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The Dangerous New US Consensus on China and the Future of US-China Relations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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The trade war and technological competition with China are symptomatic of a much larger issue: a dangerous gridlock in US-China relations that may become permanent, with dire consequences not just for the two countries' economies but also for the global economy and quite possibly East Asia's and international security. Martin Wolf, Financial Times columnist, is right to conclude: “Across-the-board rivalry with China is becoming an organising principle of US economic, foreign and security policies.” The fact that this conflict has occurred at a time of trade, investment, and security disputes between the US and its major allies, US-Russia tensions, and US military interventions across the Middle East and Central Asia, heightens global instability.
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References
Notes
1 Martin Wolf, “The looming 100-year US-China conflict,” Financial Times, June 7, 2019. Wolf concludes: “A blend of competition with co-operation is the right way forward.”
2 Stephen S. Roach, “Japan Then, China Now,” Project Syndicate, Mauy 27, 2019.
3 Bannon has revived the Committee on the Present Danger, which gained prominence in the Reagan era when it lobbied for nuclear superiority over the Soviet Union and high levels of military spending. In reconstituting itself in March 2019, the committee announced: “As with the Soviet Union in the past, communist China represents an existential and ideological threat to the United States and to the idea of freedom—one that requires a new American consensus regarding the policies and priorities required to defeat this threat.” Wendy Wu, “Cold War is Back: Bannon Helps Revive U.S. Committee to Target ‘Aggressive Totalitarian Foe’ China,” Politico, March 26, 2019.
4 “These are not our friends. These are our enemies,” said Trump. “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer: Donald Trump on China,” CNN, January 20, 2011.
5 China is the third most important US trading partner (behind Mexico and Canada), the world's top merchandise exporter, and among the leaders in inward and outward foreign direct investment. It also plays an indispensable role in propping up the US dollar as the international currency despite its massive trade and balance of payment deficits through its purchase of $1.2 trillion in US Treasury bills.
6 The Trump administration's 2017 national security strategy paper identifies Russia as well as China as the chief threats to the United States. “A New National Security Strategy for a New Era,” Dec. 17, 2017.
7 Ellen Nakashima, “China Specialists Who Long Supported Engagement are Now Warning of Beijing's Efforts to Influence American Society,” Washington Post, November 28, 2018.
8 Editorial Board, “The Grave Consequences of a U.S.-China Schism,” WAPO, June 15, 2019.
9 Significant exceptions include Stephen Wertheim, “Is it Too Late to Stop a Cold War with China?” New York Times, June 8, 2019; Jessica Chen Weiss, “A World Safe for Autocracy? China's Rise and the Future of Global Politics,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 98, no. 4 (July-August, 2019), pp. 92-102. An open letter to President Trump by China specialists M. Taylor Fravel, J. Stapleton Roy, Michael D. Swaine, Susan A. Thornton, and Ezra Vogel, “Making China a U.S. Enemy is Counterproductive,” Washington Post, July 3, 2019, signed by major figures in China scholarship, is the most significant challenge to the emerging consensus to date.
10 The Chicago Council on Global Affairs poll in February 2019 found that about 63 percent of those polled agreed that the US and China are “mostly rivals,” with little separating among Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. That figure is 14 percent higher than the previous poll found in March 2018. In fact, previous polls going back to 2016 consistently reported about 50 percent agreement on US-China rivalry. Craig Kafura, “Public and Opinion Leaders' Views on US-China Trade War,” The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, June 27, 2019“.
11 “Memorandum on Reforming Developing-Country Status in the World Trade Organization,” July 26, 2019.
12 Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution notes “Joe Biden's off-the-cuff remark that China ‘isn't in competition with us.’ But a few months ago, at the Munich Security Conference, Biden also said that China ‘seeks to establish itself as a hegemon and a global power player’ and that the United States finds itself in ‘an ideological struggle … a competition of systems [and] a competition of values’ with Beijing and other authoritarian powers. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren have both highlighted the risk posed by kleptocratic and autocratic regimes in their foreign-policy speeches, with Warren singling out China in particular.” Wright, “Democrats Need to Place China at the Center of Their Foreign Policy,” Brookings, May 15, 2019.
13 “Several U.S. senators pressured the Trump administration on Thursday not to give in to China's conditions. Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said the president ”cannot go soft now and accept a bad deal that falls short of reforming China's rapacious economic policies—cyber espionage, forced technology transfers, state-sponsorship, and worst of all, denial of market access.“ Rubio: ”It's not really a trade issue as much as it is first a national-security issue and second a wake-up call to the U.S. about how we need to have a counter to Chinese industrial policy.“ Lingling Wei and Bob Davis, ”China to Insist U.S. Lift Huawei Ban as Part of Trade Deal,“ June 27, 2019.
14 Kimberly Amadeo, “Why China is America's Biggest Banker,” The Balance, June 25, 2019.
15 Kristof, “When China Massacred Its Own People,” NYT, June 1, 2019.
16 Pence, “Remarks by Vice President Pence on the Administration's Policy Toward China”.
17 Weiss, “A World Safe for Autocracy?”
18 People's Republic of China, Office of Information of the State Council, China's National Defense in the New Era (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, July 2019).
19 Quoted by Mark Magnier, “Slip-up or Signal? What US Official's ‘Clash of Civilisations’ Remark Suggests,” South China Morning Post, May 25, 2019.
20 Evelyn Cheng, “China is indicating it'll never give in to US demands to change its state-run economy”. Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, said in a May 25, 2019 commentary (“Five Great American Threats to China's Trade”) that “behind the United States' trade war against China, it is trying to invade China's economic sovereignty and force China to damage its core interests.”
21 See Andrew J. Nathan, “How China Really Sees the Trade War,” Foreign Affairs, June 27, 2019.
22 “U.S.-China Trade Standoff May Be Initial Skirmish in Broader Economic War,” New York Times, May 11, 2019.
23 Reuters, “China's Xi Says Iran Tensions Worrying, Calls for Restraint,” June 4, 2019.
24 Jane Perlez, “F.B.I. Bars Some China Scholars from Visiting U.S. Over Spying Fears,” New York Times, April 14, 2019.
25 Lindsay Ellis and Nell Gluckman, “How University Labs Landed on the Front Lines of the Fight with China,” Chronicle of Higher Education, May 31, 2019.
26 L. Rafael Reif, commenting on Emory University's firing of two professors of Chinese ethnicity, one tenured and both naturalized US citizens. Nick Anderson, “Scrutiny of Chinese American Scientists Raises Fears of Ethnic Profiling,” Washington Post, July 19, 2019, online ed.
27 Geng Shuang, China's foreign ministry spokesman, quoted in Megan Specia, “Iran Says It Has Surpassed Critical Enrichment Level in 2015 Deal,” New York Times, July 8, 2019, online ed.
28 Mark Schrader, “Huawei's PR Campaign Comes Straight from the Party's Playbook,” Foreign Policy, June 6, 2019.
29 See Richard Weitz, “The Expanding China-Russia Defense Partnership,” Hudson Institute, May 13, 2019.
30 Ivo Daalder, “China's Power is Booming, How Should the U.S. Respond?” Chicago Tribune, May 23, 2019.
31 Ana Swanson and Keith Bradsher, “U.S.-China Trade Standoff May Be Initial Skirmish in Broader Economic War,” NYT, May 11, 2019. On the liberal side, Thomas L. Friedman takes the position that China has been cheating to get to the top, and that must stop. He argues that once China decided to leap into the advanced economy category, “all China's subsidies, protectionism, cheating on trade rules, forced technology transfers and stealing of intellectual property since the 1970s became a much greater threat. If the U.S. and Europe allowed China to continue operating by the same formula that it had used to grow from poverty to compete for all the industries of the future, we'd be crazy. Trump is right about that.” Friedman, “China Deserves Donald Trump,” New York Times, May 21, 2019.
32 Fareed Zakaria argues, “the end goal is to create more economic interdependence between the two countries. If there is a deal, China will buy more American goods, invest more in America and provide more market access to American companies. A technology war would take us in a very different direction. It would lead not to a cold war but a cold peace, in a divided and less prosperous world.” Zakaria, “The Blacklisting of Huawei Might Be China's Sputnik Moment,” Washington Post, May 23, 2019.
33 Demestri Sevastopulo and Su-Lin Wong, “Trump Softened Stance on Hong Kong Protests to Revive Trade Talks,” Financial Times, July 10, 2019, online ed.
34 Maria Abi-Habib, “How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port,” New York Times, June 25, 2018; Eric Reguly, “China's Piraeus power play: In Greece, a port project offers China leverage over Europe,” The Globe and Mail, July 7, 2019; Jeremy Page et al., “Deal for Naval Outpost in Cambodia Furthers China's Quest for Military Network,” Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2019, online ed.
35 John A. Mathews with Xin Huang and comments by Mark Selden and Thomas Rawski, “The Greening of China's Energy System Outpaces its Further Blackening: A 2017 Update,” with response from the authors, The Asia-Pacific Journal, May 1, 2018.
36 See the testimony of Harry B. Harris, Jr., head of the US Pacific Command, April 27, 2017.
37 See David E. Sanger and Edward Wong, “U.S. Ends Cold War Missile Treaty, With Aim of Countering China,” New York Times, August 1, 2019, online ed.
38 In a series of tweets on July 30, Trump claimed that China had lost 5 million jobs, including 2 million in manufacturing, because of the “Trump tariffs.” “Trumps [sic] got China back on its heels, and the United States is doing great,” he wrote. But various economic forecasts show a slowdown in worldwide growth and a possible recession as the trade war continues. And Trump now does not expect a deal with China before the 2020 US elections. Taylor Telford, Damian Paletta, and David J. Lynch, “Trump Backpedals on China Threats as Trade Deal Shows Signs of Slipping Away,” Washington Post, July 30, 2019, online ed.
39 Adam Segal offers a compelling example of a competitive approach for US dealing with Huawei, “The Right Way to Deal With Huawei: The United States Needs to Compete With Chinese Firms, Not Just Ban Them,” Foreign Affairs, July 11, 2019. In one area, the Trump administration appears complacent about US-China cooperation. Ryan Gallagher reports on “How U.S. Tech Giants are Helping to Build China's Surveillance State,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, July 21, 2019. In this case IBM, the US chip maker Xilinx and the Chinese firm Semptian have collaborated. Presumably the same technology is being applied to US surveillance, an important subject for future research.