The Trend of U.S. China Policy and China’s Reverse Shaping

Wu Baiyi

Director and Researcher of Institute of European Studies, CASS

The U.S. policy toward China involves many aspects such as hegemony and order, strength and interests, system and culture, which determine that the competition between China and the United States is a "hybrid competition" with various characteristics. Meantime, China and the United States are faced with a critical moment as they make a major choice again about the future relations between the two countries and the direction of the world. At such a moment, it is very important for China to take various measures to shape in the reversal direction.

I. The U.S. Comprehensive Crackdown on China and its Impact

There are many reasons for the U.S. policy toward China. Understanding the main opinions of the internal debates can be generally summarized into three perspectives. First is about the contention for hegemony and order. The United States believes that China has directly challenged its hegemony. This basic position mainly comes from the "principled realism" thought of anti-China hawks, who believe that the rise of China may completely subvert the world order dominated by the United States. Second is about the contention for strength and interests. The United States believes that China may surpass it in strength and will challenge and squeeze the global interests of the United States. Most of the people who hold this view are transferred from the "engagement" with China, and the composition is rather complicated. They are increasingly suspicious of the competitive advantage of the United States and the dominant position of relations with China, and their hostility to China's system, capabilities and even goals is increasing. Third is about the contention for system, culture and ideology. The United States believes that China is the most dangerous challenger of Western democratic system and culture. The supporters of this school of thought include not only the liberal intellectuals scattered in the academic circles, think tanks and government advisory circles, but also the key figures in the "deep state". Their negative role in shaping the atmosphere of Sino-U.S. relations is profound and long-term.

Over the past three years, the debate on the U.S. China policy has exerted a great influence on our Chinese too, which has been pushing us to try our best to determine the objective and nature of the U.S. China policy. Therefore, China's analysis and debate on this issue have gone through three stages. At the beginning of the U.S. trade war against China, most people believed that the Trump administration's main intention was to "ask for money", and through negotiations and concessions, the main contradiction of Sino-U.S. trade deficit and even structural imbalance can be alleviated and reconciled. It is just as some believe that "any problem that can be solved with money, its cost is controllable". In December 2018, after the leaders of the two countries put forward the keynote of "coordination, cooperation and stability" for the Sino-U.S. relations in Buenos Aires, the economic affairs teams of the two governments accelerated the negotiation process of the agreement, and China's domestic optimism about the Sino-U.S. relations rose. For most of 2019, the United States accelerated the pace of "decoupling" from China in the fields of technology, humanities, diplomacy and so on, resulting in the continuous deterioration of bilateral relations. In January 2020, when the two sides finally reached the first stage of economic and trade agreement, the domestic academic circles and the public were no longer enthusiastic about the prospect of the Sino-U.S. relations. At the moment, the Sino-U.S. relations have basically fallen into the worst deadlock since the establishment of diplomatic relations. No matter what stand and viewpoint they take, most of the folk analysis and public opinion think that the "Sino-U.S. relations are not good", or even worse. This change in the foundation of public opinion is unprecedented in the 41 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the United States, and it is also a negative consequence of the destructive policies of the United States. It will not only have a profound impact on the Sino-U.S. relations, but also bring great pressure and difficulties to China's policy toward the United States.

II. Characteristics of the Sino-U.S. strategic competition

The strategic competition between China and the United States is not only a part of the "great change unseen in a century", but also one of the most important variables to promote this change. Borrowing the official language, the development of the world is faced with a high degree of uncertainty and instability. The changes in the Sino-U.S. relations are in causality highly superimposed, which not only greatly increases people's cognitive difficulties, but also creates a deep crisis of "losing certain boundaries" in the management and control of Sino-U.S. relations. This is the essence of the saying that the Sino-U.S. relations can never go back to the past. To put it simply, China's historical mission of national rejuvenation is the decided direction and goal, but whether the United States can finally recognize and accept this through strategic competition with a bottom line depends on China's wisdom in dealing with and responding to the pressure, interference and even challenges from the United States, depending more on the development and movement of internal contradictions in the United States and the final return of rationality, and also based on the response efficiency by the international community to control the non-peaceful and irrational competition. In the past three years when the curtain of competition between China and the United States is raised, the negative interaction between China and the United States has a distinctive feature of "hybrid competition", which is mainly manifested in the following five points.

First, dynamic imbalances and short-term effects. That is to say, the goal and effect of each compromise between China and the United States are short-lived, with limited influence, and will quickly lose its stable role. Some people suggest that mutual trust between the two countries can be rebuilt by combing the "list" and accumulating short-term cooperation achievements. This proposal is reasonable, but may be unreliable.

Second, the existing management paradigm is weakened and there is lack of new interaction norms. Behind U.S. bullying and China's passive but firm response, both sides are trying to find out each other's final will and strategic bottom line. As a result, the doctrine for China and the United States to get along with each other, which has been basically forged in the past 40 years, has changed dramatically, and may even lose the common tacit understanding of "fighting but not breaking". The risks of negative interaction between the two countries and the importance of crisis management have increased significantly.

Third, the fundamental strategic mutual trust between the two sides has been seriously weakened, resulting in the neglect and indifference to global strategic stability. The United States is not only the active destroyer of mutual trust between China and the United States, but has repeatedly upgraded its hostile policies and measures against China because of its domestic political crisis and interests-seeking and other reasons, and even launched and created an anti-China clamor in a larger international scope. This will not only undermine the strategic coordination and cooperation between China and the United States, but also may cause the chain eruption of many contradictions in world development, security and governance.

Fourth, strategic competition between the two sides leads to the increase of "other’s trap". As competition intensifies, China and the United States are striving to achieve structural rebalancing by relying on the third party, which as a result, on the one hand, causes "selective panic" for the third party, on the other hand, creates opportunities for the third party to "speculate", which in turn further aggravates the uncertainty of Sino-U.S. relations. Whether or not the third party's speculation in the "seesaw" or teeterboard game between China and the United States will aggravate its own crisis or expand its own benefit opportunities is difficult for them to make a wise judgment and grasp.

Fifth, the long-term foundation of economic and social interdependence between China and the United States has been damaged, which is very difficult to be repaired, and will also have a very negative impact on economic globalization. Without the joint promotion of China and the United States, there will emerge more difficulties, twists and turns and even decline in multilateral cooperation at both the global and regional levels, and the prospects for the reform of the international governance mechanism will become dim.

III. Maintaining the Sino-U.S. relations and China’s reverse shaping

Presently, both China and the United States are faced with a critical moment of making a major choice again about their future bilateral relations and the direction of the world.

One is the choice of direction. Because of the differences in national conditions and systems, it is impossible for China and the United States to choose the identical road and direction of development, which constitutes the fundamental reasons for the long-term competition and tense relationship between the two sides. We have never had any illusions about this, but I think we can make due exploration and efforts on how to avoid vicious competition, regression and disruption of bilateral relations, and whether there is still time and space for adjustment, flexibility and delay. On this point, people of insight in China and the United States shoulder great responsibilities and should have the same sense of urgency.

Two is the choice of paradigm. In the future, whether the normal relationship between China and the United States is conflict and opposition, or peaceful coexistence, we should go through repeated running in and even pay the price before we can complete the whole process of deconstruction first and then reconstruction. The current "irrationality" of the United States is only the extreme manifestation of the "deconstruction" process, which is just like the so-called "never coming back until a dead end".

Three is the choice of tactics, i.e., the doctrine to deal with the situation. In the fierce game-play, both China and the United States hope to magnify each other's mistakes. The United States tries to focus on promoting the division of Chinese society, industrial crushing, public criticism and ideological poisoning, etc. which all point to the difficult and painful points of China's development and reform. In this regard, China should speed up its own reform and opening up while maintaining its strategic and institutional stability. Only by continuously innovating and optimizing China's development, governance system and capacity， can we strengthen the "internal strength" of the game-play with the United States and truly stand on the "right side of history".

The reverse shaping of Sino-U.S. relations is a long-term systematic project, and its connotation and measures can be continuously enriched and improved. At the moment, we can start from the following several aspects.

Firstly, we should make good use of the people's will and strength and the rising comprehensive national strength to respond to the challenges. To a certain extent, the imbalance and reversal of the Sino-U.S. relations are due to the long-term asymmetric interaction pattern between the two countries and their societies. The U.S. government is constantly changing, while the fundamentals of American social participation in shaping the Sino-U.S. relations have always been pluralistic and relatively clear. Especially when the right-wing extremist force in the United States controls the government and misleads the public, the work on the United States should not be limited to responding to the concerns of the U.S. "whole society" with our "whole government", but should focus on a long-term patient work. By enhancing our organized social participation, we can form a bottom-up effect on the U.S. anti-China force through "drastic" measures.

Secondly, we should strengthen the innovation of foreign cooperation mechanism. The world's governance faces largest public product deficit, China-proposed establishment of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank, and BRICS New Development Bank, launching the Belt and Road Initiative and promoting regional cooperation negotiations such as RCEP. However, these public goods are not enough to support China's need for reverse shaping of the United State whether in terms of quantity, influence or coverage. We need to further improve our initiative and regulatory capacity on major global governance issues such as the reform of the World Trade Organization, and speed up the training of more interdisciplinary talents who can hold key positions in international multilateral organizations. There is still considerable room for improvement in our efficient, coordinated and unified decision-making and implementation mechanism for external work.

Thirdly, we should make good use of China's diversified overseas resources and build a global "circle of friends" broadly. We should make use of the new pattern to build domestic and international "duel circulation", give full play to the trump card role of China's huge domestic demand market, consolidate the cooperative relations with countries in surrounding areas, emerging markets and developing countries, unite friendly developed economies, and expand the international united front.