In 2012, China will undergo a leadership transition and the United States will be at the height of a presidential election—a situation that could amplify tensions between the two powers.
In a video Q&A, Michael D. Swaine, author of the new book America’s Challenge, looks at the contentious points in the U.S.-China relationship—including Taiwan, the South China Sea, and North Korea. He argues that Washington shouldn’t alter its general strategy, but needs to rethink some approaches in order to enhance engagement and minimize the chance that the United States and China will be drawn into an increasingly confrontational competition for strategic primacy in the Asia-Pacific region.
- How important is the relationship between the United States and China?
- Is there a growing rivalry?
- Does Washington need to change its strategy toward China?
- Will Washington need to rethink its policy on Taiwan?
- How effectively has the United States handled territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas?
- Can Washington and Beijing better cooperate on North Korea?
- What impact will China’s upcoming leadership transition have on the country?
How important is the relationship between the United States and China?
The U.S.-China relationship is really critical to both countries. It’s probably the most difficult and, in many ways, the most important strategic bilateral relationship that the United States has right now, given the combination of China’s rapid growth, its acquisition of increasingly significant military capabilities, its growing global economic presence, its growing involvement in a whole range of multilateral organizations, its production—along with the United States—of greenhouse gases and other elements that contribute to global pollution and global warming, its sheer size and scope, and of course the fact that it’s not a democratic country.
There’s a long history of ups and downs in U.S.-China relations. The two countries have fought one another and have been “strategic partners,” as it was described for a brief period of time before that term fell out of use.
It’s a complex relationship and one that’s increasingly important. The United States really has to get it right to address a whole range of issues of relevance to the United States—not just internationally, but domestically as well.
Is there a growing rivalry?
China is now acquiring capabilities that conceivably can check or call into doubt, if not neutralize, some of the historic U.S. capabilities. It is doing this for logical national security reasons of its own—not because it’s preparing to attack the United States or preparing to take over the Pacific and become the dominant power in the Pacific necessarily, but because it wants to reduce its vulnerability to potential efforts to possibly contain or control or prevent Chinese access to key resources and to prevent the separation of Taiwan permanently from China. The Taiwan issue is what really gave impetus toward their military modernization, even though they needed to modernize in general because they had a very backward military.
In any event, the Chinese effort to reduce vulnerability and the U.S. effort to maintain predominance in the Western Pacific for historical reasons and what it views as essential geostrategic reasons are running up against each other. And the question really becomes how the two countries will manage the strategic shift that is occurring in the Western Pacific.
I want to emphasize: this is a problem that’s essentially about the Western Pacific. It is not a problem about the Chinese creating a global military force that will be able to intervene across the world to support Chinese interests in the Middle East, in Africa, or in the Americas. It is highly unlikely that the Chinese will acquire either the capability or the desire to conduct such military actions.
Does Washington need to change its strategy toward China?
From a very basic perspective, I don’t think Washington can really alter what has been its strategy since the normalization of relations between the United States and China back in 1979, or the diplomatic relations established at that time. This is based on a combination of efforts to seek greater cooperation with China and to have China become a more significant and supportive member of the international system as it becomes more involved beyond its borders in a variety of ways. The United States is encouraging that effort and working with the Chinese to play a positive role throughout the world in a variety of areas. But on the other hand, the strategy is based on maintaining the capability to shape, deter, and, if necessary, defeat Chinese ambitions if they were to become a threat to U.S. interests.
Here primarily the biggest concern has been about Taiwan and the desire to deter Chinese use of force or coercion against Taiwan. That is clearly not in U.S. interests or from the U.S. perspective, not in the interest of the region. So you’ve got this balance between cooperative engagement on the one side and shaping deterrence on the other—which some people call hedging against uncertainty—toward a possibility of a much more negative relationship with the Chinese.
Given the uncertainties over China’s trajectory, that China is not a democratic state, and that you have a lot of strategic distrust between U.S. and Chinese peoples and leaders—despite their desire for cooperation—you really have this continued two-sided approach to dealing with China. It’s not really a strategy per se; it’s an approach or sort of the tools of strategy. Now, that said, the United States needs to reassess some of its approaches and policies that could enhance the engagement and cooperation side, and minimize or lower the chances that the hedging or deterrence side would come into play over time.
Some people think the best way to do this is just simply to draw a line in the sand; build a strong U.S. military; counter every move the Chinese might possibly want to make militarily beyond their borders; neutralize any capability by the Chinese to deploy any forces that would question the U.S. predominance; and just make it clear to the Chinese that the United States will remain unambiguously dominant.
This is an unrealistic strategy, or let me rephrase that: I think this kind of assumption needs to be reassessed. First, I’m not sure this is the most effective approach in dealing with the Chinese and trying to get where the United States wants to go, which is to have a genuinely sustained cooperative relationship with the Chinese.
Secondly, I’m not sure that the United States is capable, over the long term, of maintaining that kind of predominance if China continues to grow at the rate it is experiencing right now. And there’s a big debate about whether or not China will continue to grow as fast as it has been over the last twenty years. But if the United States is not able to maintain its growth and its commitment of resources to the region, it would be questionable whether or not it can indeed sustain its predominance. So this is problematic.
And as time passes, there needs to be more attention given to alternative ways of structuring security in the region—or at least additional ways that go beyond the standard hub-and-spoke system of the U.S. alliance-based system with key allies in the region, a forward military presence, and all that entails. In the context of China’s rising emergence, I think there needs to be a greater effort to try to engage with China.
And China needs to do this as well, in a range of multilateral interactions that include the Chinese, including ones that have regional security dimensions to them. This is not necessarily what you call hard security—at least to begin with—but the idea of moving in that direction to get the militaries interacting more with one another and to have more contact not just between the United States and China but also with other Asian militaries, about the future of the region and what’s necessary to avoid rivalry over time. That really needs to be examined more closely. And I think the United States needs to make some hard decisions about what it’s willing to do on these different fronts.
Will Washington need to rethink its policy on Taiwan?
I’m not as certain as many people seem to be that the situation regarding Taiwan will remain as generally benign and stable as it appears to be today. If we see China continuing to grow at double-digit rates; if we see China continuing to apply its resources to acquiring much greater military capabilities to deal with the Taiwan situation or contingency; it is unclear to me whether China will continue to accept continued significant U.S. arms sales to Taiwan in response to China’s military buildup without seeking to place greater coercive pressure on the United States and possibly on Taiwan. This could indeed produce crises between the United States and China over time.
I take China’s perspective on Taiwan and its commitment to resolving this issue in its favor as something that is a very serious national security objective for the Chinese. It’s not necessarily one we need to accept as the Chinese define it, but I’m not sure it can be managed successfully with the standard kind of approach that the United States has taken in the past, which is “we don’t get involved in cross-strait dialogues between Taipei and Beijing, we just sell arms through an independent autonomous assessment of what we think Taiwan might need, we don’t talk to the Chinese about it, we don’t interact with them about it.”
I think over time this kind of a strategy could become increasingly difficult to manage, in terms of managing its impact on U.S.-China relations. In my view it calls for a consideration of how the United States and China might be able to engage in some kind of dialogue to understand, assess, or establish some sort of quid pro quo involving military deployments and arms sales, in consultation with the Taiwan government on the U.S. side. But it would require very different thinking on the part of U.S. officials from what exists today. Because the current U.S. position basically is, “It’s not broken, don’t fix it.” We just keep selling arms to Taiwan if the Chinese keep developing, and to me, if trends continue, that is a recipe for problems.
How effectively has the United States handled territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas?
The United States has a mixed record in this regard. On the positive side, the United States has made it clear that it is concerned about the peaceful resolution of these territorial disputes, whether they are in the East China Sea between China and Japan, in the South China Sea involving many Southeast Asian countries and China, or in other parts of the region.
The United States, as a major regional player and predominant maritime power, is concerned with freedom of the seas and the peaceful resolution of conflicts and has weighed in on this in a significant way. It is important for all the countries in the region to see this as it’s important to reassure allies and caution those who would seek to resort to coercion—or worse—to resolve some of these issues. Now, that said, I think the United States has unintentionally communicated the message to the Chinese and perhaps to other countries as well that it appears to be taking sides in this effort. It appears to be coming down on the side of the Southeast Asian countries, the members of ASEAN that have disputes with China on territorial issues, and to some degree it’s seen as coming down on the side of the Japanese in its quarrel with China over territorial disputes.
As I said, this is unintentional. I don’t think there’s a clear desire to draw a line in the sand and tell the Chinese that the United States is on the side of these other countries in its disputes, but the Chinese have by and large drawn that conclusion. They see this as part, therefore, of a larger strategic calculation that the United States has made to use these disputes as a way of increasing the U.S. presence, leverage, and support for the U.S. position in the Western Pacific. And that, of course, is not something that the Chinese look on very favorably. They want to see a more even-handed, neutral position on the part of the United States—which the United States professes to have—but its actions have not conveyed that in the view of the Chinese.
Can Washington and Beijing better cooperate on North Korea?
Over time, analysts are discovering that the Americans and the Chinese certainly have a common commitment to avoiding conflict and instability on the Korean peninsula in making the peninsula a nuclear-free area and keeping the export of nuclear weapons or technology from the peninsula. The goals there are quite similar. However, there is a significant difference between the two countries in their perception of how you get to those endpoints and what kind of strategy is most useful. And in that regard, this issue of strategic distrust, particularly on the Chinese side, exists.
The Chinese have a strong suspicion that, from the U.S. point of view, the best solution is to overthrow the regime in North Korea—regime change, in other words—and that would eliminate the problem. The Chinese have clearly indicated that they don’t want that. This is not to say they are in support of the North Korean government and whatever it does, or that they are in support of the North Korean regime infinitely into the future. They are not necessarily. But it does suggest that they are very hesitant to join in efforts that focus all the other players involved in this issue against North Korea. They want to keep the door open to North Korea, they want to keep North Korea as a viable regime, and they want to work peacefully through the problems, without North Korea or the United States provoking greater confrontation. How to do that and what role they should play can differ significantly between the United States and China. And it has and will continue to. I don’t see a major change in the way the Chinese behave toward North Korea or a change in U.S. policy toward North Korea—certainly in the near term.
North Korea’s going through a critical succession process now and the Chinese are looking at the long term. They’re looking for a post-Kim regime. They are hoping that there will be other elements in North Korea that could emerge and be more moderate in some ways and more receptive to the kind of reform policies China has undertaken, and therefore could peacefully evolve to a position of greater stability for the region.
So China does not want to resort to efforts that could derail that possibility. And the United States is not necessarily as long term in that point of view. It looks toward addressing the question of denuclearization and really making sure that the North Korean regime stops undertaking highly provocative actions against South Korea. That dynamic is going to continue.
What impact will China’s upcoming leadership transition have on the country?
I don’t think it’s known at this point, in all honesty, what the new leadership in China is going to do that will be different from what it has done in the past. The apparent successors to the current leadership— at the top, Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang—can be viewed in many ways as a kind of cipher in terms of foreign policy and their preferences and what they would or would not support. There’s going to be a big turnover in the party leadership at the party congress next year—something like 70 percent or more of leadership positions will turn over—and many leaders at the higher levels are retiring.
There’s a whole new crop of individuals coming in. We cannot really say what their views are at this point. However, there are certain trends that appear to be underway that one should keep an eye on. One of them is the level and degree of economic reform in China. Many analysts believe China is entering a threshold or watershed point—that it’s going to have to engage in much deeper levels of reform, particularly financial reform, to achieve adequate growth rates and that will retain the prospect of domestic and social stability and order. And they’ll have to make some changes in other policies—including on internal migration, residence certificates, that sort of thing. If they don’t, they could end up really losing a lot of their growth rate and have a lot of problems as a result.
How the new leadership responds to these challenges, and they certainly are challenges, will be one very strong bellwether. A second will be how they deal with domestic dissent. China’s communications revolution has been very significant over the last twenty years. The ability for them to communicate with the outside world, using advanced technologies of various types, has come up against the desire of the government to control that information flow and those elements of the flow that might threaten the government.
And yet, what we’ve seen on the outside now, with the Arab Spring and recent developments, is that these technologies are being used to generate and strengthen social movements in those societies. The Chinese government certainly does not want that to happen, so it has a major challenge. It’s responded to that, by and large, by enacting repressive policies: constraining policies on the technology side to try and filter out these kinds of capabilities of interacting with and engaging in enhanced levels of domestic repression against individuals and groups that might want to act more autonomously, either through these technologies or independently. And this is a very worrisome development.
The Chinese government seems to have drawn a conclusion that to avoid what has been happening in the Middle East—which it sees to a great extent as destabilizing and as creating chaos—is to avoid that kind of rupture in the social fabric and the abrupt shifts in political and social relations. It wants to nip any movements in the bud. It wants to go after any possible basis of a protest or a criticism very early on. The lesson it seems to have drawn is that if you don’t do that, and do that effectively, then you’re in trouble.
Now the Chinese, of course, have a very strong thing going for them, and that is their growth and their economy. They are not in the same socioeconomic situation as Tunisia, Egypt, or Libya. They are much better off, at least than Egypt and Libya. And so they still have a lot of popular support in a variety of areas. And they play very much to the fear of chaos that exists in China given its historical legacy in the modern period.
