US-China Relations: The Post-Inauguration Blues

U.S. President-elect Donald Trump already has analysts worried about the future of the U.S.-China relationship, and he hasn’t even been inaugurated yet. Besides standard campaign-trail rhetoric accusing China of currency manipulation and stealing U.S. jobs, Trump has promised to slap massive tariffs on Chinese imports and most recently questioned the wisdom of sticking to the “one China” policy.

To be clear: nothing about Trump is standard, or even within the norm for American politics. Certainly his complete lack of foreign policy expertise, coupled with a seeming disinterest in taking advice or improving his own knowledge base, is serious cause for concern. However, before lamenting the future of the U.S.-China relationship, it’s worth taking a look back at Trump’s predecessors – many of whom came to office with their own plans to “get tough” on China, but left the White House having advanced the relationship in important ways.

Ronald Reagan

Though it was President Richard Nixon who started the process of normalizing U.S.-China relations, the official establishment of diplomatic relations came in 1979 under President Jimmy Carter. That move became a talking point for Carter’s eventual opponent in the 1980 presidential election, Ronald Reagan. Reagan called the decision to normalize ties with China a “betrayal” of Taiwan, which was de-recognized by Washington at the same time Beijing gained official recognition. During his campaign, Reagan promised to restore diplomatic relations with Taipei, to the universal dismay of Washington’s China hands (sound familiar?)

However, upon coming to office, Reagan soon changed his tune. Rather than granting Taiwan diplomatic recognition, Reagan’s administration offered an olive branch to China in the form of the 1982 Joint Communique, which saw Washington promise “gradually to reduce its sale of arms to Taiwan, leading, over a period of time, to a final resolution” of such sales (this was accompanied, however, by the Six Assurances to Taiwan, promising among other things not to consult with China before selling arms to Taiwan and not to set an end date for arms sales).

What happened? Reagan, with the help of his advisers, apparently saw what Nixon had seen before him: that China, itself on fractious terms with Moscow, could be a valuable Cold War asset. In fact, as Reagan focused his attention on the Soviet Union, U.S.-China ties reached their highest point of strategic cooperation, with the United States even selling lethal arms to Beijing. Eventually, geopolitical calculations won out over Reagan’s personal affinity toward Taiwan and his distrust of the communist government in Beijing.

Bill Clinton

However, the Cold War rationale for close U.S.-China ties disappeared along with the Soviet Union in 1991. At the same time, Americans received a harsh reminder of the different values held by their government and the Communist Party of China in the form of the bloody 1989 crackdown on peaceful protesters who had camped out on Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Accordingly, Bill Clinton wasted no time attacking incumbent President George H.W. Bush on his China-friendly policy during the 1992 elections.

Clinton famously denounced China’s leaders as the “butchers of Beijing” and promised, under his leadership, “an America that will never coddle tyrants, from Baghdad to Beijing.” Specifically, Clinton endorsed a proposal supported by many members of Congress: linking the renewal of China’s Most Favored Nation status (which gives preferential access to the U.S. market) to improvements on human rights.

Sure enough, when Clinton assumed office in 1993 he issued an executive order linking the renewal of China’s MFN status in 1994 to the human rights situation in the country. In doing so, Clinton apparently both overestimated how susceptible to outside pressure China’s leaders were and underestimated the importance of trade with China for U.S. businesses. Beijing stood firm, daring Clinton to make good on his promise, and for good reason. Almost immediately after the order was issued, business leaders began lobbying the Clinton administration to walk it back – which he did in 1994, to much criticism from Congress and the press.

A common enemy – the erstwhile Soviet Union – may no longer have united the United States and China, but Clinton stumbled across an equally powerful motivation: the money to be made in ballooning economic ties. By the end of his term, the president who had pledged to punish China for its human rights violations by restricting trade ended up seeing his administration help pave the way for China’s entry into the World Trade Organization. Once again, reality trumped campaign rhetoric.

George W. Bush

Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, also originally planned to rethink the U.S.-China relationship. While Clinton had referred to China as a “strategic partner,” Bush flatly labeled the country a “competitor.” He also clearly had a plan to use U.S. alliances with democratic Asian allies to check China’s growing clout. “If I am president, China will find itself respected as a great power, but in a region of democratic alliances,” Bush said from the campaign trail. China, he added, would be “unthreatened, but not unchecked.”

Bush’s tougher attitude toward China was on full display after a U.S. Navy EP-3 aircraft, which had been conducting surveillance near China’s Hainan Island, collided with a Chinese J-8 fighter jet. The Bush administration flatly refused to apologize for the EP-3 Incident, as it came to be known, despite China’s demands. The situation was eventually resolved, as such incidents often are, with some rhetorical ambiguity, but overall it seemed to set the United States and China up for a tense relationship.

Then terrorists hijacked four planes and attacked the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. After the 9/11 attacks, Bush turned his focus to the Middle East and Afghanistan for the “war on terror.” China went from a “competitor” to a potential partner as a result. Ultimately, the U.S. and China expanded all facets of their relationship, including military-to-military ties, during the Bush administration. 

Implications for Trump

So, in the nearly 40 years since the U.S. and China established diplomatic ties, three presidents have come to office pledging a rethink of the relationship, in one way or another. None have followed through. As the realities of geopolitics and economics settled in, all three presidents chose to adopt the general policies that have marked the U.S.-China relationship since the 1970s: an ad hoc mix of cooperation on some issues and agreeing-to-disagree on others.

Interestingly, the other two presidents – George H.W. Bush and Barack Obama – came to office with the opposite goal. They each, in their own way, wanted to transform U.S.-China relations for the better, with dreams of a closer, smoother partnership. Here too, reality soon overcame the best laid plans. Bush’s own triumphant visit to Tiananmen Square in February 1989 became a source of embarrassment just four months later when tanks chased protesters out of the same plaza. Meanwhile, Obama found his attempts to mollify Chinese concerns met not with reciprocal compromise, but only with demands for further conciliation. The experience of U.S. presidents shows, as the old adage holds, that U.S.-China relations will never get overly bad – or overly good.

The real question mark, in my mind, comes not from Trump but from the general atmosphere in which his decisions will take place. Over the past year, more and more voices in Washington have begun demanding a total rethink of the U.S.-China relationship. To quote David Lampton, director of China studies at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the U.S.-China relationship is at a “tipping point,” where the status quo may no longer be possible. In other words, the realities that constrained policymaking vis-à-vis U.S.-China relations have changed – which means policy options have as well.

For those invested in U.S.-China ties, the general shift toward dissatisfaction with the basic policy framework passed down from Nixon bears closer watching than Trump himself. History shows that previous presidents often change their foreign policy approach to match the perceived wisdom in Washington – and Trump is nothing if not changeable. The real question, then, is to what extent the previous model for U.S.-China relations has actually outgrown its usefulness. That question will continue to be hotly debated as Trump assembles his foreign policy team.