China and the United States: Responsible Stakeholder or Emerging Threat?

ASIANPERSPECTIVE, Vol. 32, No. 4, 2008, pp. 181-183. Editorial CHINA AND THE UNITED STATES: RESPONSIBLE STAKEHOLDER OR EMERGING THREAT? Melvin Gurtov The election campaign produced nary a word about China. Rest assured, once the new administration is in place, we will be hearing a great deal about the "China challenge." The central question has not changed: whether to engage China on equal terms, or treat it as a potentially hostile competitor. Judging from the substantial number of Clinton-era appointees on President­ elect Barack Obama's foreign-policy team, the answer will be engagement. Nevertheless, how engagement is practiced— whether it is a philosophical commitment or simply a reversible tactic, for instance—compels attention to the fundamental guide­ lines of China policy. Here, then, are thoughts about the guidelines: • The People's Republic of China and the U.S. have fundamentally different approaches to international affairs. As a PRC official once told visiting Americans, "China is more concerned with its own internal development and the U.S. is most concerned with trying to maintain international order." In a word, China is rising, but the United States has risen; and for China, the overwhelming priority is to continue promoting rapid economic development, not challenge the United States for Asian or global leadership. • Despite the two countries' numerous intersecting interests, start­ ing with a high degree of economic interdependence, mutual concerns about global warming, and restraining North Korea's nuclear-weapons development, many senior Chinese leaders 182 Melvin Gurtov and analysts view the United States with suspicion. As Wang Jisi, a top PRC America watcher, has written: "The Chinese-U.S. relationship remains beset by more profound differences than any other bilateral relationship between major powers in the world today." That view is shared by both China's so-called fourth and fifth generation of leaders. • Thus, while appeals from American officials to China to join the United States as a "responsible stakeholder" in world affairs are a positive development, they have not been backed by consistent action. Each country has its own view of what global responsi­ bility means. And each has taken steps—e.g., China with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, arms deals with Russia, and a missile buildup opposite Taiwan; the United States with two wars in the Middle East, Central Asian basing, security ties with Japan, and continued arms sales to Taiwan—that are regarded by the other as irresponsible. • Marring the opportunity to really engage China is a view, which runs especially deep in the Pentagon, that China represents a threat to the United States—because of its economic power, its energy needs, and its increasing military spending. Such retrothinking would take us back to the cold war—a view shared by none other than the former U.S. commander for the Pacific region, Admiral William Fallon, who warned against treating China as though it is "a clone of the Soviet Union." • To be sure, there is a competition with China, particularly for support within the Third World: a "Beijing consensus" that rivals the "Washington consensus." But just as the Washington consensus over many years has encountered obstacles and embittered developing-country governments as it has pushed for "liberalizing" and privatizing economies, so may the Beijing Consensus run afoul of the governments and people China says it is helping in the name of protecting sovereignty. China's will­ ingness to support authoritarian governments such as Sudan and Iran puts it in the same poor light as U.S. support of dicta­ torships has, with blowback a frequent consequence. • For U.S. policy makers, the central issue in relations with China should be how to work most effectively with it so as to build trust, improve global conditions such as environmental protection and nuclear nonproliferation, and (perhaps most importantly) assist China in dealing with its most destabilizing characteristics: unequal growth and environmental destruction. • China's priorities are recognition of its emergence as a key player on all international issues, and achievement of its economic devel- China and the United States 183 opment goals so as to maintain its political system and internal unity. The United States, while rightly calling for improvement in human rights and other matters...