Reality CheckMarch/April 2020 45
has been the cornerstone o cooperative
relations with Beijing from the last
decades o the Cold War to the present.
Several other aspects o U.S. policy,
however, antagonize Beijing. The
United States’ policy o economic
engagement with China, often cast as a
benign eort to welcome the country
into the global trade regime, also has a
transformative logic. Its proponents have
talked openly about their hopes that
the policy would force China to reform
its illiberal institutions, reduce its human
rights violations, and create a new,
wealthy elite that would reject the Chi-
nese Communist Party’s grasp on power.
Chinese observers have correctly consid-
ered a U.S. strategy endowed with such
hopes to be a soft form o regime change.
The Chinese are also wary o U.S.
alliances in the region, fearing that
Washington’s decision to maintain Cold
War alliances in Asia after 1990 was
aimed at containing China. Resenting
U.S. military dominance, the Chinese
have seethed when U.S. military vessels
have crossed into Chinese waters and
airspace, or when the United States
sailed two aircraft carriers through the
Taiwan Strait in 1995, at a time o
heightened tension between Taiwan and
the mainland. More recently, as the
United States has strengthened political
and military ties with countries along
the region’s major trade routes and
along China’s borders (notably India
and Vietnam), Chinese leaders have
complained o encirclement.
Today, however, China can do much
more than complain. As part o a sweep-
ing overseas inuence campaign, Beijing
has interfered in the domestic politics o
other countries (Australia, Canada, and
New Zealand, for example), used eco-United States economically.) More
important, China’s fast economic
growth—which even after slowing down
is nearly triple the rate o U.S.
growth—means that unless some
political catastrophe befalls China, the
country will be the economic jugger-
naut o the twenty-¥rst century.
China has also become a regional
military power. Beijing has transformed
the bloated, technologically backward
military it ¥elded in 1990 into one with
sophisticated capabilities for the types o
missions that Chinese leaders care about
most: coercing Taiwan and hindering
U.S. military movements in East Asian
waters. Deng Xiaoping, China’s leader in
the 1980s, famously counseled his country
to “hide your strength, bide your time.”
Today, the country is done with hiding
and biding. Instead, it has extended its
reach in Asia by building two aircraft
carriers, constructing and then militariz-
ing arti¥cial islands in the South China
Sea, and securing access to military bases
across Asia and the Indian Ocean. As a
result, China is on its way to becoming a
peer competitor in a region where U.S.
diplomatic, economic, and military
power went unrivaled not long ago.
U.S. foreign policy was relatively
mindful o¤ Beijing’s core interests even
before China’s rise. In deference to
Beijing’s claims o sovereignty over
Taiwan, the Nixon administration ended
the U.S. alliance with the Republic o
China (Taiwan), o¾cially recognized
that there was only “one China,” and
normalized relations with Beijing. That
policy was undermined by pushback
from Congress and by continued U.S.
arms sales to Taiwan, which the Chinese
say violate U.S.-Chinese bilateral
agreements. Still, the “one China” policy