Washington; The current U.S.-China relationship is marked by a deep mistrust, dysfunction, and dissonance.
This is bad news because a downward spiral in relations could, whether on purpose or accidentally, lead to a kinetic conflict, which could have serious consequences for Japan and the larger Indo-Pacific region.
The recent trip to China by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is a crucial first step in resuming communication between Washington and Beijing in an effort to reduce the likelihood of war.
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Beijing's mistrust is a result of a long-standing concern about ensuring the survival of the ruling regime. Chinese leaders view the intentions of the U.S. and other Western nations through the lens of democratising their nation using the same strategy that U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles promoted for dismantling the Soviet Union, known as "Peaceful Evolution."
Since the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took power in 1949, as Sulmaan Wasif Khan explains in his book, "Haunted by Chaos: China's Grand Strategy from Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping," they have navigated what Beijing's leaders perceive as a hostile world by using all of the country's resources to strengthen their revolutionary government and precarious state.
They view the colour revolutions in Hong Kong, Libya, and Syria (and even the war in Ukraine) as U.S.-supported attempts to undermine China's political system and prevent its regaining influence in the Indo-Pacific region, as did Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and now Xi Jinping.
Most importantly, they believe that the American stance towards Taiwan violates or weakens the "One-China" policy, which states that the People's Republic of China is the only legitimate government in the nation. In other words, Taiwan or the Republic of China were not and are not considered to be separate sovereign states; the PRC was and is the only China.
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Beijing uses the Taiwan Relations Act, which includes a policy of supplying the autonomous island with defensive weapons, as proof and condemns it. The Chinese leadership also takes issue with the increasing number of high-level political visits to Taiwan by representatives of the United States and other nations, as well as the inclusion of Taiwan in recent international communiqués, like the leaders' statement from the Hiroshima Group of Seven summit.
American mistrust, in contrast, is a result of Beijing's attempts to rewrite the rules of international organisations, such as the definitions of democracy and human rights, as well as its opaque political system and values, as well as its attempts to drive out the United States and its presence in the region. It believes that the rule of law is ultimately weakened.
Deep worries exist regarding the militarization that is occurring quickly, the growing history of economic coercion, and the renunciation of international agreements like the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong. In accordance with a 2022 study from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, "China continued to be the second largest military spender in the world, spending an estimated $292 billion. This was a 6.3% increase from 2013 and a 4.2% increase from 2021. For 28 years running, China has increased its military spending.
Importantly, nations like Japan, Canada, Germany, and India have similar worries to those of the United States. These shared worries imply that the deterioration in Washington-Beijing relations is a problem that affects more than just the United States and that it has wider, more international ramifications.
Communication between Beijing and Washington has significantly deteriorated, at least since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic and the second half of the Trump administration.
People-to-people exchanges decreased significantly during this time, especially those between the United States and China. Joe Biden and Xi Jinping met informally on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Indonesia, but substantive discussions between academics, think tanks, and policymakers have all but vanished out of fear that China will resume its hostage diplomacy, as it did with the detentions of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor in 2018 and the arrest of Huawei's chief financial officer, Meng Wanzhou, by Canada at the G20 summit.
Until now, regular communication and travel to each other's countries gave experts the chance to develop a deeper understanding of one another's security issues and create bridges for cooperation and collaboration. I led study tours to China for my students as a professor to expose them to various facets of China's politics, economy, and society.
The aforementioned exchanges are at best frozen in the current environment. This worsens the dysfunction that already exists between various nations, including the United States and China. How will the upcoming generation of academics and decision-makers become familiar with one another's societies? When there are no exchanges, how do we create extensive and deep human connections? Conflict and misunderstanding are accelerated by a lack of mutual understanding.
Relationships between the United States and China, as well as Beijing's relations with many other nations, are also hampered by dissonance, the inconsistency between one's beliefs and actions. One illustration is China's "neutrality" towards Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which is pro-Russian. Other indications of China's adherence to its Five Principles of Peaceful Co-Existence—respect for each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit—include its rejection of the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration's ruling against its South China Sea territorial claims, as well as its policies in Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
In his book "America Second: How America's Elites Are Making China Stronger," Isaac Stone Fish cites growing evidence of Chinese influence operations in Canada and Australia as well as the CCP's influence over American corporations, showing there is a significant discrepancy between Beijing's words and actions.
Similar to this, some of the U.S.'s actions and declared beliefs are contradictory. Observing the 'One-China' policy, for instance, while continuing to support the status quo on the other side of the Taiwan Strait. A few examples of the U.S.' dissonance include demanding signatories to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea to abide by its regulations while not signing the convention itself and criticising Russia's invasion of Ukraine while invading both Iraq and Afghanistan.
The deep mistrust, dysfunction, and dissonance that define the U.S.-China relationship will not be resolved by Blinken's visit there. In fact, the escalating economic crisis that is engulfing China, the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and the knock-on effects of Russia's illegitimate invasion of Ukraine could all get worse.
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By pressuring both nations to prioritise communication and cooperation, middle powers like Japan, Canada, Australia, ASEAN, and the EU will need to use their combined diplomatic and economic resources to defend their national interests from Sino-U.S. strategic competition. They can achieve this by supporting academic and think-tank discussions between the US, China, and other nations and by expressing their concerns to both Washington and Beijing in a clear and concise manner.
The middle powers must be pragmatic, results-oriented, and realistic as they invest in the rules-based order in the areas of security, trade, and international law in order to protect themselves from the conflict that will result from U.S.-China relations.