THE PERPLEXING FUTURE OF THE U.S.-CHINA RELATIONSHIP

On Friday, June 17th, 2011 the Munk Debates took up the question of China. The question posed to the experts was:  “The 21st Century Will Belong to China”

Speaking in favor of the resolution was Niall Ferguson, Laurence A. Tisch Professor of History at Harvard and William Ziegler Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and David Daokui Li, the Director of the Center for China in the World Economy at the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management in Beijing.

Speaking against the resolution was Fareed Zakaria who is host of CNN’s international affairs program – Fareed Zakaria GPS, and the Editor-at-Large of TIME. Also speaking against the resolution was Henry Kissinger the 56th Secretary of State of the United States from 1973 to 1977.

It has become common wisdom in international politics that the most critical relationship in global affairs is that between the United States and China.  It is then a pivotal moment when one of the architects of the US-China relationship, Henry Kissinger, former national security advisor and former Secretary of State released a book on this relationship – “On China”.

This book attracted a variety of commentators on China and the US-China relationship to review and assess Kissinger and the relationship of these two great powers.  This critical relationship has become a small cottage industry for international relations, because understanding global dynamics today requires an understanding how these two great powers work alongside one another.

Many in Washington now believe that China is out to supplant the U.S. as a dominant power, and that the two powers are now engaged in a zero-sum game, much as Germany and Britain were at the beginning of the 20th Century. But Kissinger, at least, rejects that this classic German-British case is the apt expression of the US-China relationship.  Indeed as Kissinger argued in a January editorial in The Washington Post, entitled, “Avoiding a US-China cold War”,

Conflict is not inherent in a nation’s rise.  The United States in the 20th century is an example of a state achieving eminence without conflict with the then-dominant countries.  Nor was the often-cited German-British conflict inevitable.  Thoughtless and provocative policies played a role in transforming European diplomacy into a zero-sum game.

China’s rise may be more like that of the United States alongside Great Britain at the turn of the nineteenth century; a situation in which Great Britain chose to accept America’s emergence as a great power without resorting to conflict. Indeed, the two cooperate on many matters. The problem, Kissinger argued, is that China and the U.S. lack “an overarching concept for their interaction.”

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union and the United States at least understood the adversarial role the other was playing – and each played those roles predictably, as Max Frankel suggested in his review of the Kissinger book in the New York Times.  That kind of understanding helps two powers to constrain their actions and establish a certain kind of stability, tense though it may be.

China and the U.S. do not have that kind of clear understanding of one anothers’ roles.  As a realist Kissinger believes that global stability is supremely important; China and the U.S., however, both resist such cozy arrangements because each believes it is an exception to conventional international relations and history.  China’ sense of its own exceptionalism is cultural and built on the pre-eminence of China in Asia. For the United States, exceptionalism is rooted in its missionary spirit to spread American values.  Each chooses different means to affect global governance ends.

For Kissinger then, both China and the United States must reassure the each other and convince each other that neither will dominate the global system at the other’s expense.  But how?  Kissinger offers a basic formula for a twenty-first century Pacific community that avoids blocs and balance of power politics in Asia, and instead pursues a common long-term set of objectives: a more stable global economy and financial system; preventing nuclear proliferation; limiting the consequences of climate change; and sharing energy and food resources.

Other experts are sceptical. Richard Rosecrance, at  Harvard University’s Belfer Center, shares Kissinger deep knowledge of diplomacy and argues that Kissinger’s hopeful model – America’s peaceful emergence as a global power alongside Britain – was in fact the only model of peaceful transition from one great power to the next, going back to the 15th century. In his paper “Writing a Chinese-American Tragedy?” in ChinaUS Focus, Rosecrance says “China and the United States are now on crossing and perhaps conflicting paths”, because of  “China’s growing territorial claims and assumptions.... The ruling nations assert themselves against rising incumbents.  The East rises against the West.  China rises against the United States. What will be the result?”  It is a sombre assessment.

Consider also Wang Jisi, Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University and the Director of the Institute of International Strategic Studies at the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China.  In 2005 Wang wrote a significant article in Foreign Affairs (September/October, pp. 39-48) called “China’s Search for Stability with America”.  In a wide-ranging assessment Wang described a relationship fraught with the potential for friction. But he also noted the possibility for a “slow, tortuous, limited and conditional” improvement  which “could even be reversed in the case of certain provocations .” (p. 48).

Wang revisited the question in February this year, writing more somberly in ChinaUS Focus.  Recent events, he said, had “reflected some long-term trends leading to a deepening mutual distrust and geostrategic competition between the two giants.”

 

RELATED MATERIAL FOR THE WEEK OF JUNE 13

BACKGROUND

Relations between the US and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were poor – no rather non-existent – in the years following the founding of the PRC. The United States refused to formally recognize the PRC for nearly thirty years after its founding, and maintained close diplomatic relations with the PRC’s political rival – the Chinese Nationalist Party (Guomindang) – that fled to Taiwan following its defeat in the 1949 Chinese Civil War. The PRC regarded Taiwan as a breakaway province of China and insisted that the island state needed to be reunited with the mainland.  Further China regarded the US support and recognition of the government on Taiwan as interference by the United States in the domestic affairs of China.  Through the 1950s, Sino-American relations remained mired in conflict over Taiwan.  Further the US and PRC forces found themselves on opposing sides in the Korean War that broke out on 1950 and only ended after a bloody stalemate with an armistice agreement on July 27, 1953.

Sino-US relations failed to improve until 1969, when President Nixon (encouraged by National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger) initiated a rapprochement between the US and the PRC. For the US this approach was an effort in part to counterbalance the perceived Soviet threat – that had become an increasing menace to China – and to persuade China to weigh in with North Vietnam to end the conflict in the Vietnam.

On

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February 21-28 1972, President Nixon visited the People’s Republic of China. His trip marked the first time a US President had visited the PRC and was considered an important step towards normalizing Sino-US relations. At the end of Nixon’s visit, the US and the PRC issued the Shanghai Communiqué in which both nations pledged to:

  • Work towards full normalization of diplomatic relations;
  • Reduce the danger of international military conflict;
  • Refrain from negotiating agreements on behalf of any third party; and
  • Refrain from seeking hegemony in the Asia-Pacific region.

In addition, the US acknowledged the position that there is but one China and Taiwan is part of China. Though the US did not explicitly state that the PRC should regain – this acknowledgement by both sides of the “one-China policy” allowed the US and the PRC to sidestep the issue of Taiwan in order to open trade and communications

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On January 1, 1979, relations between the two countries evolved further with the issuing of a Joint Communiqué on the Establishment of Diplomatic Relationsin which the US transferred its diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing. This appears to have been something of a symbolic gesture: While the United States severed relations with the Taiwanese government, Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act to authorize de facto diplomatic relations and create conditions for maintaining economic and cultural contacts with Taiwan. The Act provided that “any effort to determine the future of Taiwan by other than peaceful means, including by boycotts or embargoes, a threat to the peace and security of the Western Pacific area and of grave concern to the United States.”  In addition the Act provided for the US to sell Taiwan arms of a defensive character and US administrations have done so including most recently the Obabam Administration.

RELATED MATERIAL

  • In his recent editorial for the Washington Post, Henry A. Kissinger discusses the future of Sino-US relations and comments that the aim for Sino-US relations should be to create a tradition of respect and cooperation in order to avoid conflict that could exhaust both countries’ societies.
  • China US Focus offers an online platform for Chinese and American thought leaders to express their views on issues that face China and the US. The website holds comprehensive resources on current and historical facts and information related to the Sino-US relationship.
  • In an exclusive interview with CNC, Henry A. Kissinger argues that China is facing a critical time in its history as it integrates into the international system.
  • Chinese President Hu Jintao was recently interviewed by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post about his views on the current state of the China-US relationship. A transcript of the written interview can be found here.
  • In this Foreign Affairs article in 2005, Wang Jisi the Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University and discusses

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the Sino-US relationship and suggests that Chinese and American interests have grown so intertwined that cooperation is the best way to serve both countries.  He expresses less hopeful views in a more recent piece at China US Focus.