I came across this incredible transcript of the annual conference of the Institute for China-America Studies in early December which is a worthwhile read for everyone interested in the impending power play between the two nations. It was chaired by Steve Orlins, who serves as the President of the National Committee on US-China Relations and was in his previous life a managing director of The Carlyle Group in Asia, and attended by Cui Tiankai, China’s Ambassador to the US and Harvard Professor Graham Allison.
Orlins didn’t waste time and right from the start directed the conversation to the by now infamous issue of a Thucydides Trap between America and China and Allison’s corresponding book “Destined for War”. Cui was prepared to pick up the baton, talked about the new governance a post-pandemic world would need, underlined China’s choice of cooperation over confrontation, and invoked Henry Kissinger’s historic visit to China 50 years ago that brought tremendous benefits to the two countries and rest of the world.
Interesting he mentioned Kissinger right from the start, the same man who has recently issued a stern warning of China and America to be in danger of slipping into the very Thucydides Trap, but it seemed to be genuine concern that guided his remarks, not fear. Everything depended on the choices made on the basis of the new realities in today’s world, to be on the right side of history by rejecting outdated mindsets of those who are obsessed with great power rivalries, and to be up to opening new paths to avoid a trap.
Allison, true to his book, opened by determining that America and China were indeed locked in a Thucydides rivalry by likening the scenario to a classic version of a rising power threatening to replace a ruling power that seems to be accelerating along a path leading to the grandest collisions of all times. If China realises its Chinese dream, Beijing will displace Washington from positions of leadership it has become so accustomed to during the American Century, especially in China’s neighbourhood.
China is inexorably growing into the largest economy in the world, which it already is in PPP terms, the largest trading partner of everybody, which it already is, and the manufacturing workshop of the world, which it already is. China will be the only economy that will be bigger at the end of 2020 than it was at the beginning, Everybody else is shrinking. This contrasted sharply with a self-declared traditional old-fashioned American Allison’s delusional conviction that the US should be the number one in everything.
Seconding Cui’s introductory point, however, he also felt that there was no iron law of history determining an outcome. It would lie in the choices, wise or foolish, that parties made. And in Allison’s view, the choice China will have to make is to control, constrain rather, its natural impulses as it grows into some of these number one spots. On the other hand, unless America could be wise enough to cope with and learn to co-exist with a rising China, this would also turn out tragically.
With regards to looming conflicts, Allison was particularly concerned about Taiwan and North Korea as becoming incidents that would be comparable to the assassination of Austria’s archduke in 1914 that pulled all of the European powers into a tragic war. But at the same time, he took comfort in an incoming Biden administration and its perceived understanding that America and China were tied together by both nuclear mutually assured and also by climate mutually assured destruction scenarios.
When the discussion turned to values, it became a little more complex. Allison seemed to concede to Cui that an American proposal for China to get a DNA transplant in order to transcend the differences was ludicrous. And Washington’s imposition of values during the American Century wasn’t that uncontroversial either. For Allison to call it a success to always find some forms of relations, including with the Soviet Union in the Cold War, which actually was a metaphor as no destruction took place, was kind of interesting.
Cui pretended to be puzzled with the term universal values, as these values were just derived from any particular civilisation without taking into account the values of others. They could not be called universal. And still, he agreed there would be common objectives such as peace, development, equity, justice, democracy, and freedom. As long as they are institutionally enshrined such as in the Charter of the United Nations, China was willing to work with them.
Then it became slightly contentious. Orlins prompted Cui whether Beijing should be making a first step against the backdrop of Americans having such a negative view on China, upon which the ambassador insisted that China should not do anything just to please anyone else. The provocative actions of closing consulates were initiated by the US government and Beijing was forced to respond. So, no unilateral goodwill from China unless it’s reciprocated. It sounded a little undiplomatic, maybe even stubborn.
Cui’s real grievance goes deeper. There isn’t sufficient mutual understanding. What’s even more important is that the cause of this lack of understanding lies in the insufficient genuine will to acquire such understanding. He referred to American colleagues who were still not ready to have genuine respect for China, and without mutual respect, one could not acquire good mutual understanding. This was particularly frustrating as China has tried to be very transparent with its intentions and strategic goals, or so he said.
Allison attempted to draw an analogy between a popular pre-1914 myth that wars were obsolete because economic relations would make them counterproductive with today, a notion that Cui rather wholeheartedly agreed with. Under certain circumstances, closer economic ties might even make conflicts more possible. He must have had the past 12 months of Donald Trump exposure in mind. Nevertheless, Cui reiterated that the basic choice must be cooperation as it would create winners instead of losers.
Both were treading cautiously on the issue of an early meeting between Joe Biden and Xi Jinping. They suspected it would be some time but naturally agreed top-level communication and working relations were extremely important. There was a bit of wolf warrior flaring up in Cui when he said that imperative is the nature of America’s policy vis-a-vis China, if it was a policy of containment, whether unilateral or multilateral. The difference was only that Washington was either digging that trap itself or together with its friends.
As a rebuttal, Allison insisted that many still believed that the arbiter of the region should be America because that’s the position it has taken for now more than seven decades since the War and has provided stability. While he lamented the condemnation to coexist because the alternative was to co-destruct, he left no doubt about America’s resolve. Allison at this point invoked Ronald Reagan for saying that nuclear war could not be won, it must therefore be fought.
In his summation, the ambassador pleaded that China was not seeking global dominance, but it wouldn’t have been in the nature of a contentious debate if it didn’t close on a little tussle. Cui questioned the drive to make US policy against China more efficient if it was a wrong policy to begin with. Orlins came in to claim that, if the US and its allies agreed, it would be the correct policy and saw the persuasion process of the likes of Europe, Japan and South Korea as moderating and actually positive…
… to which Cui countered that US relations with some allies could not go back to the past much like US-Chinese relations couldn’t, indicating that Washington was in denial about a new paradigm simmering under the big Western alliance blanket that will in future not necessarily be solely under America’s spell but look to China, its propagated multilateralism, and the new economic realities in the world. That kind of hit home.
In the end, however, pleas for a better understanding of today’s China, the need to have more China-versed people in the US government, and the confidence that Biden and Xi are wise leaders who will avoid catastrophic outcomes predominated, and optimism seemed to be in the forefront. It will certainly come down to squaring the circle. Both parties said it would be difficult but not impossible.
