China and the United States: Different Interests and Priorities

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, China has emerged as an economic powerhouse. It is the fastest-growing major economy in the world, with an annual growth rate of more than 9 percent. Its gross domestic product (GDP) increased from $879 billion in 1996 to $2.26 trillion in 2005, making it the world's fourth-largest economy.¹ Its growth has been helped by strong exports and a heavy inflow of foreign investment. Its growing weight in the world economy has given Beijing a new clout in the international arena and has suddenly bestowed upon it the potential to play a key role in global and regional affairs.

The China-US relationship has recently come under increasing strain, because Beijing and Washington have different interests and priorities. In particular, they don't see eye-to-eye on several issues in which the Bush administration has keen interest. This divergence arises from their sharply contrasting political ideologies and also from differences in their domestic politics. China favors maintaining the status quo and seeks diplomatic solutions to problems facing its immediate region. It wishes to avoid entanglement in the internal affairs of other nations in order to devote its time and resources to the many internal problems arising from rapid economic growth. To China, all politics is local. As Lanxin Xiang, director of the China Center at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, put it, when President Hu Jintao

wakes up in the morning, foreign policy is far from his mind. Are farmers satisfied with the recent government decision on agricultural taxes? Would a revaluation of the yuan push millions of low-wage textile workers into the streets? . . . Such concerns dominate Hu's daily activities.²

Unlike China, the United States sees world problems as an opportunity to exercise its might as the only superpower. The "imperial" presidency of George W. Bush is based on power politics and is influenced by neoconservative ideology. Vice President Richard Cheney and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld believe that the use of force is just another means to conduct foreign policy. They have convinced Bush that it is time to use US might to dominate the world through military intervention and to force a change of regime in other countries in order to spread democracy and protect US interests.

Washington is critical of China's traditional neutrality. In 2005, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Z. Zoellick urged Chinese leaders to change their way, arguing that with power comes responsibility. The Bush administration would like China to be proactive in solving world problems. It should join other big powers and "take a more aggressive stance against governments that US officials believe could potentially threaten US interests and, more broadly, the international system."³ Beijing's reluctance to follow the US lead has raised questions about whether the two governments can "cooperate in certain issues while [they] remain suspicious of each other in others."⁴

On 20 April 2006, when Hu met Bush at the White House, they spent most of their time discussing the bilateral trade deficit and the Iranian and North Korean nuclear crises. Bush has repeatedly called both Iran and North Korea members of the "axis of evil." While the United States has no leverage over Pyongyang or Tehran, China has good relationships with both countries and thus is in a better position to help persuade their leaders to abandon their nuclear programs. As long as Bush threatens the use of military force and talks of regime change, however, there is little chance for diplomacy to succeed.

My purpose in this essay is to discuss three issues—North Korea, Iran, and the trade deficit—in order to understand the reasons behind the different approaches favored by China and the United States. The first issue, the Korean nuclear crisis, is complicated, because North Korea has nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of reaching neighboring South Korea and Japan. China's role in seeking solutions to the crisis is analyzed, especially in the period after the six-country talks of 2003...