s cooperation,
there is little to stand in its way.