The stealth normalization of U.S.-China relations.

• Author: Lampton, David M.

THE 1947 Marshall Plan conjures to mind certain ideals of foreign policymaking--bipartisan constancy of purpose, political perseverance and vision. Adherence to these ideals secured both American strategic interests and free-market and democratic political values in Western Europe. Though it is less appreciated for doing so, U.S. China policy has followed a similar course. Indeed, Washington has persevered in a far-sighted China policy through seven administrations--from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush, although this achievement did not come without periodically robust domestic debate. Even when presidents from Ronald Reagan, through Bill Clinton, to George W. Bush initially considered significantly altering the contours of the relationship with Beijing, each quickly realigned policy according to long-established principles once the costs of change to American interests became apparent.

Washington's policy toward the People's Republic of China (PRC) has exhibited three principal features: first, to define and articulate the key strategic interests that bind the two nations together (while remaining mindful of frictions where they exist); second, to weave the fabric of economic interdependence that binds the two countries together (thereby making conflict progressively more expensive for both peoples); and finally, to cultivate bureaucratic and cultural ties that promote stability between the nations and progressive change within China (by fostering mutual understanding and the economic and social changes underpinning humane governance--with creation of a middle class being central).

The Bush Administration came into office asserting that Bill Clinton's policy of working toward a "constructive strategic partnership" with Beijing was naive. It initially labeled the PRC a "competitor." Today, President Bush presides over a more cooperative relationship with Beijing than Bill Clinton was ever able to secure, and the prospects for progressive political change in China have improved. Indeed, Washington's relationship with Beijing approximates those which it enjoys with many of its traditional "allies", such as France, Japan, the Republic of Korea, Canada, Mexico or Turkey. How did we arrive at this juncture, and how might both sides move further forward?

To address these questions, and to better understand the transformation of the Sino-American relationship, we ought to think of it as resting on a three-legged stool, each leg representing security, economic and cultural ties, respectively. During the 1970s and 1980s, our stool would have had a long security leg, a very short economic leg and a somewhat longer cultural leg, making for a very unstable stool indeed. But during the 1990s, our stool's security leg was shortened drastically while the economic and cultural legs continually lengthened. The September 11 attacks once again lengthened the security leg, giving rise to our current arrangement, in which each leg is now of approximately the same length and strength--that is, a much more stable stool on which to rest the Sino-American relationship. But this is a story that deserves to be told literally as well as metaphorically.

The Search for a Strategic Foundation

THE PRE-9/11 circumstance: It is commonly accepted that the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact and the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union eroded the Nixon-Mao security rationale for productive U.S.-China relations by eliminating the common Soviet enemy. Even before these tectonic shifts, some of the glue holding the relationship together had weakened. In part because of President Reagan's initial pro-Taiwan proclivities and in response to Soviet overtures to improve relations with Beijing, China adopted an "independent foreign policy" to reduce dependence on Washington in 1982, and in the United States, Americans became increasingly aware of human rights abuses in the PRC (culminating in the 1989 Tiananmen Square violence) as well as China's transfers of weapons of mass destruction-related technology to Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and other countries in the 1980s. The benefits of expanding and generally positive Sino-American economic and cultural contact were insufficient to compensate for these developments.

After 1989, therefore, without a compelling security rationale to discipline demands made on Washington policymakers, all aspects of China policy seemed equal--economic, human rights and security concerns all had their proponents. With no discernible cost in doing so, every resolution or piece of legislation germane to China that Congress considered in the 1990s became a Christmas tree upon which the ornaments of accumulated dissatisfactions with the PRC were hung. Consequently, the White House could not durably define its hierarchy of priorities for Beijing. Unable to figure out what Americans really wanted, and believing that they could never be satisfied anyway, Chinese leaders gave Washington precious little.

In this environment, security considerations fostered mistrust, rather than the limited cooperation of the 1970s and 1980s. A spate of books and articles appeared asserting that each nation was the other's looming strategic challenge, both reflecting and reinforcing public opinion in both countries. In China, there was China Can Say No (1996) and Unrestricted Warfare (1999); in the United States, there was The Coming Conflict With China (1997) and The China Threat (2000). The China Threat case was most credibly made by University of Chicago professor John J. Mearsheimer, who maintained that even if China became democratic, its size and rate of growth made conflict with America inevitable.

Unfortunately, a policy of engagement is doomed to fail. If China becomes an economic powerhouse it will almost certainly translate its economic might into military might and make a run at dominating Northeast Asia. Whether China is democratic or deeply enmeshed in the global economy or autocratic and autarkic will have little effect on its behavior, because democracies care about security as much as non-democracies do, and hegemony is the best way for any state to guarantee its own survival. (1) Popular opinion in both countries reflected such sentiments. Survey data collected by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press in March 1999 indicated that "keeping close watch on China as [a] world power", was the "top priority" for 52 percent of respondents. That same year, the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations reported that 56 percent of American foreign policy "leaders" regarded China as a "critical threat." As for Beijing, in May 1995, China Youth Daily found that 87.1 percent of PRC respondents believed that the United States "was the country 'least friendly' to China." Subsequent events, such as the accidental 1999 bombing of the PRC Embassy in Belgrade and the April 2001 collision of U.S. and PRC military aircraft near Hainan Island, only further darkened popular Chinese images of the United States--and vice versa. Popular sentiment created what Daniel Yankelovich calls the "boundaries of the permissible" for political leaders in both societies--vaguely-defined limits that politicians are loath to cross. In the United States--at least until 9/11--it was safer to paint China in dark hues, to stress China as a threat rather than a future strategic partner.

The post-9/11 circumstance: George W. Bush came into office talking about China as a "competitor" and asserting that he would do "whatever it takes to help Taiwan defend herself." After September 11, however, American priorities and threat perceptions changed--the sense of challenge from China declined as dangers from other quarters mounted. The Pew Research Center charted a 13 percent decline (by January 2003) in the number of respondents concerned about keeping a "close watch" on China. As Americans became more preoccupied with terrorism and weapons of mass destruction, President Bush convincingly re-established a sense of hierarchy among U.S. foreign policy goals--with "security" as the touchstone--that could discipline his own fractious administration (to some extent), Congress and the domestic interest groups that previously had pulled Washington's China policy from pillar to post. Beijing, in turn, perceived a window of opportunity to pursue its goals for domestic development without excessive threat from the United States. The United States increasingly had other, more compelling security problems, ranging from Al-Qaeda's global network, to Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and North Korea.

Having seen the second plane hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center live on CNN on September 11, then-President Jiang Zemin...