E-Notes

September 11, the Shanghai Summit, and the Shift in U.S. China Policy

by Avery Goldstein

Since September 11, analysts have argued that the shocking terrorist attack on the United States inaugurated a new era in world politics. Subsequent events, especially the American priority attached to fighting terrorism and the flurry of diplomatic initiatives complementing military action seemingly confirm that judgment. Among the most notable shifts are the renewal of a seriously frayed relationship with Pakistan and attempts to recast relations with Russia. Less dramatic, but potentially as important, are the changes that may be shaping U.S. thinking about its relations with China.

What is the likely impact of recent events on the future of Sino-American relations? The answer to this question depends in part on events beyond the control of policymakers and beyond the knowledge of the best trained experts, as the events in September remind us. Nevertheless, the meeting between Presidents Bush and Jiang Zemin in Shanghai on October 20 provides reason for cautious optimism. In particular, their joint news conference suggests that the events since September 11 have helped clarify U.S. thinking about what would constitute a healthy Sino-American relationship in the first decades of the new century. Such ties will depend on an interpretation of the terrorist shock that neither overstates nor understates its significance for U.S. China policy.

Three Possible Reactions to 9/11

New Era? The first possibility would be to formulate policy based on the currently widespread belief that international politics entered a fundamentally new era as of September 11, 2001. In this view, the terrorist attack transformed the post-Cold War world and heralded the beginning of an age whose defining feature will be the global struggle against terrorism. The priority assigned to the fight against this overriding threat is now expected to provide a solid foundation for a united front among almost all states as they act on their self-interest in battling the common foe (in this case, international terrorism). To this end, they are expected to mute their disagreements on less pressing matters. This is a pattern familiar to students of world history, one that in past eras brought together such unlikely strategic partners as France and Russia before WWI, the U.S. and the Soviet Union during WWII, and the U.S. and China during the final two decades of the Cold War. If this “new era” reaction were to serve as the basis for American strategic thinking, the logical implications for U.S. China policy are clear. It should reprise, in modified form, the Sino-American entente inaugurated by President Nixon in 1972 when parallel interests in opposing the Soviet threat nurtured strategic cooperation between Washington and Beijing, despite differences in political ideology and disagreements about the future of Taiwan. Similarly, under present circumstances disputes about human rights, Taiwan, and concerns about whether China may one day pose a military threat to U.S. interests, would be subordinated to the immediate need to cope with the tangible terrorist challenge. This perspective, in short, argues for a return to viewing China as a “strategic partner,” and in a fashion that goes well beyond the rhetoric surrounding U.S. China policy during the Washington and Beijing summits of 1997 and 1998.
Stay the Course. A second possibility would be to formulate policy based on the belief that September 11, 2001 did not fundamentally alter the strategic priorities informing an American reassessment of military-security policy during the first eight months of the Bush administration. In this view, the U.S. must of course take steps to counter pressing terrorist dangers but should not allow this necessity to obscure potentially more serious threats to American vital interests; fundamentally reconfiguring American China policy in the wake of September 11 would be a dangerous mistake. Chinese concerns about U.S. plans to deploy missile defenses, irritation about American criticism of their human rights record, and objections to continued American military support for Taiwan are taken to be essential features of a bilateral relationship that is inherently more conflictive than cooperative. As such, while fighting terrorism the U.S. should not lose sight of the strategic priorities that guided the Quadrennial Defense Review prepared last summer — one that placed greater emphasis on security challenges in Pacific Asia, a clear if tacit call for military planners to pay more attention to the possibility of a future threat from China. In short, this perspective suggests that the U.S. should recognize that the more serious challenge in coming decades is from a hostile great power rather than from nonstate actors who are able to inflict damage, but not jeopardize our national survival. This approach, then, argues for sticking to the view of China as a “strategic competitor” that prevailed in the rhetoric of the Bush campaign and during the first months after its election victory.
Clarifying Shock. A third possibility, and the one that now seems to be shaping the Bush administration’s thinking, is to formulate policy based on the belief that the September 11 attacks were neither a historical turning point, nor a tragedy of transient significance, but instead a momentous event that has helped clarify national interests long muddied by arcane academic speculation and comforting ideological commitments that had oversimplified complex choices. In this view, for example, the attacks have demonstrated that multilateralism is neither a naive approach in a world of sovereign states pursuing their own ends nor an absolute necessity in an increasingly interdependent global community. And they have demonstrated that missile defense is neither a panacea for coping with the threat weapons of mass destruction pose to the American homeland nor an unaffordable technological fantasy, a latter day Maginot line that can serve no useful purpose. Rather, September 11 demonstrated that important policy choices always involve tradeoffs and reflect mixed interests. With respect to U.S. China policy, this perspective suggests that the recent events highlight the folly of defining the relationship by one-sidedly casting China as either a strategic partner or competitor. They have reminded us that the matters on which the U.S. and China share common interests, including but not limited to combating terrorism, are far from trivial and have probably been undervalued as the overly ambitious 1997-1998 rhetoric about “strategic partnership” was subjected to strong criticism in the US. More broadly this view suggests the importance of a sober re-evaluation of what seemed to be a decisive shift in Washington to a China policy shaped mainly by fears about irreconcilable conflicts in a more distant future, one that accepted the need to forgo the benefits of cooperation in the near term.

Facing an Uncertain Future

Though clarifying the relevant considerations for policymakers, the terrorist shocks of September 11 did not provide definitive answers. Decisions about the wisdom of the tradeoffs the U.S. faces depend on estimates about whether and how soon China might represent the combination of capability and intentions that could constitute a serious threat to American interests. If, as some argue, China will not have the capability to be a peer competitor of the United States much before the mid-21st century and in any case may not harbor hostile intentions, the risks of mutually beneficial cooperation in the near term may be small. If, as others argue, China’s rise to superpower status will be rapid and its hostility to American interests is a foregone conclusion, the risks of cooperation may be significant because it would create a more permissive environment for China’s continued economic development and military modernization.

Respected and reasonable analysts have appeared on both sides of this debate about the inevitability of an intensifying Sino-American rivalry in the 21st century and the consequent risks of cooperating with China. Most of that debate, however, has focused on difficult assessments of China’s growing capabilities rather than its even more opaque and more easily changeable intentions. Yet, two contrasting policy-relevant views can be limned. Those who emphasize the benefits of cooperation can argue that aside from the complex and potentially dangerous disagreement over Taiwan, there are no obvious issues that predestine China and the U.S. to become adversaries. Unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War, China makes no claim to be the champion of a competing way of life it would hope to spread beyond its borders and has shown a willingness to negotiate about territorial disputes other than those (such as sovereignty over Taiwan) that it believes were clearly resolved by international agreements at the end of WWII. Those who emphasize the likelihood of sharply intensifying rivalry as China grows more powerful, can argue that there is an inevitable connection between changing capabilities and Sino-American conflict — a stronger China is expected to insist on greater influence in its part of the world and this will bump up against an American interest in maintaining its currently dominant position.

Unavoidable uncertainty about the way states may choose to use their capabilities in pursuit of their parochial interests certainly does limit the extent of cooperation among great powers. But even realists who emphasize this point do not assert that this concern dooms the great powers to view one another as implacable adversaries. Though great power competition is a predictable consequence of the self- help nature of the international political system, its intensity is affected by human choice. Sino-American rivalry may, then, be inevitable, but its character will be shaped by how well bilateral relations are managed in the coming years. A China policy that smartly manages to foster areas of mutually beneficial cooperation while containing the effects of those conflicts that prove unavoidable is one that best serves U.S. national interests. In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, there are signs that the Bush administration’s China policy has moved towards a consensus that reflects such a view, one that has the potential to result in a more sustainable approach than those that would peg Beijing as either a “strategic partner” or “strategic competitor.” If so, this represents a significant change in the direction of the China policy that seemed to be unfolding since late last year.

When Jiang Zemin attended the UN Millennium Summit in September 2000, he publicly signaled an interest in resuming efforts to build a “constructive strategic partnership” with the next administration in Washington. Yet candidate Bush and his advisors had clearly rejected the designation of China as a strategic partner. Indeed, after President Bush assumed office in January 2001, all indications were that U.S. policy was shifting to a strategic view that cast China as an adversary. By April, Beijing and Washington found themselves in the tense standoff over the EP-3 incident and then publicly disagreeing about a strengthening US military commitment to Taiwan.

In June, however, visiting U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick indicated to his Chinese hosts that the Bush administration was interested in avoiding a further deterioration of the relationship. The next month, Secretary of State Colin Powell visited Beijing and along with China’s Premier, Zhu Rongji, expressed the hope that it would be possible “to develop” a relationship that is “constructive” and “cooperative.” If these messages to China over the summer reflected a continuing debate about China policy within the Bush administration (often portrayed as divided between the preferences of the Defense and State Departments), the terrorist strikes of September 11 and the re-ordering of American priorities that resulted, seems to have resolved it in favor of the position that Secretary Powell had articulated.

When Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan visited Washington in late September to discuss joint efforts in the struggle against terrorism, he returned to the rhetoric about “a constructive relationship of cooperation with the United States” that had been vetted in July. And most important, at the October 2001 APEC summit in Shanghai, Presidents Bush and Jiang both openly endorsed the new preferred formulation for describing Sino-American ties. President Jiang stated that “China stands ready to make joint efforts with the U.S. side to develop a constructive and cooperative relationship.” President Bush asserted that “We seek a relationship that is candid, constructive and cooperative,” notably adding the third “c” word most likely to differentiate his present effort at recasting Sino-American relations from the attempt at building a strategic partnership that was associated with President Clinton. His amended formulation seems intended to more clearly signal American and Chinese audiences that a constructive relationship facilitating cooperation on matters of common interest (terrorism, but also international trade and investment, nonproliferation, transnational crime, public health, and the global environment) is desired but will not prevent the U.S. from forthrightly disagreeing with China about issues on which serious differences remain (especially human rights and the American relationship with Taiwan).

In Shanghai, President Bush has set the tone for his U.S. China policy. If he is able to contain expectations about the extent of cooperation possible in a constructive relationship between countries with both common and conflicting interests, President Bush will have laid a solid foundation for a more mature China policy that avoids the oversimplified and false choice of “partner” or “adversary.” Such an approach represents a realistic reconciliation of the uncertainty about long-term trends that could produce sharp conflict and the clear interest in obtaining valuable short-term benefits through cooperation. Today’s campaign against international terrorism is the first, but certainly not the last, challenge of the early 21st century for which a sound working relationship with Beijing can pay dividends that serve American interests.

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