Introduction to the Special Issue

Specialists on US-China relations are almost unanimous in finding that the relationship has reached rock bottom in 2020. Just when it seemed that the trade war would be at least papered over, human rights issues in China and the coronavirus further embittered relations. The US presidential election in November will therefore be a critical juncture, either deepening disputes and hardening attitudes if Donald Trump is reelected, or possibly opening a new chapter in relations if Joe Biden wins.

The editors therefore decided to create a special issue on US-China relations in hopes of providing an array of viewpoints and deeper content on the present situation as well as insights for the future. The invited contributors cover many, though certainly not all, of the issues that divide Washington and Beijing, and do so employing quite a range of methodologies—psychology, game theory, and economics as well as qualitative political analysis.

Dali Yang's examination of Chinese and US responses to COVID-19 and the exacerbation of their relations introduces possible psychological elements into the explanation of leadership behavior. He focuses not just on the trade war and other contributing factors that preceded the pandemic, but especially on "the psychological impact of the pandemic coupled with the long-standing Chinese sense of ressentiment among policymakers and diplomats—that shaped China's expulsion of American journalists and disinformation campaign" led by its foreign ministry "wolf warriors."

Christopher Yung and David Bulman both find that security dilemmas undermine the US-China relationship—one on the security side, the other on the economic side. Yung shows how various elements of US-China strategic stability are being undermined by both the Donald Trump administration and Xi Jinping leadership—for example, citing each other as the principal security threat and orienting military strategy and weapons acquisitions accordingly; focusing criticism at each other's priority interests; and downgrading military-to-military dialogue opportunities. The consensus that once existed as to China's role in the international community has evaporated. But Yung points out that the ingredients for a revived strategic consensus are still at hand, provided a vigorous diplomatic effort is made to bring them back together. Bulman uses a game theoretic framework to explain the economic security dilemma that defines the US-China trade impasse—how, in a word, the shared perception of mutual economic benefits from trade integration in the 1980s and 1990s was wiped out by the global financial crisis of 2008. Since then, acrimony and blame have been the norm in trade relations, with the United States seeing itself threatened by China's "defection" from global rules and China seeing the United States as trying to contain its rising power. Now, in the Trump/Xi era, playing "Chicken" has left China to follow its own rules, exactly contrary to longstanding US aims. As Bulman points out, China's trade policies have been defensively rather than ideologically motivated, guided by its own economic needs and weaknesses. The economic security dilemma now on full display has meant significant losses to both economies and added mistrust that may contribute to open conflict.

Zha Daojiong shows a similar outcome in the nontraditional security arena, which includes public health, energy, and judicial cooperation. He offers some very pointed criticisms of US policy, contending that the Trump administration has in a sense cut off its nose to spite its face—that is, it has foregone cooperation that previous administrations accepted as mutually advantageous, and even of benefit to the world, for the sake of "America first" (and "China last") priorities. Fair enough, but when it comes to human rights, my own article sharply criticizes Beijing's repression of Chinese Muslims in Xinjiang and pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong. Trump showed initial indifference to these matters, but the pandemic gave his administration's China hawks to deploy human rights in their aim to cast China as a strategic enemy.

On the three global issues—trade, climate change, and the pandemic —that dominate US-China debate, Gregory Chin shows that while the Trump administration has brought "major global institutions to the point of legal or political...