The New York Times - USA (2020-07-26)

14 N THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONALSUNDAY, JULY 26, 2020 K

cion, aggression and antagonism
should be the status quo with the
Chinese Communist Party, no
matter who is leading the United
States next year. They call it “reci-
procity.”
Secretary of State Mike Pom-
peo declared in a speech on Thurs-
day that the relationship should
be based on the principle of “dis-
trust and verify,” saying that the
diplomatic opening orchestrated
by President Richard M. Nixon
nearly half a century ago had ulti-
mately undermined U.S. interests.
“We must admit a hard truth
that should guide us in the years
and decades to come: that if we
want to have a free 21st century,
and not the Chinese century of
which Xi Jinping dreams, the old
paradigm of blind engagement
with China simply won’t get it
done,” Mr. Pompeo said. “We must
not continue it and we must not re-
turn to it.”
The events of the past week
brought relations to yet another
low, accelerating the downward
spiral.
On Tuesday, the State Depart-
ment ordered China to shut down
its Houston consulate, prompting
diplomats there to burn docu-
ments in a courtyard. On Friday, in
retaliation, China ordered the
United States to close its consul-
ate in the southwestern city of
Chengdu. The Chinese Foreign
Ministry the next day denounced
what it called “forced entry” into
the Houston consulate by U.S. law
enforcement officers on Friday af-
ternoon.
In between, the Department of
Justice announced criminal
charges against four members of
the People’s Liberation Army for
lying about their status in order to
operate as undercover intelli-
gence operatives in the United
States. All four have been ar-
rested. One, Tang Juan, who was
studying at the University of Cali-
fornia, Davis, ignited a diplomatic
standoff when she sought refuge
in the Chinese Consulate in San
Francisco, but was taken into cus-
tody on Thursday night.
This comes on top of a month in
which the administration an-
nounced sanctions on senior Chi-
nese officials, including a member
of the ruling Politburo, over the
mass internment of Muslims; re-
voked the special status of Hong
Kong in diplomatic and trade rela-
tions; and declared that China’s
vast maritime claims in the South
China Sea were illegal.
The administration has also im-
posed a travel ban on Chinese stu-

dents at graduate level or higher

with ties to military institutions in

China. Officials are discussing

whether to do the same to mem-

bers of the Communist Party and

their families, a sweeping move

that could put 270 million people

on a blacklist.

“Below the president, Secretary

Pompeo and other members of the

administration appear to have

broader goals,” said Ryan Hass, a

China director on President

Barack Obama’s National Securi-

ty Council who is now at the

Brookings Institution.

“They want to reorient the U.S.-

China relationship toward an all-

encompassing systemic rivalry

that cannot be reversed by the

outcome of the upcoming U.S.

election,” he said. “They believe

this reorientation is needed to put

the United States on a competitive

footing against its 21st-century

geostrategic rival.”

From the start, Mr. Trump has

vowed to change the relationship

with China, but mainly when it

comes to trade. Early this year,

the negotiated truce in the coun-

tries’ trade war was hailed by

some aides as a signature accom-

plishment. That deal is still in ef-

fect, though hanging by a thread,

overshadowed by the broader

fight.

Beyond China, few of the ad-

ministration’s foreign policy goals

have been fully achieved. Mr.

Trump’s personal diplomacy with

Kim Jong-un, the North Korean

leader, has done nothing to end

the country’s nuclear weapons

program.

His withdrawal from the Iran

nuclear deal has further alienated

allies and made that country’s

leaders even more belligerent.

His effort to change the govern-

ment in Venezuela failed. His

promised withdrawal of all Ameri-

can troops from Afghanistan has

yet to occur.

In Beijing, some officials and

analysts have publicly dismissed

many of the Trump administra-

tion’s moves as campaign politics,

accusing Mr. Pompeo and others

of promoting a Cold War mentality

to score points for an uphill re-

election fight. There is a growing

recognition, though, that the con-

flict’s roots run deeper.

The breadth of the administra-

tion’s campaign has vindicated

those in China — and possibly Mr.

Xi himself — who have long sus-

pected that the United States will

never accept the country’s grow-

ing economic and military might,

or its authoritarian political sys-

tem.

“It’s not just electoral consider-

ations,” said Cheng Xiaohe, an as-

sociate professor at the School of

International Studies at Renmin

University in Beijing. “It is also a

natural escalation and a result of

the inherent contradictions be-

tween China and the United

States.”

Already reeling from the coro-

navirus pandemic, some Chinese

officials have sought to avoid open

conflict with the United States.

They have urged the Trump ad-

ministration to reconsider each of

its actions and called for coopera-

tion, not confrontation, albeit

without offering significant con-

cessions of their own.

“With global anti-China senti-

ment at its highest level in dec-

ades, Chinese officials have indi-

cated an interest in exploring po-

tential offramps to the current

death spiral in U.S.-China rela-

tions,” said Jessica Chen Weiss, a

political scientist at Cornell Uni-

versity who studies Chinese for-

eign policy and public opinion.

“Beijing isn’t spoiling for an all-

out fight with the United States,”

she said, “but at a minimum the

Chinese government will retaliate

to show the world — and a pro-

spective Biden administration —

that China won’t be intimidated or

pushed around.”

Given the size of each nation’s

economy and their entwinement,

there are limits to the unwinding

of relations, or what some Trump

officials call “decoupling.” In the

United States, tycoons and busi-

ness executives, who exercise

enormous sway among politicians

of both parties, will continue to

push for a more moderate ap-

proach, as members of Mr.

Trump’s cabinet who represent

Wall Street interests have done.

China is making leaps in science,

technology and education that

Americans and citizens of other

Western nations will want to

share in. In his Thursday speech,

even Mr. Pompeo acknowledged,

“China is deeply integrated into

the global economy.”

Only two weeks ago, the foreign

minister, Wang Yi, called on the

United States to step back from

confrontation and work with

China. In reality, officials in Bei-

jing appear resigned to the likeli-

hood that nothing will change for

the better before next year.

“There is very little China can

do to take the initiative,” said Wu

Qiang, an independent analyst in

Beijing. “It has very few proactive

options.”

Mr. Trump whipsaws in his lan-

guage on China. He has called Mr.

Xi “a very, very good friend” and

even privately encouraged him to

keep building mass internment

camps for Muslims and handle the

Hong Kong pro-democracy pro-

testers his way, according to a new

book by John R. Bolton, the for-

mer national security adviser.

When he last spoke with Mr. Xi, he

expressed “much respect!” on

Twitter.

With the election looming, Mr.

Trump’s tone has changed. He has

returned to bashing China, as he

did in 2016, blaming Beijing for the

pandemic and even referring to

the coronavirus with a racist

phrase, “Kung Flu.” His campaign

aides have made aggressive rhet-

oric on China a pillar of their strat-

egy, believing it could help ener-

gize voters.

The heated language, combined

with the administration’s policy

actions, could actually be having a

galvanizing effect on Chinese citi-

zens, some analysts and political

figures in Beijing say.

“I strongly urge American peo-

ple to re-elect Trump because his

team has many crazy members

like Pompeo,” Hu Xijin, the editor

of the nationalist newspaper

Global Times, wrote on Twitter on

Friday. “They help China

strengthen solidarity and cohe-

sion in a special way.”

The relationship might not

change course even if former Vice

President Joseph R. Biden Jr. de-

feats Mr. Trump in November. The

idea of orienting American policy

toward competition with China

has had robust bipartisan support

over the last three-and-a-half

years.

The Chinese government’s ini-

tial mishandling of the coro-

navirus outbreak and its actions

in Hong Kong, which is widely

seen as a beacon of liberal values

within China, have been signal

moments this year, contributing

to the tectonic shift in views

across the political spectrum.

The China hawks in the admin-

istration have seized on them to

publicly push their perspective:

that the Chinese Communist

Party seeks to expand its ideology

and authoritarian vision world-

wide, and that citizens of liberal

nations must wake up to the dan-

gers and gird themselves for a

conflict that could last for dec-

ades.

Since late June, the administra-

tion has rolled out four top offi-

cials to make that case.

Attorney General William P.

Barr accused American compa-

nies of “corporate appeasement,”

while Christopher Wray, the F.B.I.

director, said his agency was

opening a new China-related

counterintelligence investigation

every 10 hours.

Mr. Trump’s national security

adviser, Robert O’Brien, warned

that the Chinese Communist

Party aimed to remake the world

in its image. “The effort to control

thought beyond the borders of

China is well underway,” he said.

Mr. Pompeo’s speech on Thurs-

day was meant as the punctuation

mark. He chose the presidential li-

brary of the man credited with

opening up U.S.-China relations to

declare the policy a failure.

“President Nixon once said he

feared he had created a ‘Frank-

enstein’ by opening the world to

the C.C.P.,” Mr. Pompeo said, re-

ferring to the Chinese Communist

Party, “and here we are.”

Edward Wong reported from
Washington, and Steven Lee My-
ers from Seoul, South Korea. Claire
Fu contributed research from Bei-
jing.

Hawks in U.S. and China Set Economic Powers on Path to Lasting Divide

From Page 1

President Trump, meeting last year with President Xi Jinping, center right, vowed from Day 1 to change the relationship with China.

ERIN SCHAFF/THE NEW YORK TIMES

A broad realignment

of relations toward a

‘systemic rivalry.’

WASHINGTON — For the bet-
ter part of three years, President
Trump’s trade war with China
strained relations between the
world’s largest economies. Now,
the trade pact the two countries
signed in January appears to be
the most durable part of the U.S.-
China relationship.
Tensions between the United
States and China are flaring over
the coronavirus, which the Trump
administration accuses China of
failing to control, as well as accu-
sations of espionage, intellectual
property theft and human rights
violations. American officials on
Tuesday ordered the closure of the
Chinese Consulate in Houston,
saying that diplomats there had
aided in economic espionage,
prompting China to order the clo-
sure of the American Consulate in
Chengdu.
Earlier in the week, the Trump
administration added another 11
Chinese companies to a govern-
ment list barring them from buy-
ing American technology and
other products, citing human
rights abuses against predomi-
nantly Muslim ethnic minorities
in the Xinjiang region in China’s
far west. The two countries are
also clashing over China’s securi-
ty crackdown in Hong Kong, its
global 5G ambitions and its terri-
torial claims in the South China
Sea.
But unlike previous moments of
heightened tensions between the
United States and China, Mr.
Trump has not threatened to im-
pose additional tariffs on Chinese
goods or take other steps to pun-
ish companies that export their
products to America. And neither
side is threatening to rip up the
initial trade deal they signed in
January, which took years of
painful negotiations to complete.
Trade, long the most con-
tentious part of the U.S.-China re-
lationship, has suddenly become
an area of surprising stability.
The reasons have more to do
with politics than diplomacy. Both
the Trump administration and
Chinese leaders invested time and

political capital in reaching their

initial trade deal, which removed

barriers for foreign firms doing

business in China and strength-

ened the country’s intellectual

property protections. The deal

also required China to purchase

an additional $200 billion of Amer-

ican goods by the end of next year,

including some agricultural goods

like soybeans, pork and corn from

farm states that are crucial to Mr.

Trump’s re-election chances.

As tensions between the two

countries rise again, both sides

appear to think they have more to

lose from rupturing the agree-

ment than they would gain.

“Ironically, trade has become

an area of cooperation or stabil-

ity,” said Michael Pillsbury, a

China expert at the Hudson Insti-

tute who advises the Trump ad-

ministration.

In some ways, the signing of the

sought-after trade deal in January

has paved the way for the Trump

administration to press China on

other fronts. In pursuit of a trade

deal, the Trump administration

had long shelved various actions

to address other concerns about

China, including its human rights

abuses in Xinjiang, its crackdown

in Hong Kong and security threats

and sanctions violations by Chi-

nese technology and telecom-

munications companies like

Huawei and ZTE.

As painful as the trade war was

for companies on both sides of the

Pacific, it provided a strange

source of stability for the U.S.-

China relationship by focusing the

conflict between the countries on

purely economic matters. With

trade no longer the source of fric-

tion, tensions are spilling over into

diplomacy, security and technol-

ogy, issues that are more con-

tentious and trickier to solve.

The technological divide be-

tween the United States and

China, which censors its internet

with the help of its so-called Great

Firewall, is growing larger. China

is considering whether to extend

new internet controls to Hong

Kong, while the Trump adminis-

tration is weighing potential ac-

tion against Chinese-owned social

media services, like TikTok and

Tencent’s WeChat.

The United States has been

pressuring other countries to ban

equipment from Huawei, which it

views as a surveillance and na-

tional security threat, from wire-

less networks around the globe,

including in Britain, which re-

cently barred the Chinese telecom

giant. On Thursday, cybersecurity

researchers revealed that a popu-

lar Chinese-made drone was col-

lecting large amounts of personal

information that could be ex-

ploited by Beijing.

Geopolitical tensions are rising,

too. Clashes between Chinese and

Indian troops over their disputed

border in the Himalayas have re-

sulted in fatalities. American offi-

cials have increased their criti-

cisms of China’s actions in the

South China Sea, calling Beijing’s

claims to the disputed waters

“completely unlawful.” In April,

the United States sent two war-

ships into disputed waters near

Malaysia as a show of force after a

Chinese government vessel tailed

a Malaysian state oil company

ship for days.

American officials say that Chi-

na’s behavior has become increas-

ingly provocative in recent

months, prompting tougher ac-

tion not just from the United

States but also Australia, Britain,

India and other nations. Some

public figures in China have

blamed increasing tensions on

Democrats and Republicans in the

United States competing to ap-

pear tougher on China ahead of

the general election in November.

Jia Qingguo, a professor of Pe-

king University’s the School of In-

ternational Studies, said in an on-

line panel hosted by the National

Press Foundation on Thursday

that the United States and China

were not yet in a new Cold War,

but they were heading in that di-

rection with “accelerating speed,

thanks to the Trump administra-

tion.”

“If the current momentum con-

tinues, I think the two countries

are likely to end up in a Cold War

and maybe even in a hot one,” Mr.

Jia said.

The Chinese government is try-

ing to keep trade matters separate

from other frictions in the bilater-

al relationship, though that has

proved more difficult as the two

countries begin closing each oth-

er’s consulates.

“Comparatively speaking,

trade I think is more stable and

more quiet,” said He Weiwen, a

former Chinese commerce min-

istry official and now a senior fel-

low at the Center for China and

Globalization, a nonprofit re-

search group in Beijing. But he

said there are reasons to be wor-

ried going forward.

“I’m quite concerned about the

trade relationship ahead, because

we need a calm, stable political en-

vironment,” said Mr. He, who is

also an executive council member

of the China Association of Inter-

national Trade.

Chinese officials and experts ar-

gue that recent difficulties in bilat-

eral relations between Washing-

ton and Beijing are caused by the

Trump administration and not by

the Chinese government, which

has tried to address different chal-

lenges in the relationship individ-

ually, rather than linking them to-

gether for leverage.

“China has made all efforts to

smooth the relationship with the

U.S.,” said Tu Xinquan, the dean of

the China Institute for World

Trade Organization Studies at the

University of International Busi-

ness and Economics in Beijing.

“Though it is admitted that

there are problems between the

two countries, China has never

planned an all-out whole-govern-

ment strategy against the U.S.,”

he said.

While the trade truce is holding

for now, that could prove fleeting if

Mr. Trump decides Beijing is not

living up to its side of the deal. The

agreement left tariffs in place on

more than $360 billion of Chinese

goods and ushered in a détente

that forestalled further tariff in-

creases by either side.

But the president views tariffs

as one of his most effective and re-

liable tools, a powerful cudgel to

wield against foreign countries

that doesn’t require the approval

of Congress. And China appears to

be lagging far behind on the pur-

chases of America products it

pledged to make as part of the

trade deal, partly as a result of the

pandemic.

Analysts have long viewed

those targets as unrealistic. But

Mr. Trump sees those purchases

as crucial to narrowing the U.S.

trade deficit and boosting the for-

tunes of farmers and businesses,

and thus his re-election prospects.

“The president has repeatedly

said if they don’t make the pur-

chases, I will terminate the deal,”

Mr. Pillsbury said.

As China shakes off the coro-

navirus, its purchases of Ameri-

can products appear to be ticking

up. Data from China’s General Ad-

ministration of Customs shows

that the country’s imports from

the United States were up 15.1 per-

cent in June from the same month

last year, when calculated in Chi-

na’s currency, the renminbi, com-

pared to a 5.2 percent increase in

China’s exports to the United

States.

Agricultural imports from the

United States have been espe-

cially strong this summer, with

two of the three largest Chinese

purchases ever of American grain

occurring this month.

On Thursday, Mr. Trump

pointed to record-setting pur-

chases of corn made by China.

But, he added that “the trade deal

means less to me now than it did

when I made it.”

“Can you understand that? It

just means much less to me,” the

president said.

For now, Mr. Trump and his

trade advisers are mostly defend-

ing China’s efforts to live up to the

trade deal, saying China has been

taking crucial steps to open its ag-

ricultural markets and financial

system.

“I don’t think it’s going away,”

Jamieson L. Greer, a former chief

of staff to the United States Trade

Representative, who is now a

partner at the law firm King &

Spalding, said of the initial trade

deal. “The Chinese really needed

it, and the administration has ev-

ery incentive to keep it, too.”

Trade With China, Long a Source of Tension, Emerges as a Point of Stability

A soybean farm near Dwight, Ill. A trade pact requires China to buy more U.S. goods like soybeans.

SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES

By ANA SWANSON

and KEITH BRADSHER

Ana Swanson reported from Wash-
ington, and Keith Bradsher from
Beijing. Paul Mozur contributed
reporting.