The U.S.-China Summit: Decoding a Tower of Babel

Xi Jinping’s upcoming state visit to the United States in late September will be a strenuous test of the proposition that summits are potentially useful when tensions are high and relations deteriorating.

The feng shui for this meeting is not propitious. Almost every significant interest group in the United States, and many political forces in China, have been offended by recent developments in the bilateral relationship. In July and August, Washington was reeling from a massive theft (attributed to China) of Office of Personnel Management data. My four-year-old granddaughter, like many other listeners, heard a more-than-faint resemblance between the smash-hit music from Disney’s Frozen and Beijing’s musical masthead for the recently awarded 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor picked the moment when the Chinese government is apoplectic about foreign “subversion” to release a call for NGOs to submit “Statements of Interest” in competing for $10 million to “support the bureau’s policy priorities of fostering democracy and human rights in China,” going on to advise potential applicants that “projects should have direct and lasting impact by promoting reforms and structural changes that take advantage of changing social and political dynamics in China…” Not to be outdone, with the U.S. trade deficit with China climbing rapidly, Beijing devalued its currency, thereby energizing many in the U.S. Congress to again agitate against currency “manipulation,” even though this devaluation may be a way-station toward a more market-driven exchange rate mechanism. All this was occurring amid an upswing in the arrest of lawyers and human rights activists in China, thereby energizing the American Bar Association, the New York Bar Association, and many others around the world to criticize human rights trends in the country.

All in all, this has been a terrible summer for U.S.-China relations, with both sides taking initiatives that empower those in each society that view the other increasingly as a strategic competitor.

Climbing the Real Summit

Going back to 1949, it is hard to discern a time in which Washington and Beijing have sent out more mutually contradictory strategic signals to each other. Given the tendency in both capitals to pay greater attention to negative than positive messages, there is a downward momentum in ties that is very concerning. This strategic slide needs to be addressed during Xi’s state visit. Unless the two presidents focus on this underlying problem, the upcoming summit may come to be viewed in history as having simply been a brief respite in the unhappy journey to more friction and perhaps intense conflict. Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping need to develop and articulate a shared, more coherent, constructive, and domestically compelling rationale for the bilateral relationship, and then bring their respective behaviors into alignment with that vision. Given the domestic politics in both countries, this is a long shot.

Beyond a succession of negative moves by both sides in the last five-plus years, each capital now is considering making additional moves that the other will take to be highly adverse, in the South China Sea, cyberspace, and society-to-society relations. During Xi’s visit we likely will see various highly motivated NGOs and interest groups in the United States publicly express their disquiet with recent Chinese moves, foreign and domestic. Big power alignments among China, Japan, Russia and the United States provide added push to the downhill slide.

Skeptical analysts of U.S.-China relations would say that creating a shared vision is unrealistic because each side actually believes the other already has become an adversary and that the two sides have incompatible goals and interests. More hopeful analysts in both countries say strategic confusion, indeed suspicion, reigns because each side has become so pluralistic that it is incapable of articulating and implementing a coherent, positive strategy. Either way, with each side assuming the worst about the other, it is going to take more than the incremental steps forward on climate and trade issues that we expect from this summit to fundamentally alter this trajectory, welcome as such progress would be.

As security becomes a core area of friction between the United States and China, it spills into other, previously positive zones of the relationship, such as economics, culture and education. One such spillover: A recent U.S. House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee hearing asking “Is Academic Freedom Threatened by China’s Influence on U.S. Universities?” In another domain, a publication put out (but not endorsed) by the Council on Foreign Relations in New York in April called for tightening export controls on China. And in yet another manifestation of spillover, American high-tech firms are seriously chafing under the weight of Chinese restrictions on the import of U.S.-made high-tech products. At the same time, Silicon Valley bridles under Washington’s own cyber policies and behavior, which have eroded faith in the integrity of some U.S. products. Beijing wraps its blatantly protectionist behavior in the banner of Edward Snowden’s revelations. Finally, the cyber competition is infecting American public opinion, threatening and blurring the lines between personal information, intellectual property, and national security. In Beijing’s eyes, Washington increasingly uses “the open Internet” as a means to subvert the Communist Party’s governance.

Conceptual Tower of Babel

In the first sentence, on the first page, of the first volume of his Selected Works, Mao Zedong laid out his core strategic dictum in 1926: “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution. The basic reason why all previous revolutionary struggles in China achieved so little was their failure to unite with real friends in order to attack real enemies.” Following this dictum is easier said than done in today’s global system, a system with many threats, in different locations, of different magnitudes, in different realms, materializing over different time horizons.

Obama and Xi are having a hard time reaching a definitive conclusion about each other’s nation. One can understand their difficulty, given the potent mix of factors at play: unprecedented growth and change in China; political system differences; some of the new, and not entirely welcome abroad, directions in which Xi is taking his country at home and overseas; the interventionist proclivities of Washington; the sense of aggrieved nationalism on the Chinese Mainland; the determination of many U.S. citizens and interest groups to maintain America’s post-World War II primacy; and the fact that genuine threats are accompanied by tangible opportunities in the bilateral relationship. With respect to the latter, for example, Chinese firms now established in South Carolina are hiring American textile mill workers, recreating jobs that had left the United States for China and elsewhere decades earlier. At the same time, Beijing apparently has stolen the social security numbers of large numbers of Americans. These are just two manifestations of the complex and mixed interests embodied in the U.S.-China relationship.

Obama and Xi also must address the reality that never before have the United States, Japan, and China all been strong, economically interdependent, and mutually suspicious at the same time. With Tokyo and Washington as allies, this tends to produce an odd-man-out dynamic of suspicion in China. Moreover, not since the depth of the Cold War in Europe have Washington and Beijing had to declare themselves concerning what they are prepared to do, or not do, about Russian violation of sovereign borders near the center of Europe. As Beijing becomes estranged from the U.S. and Japan, it is reluctant to alienate Moscow by condemning it.

Until a coherent strategic picture can be formed that puts U.S.-China relations in a global and constructive perspective, and then defines the bilateral strategic relationship in a way consistent with this larger vision, the conceptual confusion, and therefore the policy confusion, will persist. The confusion is manifest in the sloppy and self-contradictory vocabulary increasingly employed by both sides. Coherent policy cannot be fashioned in a conceptual and linguistic Tower of Babel.

Speaking first of U.S. confusion and mixed messages, in November 2011, Washington articulated its “rebalance to Asia,” initially dubbed the “pivot.” The policy had economic, diplomatic and military dimensions, but a core feature was to be a gradual repositioning of relative military capacity, and economic and diplomatic attention, in the direction of Asia. Initially, the military soundtrack was louder than the economic and diplomatic soundtracks, an imbalance that would be corrected to some degree if the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) multilateral trade agreement comes to fruition – an open question at the time of this writing. Since the rebalance was declared, Beijing has reacted with suspicion and fears of “neo-containment.”

Since announcing the “pivot” in late 2011, distractions from Asia have multiplied for Washington. Festering problems in the Middle East and South Asia have tenaciously demanded U.S. attention – the Libya and Syria problems; ISIS and Al Qaeda; the need to reassure Israel even more than usual; and long-term issues in Iran, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen. Meanwhile, Russia is violating sovereignty in Europe. The juxtaposition of a statement of U.S. intent to “rebalance” toward Asia with the intractable realities of the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and even Europe, have continuously created a situation in which our friends in Asia are unsure that Washington can deliver on the implications of its declared policy. China is anxious that Washington will do just that, while friends in Europe and the Middle East wonder about the durability of Washington’s affections and the United States’ ability to do everything at once. This is even before one considers Washington’s budget, “sequestration,” and the limits to the patience of the American people with global, open-ended commitments. The first job of strategic leadership is to align ends and means. This has not been done in Washington, leaving Beijing (and others) to simultaneously suspect American aims, constancy, and capacity.

This absence of strategic clarity is seen in Washington’s recent statements, which genuinely confuse anyone trying to understand its priorities. In September 2014, Obama addressed the nation, saying:

At this moment, the greatest threats come from the Middle East and North Africa, where radical groups exploit grievances for their own gain. And one of those groups is ISIL – which calls itself the “Islamic State.”… I have made it clear that we will hunt down terrorists who threaten our country, wherever they are. That means I will not hesitate to take action against ISIL in Syria, as well as Iraq. This is a core principle of my presidency. If you threaten America, you will find no safe haven.

But then, the National Military Strategy of the United States of America 2015 was issued saying: “Today, the probability of U.S. involvement in interstate war with a major power is assessed to be low but growing. Should one occur, however, the consequences would be immense.” The report also says that Russia “has repeatedly demonstrated that it does not respect the sovereignty of its neighbors and it is willing to use force to achieve its goals.” With respect to China, this report notes that “China‘s actions are adding tension to the Asia-Pacific region…The international community continues to call on China to settle such issues cooperatively and without coercion. China has responded with aggressive land reclamation efforts that will allow it to position military forces astride vital international sea lanes.” A few days after the strategy report, Obama’s nominee to be the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph F. Dunford, told a Senate committee, “If you want to talk about a nation that could pose an existential threat to the United States, I’d have to point to Russia… If you look at their behavior, it’s nothing short of alarming.” He seemed to rank China as a lesser concern.

Trying to decode all this, one could conclude something like: ISIS is an immediate, non-state threat; Russia is a current major state threat of great magnitude but without the societal and economic dynamism of China; and China is a somewhat less acute big-power problem for the moment, but rather a longer-term major challenge that threatens the post-World War II order, or at least U.S. primacy in it. Strikingly, the strategy report explicitly says, “The U.S. military does not have the luxury of focusing on one challenge to the exclusion of others. It must provide a full range of military options for addressing both revisionist states and VEOs [violent extremist organizations].” So, the United States is committed to dealing with all this simultaneously, with as much help from its friends as it can get (which sometimes seems to be very little), all the while trying to operate within tightening domestic spending constraints. The Obama administration tries to tell the rest of the world that none of this means they will receive less attention from Washington. If you are Xi Jinping, you could be forgiven for not finding all this reassuring while simultaneously harboring doubts about the underlying strategic feasibility of the U.S. posture.

Are U.S. capabilities sufficient to deal with all the perceived challenges simultaneously? What are American priorities? Do Washington’s reactions (actual and rhetorical) precipitate the responses from Beijing that we seek to avoid? Could the United States be creating the worst of all possible worlds for itself – being provocative to Beijing without being credible? How should the U.S. balance military alarms with the positive opportunities in cultural and economic realms, and with respect to the need for cooperation on transnational issues such as climate change, world health, and global commons issues such as fisheries?

It is in the context of this evolving, confused American policy that we encounter U.S. presidential (and presidential candidate) statements and actions that increase friction with Beijing and reduce U.S. credibility. The opening months of 2015 saw the Obama administration seemingly trying to derail China’s attempt to create the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) with substantial Western and other participation, only to have 57 nations, many of them Washington’s allies, sign on with Beijing in April. We find Obama trying to sell the already fully defensible TPP trade agreement by saying, “That’s why we have to make sure the United States – and not countries like China – is the one writing this century’s rules for the world’s economy.” Similarly, we have the U.S. president giving an interview to the BBC just before traveling to Africa noting that Chinese leaders “are not accountable to their constituencies, [and] have been able to funnel an awful lot of money into Africa, basically in exchange for raw materials that are being extracted from Africa.” You can’t use Beijing as an all-purpose punching bag and expect cooperation.

The security establishments in both nations are, with increasing frequency, using the vocabulary of deterrence. Recently there has been a semi-publicly waged debate in Washington over whether or not U.S. Pacific forces should muscularly challenge Chinese sovereignty claims with respect to “islands” created through land reclamation in disputed areas of the South China Sea. This is not to say that this discussion is unwarranted (indeed, it is warranted in my view), but it is to say that the debate itself conveys a desire to deter Beijing from further expansion, while the lack of action could be construed as lack of resolve. As Washington found in the Cold War with the Soviet Union, deterrence logic can lead both sides to take actions and make commitments to secure marginal objectives, all in the quest for the “credibility” that is the Holy Grail of deterrence logic.

Lest we think that authoritarian regimes have fewer difficulties sending consistent strategic messages or unambiguous foreign policy signals than does America’s pluralistic system, the Xi and late-Hu Jintao administrations have sent divergent, worrying messages of all sorts as well. The buildup of naval, missile, air force, and space strength in China over the past two decade provides a background that foreigners use for interpreting these divergent signals, not to mention that governments tend to have the already-mentioned bias toward paying disproportionate attention to negative messages.

Beijing has sent mixed messages regarding the priority attached to relations with the United States, morphing from calling the U.S.-China relationship “the most important bilateral relationship in the world” to “a very important relationship.” Xi’s decision to take his first trip abroad as president to Russia seemed designed to send a reinforcing message. In terms of more important signals, Beijing has been allergic to publicly condemning Moscow’s violations of Ukrainian sovereignty, a reluctance that undermines the credibility of China’s 60-year mantra that respect for national sovereignty is the keystone of its foreign policy. Further, this reticence to criticize Moscow coexists with more robust efforts by Beijing to contest, or assert, sovereignty in disputed areas of the East and South China Seas. Similarly, in the fall 2014, even as Xi visited India to try to strengthen relations with that country’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, Chinese troops crossed the Line of Actual Control in the western sector of the Himalayas.

Discordant messages can also be seen in the coexistence of declarations that “all nations are equal, whether big or small” with Beijing’s 2010 reminder to Singapore (and others) that “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.” We see mixed messages in Xi alternately saying, “Let people of Asia run the affairs of Asia, solve the problems of Asia and uphold the security of Asia,” and his articulation of a seemingly more inclusive “Asia-Pacific dream” that may make room for an America determined to remain a comprehensive Pacific power.

Mixed messages are also seen in domestic political trends in China that have direct connections to relations with nations and peoples outside of the country. For example, in January 2014 a new National Security Commission was established by Beijing, chaired by Xi. The Commission’s creation held out hope that such a body might better coordinate external policy and avoid some of the mixed messages highlighted above. As time has passed, however, it has become progressively clearer that the Commission’s principal purpose is to preserve internal stability (wei wen), a fundamental dimension of which is preventing foreign “subversion.” China has asserted that “hostile foreign forces,” and “black hands,” were behind the Hong Kong demonstrations of fall 2014 (“the Umbrella Movement”). And educational and propaganda officials have warned against the corrosive effects of Western teaching and cultural materials. Also alarming to outsiders, a draft NGO Law was circulated in mid-2015, a document that, if adopted in its draft form, would put the Public Security Bureau, instead of the Civil Affairs Ministry, in charge of regulating foreign NGOs. Depending on how this draft law is finally written and then implemented, it either could have little effect on China’s ties with civil society organizations all over the world, or it could have dramatically negative consequences. A recently adopted National Security Law in China has definitions of sufficient ambiguity that it is having stifling effects on foreign and domestic NGOs, as well as some foreign businesses, notably information firms.

Most recently, in connection with the dramatic drop of Chinese stock markets, foreign financial speculators have been among those blamed by the official press for the financial losses, though foreign shareholders hold such a minor position in the entire market that such fluctuations could not be principally due to their influence. Rather, overleveraged positions taken by domestic investors buying on margin seem to be the central culprits. The point is, if China is domestically tightening up on civil society and contacts abroad, and blaming foreign groups for what are largely domestic problems, this is the most important mixed message of all by a government that proclaims “opening and reform” as the lodestone of its foreign and domestic policy.

Concisely, both Washington and Beijing are sending each other very mixed messages about how they see the world, how they see each other, and how they see themselves. This is the underlying problem in the U.S.-China relationship. It is this problem that needs to be front and center at the Obama-Xi summit. Making progress on this, however, will be difficult given the balkanized policy process in both countries, domestic challenges both leaders face, and the very different impulses that various domestic bureaucratic and interest groups in both societies have. It will be difficult to make progress given that Obama will not be in office much longer relative to Xi. Difficulties aside, how might both sides think about addressing all this?

Thinking About Progress

Whether one thinks about making fundamental progress at the upcoming Obama-Xi summit, or more modestly setting an implicit agenda for the next U.S. administration, two major principles need to be articulated and embraced by both sides, complemented by subsidiary consistent action. Such an approach could take the form of a brief joint statement – elsewhere I have called it “something like a Fourth Communiqué.”

The two core features of such a statement would be recognition by the U.S. that the world and the Asia-Pacific region in particular have seen a redistribution of influence and that the institutional structure of the post-World War II era needs to be adjusted to take account of these power shifts, without establishing, implicitly or otherwise, the idea of spheres of influence. The U.S. and China, for example, could pick the low-hanging fruit of jointly pushing for the adjustment of China’s voting share in the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The second core feature of such an agreement would be a Chinese declaration that Beijing wishes to resolve its maritime disputes in the South China Sea equitably and expeditiously, as the country did with respect to many of its land borders in previous decades. Washington can express its willingness to see this done through multilateral or bilateral forums as is appropriate in each complex case. In the interim, the United States will oppose any further expansion on rocks and reefs in the area (including by Washington’s allies and friends) and Beijing will undertake a freeze on further reclamation.

Undergirding these two broad points could be several others that both sides would endorse. To start, the two sides should agree that “interdependence” is the central reality of our times, and that it is their purpose to enhance cooperation to manage and promote interdependence along key dimensions: environment, health, international development, global economic stabilization, and augmented investment in each other’s country. This means, for example, that both sides accelerate discussions of a Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT) and cooperate on development in third areas, like Afghanistan. And second, this promotion of interdependence has to be reflected in both sides placing emphasis on developing shared regional security, economic, and other institutions and regimes, rather than drifting toward building parallel institutions, forcing countries to choose sides, a process that can easily magnify conflict.

The only thing more difficult than moving in these directions will be the difficulties resulting from our inability to do so. China and the United States will be driven to ever higher levels of insecurity and military spending, which are inconsistent with both countries’ pressing domestic needs. Further, a drift away from the United States by China would represent a strategic choice, one that brings Beijing into progressively closer alignment with a Russia that has great underlying weaknesses of its own. China would be doing so at the expense of cooperative relations with a good chunk of the world’s productive states, not least the United States and Japan. Finally, both sides need to realize that a strategic triangle in which Japan and the United States explicitly or implicitly ally against China cannot, in the long run, produce stability in Asia or the world. Leaders of China and the United States need to commit themselves to following the hard path to a good place, as opposed to the easy path to a bad place.