Six Challenges for the Biden Administration’s China
Policy
Can
Washington work with its allies and partners to shape Beijing’s behavior and
find realistic ways to cooperate on shared interests?
Thursday,
February 18, 2021 / BY: Jacob Stokes
PUBLICATION TYPE: Analysis and Commentary
Last
week, President Biden held a call with
General Secretary Xi Jinping, China’s paramount leader. They reportedly talked
for more than two hours, a length that, combined with the call readouts,
suggests a weighty and potentially heated conversation. Ties between Washington
and Beijing have become strained in recent years as the world’s two biggest
powers locked horns over geopolitics, technology, economics, and values.
Bilateral relations have entered a new and more difficult phase—even as the
global environment is characterized by many pressing issues that would benefit
from cooperative efforts to address them. In this context, U.S. policymakers
will face six major challenges in dealing with China.
Xi Jinping,
then China's vice president and leader-in-waiting, and then Vice President Joe
Biden during a governor's forum in Los Angeles, California, Feb. 17, 2012.
(Monica Almeida/The New York Times)
1. Upholding peace in the Indo-Pacific region in the face of Chinese
coercion.
The most
immediate task is to maintain peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region in the face of
China’s demonstrated willingness to engage in political, economic, and military
coercion to advance its interests. The world has watched Chinese military and
paramilitary forces operate in an aggressive manner around Taiwan, on the
border with India, and in the East and South China Seas. Those actions raise
the chances for miscalculations or accidents, and even outright aggression in
the region. Washington and its allies and partners will have to develop
integrated strategies to deter Chinese aggression and incentivize Beijing to
choose de-escalation during tense moments. Those plans should take into account
China’s penchant for seizing an advantageous territorial or operational
position and then, having made gains, pursuing de-escalation that establishes a
new status quo that allows Beijing to hold onto those gains. Examples of such
behavior can be found in the South and East China Seas and on the land borders
with India and Bhutan.
2. Building and sustaining coalitions of allies and partners.
U.S. policy
goals toward China are not just about China itself. They are about building and
strengthening a free and open international order in the Indo-Pacific and,
indeed, across the globe. Washington’s biggest advantage in that overall
campaign is its unrivaled network of allies and partners. Managing the
relationships in that globe-spanning network can be difficult though. Even
mostly like-minded countries often see both the problems and the solutions
differently. U.S. policymakers will have to be nimble and creative in building
coalitions to address a range of issues related to China through multilateral
action. For some topics, longstanding alliances like those with Japan, South
Korea, or with NATO will be the appropriate group. For others, newer forums
like the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or “Quad”) that brings together
India, Japan, and Australia are better-suited. And for others, Washington will
have to lead the creation of issue-specific coalitions to address particular
problems. All of these groupings will require painstaking, carefully
orchestrated diplomacy that would test even the world’s most skillful
statespeople. Moreover, keeping allies and partners on board is just as
important for engaging China as it is for efforts to counter the
country.
3. Crafting and implementing a whole-of-government China policy.
China poses
a number of difficult, interconnected policy problems for the United States.
One of the major challenges for Washington will be coordinating not only across
regional and functional issues where China is a major factor, but also between
foreign and domestic policy. Hiring Kurt Campbell, an experienced and empowered
official, as coordinator for Indo-Pacific
affairs on the National Security Council is a good first step.
But fully accounting for the China factor across government, including the
departments and agencies not explicitly focused on foreign affairs, while still
keeping the threat in proper perspective, will be a high-wire act. For example,
the leaders of the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Homeland Security, Justice,
and Education, among others, will all spend more time on China-related issues
than was the case in earlier eras. It will require officials across nearly
every area to have a baseline understanding of how China affects their
portfolio and how to shape policy in response. Getting policy toward Beijing
right will also require a clear-eyed assessment of the difficult realities of
strategic competition among major powers. But it must also avoid a
one-dimensional view of China as implacable adversary that must be opposed at
all costs or a perception that punishing Beijing should itself be the objective of
U.S. policy, as opposed to just a tool.
4. Balancing foreign affairs with domestic renewal.
The flip
side of the same coin is that U.S. policymakers will have to balance efforts to
address China—and a volatile global security environment generally—with dealing
with domestic challenges. President Biden has identified four active crises facing
America: racial injustice, climate change, the COVID-19 pandemic, and the
related economic downturn. China factors into the latter three in ways that
range from marginal to important, but for the most part, the core governmental
responses will be domestic in nature. Dealing with problems at home necessarily
consumes policymaking bandwidth, so there is a tradeoff between tackling
foreign and domestic challenges. At the same time, to the extent that
Washington’s relations with Beijing are shaped by each side’s perception of the
other’s power trajectory—who’s rising and who’s declining—making progress to
address domestic challenges can create useful foreign policy leverage in
addition to the direct benefit of improving Americans’ lives.
At a recent USIP event, National Security Advisor
Jake Sullivan explained that China is “pointing to dysfunction and division in
the United States and saying … [the U.S.] system doesn’t work.” He added that
America needs to “refurbish the … foundations of our democracy” at home.
Domestic strength is the wellspring of international power and influence, not
just in material terms but also in the allure of democracy as a system of
government for people around the world weighing different models.
5. Finding realistic ways to cooperate with China on shared interests.
Many global
issues would benefit from cooperative efforts that include China. The list of
potential areas where Washington and Beijing could theoretically work together
is familiar: countering climate change, improving global health security,
stemming the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and coordinating on economic
development in poor countries, to name just a few. The real obstacles come,
however, when trying to convert in-principle areas of shared interest into
tangible action. Barriers to working together often arise in that process of
going from theory to practice. For example, on global health issues, China has
been slow to turn over essential data to the World Health Organization team
investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic. Other bilateral
disagreements can undermine cooperation as well, ranging from a general lack of
trust in the relationship to specific concerns in areas such as Hong Kong or Xinjiang. Finding ways to bridge the gaps and
cooperate without making undue concessions on other priorities will be
difficult given the high level of mistrust between the two capitals.
6. Searching for a new modus vivendi for U.S.-China relations.
Last but
perhaps most importantly, Washington and Beijing will need to begin working
toward a new modus vivendi or long-term political framework for a stable
relationship. Such a framework should include sustainable methods of managing
areas where the two powers disagree and there is little prospect for accord,
such as Taiwan. It should also facilitate developing an agenda for coordination
or cooperation that both sides can uphold despite tensions in other areas. The
temptation in pursuing a new modus vivendi will be to give it a snappy name or
tagline like “new type of great power relations” or “responsible stakeholder”
and then try to fill in the specifics later. Instead, what is needed is a deep
and multifaceted understanding about the benefits of long-term stability and
what each side is willing to do to preserve it. Right now, both sides see the
other as revisionist powers. Only by moving toward a new baseline understanding
of what aspects of the relationship specifically, and the regional order in the
Indo-Pacific more generally, should or should not be revised can Washington and
Beijing come to a new equilibrium.
Taken
together, these six challenges represent a daunting agenda for the U.S.
government in the coming years as it grapples with the China challenge. The
stakes for meeting them are enormous and no less than ensuring the future of
peace and security in the Indo-Pacific region and beyond.
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