Barkat Oumeima
Master1. Gr1
Prof. M. Manaa
Contemporary US Political Thought and Foreign Policy
June 2019
The climate of lack of confidence and trust clearly complicate the handling of bilateral
and multilateral issues between the US and China. How do you predict the US response to China's dynamic
economic growth, by pursuing containment or cooperation?
Since 1990, the end of the Cold War, the United States has become a tremendously powerful nation,
continuing to dominate the international financial system and maintaining a level of military and economic
power only enjoyed by few nations in history. This, however, brings about an endless parade of challenges
facing U.S. in its attempt to maintain its status, and to prevent the emergence of a hegemonic adversary that
would pose a threat to its economic leadership and its national security. One of these potential adversaries is
China, which in the past few decades, was able to succeed in its consistent process of reform and opening
up, to establish its own foreign policy interests, to assert its international profile, and to take giant strides to
become an economic power and a peer competitor that is likely to be hegemon in the coming years. Thus
laying ground for U.S. suspicions over China’s intentions to take over the existing World order, and putting
U.S. in a wavering position about how it should approach its relations with China—which for decades have
been characterized by both cooperation, and discord and a reasonable mix of trust and mistrust— and what
measures should it take to prevent China from offering an alternative for U.S. preeminent status as a
superpower. Now with Trump’s administration’s unpredictability, it is hard to anticipate what these
measures are, and whether the U.S. response to China as a potential contender is that of cooperation or
containment.
Despite their geopolitical and ideological differences and their conflicting views on matters such as
democracy and human rights, both U.S. and China—being pragmatic and aware of realpolitik system— have
remained largely cooperative for the past four decades. China needed this cooperation to enter the global free
trade system dominated by U.S. just as much as the latter sought to gain the maximum from the Chinese
market, and to integrate China in an American-set sphere. Starting from the 1960’s an era of rapprochement
between the two began, and in 1979, both nations announced the official establishment of diplomatic
relations. Even though the following period was marked by some frictions, in October 2000, President
Clinton signed the U.S.-China Act of 2000 granting Beijing permanent normal trade relations with the U.S.
And in September 2001, China was finally permitted entry into the World Trade Organization. By 2006,
China became the U.S.'s second biggest trading partner after Canada. In 2008, China surpassed Japan to
become the largest holder of U.S. debt. As of 2013, China held $1.3 trillion of U.S. debt. In 2010, China
became the world's second largest economy after the U.S.
This cooperation has been fruitful on a number of global issues as they both share the same interests
on international challenges ranging from terrorism, climate change diplomacy, the Iran nuclear deal, to
sanctions on North Korea. It has also proven to be mutually beneficial, a great enabler for the global
economy, and a paramount factor in ensuring the security and prosperity of both nations.
However, the Sino-US correlation has always been tainted by the ever-present strife between the two
nations over matters of conflicting interests such as Hong Kong, Taiwan, arms control and proliferation; “the
global ambition of President Xi Jinping’s “ China Dream”, [and] frustration with Beijing’s unfair trade and
investment policies;” as well as China’s awareness of U.S. desire to obstruct and undermine its growth.
“Internationally, what the United States has observed is a China that is no longer content with the strategic
status quo, but rather a China that is seeking to change the strategic reality on the ground, whether through
island reclamation in the South China Sea, through the Belt and Road Initiative, or through China's various
cyber strategies.” (Rudd)
The shift in U.S. foreign policy to contain China’s rise started in 2011 during Barack Obama’s
administration, with his “Pivot to Asia” policy and “Trans-Pacific Partnership” (TPP), which deliberately
excluded China’s participation. Moreover, The U.S. National Security Strategy of December 2017 classified
China as a strategic competitor, and in the light of “Made in China 2025” strategy and under Trump’s
America First Policies “…a remarkable strategic consensus began to emerge in the United States that China
was no longer a strategic partner that could be accommodated by long-term strategic engagement…and
therefore the time had well and truly come for a fundamental adjustment in US national strategy.” (Rudd)
Hence, over the past two years, relations between the two nations have been on warpath, as they
engaged in a Trade War through U.S. unilaterally imposing tariffs on billions of dollars worth of Chinese
goods and Beijing retaliating in kind, adding fuel to the widening ongoing economic war. First Trump put
sanctions on Huawei the giant Chinese maker of smartphones and telecommunications equipment, and
barred American technology companies from dealing with it, thus denying it access to vital software,
microchips and other components. Then, in retaliation, China fined Ford Motor Co. just days after it said that
it’s investigating FedEx.Co. and “…said on Friday that it was putting together an “unreliable entities list” of
foreign companies and people, an apparent first step toward retaliating against the United States for denying
vital American technology to Chinese companies.” (Stevenson and Mozur)
This burgeoning war’s impact on both nations is growing, and it has damaging consequences for the
global economy. And since it is economic only on the surface and is highly a political altercation between
two ideologically different countries, it is difficult to expect a breakthrough anytime soon and Sino-U.S.
trading relations will continue to be unstable for years to come. It is highly possible that this Trade War is
only a threshold to a long-term confrontation, and while it might be hard to predict how it is going to end, it
is not hard to realize that it might spiral out of control and lead to confrontational new cold war between two
undeniably major powers which would certainly affect the rest of the world.
Here rises the question whether the U.S. should pursue containment or cooperation in its relationship
with China, and whether cooperation is possible in the light of this ongoing war. Well, the offensive
economic approach that the U.S. has adopted is only making an enemy out of a rival and its outcome might
be utterly disastrous. The “competition between the U.S. and China can’t be avoided and they each have
legitimate concerns, but that is all the more reason for both to make compromises and “accept new realities”
to manage relations.” Heng Swee Keat Singaporean Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Finance said on
Sino-US relations, “the U.S. has to accept that it has no better option but to work with China because trying
to contain it will result in worse outcomes,” (qtd. in Olsen)
The United States and China must find ways to coexist, because their cooperation is vital and
paramount for both their and the world’s security and economic thrive. Should this war spiral out of control,
it will probably backfire and create uncontrollable damage for them and for the global markets, for they can
gain far more from cooperation and peaceful competition than from contentions. Hence their economic
interdependence should be vectored towards easing some of the existing tensions, and the U.S. should look
beyond China's inevitable emergence as a superpower in the narrow sense of the term. It needs to focus on
the risks of allowing this adversarial relation to become completely zero-sum game, because the world
certainly doesn’t need another Cold War.
Works Cited
Olsen, Kelly. “The US-China Rivalry Could Become Dangerous, Asian Leaders and Experts Warn.” CNBC,
CNBC, 31 May 2019, www.cnbc.com/2019/05/31/us-china-rivalry-may-become-dangerous-asianleaders-and-experts-warn.html.
Rudd, Kevin. “US-China Relations: This Is a New and Dangerous Phase.” Australian Financial Review, 23
Jan. 2019, www.afr.com/opinion/kevin-rudd-on-uschina-relations-this-is-a-new-and-dangerous-phase20190122-h1acu6. Accessed June 6.2019
Stevenson, Alexandra, and Paul Mozur. “China Steps Up Trade War and Plans Blacklist of U.S. Firms.” The
New York Times, The New York Times, 31 May 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/05/31/business/chinalist-us-huawei-retaliate.html?module=inline. June 6.2019