In Search of a Middle Road on U.S. Policy Toward China

Even before revelations of alleged Chinese spying at a U.S. nuclear-weapons center, Washington’s China policy was in need of urgent reexamination. The Clinton administration’s policy of “engagement” and “strategic partnership” was under attack by critics of all political stripes. The major catalysts for the spate of negative reviews were Beijing’s recent crackdown on pro-democracy dissidents; the administration’s policy of allowing China to buy U.S.-made supercomputers and communications satellites whose technologies have possible military applications; and last December’s confidential findings of a committee, chaired by Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), documenting China’s systematic effort over the past two decades to illegally obtain militarily sensitive U.S. high-technology secrets.

The administration’s policy of engaging China may be in shambles, but the containment strategy offered by its many critics isn’t much better. Against the backdrop of next year’s elections, it is tempting to score political points by advocating such dramatic measures as shutting off trade to punish China for its human-rights policy or for its espionage activities. This approach, however, would not be in America’s long-term interests. Rather, the United States needs a patient, moderate China policy based on a realistic understanding of the causes of tension in the Sino-American relationship and what Washington can--and cannot--do to influence the relationship’s course. The administration needs to find a middle ground between the policy poles of engagement and containment.

The fundamental cause of friction between the two countries is China’s looming emergence as a great power. The Clinton policy of engaging China, by enmeshing it in the global economy and in multilateral institutional frameworks, holds that Beijing’s rise to great-power status can be managed and that China can be induced to behave “responsibly” in international politics. The containment policy advocated by some critics, on the other hand, views China as an imminent threat to U.S. security interests. Accordingly, U.S. military power should be used to rein in China’s ambitions and compel Beijing to adhere to Washington’s rules of the game.

China’s ascendance is driven by its phenomenal economic growth since the early 1980s. Its economic success has important geopolitical implications, because international politics is competitive, and states must ensure their survival and security. As such, China has strong defensive, and offensive, incentives to convert its economic potential into tangible military power.

The defensive side of China’s behavior is a reaction to the reality that the United States is the only great power. It is an ironclad rule in international politics that when one state becomes too powerful, others will seek to counterbalance its hegemony out of fear for their security. Historically speaking, there is nothing unusual about China’s desire to constitute itself as a counterweight to U.S. power.

Over the longer term, however, if China successfully establishes itself as a great power, it almost certainly will try to expand its political influence. It will seek a role in managing the international system to reflect its new status. Again, historically, there is nothing unusual about these aspirations.

Indeed, great-power rivalry is the norm in international politics. But if rivalry is certain, war is not. Whether the United States and China find themselves on the brink of war someday will be determined as much by Washington’s policies as Beijing’s. If Washington prematurely resorts to containment, it could create a self-fulfilling prophecy of Sino-American tension and hostility. The pre-1914 Anglo-German relationship is a stark reminder of what can happen when a dominant state refuses to accord a rising power the prestige and status to which its newfound power entitles it: The resulting feelings of “status inconsistency” fuel frustration and cause the rising power to lash out. Without prudent accommodation, the odds of a violent confrontation rise appreciably.

Against the backdrop of China’s great-power emergence, the immediate focus of policy debate is trade, and both engagers and containers have gotten it wrong. A trade-oriented engagement policy will neither constrain China to behave responsibly nor induce it to change domestically. At the same time, a no-holds-barred free-trade policy only accelerates the pace of China’s great-power emergence: The more China is linked to the global economy, the more rapidly its economic power grows. Yet, because the U.S. cannot stop China from becoming a great power, it would be pointless to shrink economic relations with China drastically.

But the United States should reconfigure its policy so that trade with China is driven by strategic, rather than purely market, considerations. It should aim to reduce China’s export surplus to deprive Beijing of the hard-currency reserves it needs to import militarily significant high technology. Washington should also be much more stringent in regulating the outflow of advanced technology to China in the form of licensing, offset and joint-venture agreements, or through commercial sales of supercomputers and satellites. Can the U.S. prevent China from reaching great-power status through its trade policy? No. But rather than facilitating Beijing’s ambitions, Washington can make sure that China becomes a great power the old-fashioned way: by earning that status, step-by-step over time, as a result of its own efforts.

While replacing the Clinton administration’s porous trade policies with more guarded ones, the U.S. simultaneously must avoid policies that are bound to be self-defeating. We will soon hear a cacophony of voices urging Washington to use Sino-American trade as a bludgeon to compel Beijing to accept America’s views on human rights and democratization. Rather than playing to the galleries on these issues, U.S. leaders must be realistic and prudent.

U.S. leverage over Beijing is far too limited to force China to adopt more liberal policies on human rights and democratization. China is not going to become a democracy, certainly not anytime soon. Given China’s historical allergy to outside interference, any U.S. attempt to export democracy would only incite Beijing to denounce Washington’s meddling ways.

For similar reasons, Washington should resist the temptation to retaliate against China by deviating from its now well-established hands-off policy toward Taiwan, which recognizes the island as a province of China. Some experts and politicians advocate that Washington firmly commit itself to defending Taiwan’s independence to block Beijing from attaining its long-held goal of reunifying the island with the mainland. From Beijing’s standpoint, Taiwan is a vital national interest; from Washington’s, it is not. For China, Washington’s willingness to accommodate Beijing’s aspirations for reunification is the litmus test of whether the U.S. is prepared to accept China’s great-power status. Moreover, the contention that the U.S. should be willing to fight to prevent Beijing from reincorporating Taiwan is nothing more than a veiled argument for waging preventive war to forestall China’s great-power emergence. If that is what U.S. hard-liners want, they should say so openly and their views can then be debated.

China is slowly evolving into a great power. But it has a considerable way to go before it gets there. It is conceivable that, if its economic growth slows, or internal political unrest breaks out, China will not achieve such a status. Regardless of what the future holds, China today is not a strategic threat to the United States because it lacks capabilities to project power and lags far behind in its capacity to field high-tech military forces. While there is no need to panic and adopt a provocative, confrontational policy toward China, neither should Washington be passive. A sensible middle course for administration policy would be to protect U.S. security interests by cracking down on Chinese espionage and curtailing Beijing’s commercial access to U.S. high technology; to accommodate China’s legitimate political aspirations; and to keep a watchful eye, lest China’s future policies become overtly threatening. Whether the U.S. politics will permit such a reasoned, realistic and bipartisan China policy to emerge is an open question.*