The US-China Rivalry

My favorite course in graduate school (1967-69) was about China. My first visit there was in 1993. I went there three more times, most recently in 2011. Over the years, I was especially interested in contrasting China's route to middle-income status with India's route, with their common demographic challenges and their very different political systems. 

I never focused on US-China relations, but kept an eye on this topic. Briefly, I applauded the normalization of relations in the 1970s, I celebrated China's membership in the World Trade Organization, I felt increasingly uncomfortable with the "hollowing out" of the manufacturing sector in the USA as we became increasingly dependent on imports from China, I had mixed feelings about President Xi's leadership, and I came to believe that the shift in US policy--most clearly after our 2016 election--toward treating China as a competitor (or even "enemy") instead of a partner was a big mistake.

My op-ed begins by comparing the "bigness" of China vs. the USA. It then takes issue with a piece published in Foreign Affairs that treats, in my view, US-China relations as a zero-sum game in which there is only a winner and loser. At the heart of my op-ed are these four sentences: "There has to be a win-win option. It may not be easy to identify and pursue. It probably will not be embraced quickly by China and yield short-term results. It will need to be comprehensive and nuanced, reflecting the complexities of the US-China relationship." I point out the clear advantage over China that the US has in its "soft power" (especially higher education), and I conclude by stressing that the US will only be a winner if it is able to "make the US political system less dysfunctional, to make US society more harmonious and to get the US economy back on track."

Today US-China relations appear to be at a perilous point. The tariff war recently unleashed by the Trump Administration could be disastrous. I predict that China will "win" this war because the USA will back down before China does. One big mistake the USA seems to be making is to exaggerate China's strength and minimize our own weaknesses. China has a set of daunting domestic problems, beginning with youth unemployment. It has few friends in the world. It will suffer more than it gains if it becomes more aggressive, by attacking or blockading Taiwan for example. The USA has a dysfunctional political system and grave social problems. We are in no position to win anything positive, only more of the worst or the last.

Download the PDF version of the article or view it below:

Rieffel-US-ChinaPolicy SingStraitTimes 16Oct20.pdf

Download PDF • 2.81MB