The United States Steers Toward a Tough Stance on China

2020/10/20

Confrontation between the United States and China is intensifying. It now seems to have moved beyond conflict over individual issues and reached a point where negotiation is no longer possible. The excitement surrounding the "G2" theory in the late 2000s feels like a distant lie. G2 referred to a stance where the U.S. and China would cooperate to solve the problems facing the world. Although the United States never formally adopted the term G2, the Obama administration was seen as steering significantly in 그 direction. G2 was one of the major catalysts for pulling the United States, which had been pinned down by the War on Terror, back toward international cooperation and resetting its course.

However, even the Obama administration was forced to realize the reality that U.S.-China cooperation was not as easy as it sounded. The "G2 euphoria" at the start of the administration cooled quite early on, and the administration began to roll out an Asia-Pacific policy that contained a tough China policy within it. Yet, at this stage, they had not completely abandoned a certain kind of expectation toward China.

That expectation was that, while it might take time, China would eventually come over to "our side." In a sense, it was a desire close to an illusion that the United States had long held regarding China. The unilateral American expectation that China would eventually become like the United States had been betrayed once before. That was when China fell into the hands of the Communist Party in 1949, which triggered a search for the culprit within the U.S. to determine "who lost China." This is also said to have triggered the Red Scare of the 1950s.

Since Deng Xiaoping's reform and opening-up policy, the United States inflated this expectation once again. The U.S. was likely not the only one to hold such expectations for China. However, I feel these expectations were particularly strong in the United States. Following the end of the Cold War and amidst the trend of the "globalization" of liberal democracy, China was seen as walking toward "this side," albeit with difficulty. Despite the setback of the Tiananmen Square protests, economic growth of an unprecedented scale and speed created a substantial middle class in China, and it was thought that they would become the center of a rising momentum for gradual change.

However, such optimistic expectations no longer exist in the United States today. This shift likely occurred around the mid-2010s. It wasn't that a single decisive event occurred. Rather, a series of actions by China accumulated, leading to a collectively shared awareness on the American side that a pre-established harmony of optimism regarding U.S.-China relations could no longer hold. In that sense, even if a Clinton administration had been born in 2017, it is unlikely that traditional engagement policies would have remained the mainstream.

The Trump administration, which took office amid this rising distrust of China, raised the severity of U.S.-China relations by one or even two levels. First, in several strategic documents, it acknowledged that U.S.-China relations were in a state of "great power competition" and designated China as a "revisionist power." "Revisionism" is a very strong term, implying a desire to change the "status quo" even by resorting to the use of force. Furthermore, while China was not labeled an "enemy" of the U.S., it was designated an "adversary" in the competition for hegemony.

Harsh statements from the administration continued thereafter. Vice President Pence's October 2018 public speaking at the Hudson Institute (Research Centers and Institutes) confirmed that the U.S.-China adversarial relationship was reaching a point of no return and that the U.S. had no intention of backing down. Furthermore, between June and July of this year, four high-ranking government officials gave public speaking engagements that clearly laid out a confrontational stance toward China. National Security Advisor O'Brien, who kicked off the series, stated flatly that while the West had tried to believe the Chinese Communist Party was communist in name only, it must be recognized as an unmistakable communist party—a totalitarian party inheriting the ideologies of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong.

Secretary of State Pompeo, who concluded the series of public speaking, stated clearly that if we want the 21st century to be a "century of freedom" rather than a "Chinese century," we must not continue "blind engagement" and must not return to it. Secretary Pompeo carefully chose the location for this public speaking. It was the "Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum," which commemorates the president who launched the U.S. policy of engagement with China.

When the G2 theory was proposed in the United States, Japan issued warnings to the U.S. that China was not such an easy partner. For Japan, there is a sense that it is just right if the United States is slightly tougher on China than Japan is. The results of the November presidential election will play a role, but if the United States switches to a full-scale hardline stance against China, we will no longer be able to afford such a relaxed perspective.