MESSAGE
| DATE | 2022-12-12 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] Don't play with the dangerous Chinese homicidal
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wsj.com
The Dangerous Downward Spiral of U.S.-China Relations
Susan L. Shirk
8–10 minutes
Dec. 12, 2022 10:00 am ET
How bad is the relationship between China and the U.S.? There is no need
to mince words: China and the U.S. are caught in a competitive downward
spiral that if not reversed could drastically damage the two countries
and the rest of the world.
Even if Beijing and Washington can “put a floor” under their competition
(as the Biden administration likes to put it) so that it doesn’t go
military, the hostile interactions between these two superpowers—which
constitute 40% of the world’s economy—will take a toll on innovation and
growth. Even before the onset of the Covid pandemic, global growth in
2019 was the lowest in a decade.
That’s because technology has become the focal point of strategic
competition. Fear and mutual suspicion are leading both countries to
weaponize their interdependence—once considered a solid foundation for
peace—and use it against each other. The risk that either country could
suddenly block the other’s exports or imports of crucial technologies or
materials—as both have already begun to do—is driving them to erect
walls between them and pursue nationalist self-reliance after decades of
fruitful collaboration. They are pressing other countries to join their
bloc, forcing an either-or choice that most nations wish to avoid.
Nothing about this deterioration of relations was inevitable. It is a
truism that rising powers and reigning ones end up fighting one another
as the gap between their economic and military capabilities narrows—the
so-called Thucydides Trap. Yet for decades foreign-policy makers in
China and the U.S. proved this theory wrong; the two countries got along
remarkably well despite China’s growing might and their very different
political systems.
But for the past six years—four under President Trump and two under
President Biden—neither side has invested any serious effort in
resolving their differences through diplomacy. There has been no
progress at the international level—no joint efforts on common threats
like climate change, public health or the North Korean nuclear threat—to
build confidence between the two societies. Their mutual alienation has
been exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, which cut off travel between
Beijing and Washington and kept President Xi Jinping isolated in
Beijing. As a result, there was nothing to prevent Sino-U. S. relations
from being dragged down by domestic politics in both countries.
A U-turn
To start with China, after decades of collective leadership, President
Xi took a U-turn back to personalistic dictatorship.
Deng Xiaoping had blamed the costly tragedies of the Great Leap Forward
and Cultural Revolution on the “overconcentration of authority” and
“arbitrary decisions” of Mao Zedong’s strongman rule from 1949 to 1976.
After Mao died, Deng replaced Mao’s dictatorship with a system in which
power was more diffused and competition more rule-bound.
But Mr. Xi shattered intraparty rules and ignored precedents after
becoming top leader in 2012. He claimed a third term in power and
surrounded himself with loyal sycophants. He purged rivals, real and
imagined, by means of a massive anticorruption campaign that continues
to this day.
In this context, the top-down pressure on all officials to salvage their
careers by demonstrating their loyalty to the leader is intense. It
drives them to jump on the bandwagon behind Mr. Xi’s preferences in both
foreign and domestic policy as early as possible and implement them to a
more extreme degree than he may have originally intended—hence the “wolf
warrior” insults made by diplomats of every rank, intensified military
and coast guard actions in the South China Sea and against Japan and
Taiwan, and the economic arm-twisting against Australia, South Korea,
Lithuania and other countries who have dared deviate from China’s
dogmas. Forcing Muslims into thought-reform camps in Xinjiang and
crushing Hong Kong’s autonomy have made China’s image even more
threatening in the eyes of the world.
Echo chamber
Inside China no one dares tell Mr. Xi about the negative fallout of his
policies. He lives in an echo chamber of head-nodding and praise. At
this fall’s Communist Party congress, he forced into retirement the
politicians from outside his own faction who might have questioned his
judgment and replaced them with only his most trusted and compliant
comrades.
Consider that during his first decade in power, Mr. Xi abolished term
limits that had provided a regular, predictable succession of top
leadership; cracked down on internet companies and other private
businesses; refused to condemn Russia’s brutal, unprovoked war in
Ukraine; and prolonged an extreme zero-Covid approach to managing the
pandemic that he claimed demonstrated the superiority of China’s system
even as it broke the finances of local governments and generated growing
public resistance. It took the first nationwide protests against the
central government since Tiananmen for Xi’s administration to finally
get the message and abruptly pivot toward a more flexible approach.
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The costs of Mr. Xi’s “overreach” are piling up domestically as well as
internationally, pummeling its economy and damaging the country’s
reputation for competent economic management. Unemployment of college
graduates is approaching 20%, many private entrepreneurs are rushing for
the exits, and even the usually bullish international investors are
diversifying their portfolios away from China.
Given this perfect storm of self-inflicted problems, it’s no wonder that
Mr. Xi’s regime tries to protect itself by blaming American
“containment” and “hostile foreign forces.”
U.S. overreaction
As for the U.S., domestic political priorities have pushed policy makers
to overreact to the China threat. Many observers anticipated that the
Biden administration would revive diplomatic engagement of Beijing after
the confrontational approach of the Trump administration had failed to
produce any improvement in Chinese behavior. But with Beijing continuing
to act provocatively, the new president opted to put his ambitious
domestic agenda first.
Despite the Democrats’ paper-thin margin in Congress, President Biden
believed he could win bipartisan support for his expensive legislative
agenda for national self-strengthening if he made competition with China
the foil.
Such an approach may have been useful for winning close votes in
Congress, but it made it harder to make the compromises necessary to
stabilize what was becoming a dangerously adversarial relationship. For
example, the Trump administration’s tariffs against imports from China
remain in effect even though they contribute to inflation by raising
prices for American consumers and manufacturers.
The bipartisan consensus on the China threat left little space for
sensible thinking about the trade-offs between the costs and benefits of
specific policies toward China. The most obvious example is that the
visa restrictions on certain categories of Chinese students and
scholars, introduced by President Trump and retained by President Biden,
have undercut America’s own great advantage in attracting talent to its
unsurpassed research universities.
The face-to-face meeting of Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden at the margins of the
G-20 meeting in Bali in November hinted that the two leaders may now
have incentives to make greater investments in diplomacy. Mr. Xi won a
third term at the party congress, and Mr. Biden’s Democrats defied
expectations to hold on to their majority in the Senate. If the two
governments can build on the Bali meeting to start a process of
negotiated give-and-take that generates momentum toward detente, it
could restore a modicum of good will between the two societies and
counteract the domestic drag toward the bottom in U.S.-China relations.
Dr. Shirk is research professor and chair of the 21st Century China
Center at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of
“Overreach: How China Derailed its Peaceful Rise.” She can be reached at
reports-at-wsj.com.
--
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