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Chapter 6
build positive and cooperative ties while at the same time seeking to use
these ties to build interdependencies and webs of relationships that had the
effect of constraining the other power from taking actions that opposed its
interests. While the analogy is not precise, the policies of engagement pur-
sued by the United States and China toward one another featured respective
“Gulliver strategies” that were designed to tie down aggressive, assertive, or
other negative policy tendencies of the other power through webs of interde-
pendence in bilateral and multilateral relationships. Thus the positive stasis
in US-China relations was based on an increasing convergence of these re-
spective engagement policies and Gulliver strategies. Of course, the fact
remained that these Gulliver strategies reflected underlying suspicions and
conflicting interests that featured prominently in the calculations of both the US and Chinese administrations as they interacted with one another. 59
Sustaining the positive stasis in US-China relations was based on the fact
that neither the Chinese leadership nor the US administration sought trouble
with the other. Both were preoccupied with other issues. Heading the list of
preoccupations for both governments was dealing with the massive negative
consequences of the international economic crisis and deep recession begun
in 2008. Other preoccupations of the outgoing Bush administration included
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, broader Middle East issues, North Korea,
and other foreign policy problems that came on top of serious adverse eco-
nomic developments.
The global economic decline added to Chinese leaders’ preoccupations in
dealing with the results of the October 2007 Seventeenth CCP Congress and
the Eleventh National People’s Congress in March 2008. Those meetings and
subsequent developments showed a collective leadership, with Hu Jintao first
among equals but not dominant, that continued to debate appropriate ways to
meet a wide variety of pressing economic, social, political, and other issues
at home and abroad. The leaders sought with only mixed results those lines
of policy and action that avoided major cost and risk to China’s ruling party
leadership while endeavoring to promote Chinese development and the
stability of one-party rule. There remained uncertainty about the major lead-
ership transition expected at the Eighteenth Congress in 2012—a serious
matter in an authoritarian political system like China’s. 60
The US and Chinese governments worked hard to use multiple formal
dialogues, high-level meetings and communications, and official rhetoric
emphasizing the positive in the relationship in order to offset and manage
negative implications from the many differences and issues that continued to
complicate US-China relations. Neither leadership publicly emphasized the
major differences over key policy issues regarding economic, military, and
political questions.
Both governments registered close collaboration over North Korea’s nu-
clear weapons program. They worked in parallel to manage the fallout from
Pragmatism amid Differences during the G. W. Bush Administration
143
Taiwan’s President Chen Shui-bian’s repeated efforts to strengthen Taiwan’s
sovereignty and standing as a country separate from China. Chen’s moves
provoked China and were opposed by the United States. The US and Chinese
governments supported Taiwan’s new president, Ma Ying-jeou, who pursued
an overall easing of Taiwan-China-US tensions over cross-strait issues.
Meanwhile, much more limited collaboration between China and the United
States influenced such international hot spots as Sudan, Iran, and Myanmar/
Burma, with leaders on both sides speaking more about Sino-American
cooperation than Sino-American differences over these sensitive internation-
al questions. 61
Unfortunately for those hoping for significantly greater cooperation be-
tween the United States and China, dramatic increases in cooperation seemed
absent because of major conflicting interests and disputes over a wide range
of issues. Cautious US and Chinese leaders seeking to avoid trouble with one
another had a hard time overcoming these obstacles. Some disputes were at
times hard to control, resulting in surprising upsurges in US-China tensions,
such as strident criticism in Congress and the media on Beijing’s crackdown
on dissent in Tibet prior to the start of the 2008 Olympic games.
As noted in chapter 1, China’s many disagreements with the United States
can be grouped into four general categories of disputes, which have compli-
cated US-China relations for years. China’s moderation toward the United
States since 2001 reduced the salience of some of these issues, but they
remained important and were reflected in Chinese policies and actions. The
risk-averse Hu Jintao leadership appeared to have little incentive to accom-
modate the United States on these sensitive questions.
The four categories, again, are: (1) opposition to US support for Taiwan
and involvement with other sensitive sovereignty issues, including Tibet and
disputed islands and maritime rights along China’s rim; (2) opposition to US
efforts to change China’s political system; (3) opposition to the United States playing the dominant role along China’s periphery in Asia; and (4) opposition to many aspects of US leadership in world affairs. Some specific issues
in the latter two categories include US policy in Iraq, Iran, and the broader
Middle East; aspects of the US-backed security presence in the Asia-Pacific;
US and allied ballistic missile defenses; US pressure on such governments as
Burma, North Korea, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Cuba, and Venezuela; US pressure
tactics in the United Nations and other international forums; and the US
position on global climate change. 62
As noted in chapter 1 and earlier in this chapter, US differences with
China continue to involve clusters of often contentious economic, security,
political, sovereignty, foreign policy, and other issues. 63 Given the many foreign and domestic problems they faced, the outgoing Bush administration
was disinclined to take dramatic steps forward in relations with China. Such
steps probably would have required compromises unacceptable to important
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Chapter 6
US constituencies and partners abroad. It was more advantageous to follow
and reinforce the recent equilibrium along generally positive lines in US
policy and relations toward China.
Against this background, the outlook for US relations with China at the
end of the Bush administration seemed focused on sustaining the positive
equilibrium developed during the Bush years. One force for significant nega-
tive change seemed to be US domestic debate over China. In its last years,
the Bush administration was preoccupied with many issues and appeared
tired and reactive. It had a harder time in its waning days in controlling the
consequences of a broad range of US interest groups and commentators that
were sharply critical of various Chinese government policies and practices.
> Such groups and critics also became more active and prominent as they
endeavored to influence the policy agenda of the new US administration as it
came to power. They sought to push forward their various proposals before
the incoming government set its policy agenda.
Meanwhile, there remained uncertainty on how lasting China’s recent
moderate and cooperative approach toward the United States would be. Chi-
nese pronouncements and a variety of foreign specialists often depicted Chi-
na’s approach as based on a strategic decision by Chinese leaders seeking
long-term peace and development and offering lasting reassurance to the
United States, Japan, and other states with which Beijing had strongly dif-
fered over the years. Others saw China’s recent moderate approach as depen-
dent on circumstances. In particular, they suspected that the rise of Chinese
power and its overall economic and military capabilities were likely to result
in a less accommodating and tougher Chinese posture on the salient differ-
ences that continued to divide China and the United States. Developments in
Sino-US relations during the Obama administration and especially with the
ascendance of strong-man Chinese leader Xi Jinping seemed to support the
reasoning behind the latter scenario. 64
Chapter Seven
Barack Obama, Donald Trump,
and Xi Jinping
Pragmatism Falters amid Acrimony and Tensions
With the outset of the US administration of President Barack Obama in
January 2009, it appeared that the crisis in US-China relations after the Cold
War and the Tiananmen crackdown had evolved during the first decade of
the twenty-first century into a positive relationship that for a time seemed
likely to continue. Converging US and Chinese engagement policies broad-
ened common ground while the governments dealt with differences through
dialogues. Neither the Chinese leadership nor the US administration sought
trouble with the other. Both were preoccupied with other issues.
Heading the list of preoccupations for both governments was dealing with
the massive negative consequences of the international economic crisis and
deep recession begun in 2008. Other US preoccupations included Iraq, Af-
ghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, broader Middle East issues, North Korea, and other
foreign policy problems that came on top of serious adverse economic devel-
opments. The global economic decline added to Chinese leaders’ preoccupa-
tions in dealing with uncertain leadership succession and ongoing debate
about a number of contentious domestic and international problems.
However, long-standing differences between the two countries were not
significantly changed as a result of pragmatic engagement. They began to
worsen at the turn of the decade and grew in prominence over the following
years. China’s moderation toward the United States since 2001 had reduced
the salience of some of these issues, but they remained important and were
reflected in Chinese policies and actions. The risk-averse Hu Jintao leader-
ship appeared to have little incentive to accommodate the United States on
145
146
Chapter 7
sensitive questions. Rather, his government took steps beginning in 2009 that
challenged and tested the resolve of the incoming US administration of Ba-
rack Obama. Those challenges were met with the Obama administration’s
measured resolve and broader policy of American engagement with the Asia-
Pacific as seen in its signature rebalance policy, also known as its “pivot” to Asia. China reacted negatively; its challenges and assertiveness on differences with the United States reached new heights with the rise to power of Xi
Jinping and bold foreign policy moves that accompanied his domineering
strong-man rule of China.
As noted in the previous chapter, the four categories of Chinese differ-
ences with the United States remained as follows: (1) opposition to US
support for Taiwan and involvement with other sensitive sovereignty issues,
including Tibet and disputed islands and maritime rights along China’s rim;
(2) opposition to perceived US efforts to change China’s political system; (3)
opposition to the United States playing the dominant role along China’s
periphery in Asia; and (4) opposition to many aspects of US leadership in
world affairs. 1
Explanations varied as to why China put aside past efforts to reassure the
United States and instead undertook its more assertive and often coercive
actions in areas of difference with the United States. Chinese commentators
tended to see a starting point in the rising challenges in US-China relations as the Obama government’s rebalance policy that was announced in late 2011.
The new US approach emphasized strong and positive US engagement with
China, but it also called for stronger American diplomatic, security, and
economic relationships throughout the region, which many Chinese com-
mentators saw as encircling and designed to contain and constrain China’s
rising influence in Asia. 2
Obama government officials and many other Americans tended to see the
origins of Chinese greater assertiveness and challenges to the United States
coming from altered Chinese views of power realities between the two coun-
tries and in Asian and world affairs. The US-initiated international financial
breakdown and massive recession added to perceived American weaknesses
derived from declining American strength notably due to draining wars in
Iraq and Afghanistan. On the other hand, China emerged from the economic
crisis with strong growth, flush with cash and more confident in its state-
directed growth model as opposed to the now deeply discredited American
free-market approach. Under these circumstances, Chinese elite and popular
opinion looked with increasing disapproval on the cautious and reactive ap-
proach of the Hu Jintao government. In foreign affairs, accommodating the
United States and regional powers over long-standing Chinese interests in-
volving Chinese security, sovereignty, and other sensitive issues seemed
overly passive and misguided. Though Hu’s approach was in line with Deng
Xiao-ping’s instruction that China should keep a low profile in foreign af-
Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Xi Jinping
147
fairs and focus on domestic development, opinion in China now favored a
more robust and prominent Chinese international approach. The result was
an evolution of greater boldness, activism, and considerable use of coercion,
generally short of using military force, in employing Chinese economic,
political, and military power to meet the broad goals in what incoming leader
Xi Jinping called the “China Dream.” The goals involved China unified with
disputed territories under its control and with a stature unsurpassed in Asia as a leading world power. 3
The explanations of rising challenges and tensions in US-China relations
over the time frame delineated above tended to use the lens of realism in
international relations theory. The United States was seen in decline while
China was rising. For Chinese commentators who saw containment in the
Obama
administration’s rebalance policy, the US actions were motivated by
America trying to sustain its leading position in the face of rising Chinese
power and influence. For American observers, the catalyst for the rising
tensions and challenges in the relationship came from more powerful China
now putting aside past restraint and flexing its new muscles in pursuit of
long-standing ambitions involving key differences with the United States.
Constructivism played a role in some assessments of the rising tensions
and acrimony in US-China relations in recent years, especially as China
continued to develop a strong sense of identity based on the nationalism of an
aggrieved power with an exceptional sense of self-righteousness seeking to
remedy past injustices. And the United States had its constructed identity of
exceptional righteousness as well, making compromise between the two na-
tions over sensitive issues more difficult. Liberalism figured in the recent
developments by showing the failure perceived in the United States of eco-
nomic interchange and close diplomatic and nongovernment engagement fa-
vored by liberals as sources of stability and cooperation in relations to actual-ly lead to mutual accommodation and greater collaboration as the main trend
in the relationship. Indeed, developments in recent years showed that
Americans saw economic interchange with China as working against their
interests, an increasingly adverse situation that required strong remedial
measures by the US government. The liberal view that closer American
engagement in reaching mutually acceptable agreements with China would
lead to closer relations seemed belied by the 2016 US presidential campaign
rhetoric of Obama administration Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, leading
Republican candidate Donald Trump, and many other candidates. They
argued that America had to be constantly vigilant in watching Chinese imple-
mentation of economic and other agreements, as Beijing was not to be trusted
and had a record of manipulating and gaming accords to its advantage, at the
expense of the United States. 4
US differences with China continued to involve clusters of often conten-
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