of their regime, first by reestablishing their country as the dominant state in eastern Eurasia, and ultimately by displacing the United States as the preponderant global power.
In his first year in office, Joe Biden sought to shed some of the crude and counterproductive aspects of Donald Trump’s approach to dealing with China. As of this writing, however, Biden has continued in many respects to follow the main lines of policy laid down by his predecessor. At least in theory, his administration has accepted the need to reexamine the assumptions underpinning the entire US–China economic relationship, leaving in place for the moment most of the tariffs, export controls, and investment regulations that it inherited and even adding a few of its own. Top officials have also stressed the importance of shoring up the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific, both by strengthening US military capabilities and by working with allies and partners in the region and beyond.
Together with these positive indications, however, there are also some worrying signs.
Despite growing recognition of the harmful effects of China’s predatory trade and industrial policies, there appears still to be hope in some quarters that these can be changed through the patient application of mild pressure and a few more rounds of what the chief US trade negotiator recently described as “frank conversations” with her counterparts in Beijing.1 While Biden’s advisors struggle to formulate an economic strategy that better serves the nation as a whole, an assortment of industrial and financial groups are hard at work defending their particular interests, lobbying Congress and the executive branch to roll back some if not all of the restrictions put in place over the last several years, and urging Washington to get back to business as usual. Governments in all of the advanced democracies face similar pressures.
Having acknowledged the centrality of an intensifying military rivalry with China, the Biden administration has thus far been reluctant to make the public case for increasing defense budgets rather than holding them steady. This will become even more important as non-defense spending soars and debt rises. The absence of a clearly articulated and widely shared assessment of the nature and severity of the challenge has also contributed to problems in rallying support from other countries for a more unified effort to balance China’s rising power and counter its growing influence. Beijing’s heightened belligerence and Cold War-style “rocket rattling” seem intended in part to intimidate the democracies and discourage closer collaboration among them.
Instead of sounding the alarm, at least some in the new administration have appeared overly eager to improve the tenor of diplomatic exchanges with Beijing, and unduly optimistic about their ability to disaggregate the overall relationship into clearly delineated areas of cooperation and competition. The notion that the two powers can somehow agree on the rules of a more-or-less stable and “responsible” rivalry without first passing through a period of heightened tension and danger understates the intensity of the ideological and geopolitical forces at play.2
All of these concerns point to a deeper problem. Most Western observers now recognize that, despite years of intensive engagement, China today is far from the liberal, open, market-oriented, status quo power that many had expected to emerge. But acknowledging what China is not, and coming fully to grips with what it has in fact become, are two very different things. Without an adequate understanding of why past policies failed to transform the nation’s Leninist political system, and absent a realistic assessment of its current strengths, weaknesses, and intentions, the United States and its allies will struggle to devise effective counter-strategies. Persistent illusions about the depths of the regime’s determination, the extent of its capacity for brutality, and the scope of its ambitions will result in more inadequate half-measures and more lost time. For the better part of the past thirty years, the democracies have gotten China wrong. They can no longer afford that luxury.
Aaron L. Friedberg
Princeton, New Jersey
October 2021
1 1. Remarks as Prepared for Delivery of Ambassador Katherine Tai Outlining the Biden–Harris Administration’s “New Approach to the US–China Trade Relationship,” October 4, 2021.
2 2. “Readout of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s Meeting with Politburo Member Yang Jiechi,” October 4, 2021.
Acknowledgements
My thanks to Louise Knight of Polity Press for suggesting that I write a book on this topic. Louise and Inès Boxman were helpful and encouraging at every step along the way. Justin Dyer edited the manuscript with a deft touch. Margaret Commander found documents, tracked down citations, and generated graphs with alacrity and precision.
I am extremely grateful to Jacqueline Deal, Richard Ellings, James Mann, Stephen Rosen, Gabriel Schoenfeld, David Shambaugh, and Julian Snelder for taking the time to read the manuscript closely and for providing insightful comments and detailed suggestions. Needless to say, I alone am responsible for any errors of fact or interpretation that remain.
Most of all, I thank Nadège Rolland for her careful reading of every draft, for her help in locating and translating a number of Chinese sources, and for her enduring love, patient encouragement, and unstinting support in all things. I am the luckiest of men.
Portions of Chapter 6 draw from Aaron L. Friedberg, “An Answer to Aggression,” Foreign Affairs (September/October 2020), pp. 150–64. Adapted by permission of Foreign Affairs. Copyright 2020 by the Council on Foreign Relations, Inc. www.ForeignAffairs.com.
Introduction
The history of the last half-century of relations between China and the West1 can be briefly summarized. The United States and the other liberal democracies opened their doors to China in the belief that, by doing so, they would cause its system to converge more closely with their own. As anticipated, access to the markets, resources, technology, educational systems, and managerial know-how of the advanced industrial nations of Western Europe, North America, and East Asia helped China grow richer more rapidly than would otherwise have been possible. But trade and societal interaction did not yield the broader benefits for which the democracies had hoped. Instead of a liberal and cooperative partner, China has become an increasingly wealthy and powerful competitor, repressive at home and aggressive abroad.
When the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, the United States adopted a two-part strategy for dealing with China. On the one hand, in a continuation and expansion of policies that began twenty years earlier with the Nixon/Kissinger opening to Beijing, successive US administrations sought to promote “engagement”: ever-deepening commercial, diplomatic, scientific, educational, and cultural ties between China and the West. At the same time, together with a collection of allies and strategic partners, from the mid-1990s Washington worked to maintain a favorable balance of military power in what has now come to be referred to as the Indo-Pacific region. While most non-Asian democracies did not participate actively in the balancing portion of US strategy, all embraced engagement, and especially its economic component, with vigor and enthusiasm.
The two elements of this dual-edged strategy were expected to work together. Balancing would preserve stability and deter aggression, even as China grew richer and stronger. Meanwhile, engagement would transform the country in ways that reduced the danger it might someday pose a threat to the interests of the United States and its democratic allies. By welcoming Beijing into the US-dominated, post-Cold War international system, American policy-makers hoped to persuade China’s leaders that their interests lay in preserving the existing order, adapting to its rules and adopting its values, rather than seeking to modify or overthrow it. Drawing
