I received a group of American specialists on China in late October and compared notes with them on such topics as how to position current China-U.S. relations, why things have become like this and how to ensure that relations develop in a steady and orderly manner. Through the discussion, I found three practical problems facing the bilateral relationship:
First is strategic positioning. David Lampton has identified competition as a major feature of the current relationship. Competition includes fair competition that follows set rules, and unfair competition that doesn’t — or even sabotages the rules. China and the U.S. should strive to engage in fair and orderly competition. I agree with him on this point. Competition is both a universal phenomenon in nature and normal in human societies. Benign competition is conducive to social progress and, when it comes to international relations, in the best interest of the international community. However, defining China-U.S. relations as competitive, even strategically competitive, in no way serves bilateral ties or the common interests of the international community.
From the perspective of international relations theories, the U.S. takes the seeking of relative benefits, rather than absolute benefits, as its main goal. This means that even cooperation may bring benefits to both parties, but if it benefits China more than it does the U.S., it would relatively enhance Chinese strength and would thus be unacceptable in the eyes of the United States. Such a notion obviously will greatly limit the room for bilateral cooperation.
From a practical perspective, by taking China as its main strategic competitor and “outcompeting” it as a strategic goal, the U.S. frames China-U.S. relations as a zero-sum game in which there has to be a winner and loser. This strategic positioning of China and China-U.S. relations is not conducive to responding to global issues or building basic mutual trust; thus, it won’t have a positive impact on the steady development of bilateral ties.
Second is the definition of core interests. Preserving core interests is a country’s inherent mission and a precondition for a regime to retain legitimacy. A main reason for the troubles in China-U.S. relations is that the U.S. continually challenges China’s core interests, which China has clearly defined. They mainly encompass sovereignty, security and development interests. In fact, the U.S. is fully aware of China’s core interests. From this angle, U.S. interference is a naked manifestation of hegemony and power politics.
But what are core interests of the United States? According to the U.S. National Security Strategy, such interests may be summed up in two layers: Domestically, the interest is preserving the security and prosperity of U.S. territories; internationally, it is promoting U.S. values and preserving the U.S.-led international order. The domestic aspect is clearly defined, but the international part is full of uncertainty. In other words, the U.S. may expand the scope of its core interests in any manner it deems appropriate.
Robert Daly, for one, believes the most important core interest of the U.S. is to preserve the order under U.S. hegemony — that is, the so-called rules-based order. He also has said that the U.S. hopes China will contribute to the stability of the existing international order, but it doesn’t want to see China gaining a greater say in such an international order. The first Trump administration defined China as “revisionist,” a term the Biden administration also accepted. In his Oct. 30 speech titled “American Policy for a New Era” at the Foreign Service Institute, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explicitly defined China as a “revisionist power.”
In these narratives, the main Chinese threat is not to the security and prosperity of the U.S. homeland but to the U.S.-led international order. Such an expansive definition of core interests obviously runs counter to global trends, as the rise of the Global South is a revolt against the unjust, unreasonable international order under U.S. dominance.
Third is confidence-building. Trust is an important foundation for promoting the steady development of major-country relations, but trust can’t be built without bilateral communication and exchanges at all levels. President Xi Jinping has said that the hope of China-U.S. relations lies in their people, that the foundation of the relationship lies beyond the government, that the future of the relations lies in the youth and that its vitality lies at the grassroots. This shows the Chinese side’s positive and open attitude toward bilateral communication and exchanges. Yet by limiting the number of Chinese students in the United States and the educational disciplines they can access — and even finding fault with Chinese visitors at ports of entry — the U.S. side has gone out of its way to disrupt normal bilateral exchanges. This has already had an obvious chilling effect.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has gone to great lengths to shape domestic public opinion in a way that is extremely unfriendly to China. According to a Pew survey released in May, 81 percent of American respondents held a negative view of China. In March, a Gallup poll found that 41 percent of American respondents saw China as a major enemy. Such a poison political atmosphere and public opinion environment are obviously not conducive to promoting exchanges between Chinese and American societies, let alone resolving the trust deficit between the two countries. Both countries should make new efforts to change the wintry status quo of bilateral exchanges. Changes in the U.S. government’s policies will be particularly important.
The three conundrums facing China-U.S. relations have to do with such structural factors as the increasingly narrow gap in national strength and their drastically different social systems and values. It won’t be easy to solve such problems, but this is no excuse for inaction. Efforts could be made in the following areas:
• Both sides should have the political will to improve relations. President Xi said good China-U.S. relations benefit not only the people of the two countries but also the world at large. We have a thousand reasons to preserve relations but none to ruin them. This fully demonstrates the Chinese side’s sincerity for developing the relationship. The U.S. side should clarify its attitude correspondingly.
• Efforts need to be made to cultivate room for cooperation and rationally manage differences and contradictions. It is normal for China and the U.S. to have differences and contradictions, but they should not be amplified or lifted into the mainstream of bilateral ties. The two sides should seek common ground and shelve their differences; begin cooperating where they can and should; strive to open new spaces for cooperation, while managing their differences well and building effective, institutionalized crisis-prevention and control mechanisms, especially for potential military crises.
• Efforts need to be made to clear the way for people-to-people exchanges. This would increase mutual understanding in both societies and gradually recalibrate mutual perceptions. Ill feelings between the two peoples will only tend to harden poor state-to-state relations. Historically, the tortuous process normalizing China-U.S. relations had a lot to do with the mutual ill feelings between the two peoples.
Donald Trump has just won the 2024 presidential election, which is a worry. People-to-people exchanges between China and the U.S. suffered during his first term. The 2024 Republican Party Platform openly proposes to “keep foreign Christian-hating Communists, Marxists, and Socialists out of America.” During Trump’s second presidency, people-to-people exchanges may encounter greater storms.
