The Future of U.S.-China Policy: Back to Basics
To get its China policy right, the Biden administration needs to fully understand China’s own policy toward the United States.
One of the most egregious violations of international agreements in recent years happened this summer, yet the United States, along with most of the rest of the world, responded to the disaster diffidently, ineffectually, and insufficiently.
That violation was China’s shredding of the Sino-British Joint Declaration that framed the return of Hong Kong to China, pledging to preserve its way of life for 50 years beyond the handover date of July 1, 1997. Lodged as a treaty with the United Nations, the Declaration took years to negotiate, and ultimately became the fundamental platform that gave Britain the measure of confidence it needed to hand Hong Kong back to China rather than continuing to fight for a continuation of its colonial or at least administrative status within the United Kingdom.
The ax taken to the treaty by Beijing was the imposition of a national security law now blanketing freedom of speech and assembly in Hong Kong, by using a technicality within the Basic Law, Hong Kong's version of a constitution.
For those who know and love Hong Kong, China’s actions are a travesty, not only for the removal of fundamental rights that Hong Kong was promised, but also for China's brazen disregard of its commitment to Hong Kong and the world. Just as bad is the lack of a meaningful response by the world’s democracies, a betrayal which Beijing probably counted on.
It is against this backdrop that think tanks and policymakers are rehashing the topic that arguably has been responsible for more Washington angst than any other other issue of the last 30 years: What, as administrations change, should frame the fraught relationship that the United States has with China?
China's Policies Haven’t Changed Much
A starting point for understanding what U.S. policy toward China should be is understanding what China's policy toward the United States is, and has been.
A fundamental characteristic of China’s policy toward the United States, or, in general, toward the Western industrialized democracies, is that overarching policy has changed little for more than 30 years. Tactics and strategies for effecting Chinese policy have altered, expanded, and recalibrated according to conditions, but the policy itself looks pretty much the same, whether it’s 1987 or 2020.
That policy can be stated simply: Do anything and everything necessary to ensure that China is never vulnerable again. Simultaneously, “redress national humiliation” and, if that includes making Western powers “pay” for the unequal treaties of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and for abuses – real and perceived – of the past, then that is acceptable, too. Build a wall against vulnerability with technology, education, money, and a military that can defend the perimeter of China's interests.
This chip-on-the-shoulder, bitter mindset supports a policy framework in which most tactics and strategies are legitimate. The concept that “the end justifies the means” – usually considered unethical and cynical by the terms of most international best practices – drives the policy. Indeed, the policy is tinged with not a small portion of revenge.
Revenge is a common theme in Chinese culture. Sinologist Michael Dalby relates in his 1981 treatise, “Revenge and the Law in Traditional China,” that the great literary figure Han Yu said
“revenge figured not only in the various classics, but also in ‘innumerable’ other philosophical and historical works. None of these condemned the practice as a crime.”
Indeed, in ancient China the revenge scenario most often analyzed, that of a son murdering the man who has killed his father, was considered a case in which the the perpetrator of the revenge killing might justifiably be let off.
The CCP has built a cornerstone of its foreign policy, and the path to its own domestic perpetuity, on a constant drumbeat of victimhood of the Chinese nation, one which has seeped into the official consciousness and sanctioned vengeful behavior.
Recent U.S. Policy Prescriptions
A review of some of the recent policy prescriptions and recommendations made by China specialists in Washington shows the disconnect between the relationship as China sees it, and as the United States would like to have it.
The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission – USCC for short – is a congressionally-mandated body that holds hearings and does extensive research into all policy matters regarding China. Its annual report details its work, and most importantly, makes recommendations directly to the U.S. Congress for China-related legislation.
Many of the recommendations put out this year by the USCC are laudable, such as urging Congress to establish “a ‘Manhattan Project’-like effort to ensure that the American public has access to safe and secure supplies of critical lifesaving and life-sustaining drugs and medical equipment, and to ensure that these supplies are available from domestic sources or, where necessary, trusted allies.”
However, some of the recommendations are also unrealistic given the current climate in a China that feels emboldened by its successes in Hong Kong and the South China Sea; in the Belt and Road Initiative; in managing COVID-19 domestically; and in muffling the international fallout derived from COVID-19’s genesis in China, and its dispersal to the rest of the world.
The commission's first recommendation, that Congress should “adopt the principle of reciprocity as foundational in all legislation bearing on U.S.-China relations,” is a worthy and long-overdue principle, which the United States and its allies should fix as a defining plank of relations with China.
The problem is that the issues listed – journalistic freedom, access to information and data, access to U.S. social media platforms, unfettered diplomatic access, equal market access and protections, and many other areas in which foreigners are blocked in China – are as foundational for China to keep closed as they are to the outside world to pry open.
The USCC also recommends amending the Immigration and Nationality Act to make “association with a foreign government’s technology transfer programs” grounds to deny that person a visa “if the foreign government in question is deemed a strategic competitor of the United States.” It goes on to say that such grounds can include participation in that foreign country’s talent recruitment programs, startup competitions, government scholarships requiring study of specific STEM subjects followed by return to the home country, military-civil fusion efforts, or status as a member of a foreign military if not included on the visa application.
It would seem obvious that a strategic competitor of the United States should be denied access to the American scientific enterprise; educating your adversary in how to beat you is suicidal. But the recommendation has one inherent weakness: It drives those who would thwart it underground.
Finally, toward Hong Kong the USCC makes three policy prescriptions that virtually admit defeat in the defense of Hong Kong and the treaty that was supposed to protect it.
USCC recommends making it easier for Hong Kong residents facing political persecution to get U.S. visas. Congress should “consider” granting political asylum to Hong Kong residents who were born from June 30, 1997, the day before the handover, on. (And even that has a condition: only if they cannot apply for a second form of identification beyond a Hong Kong SAR passport.) Finally, write a report assessing China's use of Hong Kong to get around trade enforcement actions.
Those are actions any nation could undertake. Isn’t something more substantial warranted from the United States? Defending freedom of expression could, as one constructive measure, take the form of mandating semester-long courses in the principles and foundation of democracy and the U.S. Constitution for all college students, Chinese and otherwise, who come from authoritarian, one-party countries to study in America.
Conclusion
Many of the recommendations being made by think tanks and researchers seem to be disconnected from the Chinese behavior they describe. Ali Wyne wrote for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that four principles should guide America’s policymaking toward China. While writing on the one hand about “a resurgent China that is growing increasingly authoritarian at home and assertive abroad,” Wyne advises that the U.S. should “Find a middle ground between complacence and consternation.”
While detailing China's aggressive “wolf warrior diplomacy” on issues ranging from its claims in the South China Sea to the border conflict with India, Wyne prescribes that the U.S. should “strive for a durable cohabitation.”
U.S. policy toward China has always run along a sliding scale between open cooperation and outright condemnation, depending on the political winds in the United States and the latest bout of bad behavior by the Chinese Communist Party. The constant in U.S. policy, however, seems to have been that whatever the moment, the U.S. will indeed maintain the relationship regardless of China's excesses.
President Donald Trump changed this by taking a “we can live with them, we can live without them” approach to U.S.-China relations. This was the first time in almost 50 years of a renewed relationship with the Chinese government that the United States turned its back on the importance of the relationship, and, instead of trying to find new ways of ingratiating itself to Beijing while satisfying more cautious voters at home, a U.S. administration said, “If we can deal with them to our advantage, we will, and if we can’t, that's okay, too.”
That approach is likely to change under a Biden administration.
Indeed, a Biden administration will be influenced by factors that have had less weight during the Trump administration.
The giants of Silicon Valley will almost certainly pressure a Biden administration to be softer on China. American technology companies continue to work hand in hand with China on new research and initiatives, and are still angling to capture more of the Chinese market. They want an administration that will back them up.
American internationalists will find a resurgence of their voice and influence in a Biden administration. (John Lennon's “Imagine” is the score to this aspiration.) Meanwhile, American policymakers will go to great lengths to try and find the right “balance” with China.
China sees itself as a victim, with all the baggage and behavior that entails. That one principle alone can be a touchstone for determining what’s right, what’s safe, and what is workable with the Middle Kingdom.
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Bonnie Girard is president of China Channel Ltd., an independent consultancy providing due diligence for foreign companies coming into the Chinese market.