OPINION — The trade war with China is intensifying and could ultimately lead to conflict. While President Donald Trump paused tariffs for 90 days on some 80 countries, he has kept his tariff of 145% on China. China’s President Xi Jinping has responded with a 125% levy on all U.S. goods. How have relations deteriorated to this level, after many years of initial goodwill and cooperation?
The early years
Threatened by an imposing Soviet Union, China’s Mao Zedong reached out to President Richard Nixon for the historic 1972 meetings in Beijing which led to the normalizations of relations between our two countries in 1979. With normalization, China was given intelligence on Soviet movements in the East and permitted the U.S. to install equipment in Western China to monitor Soviet strategic forces while also assisting with effort to defeat the Soviets in Afghanistan.
Starting in 1978, when China’s Deng Xiaoping took over as China’s supreme leader, China moved quickly to a market economy, with Deng’s policies of economic and political reform. Central planning and communes were replaced by a free-wheeling economy, and a political system that implemented collective leadership and term limits, all the while with a strong Communist Party in the lead. China rose in a few decades from one of the poorest countries in East Asia to where it stands today – as the second largest economy in the world. Much of the credit also must go to the U.S., which was there for China, with significant foreign direct investments and the opening of Amercian universities to hundreds of thousands of Chinese students.
Meanwhile, the Shanghai Communique of 1972 was clear in stating that the U.S. “acknowledged” that there was “one China” and that Taiwan was part of China, calling for a peaceful resolution of issues between China and Taiwan. The Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 was emphatic in stating that the U.S. would accept only a peaceful resolution of issues between China and Taiwan.
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The beginning of a new era
Ironically, that U.S.-China bilateral cooperation in the 1980s and 1990s – which came to include counter proliferation, counter narcotics, counter terrorism and international crime, etc. – became more tense after China was admitted into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, with the help of the U.S. There had of course been harbinger of the tensions: the 1989 Tiananmen Square slaughter of peaceful protesting students and civilians that drew outrage from the U.S. and other countries; China’s refusal to accept a U.S. apology for the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999; and then in 2001, when China’s President Jiang Zemin refused to take calls from President George W. Bush seeking to resolve the accidental crash of a U.S. reconnaissance plane with a Chinese Air Force J-8 interceptor flying in international airspace.
A newly assertive China
China’s President Xi Jinping took over in March 2013 as China’s supreme leader. Mr. Xi’s vision for “making China great again” and calling for the “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” depended heavily on geoeconomics, using China’s economic tools, backed by a strong military, to accomplish its regional and global objectives. This was – and remains – a strategy to reclaim China’s past greatness, as the “Middle Kingdom” with 5,000 years of history and culture, when China was the world’s dominate power. Mr. Xi’s approach was to secure economic relationships with over 140 nations, using the massive global “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative, and establishing alliances with the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperative Organization and now with Russia, North Korea and Iran.
New irritants in the relationship
An assertive Mr. Xi has taken a provocative approach towards the South China Sea, establishing military bases and developing several islands despite a United Nations Tribunal’s 2016 ruling that China’s nine-dash line and land reclamation claims were not legally valid. The U.S. has pushed back aggressively against China’s unlawful activities in the South China Sea, most recently supporting the Philippines in its confrontation with China on Second Thomas Shoal.
Meanwhile, China’s recent military exercises around Taiwan have intensified since the election of Taiwan President Lai Ching-te. China recently deployed air, sea and land assets to demonstrate to Taiwan and the U.S. that such exercises could quickly develop into a blockade of Taiwan or, if necessary, a military assault. Mr. Xi has publicly indicated that by 2027, China will have the military capabilities necessary to secure unification with Taiwan. This may not be Mr. Xi’s preference, but based on his pronouncements and rhetoric, this is a likelihood that cannot be dismissed.
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China’s ultimate aim
There should be no question by now that China aspires by 2049, the centennial of the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, to be the dominant global power. Many in China have read “Destined for War”, Graham Allison’s account of the U.S. and China and the challenge of escaping the so-called “Thucydides Trap,” in which war is unavoidable when a rising power overtakes an established power. Unfortunately, many in China, especially in the Chinese Communist Party, think this is inevitable. It’s this thinking that has contributed to China’s reckless behavior in the South and East China Seas and with Taiwan.
Still hope for diplomacy
This is not a time for the U.S. to withdraw from world leadership. Many countries are looking to the U.S. for economic and security assurances, as we deter China – and Russia, North Korea and Iran – from their territorial ambitions.
Logically, given the major role the U.S. played in helping China to become the second largest economy in the world, it would make sense for both our countries to work jointly to combat pandemics and narcotics trafficking and nuclear proliferation – while using our diplomats to help resolve these irritants and ensure that we do not slide into conflict.
This column by Cipher Brief Expert Ambassador Joseph DeTrani was first published in The Washington Times
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