Is America Really Back? --A Dialogue between Dr. Thomas Fingar and Senior Colonel Zhou Bo (ret.) on the Current State of China-U.S. Relations
November 06, 2021
About the author:
Thomas Fingar, Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.
Zhou Bo, Senior Fellow at Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University.
Following the 2021 Taihe Civilizations Forum, the Taihe International Communications Center hosted an online discussion on October 8 that captures the candid and profound reflections of senior officials whose actions have shaped the course of ties between China and the United States. Dr. Thomas Fingar, Shorenstein APARC Fellow in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, former Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and former Assistant Secretary of State, and Senior Colonel Zhou Bo, Senior Fellow at Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University, China Forum Expert, and former Director of Center for Security Cooperation of the Office for International Military Cooperation of Ministry of National Defense, were invited to join this dialogue. During their conversation, Dr. Fingar and Senior Colonel Zhou exchanged ideas on important topics such as the current state of China-U.S. relations, the future development of the two countries' bilateral ties, the rationale behind the US foreign policy and the American alliance system, as well as the "extreme competition" that China and the U.S. are trapped in.
Moderator: Today we have convened two very distinguished experts to discuss the current state of China-U.S. relations. Thank you, Professor Thomas Fingar and Senior Colonel Zhou Bo(ret.) for being here. I think this is a great opportunity for us to understand what has happened, what is happening, and what will happen between China and the United States. Particularly, as 2021 marks the 50th anniversary of the China-U.S. rapprochement, also given the virtual summit between President Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden that happened on November 16th, I believe that it would be constructive to take some time to look back and envision the future.
Today's topic is China-U.S. relations after the American withdrawal from Afghanistan. But before we get into the implications of this event for the relationship between the two countries in question, let's first talk about its impact on the American alliance system in general. More specifically, how has the withdrawal affected the US allies? How about the American soft power and the American role and standing in the world?
Thomas Fingar: I will begin by asking a question. Why would one ask questions about the impact of Afghanistan on US relations with its allies? Certainly, the way in which the last month of the departure from Afghanistan played out is not pretty. But I don't see how that affects the security commitments that the United States has to its NATO and other allies or the expectations that allies have of the United States.
Afghanistan was not an ally. There is an important distinction between allies and non-allies, or even allies and partners. Commentators, erroneously in my view, have said that because the United States left Afghanistan in the way that it did, allies will lose confidence in the United States, and that the United States must do something to bolster the confidence of its allies. Historically, there was no precedent for that. US alliances remained strong or became stronger after the US defeat in Vietnam, for example. But even more to the point, to the extent I've seen commentary, from other allied governments, it mostly indicates expectation that because the United States is no longer bogged down in Afghanistan, it is now better prepared to respond to a common security challenge, should there be one.
Zhou Bo: I hope to first make it clear that the question was not about how the event directly impacted US allies, but in what ways has the American alliance system developed against the general background of the US drawdown from Afghanistan. Still, I believe that the event is one of the key elements affecting the overall American alliance system. Actually, it can be perceived as a lens through which we envision how the American alliance system might evolve in the future.
I believe that the overall American-led alliance will gradually decline in the future, both in Europe and in Asia. Let’s talk about Europe first. It is pretty clear that the U.S. wants more NATO members to pay their 2% defense spending benchmark. So far, there are ten countries that have met this standard, thanks mostly to the rude and ruthless bashing of President Trump. And I assume in the future, with more countries meeting this benchmark, sharing the burden of the United States that now accounts for approximately 37% of the world military spending and more than 70% of NATO’s combined defense expenditure, the American-led alliance in Europe, or the Trans-Atlantic alliance will actually become weaker because the more self-reliant NATO becomes, the easier it will be for America to shift its focus elsewhere. Washington has already made it clear that it will focus on the Indo-Pacific in its foreign policy. When President Biden said to the world that America is back, I wondered what the statement really means. It sounds rhetorical in that as a whole, the U.S. is in retrenchment. It has shifted its focus from global issues to address domestic issues and competition with China in the Indo-Pacific region. The European Union will have to figure out its own way of achieving the so-called “strategic autonomy” in the years ahead.
Now let’s look at the Asia-Pacific. The American effort of persuading Australia to purchase British or American-made nuclear submarines is not really a success. Yes, it has succeeded in convincing a half-hearted ally to take the risk of involving in a potential conflict with China in the future. But this was achieved at a cost of sacrificing the huge interests of France, another ally. Therefore, I don't believe the U.S. has gained much. And in the Asia-Pacific region, most of the countries, including America’s allies and partners, have taken China as their largest trading partner. Any effort to strengthen this kind of military alliance would put third-party countries in a “us or them” situation. This is what regional countries are most reluctant to do. Considering all these, I believe that the American alliance system would decline in the years to come.
Thomas Fingar: Let me pick up on four points.
One is the new alliance. It has not changed much as the U.S. had the remnants of the ANZUS alliance with Australia but now Britain is in it. So if one were to look at this one development after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan, one sees a new three-way alliance—an alliance that did not exist previously. This does not indicate diminished confidence in the United States.
Second is the Australian decision to buy nuclear-powered rather than diesel submarines. I suspect that this was not something the U.S. had to push Australia to do. I think that any country able to buy nuclear-powered submarines would do so. All would rather have nuclear-powered submarines rather than diesel submarines because they have a much greater range. That is particularly the case for a country that is as far from everything as is Australia.
The third point has to do with the concept of the US alliances as military alliances. Certainly, most of them began that way, and there is certainly an important military component. But most of the American alliances, whether with NATO, Australia, Japan, or other nations are alliances of interests that go far beyond shared military concerns. Shared values and common interests have been part of the fabric that has developed over more than 50 years, linking the countries to one another and to the United States and making us far more than a grouping of countries that come together because of a perceived common adversary. The importance of the development of ties, many of which grew out of the transparency necessary for the alliance to succeed, should not be underestimated.
The final point I hope to pick up out of what you just said is that to me there is nothing magical about the 2% figure. That figure has been around for a long time. And most of the increases in the American allies’ military budgets began before Mr. Trump became the President. The idea of the American public accepting a disproportionate responsibility for the defense of its alliance members was a deliberate part of US policy after World War II. The idea was to bear a disproportionate responsibility and financial burden for the Cold War alliances. We did that because we could; we did it in part to dissuade our allies from seeking nuclear weapons themselves; and we did it so that they could devote more of their budgets to economic development, from rebuilding and expansion to becoming more prosperous, to improve the lives of their citizens, and to make themselves stronger so that they would be stronger partners of the United States. As they became stronger, the alliance became stronger. As the alliance became stronger, the United States became more secure. That was the logic and it was not limited to the impact on the United States. It was beneficial to all in the alliance system.
What has changed, however, is the willingness of much of the American public to continue to pay such a disproportionate share. What made sense fifty or sixty years ago, when our allies and partners were weak and poor and recovering, does not seem to make as much sense now. So there will be adjustments to military requirements in a post-Cold War environment, which will be manifested by increased military expenditures, or what you mentioned as greater strategic autonomy or capacity. Frankly, speaking for myself, I wish those countries had a greater autonomous capability because it would not make us so liable or vulnerable to being pulled into situations that are of greater interest to our European partners than to the United States. Libya is an example. We did not have the same interests or involvement with Libya that our allies did. But they didn't have the intelligence or supply capacity that was necessary for what they wanted to do. Alliances are not all about American influence. They are also about collective ability to pursue shared objectives and deter unwanted actions by other countries. It is a mechanism for maintaining harmony in the sharing of information among the countries that now have a high degree of shared values.
I have a question for you. If your analysis is right, that the American alliance network is on a trajectory of decline, what are the implications of that for China?
Zhou Bo: The U.S. has always been relying on its alliance system to secure its predominance in the world, and it will become more so in the future because its own strength is declining especially in relation to that of China. I believe what President Biden has said about America wishing to strengthen its alliance system is genuine. But he simply couldn’t do much to strengthen the alliance even if he wants.
There are several reasons for this. One is the collapse of the overarching framework that once legitimized the existence of the alliance structure. The end of the Cold War marked the dismantling of the strategic framework for the existing security equation. NATO remained in place and has been in continuous expansion. But it has largely lost momentum short of an obvious enemy. Yes. NATO still harps on the so-called “Russian threat.” But how big is the Russian threat? Admittedly, some small European countries, especially those that were in the blocs of the USSR, are afraid of Russia, but Russia is unlikely to pose a threat to all NATO members. The Russian economy today is basically at the same level as Spain or Italy. Within NATO, apart from the United States, which is dominating the alliance structure, there are two other nuclear-weapon states. Besides, Russia enjoys a very good relationship with some NATO members such as Turkey, which, in spite of the American protest, bought the Russian air defense system S-400.
In Europe, the momentum of sustaining NATO has, in fact, stalled for a long time. French President Macron described NATO as “brain-dead.” NATO still wants to show the world that it is attractive in that there are still countries that aspire to join NATO such as Georgia and Ukraine. But I don’t think they will join soon. In the case of Ukraine, given the historical and cultural connectivity between Ukraine and Russia, it is impossible that Russia will bear with Ukraine’s entry into NATO. Russia’s foreign ministry spokesperson warned that Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership could entail irreversible consequences for the Ukrainian statehood. President Vladimir Putin cautioned the West against crossing Russia’s red lines. It is not entirely impossible that Russia will use military force to prevent Ukraine and Georgia from joining NATO.
NATO is also said to serve as a force to address terrorism. I think precisely because NATO doesn't have an obvious military adversary, it has to take such things as terrorism to be the main threat and amplify it so as to sustain the alliance. But NATO is too big and inflexible for addressing terrorism that is gusty and capricious in nature. Terrorist attacks won’t occur in all NATO member states at the same time, so NATO can hardly take collective actions. If a few drones could have reduced the oil output of Saudi Arabia by half as we have seen in 2019, then how flexible could NATO become to respond to such small and sudden attacks?
The influence of a declining American alliance system on China is a very interesting question. I believe that the United States wholeheartedly wants NATO to be involved in the US-led efforts against China. But there is a fundamental obstacle as most of the NATO members are also members of the European Union, who maintain a generally good relationship with China. Besides, there is the “tyranny of geography” in that Europe is too far away from China. China has some working relationships with NATO. It is not that the two are at each other’s throats. In the past, NATO’s policy on China was based on three “No”s: no policy on the South China Sea, no policy on Taiwan, no policy regarding Diaoyu Islands. Basically, the two sides just wanted to cultivate a pragmatic relationship with each other, while NATO would not get too much involved politically or militarily in the Asia Pacific region. But in recent years, I have taken notice of some changes. One notable is the remarks made by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said repeatedly that China’s rise has become a challenge for NATO. This is the reversal of what he said in previous years when he described China more as an opportunity. Still, I believe that the same logic applies here. His comment is yet again another attempt of legitimizing NATO’s existence by hyping up external threats, which, in this case, is China’s rise. But he has softened his tone a bit recently. In a virtual meeting with State Councilor and Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi in September, Mr. Stoltenberg said that NATO does not see China as an adversary. On some other occasions, he said that NATO should seek to cooperate with China on global issues like climate change. I am a bit curious why and how the largest military bloc would cooperate with China on climate change rather than on military issues given that China and NATO used to have excellent cooperation in counter-piracy in the Indian Ocean.
Thomas Fingar: I'd like to pick up on what you have said about the purpose of the alliances. In my view, they are overwhelmingly for deterrence and collective security, not expansion. They are not designed to acquire territory from some other countries. They are not intended for forceful democracy promotion. Are there threats from uncertainty and extant vulnerabilities? The answer is yes. You mentioned access to energy from the Persian Gulf region as one of the reasons the United States and its European allies got involved in the region. Now, our dependence could be zero as we don't need any from that area. The Europeans are now less dependent on the area and they will become less so as they transition to greener energy systems and economies. The United States has borne disproportionate political costs to protect European access to oil in that region. Now, arguably, we are bearing economic and political costs to protect tankers that are going to China, Japan, Korea, as well as other places. The Europeans understand that and probably think about the need to acquire greater capabilities in that regard. But I don't see the relationship among countries that are in this alliance as being in grave danger of abandoning the alliance. The interdependence and the shared interest and the common values are really strong. And it's hard to imagine the birth and expansion of the success of the European Union without NATO not only because it left more money for non-military purposes, but also because it helped to develop patterns of cooperation among longtime adversaries like France and Germany. If you're going to be a serious ally in a military confrontation like the one that NATO was organized to address, you can't do it without a high degree of transparency and sharing of information and cooperation and divisions of labor that made it much easier to move into economic and societal forms of cooperation and more open borders. I don't see any desire on the part of our European partners, or certainly, the United States, to have that unravel. The alliances have benefited everybody. And to the extent that there are shared concerns about Chinese behavior, it’s not primarily a military concern. Rather, it is mainly concerned about economic, societal, and other issues like social justice. The Europeans generally are more concerned in this arena than we are.
Moreover, no military alliance or national military like the PLA prepares for an abstract enemy. Doing so does not make sense. You build to deter or defeat particular adversaries and capabilities. Unless you have an immediate neighbor threatening to attack, you prepare to defeat the strongest possible adversary because if you're ready for the strongest one, you're ready for anybody else that’s not as strong. Right now, the three strongest militaries are the United States, Russia, and China. I don't envision NATO preparing for war or against the force structure and weapons of the United States. So that leaves two and the configuration of the expansion of military capabilities of Russia and China are different. They both sell weapons to other countries, so it would be almost unimaginable not to think about plans to prepare for the strongest potential adversary. I'm sure that is why China is reorienting its military, modernizing its forces, and building up its deployment against the United States. You are not doing it against Malawi. You are doing it against us because we are the strongest potential adversary, and countries we sell weaponry to would be the most likely opponent. It doesn't mean anybody expects war. But militaries are supposed to prepare for the unthinkable and be ready for the most formidable adversary they can imagine. That's why they exist.
Zhou Bo: There are a few points that I would like to raise. First, precisely because America is in what President Biden calls a “stiff competition” with China, the U.S. will naturally focus less on Europe in its foreign policy. With more European countries meeting the 2% defense benchmark, the US withdrawal from Europe, however gradual, is inevitable. The more European countries pay their dues for NATO, the easier it is for the Americans to leave Europe to the Europeans. I agree with you that the alliance itself is not in danger now, but I think that it will decline because its primary role of counterbalancing the Warsaw Pact during the Cold War is over and no alliance will last forever. NATO is simply becoming more and more irrelevant as the relative strength of the United States, in fact, is in decline. Therefore, to a certain extent, your attractiveness to European countries has weakened.
Secondly, when it comes to competition with China, I wish to say America’s withdrawal from Afghanistan is significant in that it marks the ending of the American-led global crusade against terrorism. It also marks the beginning of extreme competition between China and the U.S. I agree with you that neither the United States nor China wants a war with each other, but the problem is, when we are in extreme competition, then probably conflict is not so far away. So why should we begin extreme or stiff competition? When we come to the question of cooperation or competition, we have a cultural difference. China always calls for cooperation while the U.S. encourages competition because it thinks that competition is healthy. But in China, very few people would consider competition “healthy.” To me personally, competition in the military field is unhealthy. It is ugly in nature. The only question is how less ugly it can be. The frequency of American ships and aircraft sailing or flying over China's periphery has been on the rise. It’s seldom that China sent ships to sail in American waters. The stronger China becomes, the less likely it is to bear with what it perceives to be America’s provocations at its doorsteps. Therefore, the situation is becoming more dangerous. I know there are regular talks on confidence-building measures. They are useful but not really fruitful. I still cannot figure out how we might solve the problem if the United States insists on conducting all these activities that were taken by China essentially as detrimental to Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity. For me, the confusion is, if you do not want the water to boil, why would you throw the woods into the fire?
Thomas Fingar: Let me comment briefly on President Biden’s wording about competition. I don't mean to suggest that the few words are not meaningful. But I think that as Chinese people hear them, they need to think of them in multiple ways.
One of them is that unless we were to do away with our military, which is not going to happen, you have to have some competitors in mind. After twenty years of war, we have to replace and rebuild a lot of equipment. Much of the equipment that we had and most of what we still have was built for Europe. It was designed for European conditions. That makes absolutely no sense in the 21st century. We need to build for longer distances, and that means Asian distances. Part of the rationale for why we need to do things, why do we need this type of equipment, this range on an airplane, or that capability for communication. We can't say we do this because of some unknown, unforeseen adversary in the future so must justify expenditures with refernce to what's there now and what's visibly on the horizon. For better or worse, that's China.
The second way to think about it is its instrumental purpose. President Biden’s agenda, which I think is an appropriate one, is largely one of retrenchment and rebuilding. It is largely about making up for lost time by addressing problems in our own country. Healthcare, education, infrastructure, social justice, research and development. It's a list of very difficult and expensive challenges. How does one persuade the American people to spend money on those? How should we allocate or assign to Washington responsibilities for activities that traditionally have been left to states and localities? The problem is partly economic and partly political. There has to be a persuasive rationale for making major changes. The example of how to do so that's in the head of anybody older than 65 or 70 is the way in which the Eisenhower administration used the Soviet Union to justify major policy initiatives after the launch of Sputnik. He justified a wide range of programs as necessary to win the competition with the Soviet Union. Posing issues in this way helps to move proposals through our political system. Characterizing them as national security challenges is done for domestic political reasons. I wish it were not necessary to do this but recognize that it is efficacious to do so.
A third way to think about Biden’s statement is, again, in terms of American domestic politics as it plays out in Washington. That is, which oversight committees in Congress, which departments and pieces of the bureaucracy within the executive branch will handle what kinds of questions, and what kind of special interest groups have the greatest influence. That is another reason for wanting to get issues into the national security bucket. At least a portion of the rationale for declaring the competition with China to be a driving one is that it affects the steering of proposals within the American policymaking process. It doesn’t mean there’s no reality to competition with China. It doesn't mean that it's all made up and it's not real. But it needs to be understood as something other than a no holds barred struggle in which we must defeat China in every arena. I'm quite confident that is not the way in which President Biden is using the term competition.
Zhou Bo: It’s intriguing to me when you talked about American retrenchment. I remember a few years ago when I was in the UK, one of the most persuasive explanations for the UK’s failure of meeting its defense benchmark was that you simply cannot convince your people that spending money on defense in a time when there are no immediate external threats is more important than investing in education and public health. So, for the United States, I think it is really a challenge to reconcile the two objectives of invigorating the United States domestically and preparing for countering China in the Western Pacific. I understand a rising power would certainly make the existing power somewhat worried. But if you look at China's international behavior, I would argue that China's rise is achieved within the international system from which China has benefited tremendously. It has benefited from learning advanced technology and management from the West and it is still learning. This is why we have been sending many students to the United States. At the end of 2020, we had 382,500 students in the U.S. Therefore, we do not wish to challenge the international system, and this is why China has in recent years changed its old narratives of “building a reasonable new international political and economic order” which essentially means the international political and economic order is not reasonable! Now we are no longer shy to admit that China is a beneficiary of the international system. This is why China talks about itself as being a guardian of the international order.
Just now you mentioned the word democracy. While I am not a political scientist, I cannot help but think about this issue: to what extent does the Western liberal democracy matter to the world? I think it matters to you because you choose it. This concept first came up during the European Enlightenment and it started to develop quickly after the British Industrial Revolution. But still, it is less than three hundred years old and I am not very optimistic about the future of it. I'm not saying that because I come from a country of a different social system. According to Freedom House, a watchdog of global democracy, ever since 2006, democracy has been in decline. This is true even in some of the “established democracies” like the United States and India. The world was shocked to see what happened in Washington on January 6. The American President instigated the mobs to take over Capitol Hill, the US’ supreme seat of democracy. That was really an eye-opener for us outsiders.
Throughout history, there was no country powerful enough to take over the whole world. The world is always about the coexistence of different cultures, different societies, and different religions. While the American-style democracy as a system might work for the West, it is not universal and should not be elevated to the level where it is considered as the supreme form of governance applicable to all. China upholds different ideologies from its American peer. But we do not export ours. We do not intend to transform anyone’s values and culture. It seems rather confusing to me why the U.S. thinks that China raising its voice in the international arena through ways like calling for multilateralism and distributing vaccines to those in need to combat the pandemic is wrong. It is perplexing why the U.S. thinks that coming into competition with China, which might slide into confrontation, is fine. Right now, the only area of cooperation that the U.S. would essentially agree to terms with China is climate change. If maintaining our relationship only depends on one or two issues like climate change, then I can’t be too optimistic about our future. I have one question for you. Do you believe there is a new Cold War between us?
Thomas Fingar: No. I lived through the Cold War. We're not in one and we're not headed for one. The Cold War was seen as an existential competition by both sides. I was about ideology, economic systems, social systems, and military capabilities and competition in a world that was very different than today. I don't see any of those as extant today in anything approaching the same dimensions.
Let me pick up three points of what you said. The first is the rising versus the existing leading power argument. I have issues with it. I don’t side with the academic types that think in terms of rising powers and the status quo. I spent enough time in senior jobs in Washington to say with confidence that almost nobody thinks that way. This isn't about some abstract rising and challenging powers. It's about specific areas of disagreement, specific behaviors on our part, on your part, and on the part of third countries. It’s not that China's rise must be resisted because we don't want anybody else to be the tiger on the top of the mountain. If one looks at the history of the post-World War II period, the US approach has not been “I'm the king of the mountain, and I'm not letting anybody up here.” It has been: “I'm up here, I've got more capabilities and I've got a lot of economic strength, but I sure would like more people to be up here with me.” The 2% percent figure for defense may be one way of illustrating this point. We want others to be prosperous because if they are prosperous, we can sell them more stuff. If other people were more engaged and developed more forms of civil society, we would have more ways to interact with them. If others were stronger and more capable, they could pick up some of the responsibilities that we have borne. I think that's what the history of US engagement demonstrates.
Where the U.S. will look to cooperate has essentially nothing to do with abstract, defensive realist theories of constraining and thwarting. The way to win a competition is to make yourself better, not to try to make the other guy worse. This is true in sports, and it is true in economic competition and technological competition. The belated attention we are now devoting to problems we should have been addressing while we were preoccupied elsewhere is intended to make us stronger and more prosperous. The American people should be willing to pay for it.
I think there are many areas where we should be cooperating besides climate change. But in my view, cooperation should come about to solve a problem, not for the sake of building trust or strengthening the bilateral relationship. We are not going to do or not do things to reduce carbon to make one another happy. We are going to do it because we both understand the threat to life on earth and we both want to improve the living conditions of our people. We should cooperate on climate change to persuade third countries to do more to combat climate change. But given the wide range of things that both our countries want to do, if it's not easy to cooperate in one area, we will go on to something else rather than to bog down on one. I think that's the approach Washington is taking now.
The final point I’d like to make picks up on your description of the genesis and fate of democracy. I don't agree with your prediction and am struck by how non-Marxist it is. A key insight that I’ve drawn from my study of Marx is that the political superstructure is shaped—he would say determined—by the economic base. According to Marx, democracy is not something that came out of abstract thinking in the Enlightenment and it's not something that can be forcably imposed on another country. What he said was that when a country reaches a certain stage of development, its political system changes, and one of the stages of that development is what Marx called bourgeois democracy. A bourgeois democracy can last for a long time before it transforms into something else. I was intrigued that your description of the dynamics either ignored or dismissed what to me is pretty basic Marxist theory.
Zhou Bo: I fully agree with you that we should cooperate on concrete, specific issues rather than abstract concepts, but I believe unless we agree on some general guidelines that suggest our relationship is essentially one of cooperation rather than competition, cooperation on specific issues would be difficult. Washington’s China policy has made a U-turn since Mr. Trump took office. It has largely been driven by an emotional rather than rational resentment against China simply because China has become stronger but has not become what the United States has expected. Simply put, China hasn’t become “one of you” –a liberal democracy. In 2018, former American Vice President Michael Pence talked in Hudson Institute about how in the past the United States had believed that a free China was inevitable. Of course, this turned out to be wishful thinking.
Liberal democracy is the choice for some countries, but it is not the aspiration of the whole world. The world does not belong to the West. According to the Freedom House, only fewer than a fifth of the world’s people now live in fully free countries. So, you just simply cannot impose your own system on other countries through the so-called democracy promotion or humanitarian intervention.
I am wondering what the future looks like for western democracies. Not very rosy, I am afraid. A century ago, Oswald Spengler published his book The Decline of the West where he predicted the impending decay and ultimate fall of western civilization. The 2020 Munich Security Conference used the word “westernlessness” as the title of its report. The conclusion is that not only is the world becoming less Western, but also the West itself is becoming less Western. The West is threatened from inside with the rise of illiberalism and the return of isolationism. This is a threat to the foundations of the West and its collective identity as a community of liberal democracies.
China never said it wants to become a liberal democracy. That means China has never lied to the US. From day one when the People’s Republic of China was established, China maintains that it is a socialist country led by the Chinese Communist Party. I think China’s only “mistake” in America’s eye is that it has not become what the U.S. has expected. Washington has claimed that it wanted China to be strong and prosperous for many decades. But since we have managed to do that without changing our own system, the U.S. lost patience and became frustrated and panicked. This is essentially how we view the changing dynamics in recent years, and this is how we understand why the U.S. is bent on competing on almost every front with China.
I felt relieved when you said there would not be another Cold War. But I'm not so assured because the word “new” entails so many uncertainties. A new Cold War means that it may be different from the previous one. In China, at least at the government level, we're not talking about a new Cold War because we also want to avoid that. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has more than once talked about the possibility of a fractured world brought about by a US-China Cold War. So, my real concern is if the U.S. and China were eventually wired up in an increasingly fierce competition, given that the competition is already stiff or extreme, as Biden puts it, how could we manage to stay away from engaging in a confrontation that apparently nobody wants? And what can be done to stop us from entering a new Cold War?
Thomas Fingar: I'd like to pick up on two points. One of them goes back to your description of the US alleged disappointment that China has not changed to become like us. You said the United States has aspired to transform China into a liberal democracy. Regardless of what Mr. Pence and some American politicians said, transforming China into a liberal democracy was never a goal of US policy. I say that as someone that was the youngest guy in the room back when the US-China rapprochement and engagement began in the 1970s. Modernization and the transformative effects of modernization were both an objective and an expectation. We certainly expected that China would change. But that China would become a democratic system like the United States was something I honestly never heard asserted during the 30 years of meetings on and around the making of US policy. For various reasons, people who were dissatisfied with engagement have declared democratization to have been a goal of what they maintain was a naive and counterproductive policy. But it really is important to distinguish between what some Americans have said and what the US policy was. For as long as I have been involved in US-China relations, which is since the early 1970s, China has seemed to believe and often said that regime change, or political transformation, was the goal of the U.S. But that wasn't true in the past and it isn’t true now.
This article is from the November issue of TI Observer (TIO), which is a monthly publication devoted to bringing China and the rest of the world closer together by facilitating mutual understanding and promoting exchanges of views. If you are interested in knowing more about the November issue, please click here:
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