China Doesn’t Want to Compete. It Wants to Win.
A recent flurry of diplomatic talks shouldnt be taken to mean that Beijing is looking for compromise with Washington. A parade of senior American policy makers is traveling to Beijing on diplomatic missions to mend tattered relations between the United States and China. The U.S. climate envoy John Kerry is expected in Beijing on Sunday, a week after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen was in town. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited a month ago. After nearly a year of strained communication, the flurry of diplomacy is good news: If the two governments are speaking with each other, perhaps they wont shoot at each other. Or at least thats the idea. The improved dialogue is President Joe Bidens attempt to demonstrate the possibility of a middle path between conflict and appeasement in contending with China. He believes that the U.S. can and should compete with China while setting in place guardrails that will prevent competition from veering into confrontation. The two countries might even find opportunities to cooperate on pressing global concerns, such as climate change. Chinas leader Xi Jinping appears amenable, at least for the moment. In fact, Xis government was so eager to paint Yellens visit in a positive light that it laid things on a bit thick. Referring to a rainbow that appeared over Beijing upon Yellens arrival, Premier Li Qiang told Yellen that the U.S. and China can see more rainbows after a period of wind and rain. With the Chinese economy staggering badly, and the U.S. and its allies moving to de-risk, or reduce their reliance on China, Xi and his team seem to be in the mood to chat, charm, and change minds. But these efforts should not be taken to mean that Xi accepts Bidens two-track template for their relationship. Rather, Xi seems to believe the very opposite: that gentlemanly competition is not viable, and that Washington must either capitulate to Beijings wishes or prepare to slug things out. How Xi ultimately responds to Biden could make the difference between a Cold Warstyle era of great-power competitionwhich would be bad enoughand a hot shooting war that would be catastrophic for everybody. Read: China and the West are coming apart. Can Chinas economy continue to rise? American foreign-policy makers too often assume that they are in the drivers seat in U.S. relations with other nations, and that the policies of other governments are, to a great degree, a reaction to Washingtons. Obviously, any countrys foreign policy does in part respond to othersChinas included. But national leaders also have their own agendas and goals that have little or nothing to do with specific decisions made and actions taken in Washington. Xi Jinping most certainly has an agenda of his own, and he has made no secret of it. Since taking power more than a decade ago, he has stated his goal of achieving the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation, which means the resurrection of Chinas greatness on the world stage. Getting there entails reunification, as the Communists call it, with Taiwan to make the nation whole, based on Beijings definition of its rightful borders. Xi has pledged to build China a world-class military to give heft to his foreign-policy aims. His government has also declared its plans to leverage state support to dominate emerging technologies, including electric vehicles and artificial intelligence. More recently, Xi has outlined his vision for a new world order that would strip international affairs of liberal values and elevate the legitimacy of authoritarian governments instead. Throughout his tenure, Xi has pursued these goals with determination and scant regard for Washingtons opinion. He has routinely ignored Washingtons objections, voiced since the Obama administration, to his effort to lay claim to nearly all of the South China Sea, including by building military installations on man-made islands. Washington has further made clear that it views Xis industrial policies, which funnel large amounts of state financial support to high-tech sectors, unfair and threatening to American companies. But Xi just keeps spending. More recently, Xi has brushed off U.S. concerns about his support for Russian President Vladimir Putin and has continued to deepen ties with Moscow. Xi has signaled that he has no intention of changing his policies in order to improve relations with the United States. Rather, Beijings consistent position has been that Washington is entirely to blame for rising tensions, and so repairing them is entirely Americas responsibility. If the United States does not hit the brake but continues to speed down the wrong path, Qin Gang, Chinas foreign minister, said in March, there will surely be conflict and confrontation. Read: The world according to Xi Jinping After Blinkens visit last month, Xinhua, Chinas official news agency, published an editorial that suggested three R words that Washington should remember: rationality, responsibility and results. It went on to claim that the root cause for the downward spiral of China-U.S. relations is Washingtons misperceptions toward China, which have led to misguided China policies. Even under the rainbow of Yellens meetings, Beijing continues to press Washington for concessions while offering none in return. After Yellens departure, Chinas finance ministry issued a statement saying that Beijing requires the United States to cease the suppression of Chinese enterprises and take concrete steps to respond to Chinas major concerns in economic relations in order to improve ties. Only three days before Yellen arrived, Xis government announced its own export controls on two key metals used in electronics manufacturinghardly an olive branch. What Xi really wants is freedom of action, unfettered by American power, rules, or criticism. Many of his policies are designed to eliminate Chinas vulnerabilities to American punitive action. His military buildup has been designed specifically to counter the way that American armed forces project power. Xis drive for economic self-sufficiency, especially in crucial technologies such as semiconductors, is meant to protect China from Washingtons sanctions. When Xi told Blinken that major-country competition does not represent the trend of the times in their June meeting, according to the Chinese summary of the talk, he might have meant that he desires peaceful relations with the United States, but he could just as easily have been saying he doesnt think he should have to contend with the United States as an impediment to his volition. Beijing and Washington simply do not perceive competition the same way. Washington has repeatedly attempted to portray measures such as curbs on the export of certain chip technology to China, imposed last year, as targeted efforts to defend American national security that are not meant to derail Chinese development. But in Beijing, these steps are seen as no more than a global superpower exploiting its economic leverage to sustain its dominance. Qin Gang once said that Bidens so-called competition means to contain and suppress China in all respects. Xi could possibly show greater flexibility in closed-door negotiations than he has in public. Much of Chinas rhetoric is aimed at a domestic audience to make Xi look like a determined defender of Chinas national interests. Yet Xi has called Chinas rise an inevitability, and he could assume that the United States (and everybody else) will eventually have to concede to China, whether they like it or not. Beijings attitude raises doubts about how much can actually be achieved through dialogue, or even a softer China policy of the sort many American commentators have urged. Writing recently about tensions over Taiwan, Michael Swaine, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, rightfully worried about the tit-for-tat dynamic that has come to define U.S and Chinese interactions, whereby each side doubles down on what it sees as deterrence signals that in fact only serve to provoke further such signals. He recommended that both countries take steps to defuse a possible crisis, including Washington showing its sincerity by reducing its naval transits in the sensitive Taiwan Strait. The former AIG chair Maurice Greenberg, representing a group of concerned American business leaders and policy makers, argued last year that the U.S. should build on the positive benefits of the two countries economic relationship to create a more constructive dialogue: It is in our national interest, now more than ever, to do all we can to improve U.S.-China relations, he wrote . But whether such approaches would actually benefit bilateral relations ultimately depends on Xis willingness to respond in kind. So far, the Chinese leader has displayed little interest in changing his policies to accommodate Washington. There is a good chance that his current engagement with the Biden administration is little more than a fishing expedition to see what favors he might be able to extract with a few smiles and handshakes but without altering his agenda. The more consistent signals from Xi suggest that the only way to get along with China is to give in to China. That doesnt mean dialogue is pointless. If (or, more probably, when) a crisis erupts, an open channel of communication could help avert disaster. But more than likely, no pot of gold awaits at the end of the rainbow.