CHINA’S President Xi Jinping is making a landmark state visit to the United States for two days. Despite the US’ charges of currency devaluation, cyberespionage and concerns about geopolitical issues, such as China’s reclamation projects in the South China Sea, the two leaders still find time to talk to each other.
The importance of US-China relations in the 21st century must not escape us. They are the world’s most consequential strategic actors and the two biggest global economies, accounting for more than 74 per cent of global economic growth by gross domestic product (nominal) over 2014-15.
The world has yet to recover from the recent market crash in China. Some are predicting that China’s real economy may slow down much further. Although the recent “Black Monday” was nowhere near the 1997-98 financial crisis, it was nevertheless disruptive.
The market crash highlights the importance of China’s influence in the world’s interdependent economy. It used to be when America sneezed, every one caught a cold. Today, when China sneezes, the US is the first to catch a cold alongside the others, including Europe.
Some of the geopolitical dynamics impinging on the US-China relationship, in my view, revolve mainly around raw power politics. It is about hegemony. It is about the global power pecking order. It is about world leadership. It is about power transition. In the past, many major power transitions between a status quo power and a rising one have not always ended in wars.
The relationship is also about values. Whose values are more potent? Anglo-Saxon values versus Confucian values. It is also about whose development model is more relevant. The debate between Washington’s Consensus versus Beijing’s Consensus rages on. Of course, the neo-conservatives keep reminding policymakers in Washington to be wary of the “Yellow Peril”!
US-China relations are also about managing US insecurity arising from its own strategic decline.
At the global level, the relationship between the world’s leading military power and an emerging China is quite stable. Even though China’s military capabilities and spending remain a long way behind America’s, Beijing’s increasingly assertive foreign and security policies are of concern not only to Washington, but also China’s immediate neighbours.
The “rise of China” has not only transformed the international economy, but also poses a direct challenge to America’s strategic pre-eminence. The US has accused China of destabilising East Asia. Hence, it has taken measures to curb what it perceives as China’s aggressive postures. China acknowledges this power asymmetry. Yet, within its maritime backyards in the East China Sea and South China Sea, it was not shied away from challenging the US and its treaty allies to preserve its core security interests.
As P5, or permanent, members of the United Nations Security Council, they have common interests in ensuring global growth and fighting the global war on terror.
They work together in mitigating nuclear proliferation, as evident in the P5+1 Joint Comprehensive Action Plan on Iran’s nuclear programme. They have cooperated closely on managing global ocean programmes in Antarctica and the Arctic, and against piracy off Somalia, for example.
Among the geopolitical issues in the region that have direct consequences on US-China relations are:
THE North Korea issue that is difficult to go away, as long as Beijing gives protection and security guarantees to Pyongyang. Lately, China has snubbed Kim Jong-un. By inviting South Korea’s President Park Geun-hye to the military parade in Beijing on Sept 3, China sent a signal to North Korea of the new geopolitical dynamics in East Asia;
THE US-China stand-off, which has resulted in Japanese remilitarisation. Encouraged by Washington, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has succeeded in amending Article 9 of the 1954 Constitution. Japan wants to take up arms one more time. A rearmed Japan is not good for the security of the region. There is a danger that a rearmed Self-Defence Force may mutate into its once-powerful Imperial Army; and,
US President Barack Obama’s policy of rebalancing its forces to the Asia-Pacific region, ostensibly to contain China’s rise and Beijing’s robust policy response. In his speech in the Australian Parliament in November 2011, Obama said: “The US is a Pacific power, and we are here to stay… maintaining our strong presence in Japan and the Korean Peninsula, while enhancing our presence in Southeast Asia...”
China sees the US policy of rebalancing forces to the region as a direct threat to its security.
China has responded to the US-sponsored Trans-Pacific Partnership with its own regional economic initiatives. For example, in 2002, China and Asean countries signed a Framework Agreement on Comprehensive Economic Cooperation that excluded the US. In June this year, China established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). The US, Canada and Japan are not members.
Despite pressure from Washington, many European countries became founding members of AIIB. They include Germany, the United Kingdom, France, Sweden, Finland and the Netherlands.
This tit-for-tat relationship between the worlds’ two major economic powers is unhealthy.
China has accused the US of using its allies to contain its rise. In response to this intimidation, for example, in the South China Sea, China has openly challenged the US policy of unauthorised military activities in its exclusive economic zone. Since the air incident over Hainan in April 2001, there were a number of close encounters between the Chinese Navy and US Navy in Chinese waters.
The latest incident happened in May this year, when China requested that the USS Fort Worth leave the area off the Fiery Cross feature, where China is constructing a landing strip. On the same day, a US Navy P-8 Poseidon surveillance aircraft (with a CNN crew on board) menacingly flew over features in the Spratlys occupied by China. Beijing has condemned the “intrusion” as intimidating.
China is evidently exasperated by US security policies in the Far East. In her exasperation, China’s top policymaker, Madam Fu-Ying, took America to task. In a speech at the University of Chicago in May, she lamented whether the choice for China was simply to submit to the US or challenge it.
She alluded to the media warfare that the US had been orchestrating. This mind game relates to a mild warning of the Thucydides Trap, popularised by Professor Graham Allison at Harvard University. In an article for the Financial Times (Aug 21, 2012), Allison warned China that the US could start a war “when a rising power rivals a ruling power”.
He quoted Thucydides, an Athenian general, who wrote: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear this inspired in Sparta that made war inevitable.” The Peloponnesian war took place from 431BC to 404BC between the rising Greek city-state of Athens and reigning hegemonic city-state of Sparta.
Xi has downplayed the Thucydides Trap. Instead, he has appealed to both powers to avoid it by “fostering a new model of major country relations”, to which the US has yet to respond.
Hopefully, the Washington Summit will clarify some of the strategic nuances.
The writer is a student of Regional Geopolitics and commentator on
maritime security