OPINIONTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2019 | POLITICO | 25N
otwithstanding the mini
deal the White House
announced late last
week, the state of U.S.-China
relations remains tense, and
there is no reason to expect that
they will ease up. The Trump
administration, with its fixation
on trade balances and its view
that the Chinese have ripped
off U.S. consumers for decades,
clearly initiated the current
trade war. But the truth is that
American animosity to the rise
of China can’t all be attributed to
President Donald Trump.
That animosity runs deep in
American society and cuts across
partisan lines and geography,
with politicians across the
spectrum regularly asserting
Beijing’s status as an adversary
and some 60 percent of the
American public now holding
unfavorable views of China.
When it comes to the multiple
and many self-inflicted wounds
that the current U.S.-China trade
war has caused and the many
more likely to result, Trump may
have lit the match, but Americans
of all stripes have added the
kindling for years.
This matters because the
hardening of attitudes toward
China across a wide swath
of American society seems
to be resulting in bad policy:
confrontational and punitive
strategies that are just hard-
core enough to undermine
relations, but not nearly
sufficient to pressure China
into making systemic changes
or to help the United States find
viable alternatives to the needs
China currently fulfills. Unless
Americans begin to revise their
impression of China, recognizing
its limitations and its vast
potential and treating it as a
partner rather than a foe, China
is unlikely to alter course; in fact,
it is entirely possible that more
and more draconian measures
could plunge the U.S. and China
into a deep economic tailspin.
There’s no question that
the U.S.-China economic
relationship, which had been
carefully developed over the
past 20 years, is at a new low
in the Trump era. The current
administration has done its best
to disrupt that relationship, from
the first set of tariffs imposed in
the spring of 2018 to the latest
round in August, which slapped
25 percent duties on several
hundred billion dollars in imports
from China. Beijing has retaliated
by slashing purchases of U.S.
agricultural goods, leading to
Washington’s $25 billion bailout
of American farmers. Meanwhile,
the U.S. has restricted the ability
of companies from China such as
Huawei to do business with U.S.
companies, and the government
of China has begun putting
pressure on U.S. companies
doing business in China. While
trade between the two countries
has not contracted nearly as
much as one might have expected
given these moves, most analysts
believe that U.S. and Chinese
economic growth has suffered
considerably.
But there should be no illusion
Trump or his trade advisers
invented the idea that China is
a U.S. adversary. Such attitudes
are widespread in American
society, including among many
of the president’s detractors, and
have been germinating for years.
As early as 2004, the Democratic
nominee for president, John
Kerry, was saying that companies
that sourced jobs to China were
being led by “Benedict Arnold
CEOs.” Or take the more recent
imbroglio over the NBA, sparked
by a tweet from the Houston
Rockets general manager
expressing support for the Hong
Kong protests against Beijing.
A remarkable cross-current of
people, many of them not even
political or partisan, denounced
the NBA for giving a lukewarm
defense of free speech, seemingly
because it fears economic
retaliation from China. To many
Americans, it seemed absurd
that the league would defend a
repressive communist regime
rather than an American citizen’s
exercise of free speech, and the
NBA has been portrayed widely
as craven and venal, holding
economics above morals.
While Trump is driving
the specifics of U.S. foreign
and economic policy toward
China, he represents a broad
political consensus that Beijing
is a bad actor that has gotten
away with too much, has values
and interests inimical to ourown, and represents a threat to
American prosperity — all of
which suggest that a much harder
stance is merited. Republicans
who vociferously used to support
free trade have been mostly
silent about Trump’s trade war,
save to hope that there will soon
be a deal that forces China to
make changes. Likewise, almost
every Democratic candidate,
when asked about China policy,
has begun with some variant of
“of course, China is breaking
the rules and needs to be held
accountable” before criticizing
how the Trump administration is
meeting that challenge. “We’ve
let China get away with the
suppression of pay and labor
rights, poor environmental
protections, and years of
currency manipulation,” Sen.
Elizabeth Warren said a few
months ago. (In fact, China’s
record on environmental issues
and alternative energy is better
than Trump’s, and the charge
of currency manipulation belies
how the renminbi has traded.)
What’s so troubling about
this reflexive consensus is that
it entirely ignores not just the
depth of U.S.-China economic
ties, but the profound advances
China has made toward ending
internal chaos and violence and
improving the lives of the vast
majority of its citizens. The
regime of President Xi Jinping
undoubtedly violates many core
tenets of Western liberalism
and American democracy,
ranging from suppression of
ethnic minorities including the
Uighurs to draconian responses
to political dissent. But the U.S.
for decades has maintained
relations with countries whosepolicies it abhors, without
jeopardizing more constructive
aspects — for example, obtaining
oil from regimes in the Middle
East, or security and economic
cooperation with Thailand.
When it comes to China,
however, America writ large
now seems to be taking a more
absolutist stance, weaving a
narrative that leaves little room
for anything but disengagement
and confrontation. In the long
run, this stance will only hurt the
U.S. China is still a major source
of opportunity for American
businesses. And it’s not just
corporations that benefit from
the hundreds of billions of dollars
of commercial engagement.
China had been a significant
investor in U.S. real estate until
purchases plummeted this year.
It had been sending 350,000
students to study at American
universities annually — all
paying tuition; now, that number
has begun to contract. And, of
course, there were the tens of
billions of dollars of U.S. farm
exports to China that supported
local communities throughout
the U.S. until those exports
slowed dramatically last year.
What all of this resembles
is the deepening of the Cold
War with the Soviet Union in
the 1950s — except that China
today is far less threatening to
the international order than the
Soviet Union was back then. The
West’s concern about the Soviet
Union as the source of spreading
communism and a nuclear threat
was perfectly rational. But the
domestic hysteria and paranoid
view of world politics did us
considerable harm as well, as
the war in Vietnam — based ona specious domino theory about
how communism might spread —
amply demonstrated.
Unlike the Cold War,
however, the U.S. today is
not only exaggerating the
danger of China; it is failing to
do anything domestically to
meet that exaggerated danger.
If China really does pose an
existential threat, why aren’t we
matching Chinese investments
in cybertechnology, artificial
intelligence, space exploration,
education and foreign aid by
doubling or tripling on our own
spending and energy in those
areas? What we have instead
is a rhetorical war combined
with pin-prick tariffs and
erratic retaliation against
Chinese companies. This
strategy antagonizes China,
hurts American businesses
and citizens, and perpetuates
a fantasy in which the world’s
second-largest economy — with
1.5 billion people and annual
growth of more than 6 percent
— will suddenly fold like a cheap
tent just because the U.S. says
mean things and threatens dire
consequences. (Make no mistake,
the tariffs, as destructive as they
are, are not nearly destructive
enough to radically break the
current system, which is why
trade between the U.S. and China
has dipped but not imploded
— yet.)
The U.S. is badly fumbling the
rise of a new global power. For
all the strengths this country
has, it has never had to face a
competitor that it cannot coerce,
cannot invade, cannot humble
and cannot contain, except at
severe damage to ourselves.
The Soviet Union was never an
economic threat, which did not
make the Cold War easy but also
did not prepare the U.S. for the
rise of China. Thankfully, unlike
the Soviets, China has modest
global ambitions, for now, and
its investment in resource-rich
Central Asian, African and Latin
American countries is primarily
focused on China’s domestic
economic security and not
territorial expansion.
In response, the U.S. appears
to be having a temper tantrum,
rather than a cohesive strategy
that combines domestic
initiatives and foreign diplomacy
to work toward realistic goals.
Neither party, none of the
major presidential candidates
and remarkably few prominent
voices (other than occasional
plaintive business leaders)
meaningfully dissent from the
thesis that China is a threat, or
offer realistic responses that take
into account how powerful China
is becoming and how powerful
the United States is. In this rare
instance, Trump is in sync with
a broad spectrum of American
society, and that makes the
current approach a national
shame. Unless, the U.S. starts to
approach China more rationally
and realistically, Americans will
be paying the price for years to
come.Zachary Karabell is a contributing
editor at POLITICO Magazine.BY ZACHARY KARABELL
Don’t blame Trump alone for U.S.-China hostility
Trade war is key factor
but anti-China views
are long-held and cut
across partisan lines
THOMAS PETER-POOL/GETTY IMAGES
While Donald Trump is driving the specifics of U.S. foreign and economic policy toward President Xi Jinping’s
China, he represents a broad political consensus that Beijing is a bad actor that has gotten away with too much,
has values and interests inimical to our own, and represents a threat to American prosperity.