US-China Relations (3rd Ed)

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US-China Relations (3rd Ed) Page 33

by Robert G Sutter


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  attack China with air and sea forces that would destroy and disrupt Chinese

  forces—otherwise the Chinese forces would strike at US and allied combat-

  ants in areas along China’s periphery. 43 This so-called air-sea battle concept calls for US forces to be prepared to attack Chinese sensors, radars, targeting systems, and/or weapons in order to break links in the Chinese process of

  finding the US or allied target and striking it. This offensive posture is seen as likely to lead to a broader and very destructive US-China war, and so other

  specialists call for an American response to a confrontation with China that

  would involve an American and allied blockade of major shipping routes to

  China. The blockade would seek to destroy Chinese shipping and supporting

  naval vessels but avoid direct attack on Chinese territory.

  On the other side are specialists who judge that it is futile for the United

  States to endeavor to preserve its leading position in Asia through military

  primacy. 44 Given the rapid increase in Chinese military power and the worldwide commitments of US forces, the United States is advised to seek an

  agreement with China on a balance of power in the region that both find

  acceptable. A challenge facing this proposal is persuading China, which has

  in recent years seen significant advance in its control of contested territories and its related influence in Asia, to set aside its assertiveness in seeking its vision of the China Dream in favor of an accommodation with the United

  States, a power seen on the decline and thus far ineffective in checking

  China’s advances along its periphery.

  President Trump, China, and the Crisis over North Korea’s

  Nuclear Weapons

  As noted in chapter 6, China’s approach to nuclear weapons proliferation

  changed markedly after the Cold War. Beijing sometimes reluctantly but

  steadily conformed more to international norms supported by the United

  States. There was considerable cooperation and common ground between the

  two powers in dealing with this issue with regard to Iran and, notably, North

  Korea. Nevertheless, North Korea continued to develop and test its nuclear

  weapons and ballistic missile delivery systems despite UN sanctions sup-

  ported by the United States and China. The development reached a point at

  the end of the Obama administration and the start of the Donald Trump

  administration where North Korea was anticipated to soon have the ability to

  launch a nuclear strike against the continental United States. 45

  The Trump administration conducted a policy review and announced that

  if North Korea could not be persuaded to stop its nuclear weapons develop-

  ment, the United States would take unspecified unilateral actions. The result-

  ing crisis featured intense consultations among US and allied leaders. It also

  was a centerpiece in the April 2017 summit between President Trump and

  President Xi Jinping. President Trump listened to President Xi’s explanation

  Security Issues in Contemporary US-China Relations

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  of China’s concerns with the North Korean situation. China opposed the

  North Korean nuclear weapons program, but it put a high value on maintain-

  ing stability in this important neighboring area. It favored negotiations and

  avoiding confrontation. Against that background, President Trump publicly

  and repeatedly appealed to China to use its leverage as North Korea’s neigh-

  bor and main economic partner to compel North Korea to change its policy

  and halt its nuclear weapons program. In these appeals, the US president

  voiced his respect for the Chinese leader. He also indicated that progress on

  the North Korean issue would lead to US moderation in dealing with trade

  issues with China. 46

  In June 2017 there was still no resolution to the crisis. North Korea

  continued its testing of delivery systems despite UN sanctions against them.

  Its commitment to nuclear weapons development seemed undiminished.

  There were reports that China was tightening restrictions on economic inter-

  action with North Korea, but there also were reports that Chinese businesses

  had managed to circumvent such restrictions despite Beijing’s avowed com-

  mitments to economic sanctions that it established to persuade North Korea

  to stop its nuclear weapons program. 47

  Chapter Nine

  Economic and Environmental Issues in

  Contemporary US-China Relations

  The rapid growth of the Chinese economy and close integration of Chinese

  development into the global economy have been the most salient accomplish-

  ments of the reforms pursued by Chinese leaders since the death of Mao.

  China’s economic modernization has had a staggering impact on the lives of

  Chinese people. It is the foundation of the legitimacy of the ruling Chinese

  Communist Party, the source of China’s growing military power, and the

  main reason for China’s international prominence in the early twenty-first

  century. The implications of Chinese economic development also have had

  negative features at home and abroad, notably regarding trade disputes and

  environmental protection. 1

  As the world’s leading economy, source of foreign investment and tech-

  nology, and leading importer of Chinese products, the United States has had

  an important influence on, and in turn has been influenced in important ways

  by, China’s economic advance and integration into existing international

  economic structures and agreements. The burgeoning Sino-American eco-

  nomic relationship had a positive effect on relations between the two coun-

  tries. In the post–Cold War period, it replaced the strategic cooperation be-

  tween the United States and China against the Soviet Union that had pro-

  vided the key foundation of US-China cooperation in the 1970s and 1980s.

  The two world economies became increasingly interdependent. They were so

  important for each country’s development that by the first decade of the

  twenty-first century, signs of serious economic dispute or confrontation be-

  tween the great economic powers had profound impacts on world markets

  detrimental to the well-being of each country. 2

  The rapid growth of China’s economy and US-China economic relations

  were driven by forces of international economic globalization. The overall

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  process has had profound effects, both positive and negative, on broad

  swaths of public and elite opinion, economic and other interest groups, and

  political leaders in both societies. On the whole, China’s rapid growth and

  rise to great power status as a leading world economy have shown the pro-

  cess in recent years as highly beneficial to China’s interests. The Chinese

  government has generally avoided major initiatives that have the potential to

  disrupt existing economic relationships seen as largely beneficial for its interests. 3

  Complaints and initiatives to change existing economic relations have

  come in recent years largely from the US side of the Sino-American relation-

  ship. They were particularly prominent for mainly political reasons in the

  wake of the Tiananmen crackdown, when the US administration and the

  C
ongress considered whether to place conditions on the United States’ provi-

  sion of most-favored-nation trading status to China. Those efforts ended in

  US agreement with China on China’s entry into the World Trade Organiza-

  tion (WTO) and the passage of US legislation granting China permanent

  normal trade status in 2000. 4

  More recent US complaints reflect a wide range of US interests and

  constituencies disadvantaged by perceived unfair negative aspects of the

  massive US-China economic relationship. They are supported by varying

  numbers of congressional members and generally less vocal officials in the

  US government. The US administration has followed a pattern of dealing

  with such economic and trade disputes through a variety of bilateral discus-

  sions and dialogues with Chinese counterparts. The Chinese government

  favors this approach in dealing with these and other issues. It reacts negative-ly to American public pressure or US policy initiatives on trade and related

  economic issues that it tends to see as protectionist or otherwise adverse to

  Chinese interests. Chinese officials also were openly critical of US financial

  management and other policies that negatively affected China’s economy in

  the global financial crisis and recession beginning in 2008. 5

  For many years, periodic US complaints and initiatives on economic and

  trade issues caused public disagreements with China as the United States

  pressed for change and China resisted US demands on various economic

  questions. Against the background of continuing negative if not alarmist US

  public opinion on the threat China’s economic practices posed for the United

  States came more recent hardening in US attitudes. Strident charges against

  Chinese economic practices were featured in the rhetoric of the leading can-

  didates of both political parties during the 2016 US presidential election

  campaigns. President Donald Trump’s victory was based on a promise to

  right glaring economic wrongs with China. American organizations usually

  moderate in dealing with China were sharply critical of Chinese economic

  practices. 6

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  Many US experts and government leaders came to see as incorrect their

  past expectation, consistent with the liberal school of international relations (IR) theory, that growing trade and economic interchange would prompt

  China to conform more to international economic practices in line with

  American interests. What they found, as explained in a prominent report by

  the Asia Society in February 2017, was that Chinese practices reinforced,

  from a decade earlier, state-directed “zero-sum, mercantilist trade and invest-

  ment policies that are highly . . . damaging to US commercial and economic

  interests.” 7 This darker view of Chinese economic behavior was more in line with the realist school of IR theory. Using that lens, China was seen deliberately eschewing economic reforms that would open China more to invest-

  ment and trade advantageous for the United States and other developed coun-

  tries. The Chinese government practiced a form of “state capitalism” that

  used its control of bank lending and important state-owned enterprises

  (SOEs) and its influence over China’s dynamic private sector to carry out

  industrial policies designed to advance a wide range of protected segments of

  the Chinese economy; and in this way, China eventually acquired advanced

  technology from abroad in a high-priority effort to create national industries

  that would prevail in the China market and international markets at the ex-

  pense of American and other international competitors. 8

  Whether this growing realist view of economic relations with China

  would result in strong US countermeasures or have a broader impact on

  overall US policy toward China remained uncertain at the outset of the

  Trump administration. On the one hand, it could mesh with growing

  American concern over China’s international assertiveness at the expense of

  neighbors and US interests in the Asia-Pacific region and concern over Chi-

  na’s increased domestic repression of civil society and individual rights to

  support an overall tougher US policy toward China. On the other hand, many

  important American companies have a large stake in continuing to work

  constructively with China. And they have important connections with senior

  leaders of the Trump government and the Congress. Meanwhile, the willing-

  ness of the US government to pressure China on salient economic issues may

  be overshadowed by need to cooperate with Beijing on other more immedi-

  ately important issues, such as North Korea. 9

  CHINA’S ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE

  Since the beginning of economic reforms following the death of Mao Zedong

  in 1976, China has been the world’s fastest-growing major economy. From

  1979 to 2014, the average annual growth rate of China’s gross domestic

  product (GDP) was about 10 percent. By 2010 China became the world’s

  second-largest economy, after the United States. In 2011 it became the larg-

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  est manufacturer, surpassing the United States. In 2012 it became the world’s

  largest trader. China also has become the second-largest destination of

  foreign investment, the largest holder of foreign exchange reserves, and the

  largest creditor nation. 10 Several predictions said that China was on track to surpass the United States, the world’s largest economy, in the next decade. 11

  Chinese growth rates declined steadily from 12.8 percent in 2012 to 6.7

  percent in 2016. Chinese foreign trade growth stopped and overall trade was

  less in 2016 than in 2015. In 2013 Chinese leaders began a wide range of

  more than sixty sets of mainly economic reforms to deal with existing or

  anticipated economic weaknesses involving the inefficient practices of SOEs

  and the state banking system, resource and energy scarcities, massive envi-

  ronmental problems, and China’s strong dependence on the health of the

  global trading economy, which stalled in the financial crisis and recession

  begun in 2008. 12 Active foreign direct investment (FDI) in China continued, and growing Chinese investment abroad surpassed China’s FDI in 2015 and

  later years. 13

  Economists generally attribute much of China’s rapid economic growth to

  two main factors: large-scale capital investment, financed by large domestic

  savings and foreign investment; and rapid productivity growth. The two fac-

  tors appear to have worked together during the reform period, 14 though decline in productivity has prompted recent economic reforms seeking higher

  efficiency in the economy.

  In foreign affairs, the growing importance of the Chinese economy was

  manifested most notably by the growth in economic interchange between

  China and countries throughout the world, notably the United States. Most

  important in this regard was the growth of trade and foreign investment in

  China. International trade played a key role in increasing Chinese influence

  around the world and in enabling China to import the technology, resources,

  food, and consumer goods needed to support economic growth, to finance

  China’s military buildup a
nd other aspects of its national power, and to

  maintain the legitimacy of the Communist Party government. Greater Chi-

  nese access to foreign markets also enabled China to attract foreign invest-

  ment. Foreign-affiliated companies played a key role in generating economic

  growth and employment and in the manufacture of world-class products.

  China’s joining the WTO in 2001 added to reasons for strong foreign invest-

  ment in China, which in turn boosted the size of Chinese foreign trade.

  Chinese exports and imports in 2004 were both more than twice as large as

  those just three years earlier, in 2001. 15

  For many years, about half of Chinese foreign trade was so-called pro-

  cessing trade, where a commodity crosses China’s border, perhaps several

  times, before the final product is produced and the value of each cross-border

  transfer is duly registered in Chinese import and export figures. In 2012 the

  level of processing trade was said to be 34.8 percent of the value of Chinese

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  189

  foreign trade, down from a level of 44 percent in 2011. Some other more

  recent estimates have been higher. In effect, such processing trade results in a good deal of double-counting in Chinese import and export figures, which

  tends to exaggerate the actual size and importance of Chinese foreign trade.

  This consideration aside, the fact remains that the internationally recognized

  figures for Chinese exports surpassed those of the United States in 2007. 16

  Though China has sometimes run trade surpluses and sometimes run

  trade deficits in the reform period since the late 1970s, in the past two

  decades (as of 2017) China has run only trade surpluses. The surplus grew to

  about $300 billion in 2008, declined somewhat after that, and rose again to

  reach $500 billion in 2016. The US global trade deficit in these years was

  enormous, amounting to more than $700 billion for several years. It was

  $500 billion in 2016; China was the lion’s share of that deficit with a US

  merchandise trade deficit with China valued at $350 billion. Merchandise

 

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