In the coming decades, nothing is likely to matter more for global peace, prosperity and governance than how the US and China handle the ongoing shift in their relative power. In the long term, today’s other pressing challenges — including Russia’s relationship with the West and events in the tumultuous Middle East — might amount almost to sideshows by comparison.
What makes Sino-American relations dangerous is that powerful forces in both nations seem intent on a collision course. In China, under Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) assertive leadership, the government is no longer heeding former president Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) injunction that the nation should “hide its strength, bide its time and never take the lead” in international affairs. It has pursued manifestly expansionist territorial claims, most notably in the South China Sea, and shown a clear determination to resist the indefinite continuation of US dominance in the region. The prevailing Chinese mindset is that the US is intent on isolating, containing and undermining it.
Unfortunately, there is plenty of evidence on the US side to feed that sentiment. Whatever many US policymakers might be saying in private, their public discourse almost invariably reflects an intention to remain the world’s dominant power — and specifically in Asia — in perpetuity.
The most confrontational recent articulation of this position can be found in a report for the US Council on Foreign Relations, by Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis, which said that the central objective of US grand strategy must be “preserving US primacy in the global system,” and urging a series of aggressive economic, political and military measures to “balance” China. They say this is not a “containment” strategy, but it amounts to nothing less.
Is there another way to manage the relationship that, while reflecting the reality of these forces and mindsets on both sides, would not risk turning legitimate competition into dangerous confrontation?
In a new report for the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, who is now head of the Asia Society Policy Institute, outlines such a strategy, which he calls “constructive realism.” It is a clunky label, but his analysis and policy prescriptions are compelling.
The “realist” dimension of Rudd’s argument says that certain areas of disagreement — including Taiwan, territorial disputes in the South and East China Seas, US alliances in Asia, Chinese military modernization and the legitimacy of China’s political system — would remain intractable for the foreseeable future, defying easy solutions and thus requiring careful management.
The “constructive” part of Rudd’s thesis calls for systematic collaboration — with the US treating China more as an equal — in tackling a series of other difficult issues at bilateral, regional and global levels. Bilaterally, such cooperation might involve an investment treaty, a joint intelligence task force on terrorism, a cybersecurity protocol, agreed measures for managing unplanned military incidents, and mutual ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.
On a regional level, Rudd said the US and China could work on joint strategies to denuclearize and, ultimately, reunify the Korean Peninsula; tackle the lingering sore of Japan’s war history; harmonize regional trade agreements; and transform the East Asia Summit into a more complete Asia-Pacific Community.
Globally, Rudd said that the joint agenda could focus on combating climate change, revitalizing the G20, further internationalizing the renminbi; giving China a greater role in the IMF and the World Bank; and reforming other key international institutions within the UN system.
Some in the West — including veteran China watcher David Shambaugh — remain convinced that this kind of collaborative accommodation is not necessary, because failures of economic and political management would bring about China’s implosion. Rudd said that they are wrong, and that Xi would neither overplay his authoritarian hand nor under-deliver on growth. China’s rise is set to continue, and the world — including the US — must find principled ways of peacefully accommodating it, he added.
Rudd’s recommendations are undoubtedly ambitious. However, given his credentials — he is a formidable Chinese linguist and creative policy thinker, with long and close personal relationships with key figures in both the US and China — his argument must be taken seriously.
Indeed, though Rudd’s tenure as Australia’s prime minister was anything but smooth, his sheer force of intellect is unmatched by that of any public figure with whom I have interacted over the past 30 years. (Not that this would much help his evident willingness to be drafted as the next UN secretary-general: In that role the major powers have always preferred bland secretaries to creative generals.)
No US presidential candidate is likely to be comfortable talking about the US as anything other than No. 1. However, people must hope that in the years ahead they hear less talk of “primacy” and “dominance,” and much more about cooperation and collaboration.
It is only with such US policies toward China that the world can begin to be confident that the 21st century would not, like the last, become a vale of tears.
Gareth Evans, a former Australian minister of foreign affairs and president of the International Crisis Group, is chancellor and honorary professorial fellow at the Australian National University.
Copyright: Project Syndicate
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