Getting China Right

Posted September 12, 2008

With the Olympics behind us, and the U.S. elections ahead, we are entering a potentially challenging time for U.S.-China relations. Given the numerous serious policy differences between the United States and China—on human rights, trade and currency, and Sudan, to name a few—getting China right from day one will be a key challenge for the next U.S. administration.

Presidents George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush all promised during their campaigns to be “tougher” on China than their predecessor was. But once in office, when the realities of the relationship sunk in—and after initial difficulties in managing relations at the outset of their administrations—they all reverted to a more pragmatic approach. And they lost valuable time, political capital and leverage in the process.

John McCain and Barack Obama face similar temptations. Rapid changes to the global economy, off-shoring of U.S. jobs to China, high gas prices and China’s military modernization and its abysmal record on human rights at home and abroad—all combine to give unique momentum to the case that they too should adopt a “tougher” stance. And no doubt the serious issues to be resolved between the U.S. and China will require toughness and a clear-eyed approach. But the urgency of global warming and other shared challenges with China requires that the next administration forge a progressive, results-oriented strategy toward China from the start.

For 30 years, America’s approach to China has been guided by the twin poles of either engagement or hedging—or some combination of the two. Today Washington has to move beyond that construct. The “on-off” engage-hedge construct does not adequately consider the complexity of China’s growing role, for good and for ill, in global affairs and the simple fact that U.S.-China relations in the decades ahead will likely be characterized not by either competition or cooperation, but by elements of both competition and cooperation. A pragmatic, forward-looking and multifaceted “risk management” strategy can open a new phase in U.S.-China relations. Such an approach has six elements:

• Embed China. So long as China continues to show incremental progress toward accepting growing responsibilities, the U.S. should move beyond engagement to embedding China in the international system as a responsible, engaged, and respected stakeholder so it can address urgent global problems such as climate change. China’s role in the Six Party talks is encouraging, but the U.S. must also work with China to both include it in international organizations, like the International Energy Agency and the G-8 that it is not currently in, as well as adopt an approach in the international community that is more oriented towards functional and cooperative problem solving in those organizations, like the U.N. and IMF, of which it is already a member.

• Manage both potential downside and upside risk. The U.S. must always ensure that it retains adequate capacity, military and otherwise, for handling a variety of scenarios that flow from both China’s strengths and its weaknesses.  This includes maintaining peace and stability in the Taiwan Straits, naturally, but also, given the uncertainties about China’s future trajectory includes situations that may arise from economic and political instability and even natural disasters.

• Collaborate with China. Common challenges, such as sustaining and broadening global economic growth, curbing climate change, staunching the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and combating infectious diseases, will require the U.S. and China and the international community to cooperate on large-scale, long-term policies.

• Cooperate with other nations to influence China. While progress has hardly been linear, working with our allies and through multilateral channels and building international pressure has effectively induced China to modify its stance, at times, on certain controversial issues like nonproliferation and North Korea.

• Re-establish U.S. moral authority. Key to effective bilateral relations with China, and to getting others to cooperate with us vis-a-vis China is re-establishing U.S. moral authority and leadership around the globe.  Closing Guantanamo and renouncing torture are two obvious steps a new administration can take to signal a new orientation in world affairs, but it also means, more fundamentally, a willingness to re-engage in multilateral problem solving alongside our friends and partners in the international community.

• Prepare to compete globally. The United States will not be able to engage China from a position of strength, nor guarantee success in a globalized world, unless we better educate our kids, empower our workers and repair our fiscal position and our infrastructure

Importantly, the next administration has an unparalleled opportunity to engage China in a constructive partnership on climate change and energy security—an extraordinary and urgent challenge the U.S. national security in this new century. The Bush administration's shortsighted energy policies and refusal to commit to reductions in greenhouse gases prevented us from capitalizing on our two nations' shared objectives.

As the two largest emitters of greenhouse gases in the world, the United States and China must work together to find solutions that will stave off the most severe consequences of climate change. No international effort to address global warming will be successful without the full engagement of both countries. Convincing China to commit to binding targets for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions will be a difficult and long-term challenge. But the U.S., in concert with its partners, can start to lay the foundation for these critical negotiations by taking a leadership position itself, and by bringing China into global environmental institutions now.

Because China's future remains deeply uncertain, we can assume neither that the stability nor the prosperity that have generally characterized U.S.-China relations for the past several decades will continue. But nor should we assume that conflict is inevitable.

The United States cannot determine China's future; that task belongs to the Chinese people. Rather, by facing our own challenges and working with China to tackle both China's own problems as well as our shared global challenges the next administration has a once in a generation opportunity to help shape the environment in which China makes its choices and peacefully integrate China into the international order, and, in the process, embed it in the web of norms and responsibilities that come with being an active player on the world stage.

Nina Hachigian is a senior vice president at the Center for American Progress. Michael Schiffer is a program officer at the Stanley Foundation. They are co-authors, along with Winny Chen, of a new report from the Center for American Progress “A Global Imperative: U.S.-China Relations in the 21st Century” http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/08/china_report.html