Why U.S.-China Relations Are Locked in a Stalemate
https://carnegieendowment.org/2022/02/21/why-u.s.-china-relations-are-locked-in-stalemate-pub-86478
Why U.S.-China Relations Are Locked in a Stalemate
Paul Haenle, Sam Bresnick
Summary: Three months after the Biden-Xi summit, the two sides’ divergent framings of the bilateral relationship are hindering progress.
February 21, 2022
Fifty years ago this week, former U.S. President Richard Nixon flew to China, setting the stage for a dramatic shift in relations between the two countries. Much has changed since that visit, not always for the better. Despite a flurry of diplomatic activity over the past year, U.S.-China ties remain tense. Discussions in Alaska and Tianjin yielded few, if any, breakthroughs. While friendlier in tone, the recent summit between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden led only to agreements to hold yet more talks, albeit on important issues such as strategic stability. The lone bilateral bright spot has been some cooperation on climate.
Since the summit, the Biden administration announced its diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Olympics and added more Chinese companies to its trade restriction list while Congress passed a bill aimed at countering China’s forced labor abuses in Xinjiang. The two sides’ antagonistic stances on issues related to security, economics, technology, and ideology have largely crystalized, leaving little space for the adjustments that could relieve simmering tensions. Below, Paul Haenle and Sam Bresnick analyze how the two countries got here and how they can move forward.
WHY ARE THE TWO SIDES STUCK?
Former U.S. President Donald Trump ushered in a more confrontational era in U.S.-China relations, and Biden has largely maintained his predecessor’s approach to Beijing, albeit with a more equanimous tone and embrace of multilateralism. The U.S. government has for decades been concerned by China’s mercantilism, rapid military modernization, and illiberal approach to human rights, but it had held out hope that China might liberalize through increasingly robust contact with the rest of the world. That has not happened, and the United States and others have lost patience with China’s state capitalist system, militarization of the South China Sea, and increasingly authoritarian governance.
But Beijing is not backing down. Despite facing pronounced international pushback during the pandemic, Xi has become even more confident in China’s economic system, governance model, and approach to international affairs. “Time and momentum are on China’s side,” he argued last year at a high-level meeting, though many analysts accuse the party of overconfidence. At the same time, Chinese officials are increasingly looking askance at their U.S. counterparts. Many appear to believe that the United States, though still a formidable power, is in the early stages of an inevitable decline. Just as China resumes its rightful place atop the hierarchy of Asian nations, Beijing’s thinking goes, the United States’ unresolved racial justice issues, income inequality, and political polarization will catalyze an irreversible diminution of U.S. power in Asia and across the globe.
Complicating matters further, the U.S. and Chinese publics are increasingly distrustful of each other. A whopping 89 percent of American respondents to a recent survey from the Pew Research Center consider China a competitor or enemy, while around two-thirds of Chinese respondents view the United States unfavorably or very unfavorably. Such negative mutual perceptions would likely hamper each side’s ability to recalibrate its approach to the other.
Finally, the two sides’ divergent framings of the relationship are contributing to the ongoing stalemate. Discussions with high-level Chinese scholars and former government officials have revealed that Beijing prefers to define the bilateral relationship as a peaceful coexistence guided by shared principles, consensus, and possible cooperation. China is frustrated that the United States is more focused on competing with and confronting Beijing. In Washington, however, great power rivalry, defined more by competition and confrontation than cooperation, has become the central framework for bilateral ties.