The Struggle For Power

THE STRUGGLE FOR
POWER
U.S.-CHINA RELATIONS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Foreword by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and Condoleezza Rice

Preface by Nicholas Burns
Edited by Leah Bitounis and Jonathon Price
CONTRIBUTORS INCLUDE:
Graham Allison, Robert D. Blackwill, Nicholas Burns, Kurt Campbell,
Elizabeth Economy, Joseph P. Federici, Kathleen H. Hicks, Anja Manuel,
Shivshankar Menon, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Michael Pillsbury, Mira Rapp-Hooper,
Ely Ratner, Condoleezza Rice, David E. Sanger, David Shambaugh,
Pavneet Singh, and James B. Steinberg
Copyright © 2020 by The Aspen Institute
The Aspen Institute
2300 N Street, N.W.
Suite 700
Washington, DC 20037
Published in the United States of America in 2020 by The Aspen Institute
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Wye Publication Number: 20/001
Cover design by: Steve Johnson
Interior layout by: Sogand Sepassi
aspen strategy group
Aspen Strategy Group Leadership
CHAIR EMERITUS MEMBERS

Brent Scowcroft Madeleine K. Albright
President Chair
The Scowcroft Group, Inc. Albright Stonebridge Group
Graham Allison
CO-CHAIRS Douglas Dillon Professor of Government
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Harvard Kennedy School
University Distinguished Service Zoë Baird
Professor Emeritus CEO and President
Harvard Kennedy School Markle Foundation
Condoleezza Rice Robert D. Blackwill
Thomas and Barbara Stephenson Henry A. Kissinger Senior Fellow for
Senior Fellow on Public Policy U.S. Foreign Policy
Hoover Institution Council on Foreign Relations
Stanford University
Christian Brose
Head of Strategy
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Anduril Industries
Nicholas Burns
Sylvia Burwell
Goodman Family Professor of the Practice of
President
Diplomacy and International Relations
American University
Harvard Kennedy School
Kurt Campbell
DIRECTOR Chairman and CEO
The Asia Group, LLC
Anja Manuel
Principal Ash Carter
RiceHadleyGatesManuel LLC Director
Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School
DEPUTY DIRECTOR James Cartwright
Jonathon Price Senior Partner
Deputy Director JEC Associates LLC
Aspen Strategy Group Eliot Cohen
Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies
ASSOCIATE DIRECTOR Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced
International Studies
Leah Bitounis
Associate Director Richard Cooper
Aspen Strategy Group Professor of Economics
Harvard University
ASPEN INSTITUTE PRESIDENT John Deutch
Daniel Porterfield Professor
President and CEO MIT
The Aspen Institute
Tom Donilon Dina Powell McCormick
Chairman Managing Director
BlackRock Investment Institute Goldman Sachs
Diana Farrell Penny Pritzker
President & CEO Chairman and Founder
JPMorgan Chase Institute PSP Partners
Peter Feaver Tom Pritzker
Professor Executive Chairman
Duke University Hyatt Hotels Corporation
Dianne Feinstein Jack Reed
United States Senator United States Senator
U.S. Senate U.S. Senate
Michèle Flournoy Susan Rice
Co-Founder and Managing Partner Distinguished Visiting Research Fellow
WestExec Advisors School of International Service American University
Mike Green David E. Sanger
Senior Vice President for Asia National Security Correspondent
Center for Strategic and International Studies The New York Times
Stephen Hadley Susan Schwab
Principal Professor of Public Policy, University of Maryland
RiceHadleyGatesManuel LLC Strategic Advisor, Mayer Brown LLP
Jane Harman Anne-Marie Slaughter
Director, President, and CEO President & CEO
Wilson Center New America
David Ignatius Jim Steinberg
Columnist and Associate Editor University Professor
The Washington Post Maxwell School, Syracuse University
Nicholas Kristof Dan Sullivan
Op-Ed Columnist United States Senator
The New York Times U.S. Senate
Jessica Mathews Strobe Talbott
Distinguished Fellow Distinguished Fellow in Residence
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace The Brookings Institution
David McCormick Frances Townsend
CEO EVP, Worldwide Government,
Bridgewater Associates Legal and Business Affairs
MacAndrews & Forbes, Inc.
Sam Nunn
Co-Chair Dov Zakheim
Nuclear Threat Initiative Senior Fellow
CNA Corp.
Meghan O’Sullivan
Jeane Kirkpatrick Professor of the Practice of Philip Zelikow
International Affairs and Director of the Professor
Geopolitics of Energy Project University of Virginia
Harvard Kennedy School
Robert Zoellick
William Perry Chairman
Professor AllianceBernstein
Stanford University
Acknowledgements
T his publication has been realized thanks to many individuals who contributed their time, talent, support, and
expertise. In early August 2019, the Aspen Strategy Group (ASG) and invited experts came together in Aspen,
Colorado to discuss the state of U.S.-China relations.
This book is a compilation of the commissioned papers presented during our working sessions. It reflects the
lessons learned, options, challenges, and potential policy options for the next phase of U.S.-China relations. We
must begin by thanking our authors who so thoughtfully prepared papers to stimulate our summer discussions.
Their willingness to share their research, insights, recommendations, and welcome feedback is an important legacy
of the founding principles of the ASG.
We would also like to express our appreciation for our Aspen Strategy Group members, who give their time
every summer to come together in a nonpartisan manner to read, discuss, learn, and contribute solutions to the
most pressing national security and foreign policy problems facing America.
Many thanks also go to ASG staff members Jonathon Price and Leah Bitounis who spent many hours turning
these papers into the latest edition in our policy book series. Gayle Bennett, our long-time editor of ASG
publications, also reviews every page of this book to ensure its quality. Steve Johnson and Sogand Sepassi have
done a masterful job on layout and design—thank you. Our wonderful Scowcroft Fellows—Tyler Headley, Tobias
Brandt, and Katy Henderson—your dedication to this project demonstrates the very bright careers you have in
front of you. And thank you to our staff who helped ensure the summer conversations flowed seamlessly: Ciara
Campbell, Deb Cunningham, and John Hogan.
We are extremely grateful to all the Aspen Strategy Group’s friends and sponsors. Their generosity and steadfast
support allow the ASG to continue our long-term efforts to be a trusted and effective venue for nonpartisan
dialogue on America’s greatest foreign policy challenges. We are indebted to David M. Rubenstein, The Clermont
Foundation, The Markle Foundation, Robert Rosenkranz and Alexandra Munroe, The Stanton Foundation, The
Margot & Thomas Pritzker Family Foundation, The Pritzker Traubert Foundation, Robert Abernethy, Leah Joy
Zell, The John Anson Kittredge Educational Fund, Lynda and Stewart Resnick, The Asia Group Foundation,
Robert Belfer, Gail Engelberg, F. Francis Najafi, and Gordon Segal. Without their support, our conference and this
book would not have been possible.
Finally, we simply could not do what we do without our superb co-chairs Joe Nye and Condi Rice. Joe, who
founded this group over three decades ago, and Condi, who was first brought to this group by Brent Scowcroft,
moderate the conversations, ask hard questions, and serve as the very definition of what our public servants
should aspire to be—we are grateful for your leadership.
As the relationship between the United States and China grows increasingly complicated, it is reassuring to
know that such a large community is committed to understanding the history of this relationship and what must
be done going forward. The Aspen Strategy Group deems it a privilege to be able to bring together leaders and
experts to help drive such positive change. We hope you find the ideas shared in this book to be a substantive
contribution towards this aim.
Contents
Foreword
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and Condoleezza Rice. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Preface
Nicholas Burns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
CHAPTER 1
Ernest May Lecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
U.S.-China Relations at a Crossroad: Can History Guide the Path Forward?
James B. Steinberg
CHAPTER 2
The Trump Administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Michael Pillsbury
CHAPTER 3
Reimagining Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Elizabeth Economy
CHAPTER 4
Toward a New China Debate:
The Strategic Logic of Blunting China’s Illiberal Order . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Ely Ratner
CHAPTER 5
The Case for Allies: Coordinating a Response to China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Shivshankar Menon
CHAPTER 6
How Asia Navigates the U.S.-China Rivalry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Kurt Campbell
CHAPTER 7
The U.S.-China Strategic Competition: Clues from History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Graham Allison
CHAPTER 8
Campaigning through China’s Gray Zone Tactics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Kathleen H. Hicks and Joseph P. Federici
CHAPTER 9
From Primacy to Openness: U.S. Strategic Objectives in Asia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .105
Mira Rapp-Hooper
CHAPTER 10
Managing the Fifth Generation:
America, China, and the Struggle for Technological Dominance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113
David E. Sanger
CHAPTER 11
Compete, Contest, and Collaborate:
How to Win the Technology Race with China. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .123
Anja Manuel and Pavneet Singh
CHAPTER 12
The Rise of China . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .133
Joseph S. Nye, Jr.
CHAPTER 13
Toward a “Smart Competition” Strategy for U.S. China Policy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141
David Shambaugh
CHAPTER 14
U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China: Seventeen Policy Prescriptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .155
Robert D. Blackwill
Foreword 5
Foreword
Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Condoleezza Rice
Aspen Strategy Group Co-Chairs
I n the forty years since the United States established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China, the
dynamic between the two countries has moved through periods of collaboration, competition, and occasionally
confrontation. Today, the U.S.-China relationship encompasses all pressing issues of national security—whether
technological innovation, military capability, or global trade. Accordingly, our thirty-fifth annual summer workshop
meeting in Aspen, Colorado, rightly focused on this crucial challenge.
Facing a new era of U.S.-China relations, the Aspen Strategy Group (ASG) brought together a collection of
seventy legislators, policy makers, scholars, journalists, and private sector leaders to discuss the right balance
and approach for U.S. policy toward China. As one of the foremost organizations in the United States focused on
national security and foreign policy, the Aspen Strategy Group takes seriously the need for nonpartisan discussions
to address the challenges facing the United States today. Few are as pressing as the current state of our relationship
with China.
The rise of China as a great power on the world stage is a reality long foretold. As Jim Steinberg explains in his
Ernest May Memorial Lecture in this volume, the admission of China into the World Trade Organization was a
move meant to forestall the expansion of authoritarian ideology in China, one that was thus far unsuccessful. Since
the Clinton administration, the economic growth of China and its slow but steady ascension as a global power have
shifted geopolitics. Over the last few decades, China has challenged U.S. interests in many ways. Between China’s
Belt and Road Initiative and Huawei’s expansion of 5G network capabilities around the world, the opportunity for
the United States to maintain its preeminent role in the fields of global infrastructure development, technology,
and the economy is being challenged.
The U.S. and China are competing for military power and positioning in the Indo-Pacific, on trade, for
technological power, and in an ongoing debate about democracy versus authoritarianism. At the same time, the
countries need to work with each other on climate change, stabilizing the global economy, and other issues. Can
we learn simultaneously to compete and cooperate?
Our goal over the summer was to begin a process of addressing these complicated questions and to help define
a new policy with respect to the U.S. relationship with China. We began our conversations in Aspen with the
central query: How do we get a clear-sighted view of China that doesn’t underestimate or overestimate it and
allows us to develop a strategy without potentially disastrous historical aftereffects? This compilation captures
our resulting conversations and policy recommendations. We hope your assumptions will be challenged and your
understandings broadened through your reading of these papers, as ours were.
Preface 7
Preface
Nicholas Burns
Aspen Strategy Group Executive Director
W hen the nonpartisan Aspen Strategy Group (ASG) met in August 2019 to consider the future of America’s
ties with the People’s Republic of China, it was at a time of swift and dramatic change in the relationship
between the world’s two strongest powers.
For most of the last forty years since the full normalization of diplomatic relations between the two countries
in 1979, American presidents sought to engage China across a full range of issues while competing with it when
necessary. During the past few years, however, the U.S., with the support of leaders in both parties, has swung
away from an engagement strategy with China toward one of outright competition across the board. This was
in response to aggressive Chinese actions designed to limit U.S. economic and military power around the world.
The Trump administration formalized this important shift in its 2017 National Security Strategy and the 2018
National Defense Strategy by determining that the challenge from authoritarian governments in China and Russia
had surpassed terrorism as the most consequential threat to America’s national security.
This major shift in U.S. policy toward China has found large-scale acceptance and support by leaders in both the
Democratic and Republican parties.
The two governments, in fact, are by competing for advantage in four principal areas.
1. The first is the battle for economic power and trade supremacy. The U.S. and China have the two largest
national economies in the world. While they are important trade partners, they also compete for economic
advantage in the Indo-Pacific and globally.
Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump have been locked in an increasingly bitter
trade war that has unnerved investors and global markets for over a year. In challenging China on the
trade front, President Trump is responding to widespread anger in the American business community
about China’s unfair and illegal trade practices and violating the intellectual property rights of American
businesses. While the president and others have focused on the size of the U.S. trade deficit with China,
these issues of sectoral noncompliance by China of its World Trade Organization obligations are considered
by many to be critical for the future.
The U.S. business community, long an important voice in arguing for engagement with the Chinese
government, is now increasingly an advocate for a more aggressive U.S. response to China’s unfair trade
practices.
Many of our Aspen Strategy Group participants believed that while the Trump administration has been
right to prioritize U.S. trade complaints with China, it made a strategic error in removing the U.S. from the
proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership, a twelve-nation free trade agreement that would have served as a major
U.S. and Western tool of leverage against China on the trade front.
8 The Struggle for Power: U.S.-China Relations in the 21st Century
China’s massive and ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has brought it influence in many parts of the
world, including Southeast Asia, Africa, and parts of Latin America. Many of the American participants
applauded the U.S. BUILD Act but argued for an even larger U.S. initiative in the near future to compete
with the BRI.
Some participants argued that the U.S. still enjoys major advantages over China in U.S. capital markets, the
strength of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency, and industries essential for economic success in
the future—nanotechnology, biotechnology, and other areas.
The opening chapters in this book—the Ernest May Lecture by Jim Steinberg and the chapters by Liz
Economy and Ely Ratner—examine the history of U.S. policy towards China and analyze the current
approach by the Trump administration on the issues outlined above.
2. The second major issue between China and the U.S. is the battle for strategic military power in the Indo-
Pacific. This is explored in detail by Graham Allison, Mira Rapp-Hooper, and Kathleen Hicks and Joseph
Federici’s papers in this book. While the U.S. has been the uncontested supreme military power in the
region since the end of the Second World War in 1945, China is seeking to overtake the U.S. in regional
military power in the next several decades. Its development of a blue water navy, powerful ballistic missiles,
and stronger air power is designed to contest U.S. naval and air supremacy in the region. In response, the
U.S. is investing in a new generation of military technology, including in space-based assets, unmanned
aircraft, and underwater programs to limit China’s own power in the region.
China’s aggressive actions in militarizing islands and islets in the Paracel and Spratly Islands of the South
China Sea and claiming sovereignty well beyond the legal limits set by the Law of the Sea Treaty is a major
U.S. and international concern.
Some in the U.S. believe Washington’s strategy should be to preserve its military predominance in the
region. Others maintain that is no longer possible as China is now a military peer of the U.S. They argue
the U.S. should now shift to a policy of deterrence to protect our treaty allies and many partners in the
region. That will require the U.S. to invest more heavily in advanced technologies to blunt China’s growing
strength.
One issue critical in keeping the peace between the Chinese and American militaries in the Indo-Pacific is
to emphasize crisis management exercises between the two governments, hotlines, and regular high-level
defense talks to limit the probability of an accidental conflict between our two militaries operating in close
proximity in the South and East China Seas.
3. The third major issue is our competition with China for military technology advantage in the Digital Age.
The ASG focused on this issue in 2018 during its summer conference and subsequent policy book, Technology
and National Security: Maintaining America’s Edge. This may well be one of the most important issues in
determining the future balance of power between the two countries. Both are developing a new generation
of military technologies based on artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biotechnology. If one
of the two can race ahead to gain an early technological advantage, it could have a decisive impact on the
balance of power between the two as well as globally.
The Trump administration and Congress have strengthened restrictions and export controls on Chinese
firms seeking to purchase U.S. companies that produce technologies important for our national security.
A few prominent Americans who see China as a major threat to U.S. economic and strategic power have
argued for an essential decoupling of the two economies. That view, however, is rejected by the majority
of American leaders in government and business from whom we heard at our conference.
Preface 9
A critical early challenge is for the U.S. to convince its Asian and European allies to resist the Chinese
company Huawei’s efforts to secure contracts for the building of 5G systems. New York Times journalist and
ASG member David Sanger provides an important and informative assessment of this challenge and offers
insights into how it can best be mitigated in his chapter. Australia banned Huawei from competing in its 5G
network in 2018. The European Union countries are divided. The stakes are very high for the U.S.
America’s Silicon Valley tech companies must also agree to work much more closely with the U.S.
government to help in the race for a new generation of military technologies in the Digital Age. Anja
Manuel and her co-authors Pavneet Singh and Thompson Paine lay out in her paper the tools that are
available for the U.S. to win this race with China.
Many participants also argued for a massive U.S. effort to expand government funding for science, research,
and development.
4. The fourth challenge might be best understood as a battle of ideas for the future. China’s government
has been making the case that an economy open to the global market combined with an authoritarian
government at home is the best model for countries around the world in this century. One of our
participants, former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, has described the dimensions of this ideological
battle as a struggle between U.S. advocacy of liberal capitalism versus China’s championing of a system of
authoritarian capitalism.
While China’s increasingly powerful leader, Xi Jinping, has argued his system’s merits, President Trump has
not made defending our democratic or free market systems a priority in contrast to the way Presidents Ronald
Reagan and John F. Kennedy used the bully pulpit in their Cold War stand-off with the Soviet Union.
The widespread protests in Hong Kong are challenging the U.S. government to decide how far to go in
expressing support for the young people of that city who often demonstrate while waving American flags.
Similarly, the Trump administration is under pressure to protest more vigorously China’s extremely harsh
subjugation of the Uighur population in the brutal “re-education” camps in Xinjiang Province.
There are other rights issues where the U.S. needs to limit China’s global influence—in maintaining an
open internet against China’s closed system and in pushing against China’s massive surveillance state and
its major human rights violations against its own people.
There was strong support in our meeting for the U.S. government to launch a sophisticated, long-term public
diplomacy campaign to engage the Chinese people and others around the world in a global competition of
ideas.
As we surveyed this very competitive landscape in our meeting at the Aspen Institute campus in Colorado, we
tried to keep in mind two central questions about the U.S.-China relationship.
First, is our analysis correct about the challenges China poses to our future? Our group was divided on this
issue.
Some participants argued that China’s powerful threat to the U.S. position in the Indo-Pacific and global economy
demands a more aggressive pushback by the U.S. They pointed to China’s aim of contesting U.S. influence in the
Indo-Pacific as evidence of a massive power play by Xi Jinping. Others advocated for a more balanced approach,
stressing that China is still benefiting from the U.S.-dominated global order and that it would be a mistake to view
China as an enemy lest that become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
In arguing for a balanced approach, our co-chair, Professor Joe Nye of Harvard University, has framed the
debate in these terms in his chapter for this volume: “Underestimation breeds complacency; while overestimation
creates fear—either of which can lead to miscalculation.”
The second question that occupied much of our time is whether we have the balance right between cooperation
and competition with Beijing. This is a genuinely difficult issue for the president and American cabinet officials to
manage. Most agree the U.S. will be in a highly competitive struggle for power with China for some time on trade
and military power in the Indo-Pacific.
At the same time, most also agree that we will have to cooperate with the Chinese government on climate
change and in responding to other transnational threats where our combined power and influence can be
decisive—combatting piracy and drug and crime cartels and responding to pandemics of the future, to name just
a few threats.
While the two governments are currently in a much more competitive mode with each other than in the past,
both understand the necessity of working together where possible. President Barack Obama and Xi Jinping did so
on climate change in advance of the 2015 Paris Agreement in a U.S.-China joint venture of sorts to convince other
countries to complete the first global climate change agreement.
Americans are finding this is a difficult balance to achieve. While there is widespread support in both parties
for the Pentagon to maintain America’s military advantage in the Indo-Pacific, there is less of a consensus on how
best to counter China on trade.
I suggested at the Aspen meeting that one way of framing these difficult trade-offs is with a hybrid approach:
compete with China where we must; cooperate where we can.
Most participants agreed that maintaining American power in the Indo-Pacific and meeting these China
challenges head on would be probably the most important issue the U.S. will face in the coming decades. Many
participants thus argued for the development of a much more ambitious American national strategy to deal with
a more assertive China.
Some likened the effort needed to be the equivalent of the space program of the 1960s. They advocated a
whole-of-government approach led by the White House and encompassing all of the major U.S. cabinet agencies.
Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has quipped that the U.S. has an attitude toward China, but not yet
a strategy. He warned that China has a highly developed strategy toward the U.S. This is a particular problem for
President Trump, who has failed to put into place a coherent strategy to guide U.S. efforts. In his essay, the second
chapter in this volume, scholar and China expert Michael Pillsbury offers his own assessment of President Trump’s
Indo-Pacific Strategy with a perspective on the policy path the administration is pursuing.
In reflecting on the immense challenge ahead for the United States, one of my own takeaways from this Aspen
Strategy Group book of essays on the China challenge is this: Americans should be careful not to overemphasize
China’s strengths and underemphasize its weaknesses, as we often did with the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
Chinese leaders have to worry about maintaining the central authority of the Communist Party as millions of
Chinese travel and see firsthand the freedoms other people enjoy. The government will have to find a way to cope
with the democracy movement in Hong King, a toughening of the resolve and durability of Taiwan, and growing
religious fervor within China itself.
We should also be careful not to overlook U.S. long-term strengths. Our democratic system, the rule of law, and
our innovative and flexible economy are major and often underappreciated U.S. advantages.
In the military sphere, the U.S. has an enormous advantage over China, as our power is magnified by our treaty
allies Japan, South Korea, and Australia and security partners such as New Zealand, the Philippines, Thailand, and
Singapore. While the U.S. is not a treaty ally with India, we are aligned in a close military relationship and work
with its navy and air force to limit China’s military ambitions in the Indian Ocean region. By contrast, China has
no such allies upon which it can depend in a crisis. In their chapters, Kurt Campbell and Shankar Menon outline
the case for allies.
Preface 11
The U.S. is also pushing our European allies to help us counter growing Chinese influence in Europe itself.
NATO leaders meeting in London in late 2019 agreed to make China’s role in Europe a priority concern for
the alliance. In addition, European companies have many of the same trade complaints with China that we do,
making the European Union a potential ally in pushing China to address trade concerns. The European Union
worries about an increasingly aggressive China seeking to buy up the industrial infrastructure of the Eastern
Mediterranean and to buy influence in the Balkans and parts of Southern Europe.
Closing our meeting, and this book, we asked David Shambaugh and Bob Blackwill to lay out in detail what U.S.
grand strategy towards China should be going forward.
In the end, the U.S. needs to maintain its national self-confidence that we can successfully meet the China
challenges and maintain our leading global role.
Former Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis has spoken about the two types of power that we have in the world.
The U.S. has the power of intimidation through our extraordinary military. Crucially, it also has the power of
inspiration through our democracy, the rule of law, immigration, our first-class universities, economic and
technological innovation, and our free and open society.
It is this power best leveraged through diplomacy that may be our decisive advantage in the long-running
struggle for influence between China and the U.S.
These substantial strengths enjoyed by the U.S. should give Americans confidence that we can meet the China
challenge head-on in the decades ahead while keeping the peace between us.
[If] there was an opportunity for a new Sino-American understanding, one might
reasonably ask whether that window is now closed—as result of decisions made both in
Beijing and Washington. And if the window is not closed, what form might that new
understanding take?
—JAMES B. STEINBERG
Chapter 1 | The Ernest May Memorial Lecture 13
The Ernest May Memorial Lecture

U.S.-China Relations at a Crossroad:
Can History Guide the Path Forward?
James B. Steinberg
Editor’s Note: James Steinberg presented the annual Ernest R. May Memorial Lecture at the Aspen Strategy
Group’s August 2019 Summer Workshop in Aspen, Colorado. The following are his remarks delivered at
the meeting. The lecture is named for Ernest May, an international relations historian and Harvard John F.
Kennedy School of Government professor, who passed away in 2009. The ASG developed the lecture series to
honor Professor May’s celebrated lectures.
I t’s an honor to have the opportunity to give the Ernest May lecture this year. Like so many of us at the Aspen
Strategy Group, it was a privilege to have the chance to know and work with him—as a mentor, colleague,
and friend. Ernest opened our eyes to the enormous importance—and great perils—of using history both to
understand contemporary problems and to inform sound policy making.
My talk today is entitled “What Went Wrong?” And there are two reasons why Ernest May’s teachings are an
appropriate point of departure for the topic. First, the focus of this talk is to explore the history of contemporary
U.S.-China relations, to understand the trajectory that has led us to the current, very troubled period. But, follow-
ing both May and Karl Marx, the goal here is not simply to understand how we arrived at the world we live in, but
to set the stage for our conversations over the next four days—to consider whether and how it is possible to change
it1—using history not just to understand what happened and why, but to guide us on what is to be done.
A second reason why this seemed an appropriate topic for the May lecture is that Ernest May had a real apprecia-
tion of the importance of East Asia for the United States. Several of his important works focused on the area. He
authored a book chapter on U.S. policy toward China at the end of World War II called Making Hard Choices.2 For
many years, he chaired the American Historical Association’s (AHA) Committee on American-East Asian relations.3
The question I want to explore today is one that holds particular importance for me, both as a scholar and as
a former practitioner. Twenty-five years ago, after Warren Christopher offered me the extraordinary privilege of
becoming director of the policy planning staff, the first major assignment he gave me was to focus on how to ex-
tricate the Clinton administration from the impasse we had reached with China on the extension of Most Favored
Nation (MFN) trade status—following the administration’s early, unsuccessful efforts to leverage MFN renewal
to change China’s human rights practices. That assignment led to my first trip to China and what now has been
a quarter century of interaction with Chinese leaders, scholars, and the Chinese people. It won’t surprise you to
hear me say that the current state of Sino-U.S. relations is far from what I and many others in the Clinton adminis-
tration had hoped we could achieve those many years ago. Although the ultimate responsibility for decisions about
U.S.-China policy rests with the leaders of the two countries, including the two presidents and secretaries of state
for whom I worked, the privilege of working at senior levels of government carries a responsibility to account for
advice offered and to take seriously the question of whether—as was famously said by President Clinton after the
U.S. bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade—“mistakes were made.”4 Professor Stephen Walt may believe that
foreign policy officials are unaccountable,5 but at least this member of the “blob” takes accountability seriously.
As a scholar, my interest in this question goes beyond the obvious importance of understanding the past and
future of Sino-U.S. relations to the broader issue of the question of “agency” in international affairs, generally, and
more specifically in great power relations. For policy makers, the importance of agency is a given—why else would
anyone suffer all the slings and arrows of public service?—yet in the academy, with its search for parsimonious
theory, agency and contingency are often seen as anathema. As a historian, Ernest May privileged the importance
of agency, especially the role of political leaders. For example, one of the key lessons he drew about the outcome
of the Battle of France was: “Hitler understood the French and British governments better than those govern-
ments understood his.”6
The issue I want to explore with you today goes to the heart of the agency question: whether different decisions
in Washington or in Beijing, or in both, might have led to different—and perhaps better—Sino-American relations
today.
I think it’s safe to say that the Sino-American relations have deteriorated dramatically over recent years. One
need only look at the changing rhetoric in Washington—not just in the Trump administration, but in Congress
and the think tanks and punditry. Just compare the language of the Joint Statement of Presidents Obama and Hu
in 2009, with the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy (NSS) of 2017—or even the statements of
many of the current Democratic candidates for president.
First, Obama in 2009: “The two sides reiterated that they are committed to building a positive, cooperative and
comprehensive U.S.-China relationship for the 21st century, and will take concrete actions to steadily build a part-
nership to address common challenges.”7
Now the Trump NSS, which asserts that China, along with Russia, “challenge American power, influence and
interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. … [They] want to shape a world antithetical to
U.S. values and interests.”8
Finally, Senator Elizabeth Warren: “The whole policy was misdirected. We told ourselves a happy-face story
that never fit with the facts.”9
As Mark Landler recently observed: “From the White House to the boardroom, from academia to the news
media, American attitudes toward China have soured to an extent unseen since Mr. Kissinger’s historic trip.”10
Public opinion, too, has recently turned more negative, particularly in recent months. It is important to note,
however, that the public is much less negative than our political leaders and that the increased concern about the
China threat largely comes among Republican voters.11 Indeed, favorable U.S. attitudes toward China actually rose
following Trump’s election and even today are higher than in the 1990s.12
For some, this trajectory of Sino-American relations is not surprising. They have long argued that conflict be-
tween the United States and China is unavoidable—a product of the inherent tensions between an established and
rising power.13 If we accept this view, then the policy question—both in the past and in the future—is not how to
improve Sino-American relations but rather how to prevail in the foreordained contest. Taken at face value, this
view suggests that if anything “went wrong,” it was the failure to understand from the outset that China and the
United States were destined to compete in what the organizers of this year’s Aspen Strategy Group have called
“The Battle for Primacy.” If any mistakes were made, they were mistakes that came from the belief that a better,
more cooperative relationship was possible.
This is a pretty bleak assessment about the future. Even if military conflict is not inevitable, it’s hard to see how
this view produces anything except a prolonged, costly, and potentially dangerous struggle between two militar-
ily and economically powerful states across the full range of policy issues. “Game on” in the battle for primacy in
which each side has the determination to prevail rather than submit.
But for those of us who question the premise, there is a heavy burden to show that an alternative path was pos-
sible in the past and may still be possible in the future. In this lecture, I want to focus on the past to see whether
different choices might have produced a better outcome—thus suggesting, though not guaranteeing, that choices
in the future too might lead to a more optimistic result.
Framing the question this way naturally leads to a counterfactual exercise. If we can’t construct a plausible
counterfactual story that would have led to a better outcome, then the result of the exploration will lead us back
to the alternative hypothesis—namely that the current state of affairs was either inevitable or perhaps it is even
better than it might otherwise have been.
This is no small challenge. Counterfactual assertions are easy to make—and often resorted to, not just in the
academy, but in the world of politics. But they are inherently impossible to prove. Yet, despite the formidable
methodological challenges, counterfactual analysis is an indispensable part of the analytic tool kit. Near the end
of Strange Victory, May’s magisterial study of the fall of France in 1940, he observes, “though many historians raise
eyebrows at counterfactual speculation, I think it integral to any historical reconstruction. … I simply choose to
say explicitly that if condition x had not obtained, the actual events probably would not have gone as they did.”14
We have few tools available to us to assess the validity of counterfactuals; Ernest himself often confidently of-
fered rather definitive conclusions that might startle a political scientist: in Strange Victory, he asserted, for example:
“intelligence analysis was an integral part of German operational planning: without it the odds against Germany
adopting anything like the final version of Plan Yellow would have been at least two to one.”15 A number of insight-
ful political scientists, including Jack Levy, Richard Ned Lebow, Steve Weber, Philip Tetlock, and Aaron Belkin, have
offered valuable suggestions on better and worse ways to apply counterfactual analysis to international relations.16
So now to the substance of the talk. What different decisions might the U.S. and China have made over the
past thirty years that would have produced a better outcome in Sino-American relations today? By better, I mean
a relationship that featured more cooperation across a range of issues—security, economic, and political—and less
risk of conflict, especially military.
Why thirty years? I offer two justifications. First, this summer marks the thirtieth anniversary of Chinese sup-
pression of the democracy movement in Tiananmen square. The Chinese actions—and the Bush administration’s
response—represent one of the most important decisions shaping the course of Sino-American relations and one
that I will return to in detail shortly. Second, the end of the Cold War arguably represents a significant inflection
point in the Sino-U.S. relationship, as the relationship became less instrumental and more centrally focused on
bilateral concerns.
My initial approach to answering this question was to look at key specific decisions made by each side over
the past thirty years to see whether a different choice might have had a significant impact on the trajectory of
the relationship. Borrowing from the political science literature, the question is sometimes phrased in terms of
“critical junctures”—moments in time where specific decisions have a consequential, and potentially irreversible,
impact on the course of events.17 But further reflection suggests that it was at least as likely that the “path” of Sino-
American relations was the product of a sequence of accumulated decisions rather than one decisive moment. For
Robert Frost, two roads might diverge in ways that have irreversible consequences—but, as critics of the critical
junctures approach have pointed out, international relations are not so binary. In the case of Sino-American rela-
tions, each of the individual, specific choices reflected a broader underlying policy approach that informed the
choice—a policy approach sometimes called a policy of “engagement,” which was relatively consistent across the
four administrations from Bush 41 to Obama. After looking at some of the key decisions and the alternatives at
key junctures, I will turn to the question of whether a different strategy based on a different set of assumptions
would have produced a better result.
In this lecture, I want to look at three decisions that many commentators have identified as the key “mistakes” of
the past thirty years: the U.S. response to Tiananmen, the decision to support China’s entry into the WTO and grant
China Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR), and the U.S. effort to broker a resolution of the Scarborough
Shoal crisis in 2012. I’ve picked these three for several reasons. First, at the time of each decision, there were those
pushing for a different approach. Although there is debate in the political science community about whether this is a
necessary condition for a plausible counterfactual, it certainly helps the credibility of the analysis.18 Second, the deci-
sions occurred under three different administrations, one Republican and two Democratic. Finally, these decisions
cover the three main areas of contention in the U.S.-China relationship: values, economics, and security, respectively.
I should note that today I’m going to focus on U.S. decisions. A more complete analysis would give comparable
attention to Chinese decision making as well—a point I’ll come back to at the end.
First, Tiananmen. The story of the U.S. debate on how to respond is familiar to all of us, although the recent
publication of “The New Tiananmen Papers” in Foreign Affairs revealing the deliberations of the Chinese Com-
munist Part (CCP) and the Asia Society’s re-publication of key documents from the George H.W. Bush Presiden-
tial Library help revive a sense of the contemporary debate in both countries.19 Both in its direct diplomacy with
China, as well as its executive actions and negotiations over sanctions legislation, the Bush administration sought
to moderate the U.S. response to limit the overall disruption in Sino-U.S. relations in the face of calls for tougher
sanctions, including revoking China’s MFN treatment—a critique mirrored in candidate Bill Clinton’s vehement
attack on the policy in the 1992 presidential campaign.20 Nor was the critique limited to Bush’s Democratic oppo-
nents. Writing in the World Policy Journal shortly after Tiananmen, Marie Gottschalk, the associate editor, argued:
“The time for a reassessment of Sino-American relations is long overdue. China’s domestic and international
conditions have changed enormously since President Nixon’s visit in 1972.… Yet U.S. policy has remained surpris-
ingly constant, driven by outdated sentiments and questionable assumptions. By failing to rethink this approach,
the so-called realists have pursued a surreal path in Sino-American relations that has not only hurt the cause of
political reform and human rights in the People’s Republic, but also America’s long-term interests in the region.”21
The Bush administration’s decision to try to sustain U.S.-China ties was not based exclusively on either the
strategic or the economic value of the Sino-American relationship. Bush himself argued that continued engage-
ment with China, including through trade, would foster the values agenda as well. “As people have commercial
incentives, whether it’s in China or in other totalitarian countries, the move to democracy becomes inexorable.”22
How might things have been different if President Bush had adopted his critics’ approach? One could conceive
of three scenarios. First, under the economic pressure of withdrawn MFN, and the political pressure of diplomatic
isolation, China’s leaders might have opted to move toward political reform. This, of course, was the argument
made by contemporary critics. Alternatively, China might have resisted U.S. pressure, but at the cost of slowed or
even reversed economic growth, which over time might have eroded support for the CCP and ultimately led to a
change of regime. Third, China might have adopted a more hostile attitude toward the United States and devel-
oped a strategy to confront the U.S. more directly.
The first scenario seems quite implausible. A look at the deliberations of the CCP leadership in “The New Ti-
ananmen Papers” published in Foreign Affairs suggests that Deng Xiaoping and his colleagues saw political reform
as an existential threat to their leadership—and evinced a clear willingness to risk economic and political isolation
to retain control. That conclusion is buttressed by the Chinese leaders’ strong resistance to the Clinton administra-
tion’s subsequent effort to condition MFN on improvement in human rights. Of course, it can be argued that in the
latter case, China’s leaders may have doubted Clinton’s willingness to go through with the threats—but given the
earlier Congressional votes withdrawing MFN in 1991 and 1992, they certainly could not take that for granted.23
The second scenario is somewhat more plausible but is also questionable. A case can be made that the technol-
ogy and arms sanctions that the United States and others imposed did impact China’s economic growth and the
pace of its military modernization. At the same time, one could argue that the technology sanctions ultimately
persuaded China that it would need to focus on developing its own indigenous capability, thus becoming a more
formidable competitor in the long run.
For the strategy of “strangulation” to succeed, the United States would have to close its markets to China and
persuade others to do the same. In addition to overcoming domestic business opposition, the U.S. would have
had to persuade China’s other key economic partners in East Asia and Europe to follow suit. Although U.S. allies
generally adopted the limited sanctions imposed by the Bush administration, it would have been a heavy lift to get
them to hurt their own economies through broader trade sanctions. And even if they had, there is a further leap
to conclude that the economic pain would undermine a Communist leadership that had survived the Great Leap
Forward and the Cultural Revolution. Indeed, one can imagine that economic sanctions might have triggered a na-
tionalist backlash that would reinforce the grip of the CCP as the defender of China’s sovereignty—a development
even more likely under the third scenario, which seems the most plausible of the three alternatives. This scenario
would have led to much earlier confrontation between the United States and China and a much tenser East Asia
during the first two decades after the Cold War, with all the associated economic and political ramifications. One
can imagine, for example, that in this case, China might have actively supported North Korea and Iran’s nuclear
ambitions, not to mention taking a tougher line on Taiwan.
The second case is the Clinton administration’s decision to support China’s admission to the WTO and to grant
China PNTR.24 Of all the China policy decisions of the last three decades, this has attracted the most criticism,
both at the time and especially in hindsight. A very cottage industry of critiques has emerged, epitomized by U.S.
Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer’s assertion in his 2017 Report to Congress: “It seems clear that the United
States erred in supporting China’s entry into the WTO on terms that have proven ineffective in securing China’s
embrace of an open, market-oriented trade regime.”25 In a piece for the Atlantic, in August 2018, author Gabe
Lipton asserted: “By letting [China] into the World Trade Organization back in 2001, Washington laid the ground-
work for the tensions roiling relations with Beijing today.”26
Before considering the counterfactual, it is useful to recall the arguments made in favor of the decision to sup-
port China’s entry into the WTO.27 On the economic front, the Clinton administration argued that the agreement
would enhance access for U.S. exports by reducing tariffs and eliminating barriers to investment. It also asserted
that the need for China to meet WTO standards would lead to economic reform in China, including privatization
and the decline of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs). It contended that subjecting China to the WTO settlement
mechanisms offered a greater chance of gaining compliance with trade agreements. More broadly, the administra-
tion argued that WTO admission would make China more prosperous and stable, and that a weak China was at
least as likely to be a threat as a strong China.
Clinton also asserted that by supporting China’s entry, the U.S. would increase its influence over Chinese deci-
sion making. “[E]verything I have learned about human nature in over a half-century of living now convinces me
that we have a far greater chance of having a positive influence on China’s actions if we welcome China into the
world community instead of shutting it out.”28
Some have suggested that the Clinton administration also based its case on the positive contribution that WTO
membership would make to political reform and human rights in China. I’ll come back to this point shortly, but for
now, I will simply quote Clinton’s own words: “Membership in the W.T.O., of course, will not create a free society
in China overnight or guarantee that China will play by global rules. But over time, I believe it will move China
faster and further in the right direction, and certainly will do that more than rejection would.”29
Critics of the WTO decision have offered a number of complementary arguments for why the decision was a
mistake. First, on the economic front, they contend that China’s entry into the WTO—at least on the terms agreed
to by the United States and other WTO members—destroyed millions of jobs in the U.S.; decimated the U.S.
manufacturing industry in key sectors; and created a massive trade deficit, which, at least in the view of some, had
wider adverse consequences. Lighthizer, for example, has stated: “our trade deficit with China played a major role
in creating the financial bubble that exploded in 2008.”30 At the same time, China failed to open its markets to U.S.
firms and U.S. exports, denying the U.S. the reciprocal benefits of more open trade. For some, this was a product
of the specific terms of the deal—the U.S. did not demand enough. For others, the problem lay in insufficient en-
forcement. And for a third group, the problem was inherent in the WTO—again quoting Lighthizer—“the WTO
settlement system is simply not designed to deal with a legal and political system so at odds with basic premises
on which the WTO was founded.”31 James McGregor argues that “Chinese policymakers are masters of creative
initiatives that slide through the loopholes of WTO and other international trade rules”32—including currency
manipulation and forcing companies to relocate to China rather than export from domestic sources. Moreover,
to the extent that WTO membership contributed to China’s economic success, it reduced the pressure for politi-
cal reform, since the leadership could point to the success of its authoritarian mode of governance to produce
prosperity. And the wealth generated helped underwrite China’s rapid military modernization and technological
progress, which challenge U.S. security interests in East Asia and beyond.
Many of these arguments were advanced at the time of Clinton’s decision, including by leaders in his own
party. Representative Nancy Pelosi, for example, argued: “China’s pattern of violating trade agreements behooves
the U.S. Congress to retain its authority for annual review of China’s trade record.”33
There is no doubt that many of the more hopeful predictions—or perhaps the better word is aspirations—were
unrealized. The U.S. job loss to China in the past two decades has been well documented.34 Similarly, the down-
ward trend in political reform, political rights, and the rule of law seems incontestable, and U.S. influence over
China in a range of areas is waning. But the fact that bad things happened following China’s WTO entry does not
by itself prove that they were caused by that decision—or perhaps even more important, that things would have
been better had the U.S. blocked China’s entry into the WTO—or held out for a better deal.
In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Philip Levy explores some of the counterfactual scenarios.35 One option
would have been for the U.S. to acquiesce to China’s membership but to deny China either annual or permanent
MFN.36 Critics at the time and subsequently have argued that denying PNTR would have had several positive
consequences. First, by requiring annual renewal of MFN, it would have provided the U.S. leverage over China’s
actions, and in the meantime, the U.S. would retain the right to impose higher tariffs against Chinese exporters.
Second, it would have created substantial uncertainty for U.S. and other foreign manufacturers considering out-
sourcing production to China, reducing their willingness to relocate and thus limiting the job loss to the U.S.37
Some of these critiques are unpersuasive. As the Clinton administration argued at the time, U.S. failure to ex-
tend MFN would primarily harm the U.S., since other countries’ exporters would gain greater access to China than
the U.S. and, of course, would also raise costs for U.S. consumers and businesses where China formed part of the
supply chain.38 Moreover, higher barriers against Chinese imports might simply displace the U.S. job loss to other
low-cost producing countries that had already joined the WTO. There is certainly evidence to support this view,
based on the impact of President Obama’s 2012 tariffs on Chinese tires, which largely appeared to have led to more
imports from other countries at higher prices rather than a substantial increase in U.S. jobs.39
A second option was to try to block China’s admission to the WTO. Under the WTO’s rules, new members are
admitted by a two-thirds majority vote, so this strategy would have required the United States to rally significant
outside support to block China’s entry—yet many countries, especially U.S. allies like Japan and Germany, had a
large stake in expanding their access to China. To be fair, in the past, most new admissions have been by consensus,
so it could be argued that the U.S. had a de facto if not de jure veto, although this is quite speculative.40
What would have happened if China had not joined the WTO in 2001? Under these circumstances, there were
two alternatives for U.S. policy. This option offered some theoretical advantages over the previous option; in this
case, the United States would not be at a competitive disadvantage to other countries. Like the previous option, the
U.S. could continue annual reviews of China’s MFN with the option of imposing new protections. This option dif-
fers little from what had prevailed prior to 2001. Although the United States in theory would have additional lever-
age, the 20-year track record of Jackson-Vanik waivers suggests that China would not likely have made significant
concessions based on the mere threat of MFN denial. Of course, the U.S. could have demonstrated its resolve by
making good on that threat and imposing new barriers against Chinese exports. This scenario bears considerable
similarity to the situation we see in the current U.S.-China “trade war”: China has made some new concessions but
at least thus far has refused dramatic change. Would China have been more willing to compromise at an earlier
stage of its economic development when it was even more dependent on export-led growth? Perhaps, although
many believe (including President Trump himself ) that China’s current economic difficulties make it more suscep-
tible to trade “hardball.”41
Even assuming that the United States might have derived some economic benefit from denying China’s WTO
entry in 2001, there would be non-economic consequences as well. For example, had the United States blocked
China’s WTO membership in 2001, it would have also lost its leverage to insist on the simultaneous entry of Tai-
wan in the WTO, which has played an important role in shoring up Taiwan’s economy, as well as providing it the
international stature that comes from participation in a major international institution.42
Would the costs of blocking China’s membership have been worth it if exclusion slowed or even halted China’s
economic and military rise? It certainly would have crystallized a more adversarial U.S.-China relationship, since
China would have seen such a decision as evidence of a broad containment strategy. As Joseph Fewsmith argued at
the time, “if negotiators had failed to reach agreement [during the second round, in November 1999], Jiang would
likely have been forced to play the nationalist card to defend himself.”43
The third option would be to hold out for a better deal. This option—assuming it was possible—would seem to
avoid all the downsides of the two previous options along with the benefits of the additional concessions wrested
from China. It seems almost incontrovertible that the U.S. might have gotten at least a somewhat better deal if it
had held out for more.44 It’s hard to make the case that the Beijing had truly reached its bottom line and would
have preferred to walk away. This conclusion is buttressed by the fact that the U.S. backed off from the initial deal
negotiated with Zhu Rongji in April 1999; despite the rather public humiliation associated with the rebuff, China
returned to the table.45 China’s willingness to put new offers on the table in response to the recent Trump tariffs
also suggest that China is not averse to making new concessions under pressure.
Would a better trade deal in 2000 have made a significant impact on subsequent U.S.-China relations? A key
question is whether the U.S. could have gained enough additional concessions to alter significantly the adverse im-
pact on U.S. jobs and manufacturing other than at the margin. Critics have argued, for example, that the U.S. could
have negotiated strong safeguards against Chinese violations of its commitments46 or insisted on more thorough
reform of the SOE and China’s intellectual property rights practices.
The “but for” here is complex. U.S. manufacturing employment was already declining precipitously even be-
fore China’s entry into the WTO. There is considerable debate about whether the WTO agreement by itself had
any impact on that trend.47 Indeed it is possible to argue that manufacturing in the United States might have been
even worse off if the United States had successfully insisted on more thorough-going reform, since arguably, it
is precisely the process of reform that has helped stimulate China’s emergence as an economic powerhouse.48 In
the end, the question of impact of the WTO decision goes to the broader question of how the United States re-
sponded to the process of globalization and whether other policies, either more protectionist or more focused on
retraining and retooling workers and industries, would have been more effective in addressing the economic and
social costs of deepening global economic integration.49
The third case I’d like to touch on briefly is the confrontation between China and the Philippines over the Scar-
borough Shoal in 2012. As you all know, critics of U.S.-China policy have argued that the U.S. has failed to respond
effectively to what is seen as increasingly assertive Chinese behavior in the South and East China Seas, endangering
the security of the United States and our East Asian partners and putting at risk freedom of navigation in these
vital waterways. The Scarborough Shoal incident is an interesting test case, since the focus of U.S. policy makers
was an effort to defuse the crisis rather than, as some have argued, to confront and challenge Chinese aggressive
actions. The story is complex, and some of the facts are disputed by the participants, but the basic outlines are
reasonably clear.50
In April 2012, a Philippine warship boarded several Chinese fishing boats in the waters close to Scarborough
Shoal, a landform long occupied by the Philippines but claimed by China under its expansive “nine-dash line.”
China dispatched two marine surveillance ships in response, blocking efforts by the Philippines to arrest the fisher-
man and confiscate their catch. A tense standoff ensued with both Chinese and Philippine officials insisting that
the other side had to withdraw its vessels from the area. The Philippines announced that it would take the mat-
ter to international arbitration, called on the Association of Southeast Asian Nations to support the Philippines,
and appealed to the U.S. to clarify that the Scarborough Shoal fell within the terms of the U.S.-Philippines Mutual
Defense Treaty. At the first 2+2 U.S.-Philippines meeting, Secretaries Clinton and Panetta broadly reaffirmed the
treaty without making specific reference to Scarborough Shoal, but did agree to enhance support for Philippines
maritime forces. China in turn imposed de facto economic sanctions on the Philippines. In June, the United States
helped broker an understanding for a mutual withdrawal of naval vessels. In the end, the Philippines withdrew its
ships and China did not, leading to China’s de facto control over Scarborough Shoal.
At the time, there appears to have been little debate within the U.S. government over what course to take and
a broad consensus in favor of the U.S. effort to defuse the crisis. But the Chinese actions had a profound impact
on those—both participants and observers—that have colored the U.S.-China policy debate ever since and led to a
vigorous argument questioning the U.S. approach.51
What might the U.S. have done differently? On the political level, the U.S. could more clearly have endorsed the
Philippines’ sovereignty over Scarborough Shoal and the associated maritime rights that flow to that claim under
the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.52 The U.S. could have provided more direct support to the
Philippine navy and coast guard, including the dispatching of U.S. vessels to the area. Finally, the U.S. could have
declined to mediate the crisis.
Critics of the decision argue that if the United States had adopted a more assertive approach, China would have
backed off, given the relatively dubious nature of its claim as well as the risks of a direct confrontation with the
United States. It’s hard to test this assertion, although in other cases where China has sought to assert questionable
claims over international commons, for example, in declaring an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) over the
East China Sea or contesting U.S. freedom of navigation operations, China has up until now refrained from direct
confrontation (although there have been close calls). Assume for the purpose of argument that a U.S. show of re-
solve would have been successful in backing China off—the key question is whether this would have led to better
U.S.-China relations over the longer term.
Advocates of this approach would argue yes—establishing clear and enforceable red lines would tame China’s
ambitions and moderate its policies. According to this logic, China simply has too much at stake in its own process
of economic development to risk a war with the United States over its claims in the South and East China Sea.
There is a certain plausibility to this argument. The 1996 Taiwan Strait Missile Crisis bears some similarity to
the Scarborough case. There the Clinton administration dispatched two aircraft carriers to waters off Taiwan,
and the U.S. action appeared to persuade China to abandon the intimidating practice. In that case, the U.S. clearly
won the “battle,” and for an extended period, China refrained from provocative shows of force against Taiwan.
But what about its impact on the “war”—the long-term U.S.-China relationship? Some, such as Michael Cole,
have argued that while China backed off in 1996, the experience led the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) as well as
China’s political leaders to deepen their determination to match the U.S. militarily so as to be in a better position
to prevail in the future.53
Similarly, in the case of Scarborough Shoal, it can be argued that even if a more assertive U.S. response had led
to China backing down in the near term, the experience might have reinforced China’s conviction that the U.S.
was determined to side with China’s adversaries, and thus hasten the deepening of division and the likelihood of
conflict between the U.S. and China.
What lessons can we learn from these three cases? For me there are three broad takeaways. First, it’s hard to
make a powerful case that things would clearly have been better with different policies. Second, the possibility
of better outcomes seems greatest in the case of economic relations, weakest in the case of human rights and
political reform in China, and the security realm somewhere in the middle. Third, even when there might have
been short-term gains from a different decision, the long-term consequences might have been much different and
conceivably even worse than what we face today.
As I suggested earlier, perhaps the explanation of “what went wrong” was not so much bad individual deci-
sions, but rather a misguided overall strategy—or put differently, the individual decisions were flawed because
they were the product of a flawed strategy. To explore this hypothesis, we need to be a bit clearer about what the
strategy was and what the alternatives were.
Many commentators have noted the broad consistency of U.S. policy toward China from the Nixon adminis-
tration on. Although presidential challengers from Reagan to Clinton to Bush 43 often criticized the incumbent’s
strategy, in the end, most observers have argued that the similarities outweighed the differences.54 So what were
the core assumptions underlying the U.S. approach? Although many have adopted the shorthand phrase “engage-
ment,” I find the term too amorphous and procedural to capture the essence of the policy. At its core, the policy
was based on the belief that a stable, prosperous China would serve the interests of the United States, while a weak
and insecure China was at least as likely to pose risks for the U.S. and its allies. Therefore, the U.S. should welcome
rather than resist China’s rise.55 Implicit in this policy was a belief that a rising China would not inherently threaten
the United States.
Some have argued that there was also a second premise underlying the policy—a belief that as China became
more prosperous, it would come to resemble the United States and increasingly share our values about domestic
governance and the international order. This convergence would then facilitate increased cooperation between
our two countries. Iain Johnston’s thorough look at the historical record suggests that while most advocates for
the policy hoped that liberalization would occur, the decision to support rather than oppose China’s rise was not
premised on this hope.56 But for the purposes of this analysis, the assumptions behind the policy are less important
than whether a different strategy would have produced a better result.
So what alternative strategies were available to presidents from Bush 41 to Obama, and how might adopting
one of these have changed the course of Sino-American relations? At the risk of oversimplification, we can draw
on the familiar Goldilocks paradigm. One school has argued that the strategy was too soft, another that it has been
too tough. And before I discuss those two alternatives, I want to reassure that my purpose is not, as you might fear,
to show that the actual policy was just right.
First the “too soft school.” As we’ve seen from the three case studies, critics have argued that a tougher line
would serve U.S. interests by one of three mechanisms—either by slowing China’s rise, by forcing the CCP to
adapt its policies to meet U.S. demands, or even by fostering regime change. They cite a long list of misguided
accommodations (in addition to the three cases discussed earlier): the Clinton administration’s decision to drop
human rights conditionality for MFN in 1994, Bush 43’s reversal on enhancing support for Taiwan following the
EP3 incident, and so on.
In the late 1990s, this viewpoint was pressed by the “Blue Team”—members and staff of Congress, think tanks,
journalists, and others who challenged the prevailing policy of the Clinton administration.57 Individuals associated
with the Blue Team argued that the U.S. was underestimating the “China Threat”—the title of a 2000 book by
Washington Times reporter Bill Gertz—and they advocated a range of alternative strategies, including, for some, an
explicit commitment to regime change.58 More recently, this view has been picked up by the reincarnated Commit-
tee on the Present Danger, now called the Committee on the Present Danger—China, which contends that “there
is no hope of coexistence with China as long as the Communist Party governs the country,” and therefore the U.S.
should adopt “a determination to reverse decades of American miscalculation, inaction and appeasement.”
Of course, these represent the most extreme wing of a broader spectrum of views advocating a more force-
ful challenge to China. In one form or another, there is a growing conviction among U.S. politicians and policy
analysts that the U.S.-China relationship should be seen as a zero-sum competition in which the United States
should seek to “prevail” over China. For example, Ambassador Bob Blackwill and Ashley Tellis have argued that
“preserving U.S. primacy in the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in the
twenty-first century.”59
An alternative strategy is offered by the “too hard” school—that the difficulties in the Sino-U.S. relationship
stem from the U.S. reluctance to accommodate China’s rise. In this view, had the U.S. been more accommodating,
China would feel less threatened and more willing to cooperate with the U.S. on shared economic and security
interests like nonproliferation and counter-terrorism rather than to compete with the United States.60 Proponents
of this view argue that while the rhetoric of the policy has been to support China’s rise, the reality was much
more confrontational. They point to as evidence a long list of hostile U.S. actions: the continued ban on technol-
ogy transfers to China imposed after Tiananmen and tightened after the Cox Committee Report in 1998,61 arms
sales to Taiwan beginning with the George H.W. Bush F-16 sales in 1992 despite the promise of the U.S.-China
Third Communique,62 Clinton’s carrier diplomacy during the 1996 Taiwan Strait Crisis, the reinforcement of U.S.
security alliances with Japan and South Korea despite the end of the Cold War, George W. Bush’s use of third-party
sanctions against Banco Delta Asia in 2005, and the Obama “pivot”—including beefing up the U.S. military pres-
ence in East Asia. As a result, China had little choice but to focus its efforts on competing with the United States
through strengthening its military, building up its indigenous economic and technological prowess, and enhancing
ties with countries like Russia to counter U.S. power. Charles Glaser is a prominent exponent of the view, arguing
specifically that accommodating China over Taiwan as part of a grand bargain would better serve U.S. interests.63
How can we evaluate the likely success of these two alternative strategies? Since this is the Ernest May lecture,
one possible answer to this question is to look at history. In many ways, the “too soft” argument mirrors the argu-
ment against détente made by critics of President Nixon’s policy toward the USSR—including the earlier incarna-
tion of the Committee on the Present Danger. Following this analogy, today’s proponents of the “soft on China
argument” would argue that it was Reagan’s more confrontational line, from human rights to security, rather than
Nixon’s accommodation, that brought the Soviet Union to the bargaining table and ultimately led to the end of the
regime. In an analysis that Ernest May would have appreciated, Glaser argues: “Reaching back further in history,
the too soft argument might invoke one of the greatest warhorses of historical analogies—the Munich argument.”64
The “too hard” argument might in turn invoke the history of the United States’ own rise, pointing to the early
failure of European powers who sought to check U.S. expansion and the more successful approach followed by
the United Kingdom, which (at least after 1812) chose to accommodate and work with a rising United States—in-
cluding its acquiescence in the Monroe Doctrine and a U.S. hemispheric sphere of influence—a history so richly
explored by Kori Schake.65
But May would be the first to caution against such superficial analogies. Even if we accept the argument that
Reagan’s tough line brought about the end of the Cold War—a matter of no small controversy—that assessment
doesn’t help us much in judging whether a similar approach would have a similar effect vis-à-vis China. China’s
leadership is more agile, and its society more dynamic, than the USSR of the 1980s and thus less vulnerable to U.S.
pressure and coercion. Reagan’s success depended to some degree on the support—or at least the acquiescence of
U.S. allies—a much more difficult challenge vis-à-vis China, as we see today in the lukewarm response of U.S. allies
to the Trump administration’s strategy.
But if China is not the USSR of 1980, neither is China the United States of the nineteenth century. European
powers—especially Europe’s monarchies—may have been wary of America’s ascendency. But for Britain, shared
political values—along with Britain’s abandonment of mercantilist policies in the mid-nineteenth century and its
preoccupation with imperial interests in Africa and Asia—meant there was a degree of congruence, or at least
complementarity of interest that facilitated Britain’s decision to work with rather than against the United States.
For these reasons, accommodating China’s rise might not turn out nearly as well for the U.S. as accepting Ameri-
ca’s rise did for Britain.
But this is not the only way we might use history to evaluate these counterfactual strategies. A more productive
line is to look more narrowly at the U.S.-China relationship to see where the U.S. policy has been most and least
successful. As the political scientists would say—we can look at “within case” rather than “cross case” comparisons.
In the years following Nixon and Kissinger, U.S. policy toward China had some notable successes. Normaliza-
tion not only began a process of engagement that brought considerable economic benefit both to China and to the
United States, but also helped build a more stable security environment in East Asia and the Western Pacific. This
benefitted not just the United States, but also its allies. Over time, China joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and
related arms control regimes, abandoned its policies of supporting revolutionary movements around the world,
and began to support UN peace-keeping activities. Most notably, China acquiesced in the status quo over Taiwan
despite its rhetorical commitment to unification. Domestically, while democracy failed to take hold, Chinese soci-
ety became more open. And of course, China’s economic growth helped fuel global prosperity and contributed to
managing the economic crisis of 1998-99.
The achievements of this period were based on a more or less explicit shared understanding or modus vivendi
about the terms of the relationship. I’m deliberately not using the term “bargain,” which has implications of an
explicit quid pro quo. The United States would welcome the rise of a strong, prosperous China and not seek to
overthrow the Communist Party’s control. China would not seek to challenge the United States’ dominant posi-
tion in East Asia or the broader international economic and political order, which helped facilitate China’s own
economic development.
But that understanding had within it the seeds of its own destruction. As long as the military and economic
disparity between the two remained one, the relationship was reasonably stable. It began to erode as China be-
came more economically successful and militarily more capable. This in turn fueled U.S. anxiety about China’s
long-term intentions. Critics began to focus on what they saw as the dark side of Deng’s “hide and bide” strategy.
In China, some in the PLA and academia were beginning to question why China needed to continue to acquiesce
in U.S. hegemony or defer key policy objectives such as the recovery of Taiwan.
These changing circumstances led the George W. Bush administration to seek to revise the understanding. Bob
Zoellick’s concept of “responsible stakeholder” was an effort to take into account China’s growing power and its
desire for a greater international role while deflecting Chinese pressure to replace the U.S.-led international order.66
That effort continued into the early years of the Obama administration. It was reflected most clearly in the joint
statement of the two presidents following Obama’s visit to China in 2009: “The two countries reiterated that the
fundamental principle of respect for each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is at the core of the three US-
China communiques. …The two sides agreed that respecting each other’s core interests is extremely important to
ensure steady progress in US-China relations.”67
I think it’s fair to say that these efforts to create a new shared understanding largely failed. Despite the meeting
between Obama and Xi at Sunnylands in 201368 and later between Trump and Xi at Mar-a-Lago in 2017, we see
little meeting of the minds on the nature or future of the bilateral relationship.
There are several possible explanations why. Going back to our framing question, some would argue that
failure was inevitable given the inherent conflicts between an established and rising power. A second explanation
might focus on domestic forces in each country, which make mutual accommodation difficult. As we have seen in
the United States over the past two decades, Congress—including leaders from both parties—have pushed for a
tougher U.S. approach to China. Presidential aspirants have repeatedly challenged the policies of incumbents, with
some success (Clinton in 1992, Bush in 2000, Trump in 2016). In China, growing nationalism and the need to shore
up the CCP’s legitimacy in the absence of democratic reform also push China’s leaders to a less accommodating
strategy.
A third explanation would focus on each side’s judgement of the other’s intentions and of its own capabilities.
Here we might look to guidance not so much from Ernest May, but from the analytic insights of his distinguished
colleague Tom Schelling. The case for U.S.-China cooperation in the past has been based on the idea of what our
Chinese friends call “win-win” cooperation—that both sides will gain more from cooperation than competition.
But what if one concludes that the other is determined to prevail at all costs rather than cooperate?69 In this case,
the choice then becomes one of compete or acquiesce. And if both sides believe that they can prevail in the com-
petition, both will choose competition over conciliation—even at the potential risk of war. In game theory lingo,
it’s a game of chicken where each side believes the other will swerve.
To my mind, both the domestic dynamics and the increasingly gloomy assessment of each other’s true inten-
tions, against the backdrop of China’s rise, help explain the current state of affairs. And here we need to look at
something I have not yet addressed—decision making on the Chinese side, specifically the Chinese response to the
Bush and Obama efforts to reshape the relationship. Although this assessment risks appearing self-serving coming
from a former American policy maker, I think a good case can be made that the Chinese side bears significant re-
sponsibility for the failure to reach a new understanding. I come to this conclusion both from my own engagement
as deputy secretary of state during 2009-2011 but also from conversations with Chinese interlocutors as well. Our
friend and colleague Jeff Bader expressed a similar view in his book, where he identifies “a changed quality in the
writing of Chinese security analysts and Chinese official statements, and in some respects Chinese behavior.”70
I would argue that two factors explain China’s reluctance to move in this direction. First, during the key pe-
riod—the second term of George W. Bush and the beginning of the Obama administration—China experienced
relatively weak leadership under the collective leadership style of Hu Jintao, which made any bold initiative—
particularly one that involved compromise with the U.S.—difficult. The problem was compounded by a sense of
hubris in some leading Chinese circles following the financial crisis of 2008-2009, which led some to believe that
the U.S. was in permanent decline and China on the ascendancy.71 As a result, a promising moment passed, and the
failure of the two U.S. efforts to elicit a positive response from China began to harden attitudes in the U.S.
It is possible to argue that Xi Jinping’s proposal for a new form of major power relations was a belated effort to
pick up72 the gage dropped by Bush and Obama. For a brief period, there was evidence that the Obama administra-
tion saw this as a new opening. But that effort came to naught—in part because of skepticism in the U.S., in part
because China never really made clear what Xi envisioned by this concept or whether it reflected a real Chinese
willingness to make meaningful accommodations to U.S. concerns.
Even if I’m right, and there was an opportunity for a new Sino-American understanding, one might reasonably
ask whether that window is now closed—as result of decisions made both in Beijing and Washington. And if the
window is not closed, what form might that new understanding take? These are questions worthy of a separate
lecture. For the purpose of the May lecture, I would conclude by observing that however constraining the circum-
stances, there are always choices available to leaders.73 As Graham Allison reminded us in Ernest May’s obituary
in the New York Times, Ernie did not believe that China’s rise must lead to war.74 In reflecting on the decisions
leading to the Spanish-American War and the annexation of the Philippines, Ernest May wrote, “unconcernedly
and almost unthinkingly, these statesman ran the risk of precipitating Europe into a coalition against the United
States.”75 Our challenge in the next few days is to do better in developing a strategy to deal with China. I believe
that a solid understanding of the history of Sino-American relations will allow us to do just that.
James B. Steinberg is University Professor of Social Science, International Affairs and Law at Syracuse University, where he was Dean of the Maxwell
School from July 2011 until June 2016. Prior to becoming Dean, he served as Deputy Secretary of State, the principal deputy to Secretary Hillary Rodham
Clinton. From 2005-2008, Mr. Steinberg was Dean of the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. From 2001 to 2005, he was vice president and
director of Foreign Policy Studies at the Brookings Institution. Mr. Steinberg was deputy national security advisor to President Clinton from 1996 to 2000.
During that period, he also served as the president’s personal representative to the 1998 and 1999 G-8 summits. Prior to becoming deputy national security
advisor, Mr. Steinberg held positions as director of the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff, and as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Analysis in the
Bureau of Intelligence and Research. He is the recipient of the Joseph J. Kruzel Memorial Award, American Political Science Association (2014), the CIA
Director’s Medal (2011) and the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award (2011). Mr. Steinberg’s most recent books are A Glass Half Full? Rebalance,
Reassurance and Resolve and Strategic Reassurance and Resolve: US-China Relations in the 21st Century (both with Michael O’Hanlon). He has also authored
Difficult Transitions: Foreign Policy Troubles at the Outset of Presidential Power (Brookings 2008) with Kurt Campbell. He is married to Sherburne Abbott,
University Professor at Syracuse University. They have two children, Jenna and Emma Steinberg. Mr. Steinberg received his A.B. from Harvard College and
a J.D. from Yale Law School. He is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group.
1
Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach (1845), https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/theses/index.htm.
2
Ernest May, Kirsten Lundberg, and Robert D. Johnson, “China 1945-1948: Making Hard Choices” in Ernest May and Philip Zelkow, eds., Dealing with
Dictators: Dilemmas of U.S. Diplomacy and Intelligence Analysis 1945-1990 (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), ch. 2.
3
See The Harvard Gazette, February 17, 2011.
4
For an entertaining catalogue of presidential uses of this euphemism, see Mark Knoller, “’Mistakes were Made’: A Short History,” CBS Evening News,
March 14, 2007, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mistakes-were-made-a-short-history/.
5
Stephen M. Walt, The Hell of Good Intentions: America’s Foreign Policy Elite and the Decline of U.S. Primacy (New York: Farrar Strauss and Giroux, 2018).
6
Ernest May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 453.
7
U.S.-China Joint Statement, November 17, 2009, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/realitycheck/the-press-office/us-china-joint-statement.
8
National Security Strategy of the United States of America, December 2017, p. 2, 25.
9
Michael Martina, “Senator Warren, in Beijing, says U.S. Is Waking Up to Chinese Abuses,” Reuters, April 1, 2018.
10
Mark Landler, “The Road to Confrontation,” New York Times, November 25, 2018.
11
Dina Smetltz, Ivo Daalder, Karl Friedhoff, Craig Kafura, and Brendan Helm, Rejecting Retreat: Americans Support US Engagement in Global Affairs,
Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2019, p. 29-30.
12
https://news.gallup.com/poll/1627/china.aspx. For earlier polling up to 2000, see Charles Tien and James A. Nathan, “Trends: American
Ambivalence Toward China,” The Public Opinion Quarterly 65, No. 1 (Spring 2001): 124-138.
13
Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape the Thucydides Trap? (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).
14
Ernest May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 452-453.
15
Ernest May, Strange Victory: Hitler’s Conquest of France (New York: Hill and Wang, 2001), 456.
16
See, for example, Philip E. Tetlock and Aaron Belkin, eds., Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics, (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1996); Jack S. Levy, “Counterfactuals, Causal Inference and Historical Analysis,” Security Studies 24, No. 3 (2015); Richard Ned Lebow, Forbidden Fruit:
Counterfactuals and International Relations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010).
17
On critical junctures and path dependency, see Giovanni Capoccia and R. Daniel Keleman, “The Study of Critical Junctures: Theory, Narrative and
Counterfactuals in Historical Institutionalism,” World Politics 59, No. 3 (April 2007).
18
See, for example, Niall Ferguson, ed., “Introduction,” in Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (New York: Basic Books, 1999).
19
Andrew J. Nathan, “The New Tiananmen Papers: Inside the Secret Meeting that Changed China,” Foreign Affairs ( July-August 2019); Asia Society
China File, “The Other Tiananmen Papers,” http://www.chinafile.com/conversation/other-tiananmen-papers.
20
For a detailed account of the Bush administration actions and the congressional response, see David Skidmore and William Gates, “After Tiananmen:
The Struggle over US Policy Toward China in the Bush Administration,” Presidential Studies Quarterly 27, No. 3 (Summer 1997): 514-539.
21
Marie Gottschalk, “The Failure of American Policy,” World Policy Journal 6, No. 4 (Fall 1989): 668. Gottschalk’s argument prefigures many of the
subsequent critiques of U.S. policy, for example: “To enable China to project power in the Pacific more effectively, Deng’s military modernization
has favored the Chinese Navy. China has built new naval bases and up to date warships and missiles. … Beijing also intends to enhance its submarine
fleet … beefed up its capability for long distance troop deployments and conducted naval exercises further and further afield from China.” (p. 676)
22
David Skidmore and William Gates, “After Tiananmen: The Struggle over U.S. Policy Toward China in the Bush Administration,” Presidential Studies
Quarterly 27, No. 3 (Summer 1997): 519. This view was echoed in Bush’s subsequent veto message with respect to the 1992 legislation withdrawing
China’s MFN status: “my administration shares the goals and objectives of HR 2212. … My objection lies strictly with the methods proposed to
achieve these aims.” “Veto Message on China MFN Status,” Congressional Quarterly, March 7, 1992, p. 582.
23
See David Skidmore and William Gates, “After Tiananmen: The Struggle over U.S. Policy Toward China in the Bush Administration,” Presidential
Studies Quarterly 27, No. 3 (Summer 1997): 530-534.
24
Granting China PNTR was required if the United States wanted to gain the trade benefits associated with China joining the WTO.
25
United States Trade Representative, 2017 Report to Congress on China’s WTO Compliance, January 2018, p. 2.
26
Gabe Lipton, “The Elusive ‘Better Deal’ with China,” The Atlantic, August 14, 2018.
27
For a contemporary account of Clinton’s arguments in favor of China’s WTO accession, see Ted Osius, “The Legacy of the Clinton-Gore China
Policy,” Asian Affairs: An American Review 28, No. 3 (Fall 2001): 125-134.
28
See “Full Text of Clinton’s Speech on China Trade Bill,” New York Times, March 9, 2000, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/
world/asia/030900clinton-china-text.html.
29
See “Full Text of Clinton’s Speech on China Trade Bill,” New York Times, March 9, 2000, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/library/
world/asia/030900clinton-china-text.html.
30
Robert E. Lighthizer, “Testimony Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission: Evaluating China’s Role in the World Trade
Organization Over the Past Decade,” June 9, 2010, p. 15. Lighthizer cites Ferguson’s earlier testimony to the House Ways and Means Committee in
support of this assertion. Niall Ferguson, “The End of Chimerica: Amicable Divorce or Currency War,” Testimony before the Committee on Ways
and Means of the U.S. House of Representatives, March 24, 2010, p. 4.
31
Robert E. Lighthizer, “Testimony Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission: Evaluating China’s Role in the World Trade
Organization Over the Past Decade,” June 9, 2010, pp. 16-17.
32
Cited in Robert E. Lighthizer, “Testimony Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission: Evaluating China’s Role in the World
Trade Organization Over the Past Decade,” June 9, 2010, p. 20.
33
See, for example, “Statement by Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi on the Democratic Leader’s Decision to Oppose Permanent NTR for China,” April
19, 2009, https://pelosi.house.gov/sites/pelosi.house.gov/files/pressarchives/releases/prleader.htm.
34
See David H. Autor, David Dorn, and Gordon Hanson, “The China Shock: Learning from Labor-Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade,”
Annual Review of Economics 8, No. 1 ( January 2016): 205-240.
35
Philip Levy, “Was Letting China Into the WTO a Mistake?” Foreign Affairs, April 2, 2018.
36
The Jackson-Vanik Amendment, Sec 401 of the Trade Act of 1974, prohibits the U.S. from granting MFN to certain countries, except by annual
presidential waiver. For this reason, Congress was required to amend Sec 401 in order to grant China permanent MFN in order for the U.S. to gain
the benefits associated with China’s accession to the WTO. If the U.S. had failed to grant China PNTR following China’s accession to the WTO,
the WTO’s “non-application clause would allow either party to refuse to apply WTO commitments to the other.” JayEtta Z. Hecker, “China Trade:
WTO Membership and Most-Favored Nation Status,” Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Trade, Committee on Ways and Means, House of
Representatives, GAO/T-NSIAD-98-209, p. 10.
37
China viewed achieving PNTR (and thus escaping the uncertainties of annual review) an important benefit of U.S. support for China’s WTO
accession. Hongyi Harry Lai, “Behind China’s World Trade Organization Agreement with the USA”, Third World Quarterly 22, no. 2 (2001): p. 248.
38
“Important consequence of the United States invoking WTO non-application is that if China becomes a member, it does not have to grant the
United States all the trade commitments it makes to other WTO members, both in the negotiated accession package or in the underlying WTO
agreements. Because U.S. businesses compete with business from other WTO members for China ’s markets, this could potentially put U.S. business
interests at a considerable competitive disadvantage. For example, the United States may not benefit from Chinese concessions regarding services,
such as the right to establish distribution channels in China. While the United States would continue to benefit from Chinese commitments made in
bilateral agreements concluded with the United States, the commitments are not as extensive as those in the WTO agreements.” JayEtta Z. Hecker,
“China Trade: WTO Membership and Most-Favored Nation Status,” Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Trade, Committee on Ways and
Means, House of Representatives, GAO/T-NSIAD-98-209, p. 11.
39
“The big winners from the 2009 safeguard tariffs were alternative foreign exporters, primarily located in Asia and Mexico, selling low-end tires to the
United States. Domestic tire producers were secondary beneficiaries.” Gary Clyde Hufbauer and Sean Lowery, “U.S. Tire Tariffs: Saving Few Jobs at
High Cost,” Policy Brief No. PB12-9, Peterson Institute of International Economics, April 2012, https://www.piie.com/system/files/documents/
pb12-9.pdf. See also Philip Levy, “Was Letting China Into the WTO a Mistake?” Foreign Affairs, April 2, 2018.
40
See JayEtta Z. Hecker, “China Trade: WTO Membership and Most-Favored Nation Status,” Testimony Before the Subcommittee on Trade,
Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, GAO/T-NSIAD-98-209, p. 7.
41
See Sylvan Lane, “Trump Faces Dwindling Leverage With China,” The Hill, September 15, 2019, https://thehill.com/policy/finance/461357-trump-
faces-dwindling-leverage-with-china. Others argue that the leverage is overstated, and Xi’s need to appear strong domestically is a more important
factor than the impact on the Chinese economy. JayEtta Z. Hecker, “China Trade: WTO Membership and Most-Favored Nation Status,” Testimony
Before the Subcommittee on Trade, Committee on Ways and Means, House of Representatives, GAO/T-NSIAD-98-209, p. 7.
42
See Nancy Bernkopf Tucker, “The Taiwan Factor in the Vote on PNTR for China and its WTO Accession,” NBR Analysis 11, No. 2 ( July 2000): 33-45.
43
See Joseph Fewsmith, “China and the WTO: The Politics Behind the Agreement,” NBR Analysis 10, No. 5 (December 1999): 227. Fewsmith’s article
provides a valuable account of the Chinese deliberations over the negotiations with the U.S. in connection with the WTO.
44
There is some support for the belief that China would have had to make even greater concessions if it had waited to conclude the WTO negotiations
rather than agreeing in 1999. See Lai, p. 249.
45
See Joseph Fewsmith, “China and the WTO: the Politics Behind the Agreement,” NBR Analysis 10, No. 5 (December 1999): 218-227.
46
For example, Lighthizer argues that the U.S. effectively gave up the option of Section 301 actions in favor of the WTO dispute resolution mechanism.
“By contrast to Section 301—which was a powerful tool with which to influence our trading partners—the dispute settlement process is simply not
designed to deal with a country like China.” Robert E. Lighthizer, “Testimony Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission:
Evaluating China’s Role in the World Trade Organization Over the Past Decade,” June 9, 2010, pp. 23-24.
47
See, for example, Bob Davis, “When the World Opened the Gates of China,” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-
the-world-opened-the-gates-of-china-1532701482. Indeed, in the fifteen years before its WTO entry, U.S. imports from China grew at a faster rate
than in the fifteen years after, albeit from a much lower base.
48
The desire to accelerate reform was a major impetus for Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongzhi’s determination to get a WTO agreement. See Lai, p. 249-
250.
49
For this reason, former Democratic Congressman David Bonior, a strong critic of the WTO agreement, later stated: “I don’t know that [a defeat for
the WTO agreement] would have made a difference.” Bob Davis, “When the World Opened the Gates of China,” Wall Street Journal, July 27, 2018,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/when-the-world-opened-the-gates-of-china-1532701482.
50
For a detailed account of the crisis, as well as background on the competing claims, see Michael Green et al., “Case 3: Scarborough Shoal Standoff
(2012)” in Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia, Center for Strategic and International Studies (Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, 2017).
51
See, for example, Greg Poling and Eric Sayers, “Time to make Good on the U.S.-Philippine Alliance,” War on the Rocks, January 21, 2019, https://
warontherocks.com/2019/01/time-to-make-good-on-the-u-s-philippine-alliance/.
52
In this case, like all of the disputed sovereignty claims in the area, the United States has declined to take sides while insisting on a peaceful resolution
of the disputes and upholding freedom of navigation under applicable international law.
53
See J. Michael Cole, “The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The Forgotten Showdown Between China and America,” The National Interest, March 10,
2017. “[I]njury to Chinese pride … convinced Beijing of the need to modernize its military. The result was an intensive program of double-digit
investment, foreign acquisitions … and indigenous resourcing to turn the PLA into a force capable of imposing Beijing’s will within its immediate
neighborhood and eventually beyond.”
54
See Richard Baum, “From ‘Strategic Partners’ to ‘Strategic Competitors’: George W. Bush and the Politics of U.S. China Policy,” Journal of East Asia
Policy Studies 1 No. 2 (August 2001): 191-220.
55
See for example, Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis, Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, Council on Foreign Relations Special Report No.
72, March 2015, p. 4: “a series of administrations have continued to implement policies that have actually enabled the rise of new competitors, such
as China.”
56
Alastair Iain Johnston, “The Failures of the ‘Failure of Engagement’ with China,” The Washington Quarterly 42, No. 2 (Summer 2019): 99-114.
57
See Robert Kaiser and Steve Mufson, “Blue Team Draws a Hard Line on Beijing,” Washington Post, February 22, 2000, p. A1. See also Richard Baum,
“From ‘Strategic Partners’ to ‘Strategic Competitors’: George W. Bush and the Politics of U.S. China Policy,” Journal of East Asia Policy Studies 1, No.
2 (August 2001): 199-200.
58
The view was not limited to politicians. University of Pennsylvania Professor Arthur Waldron advocated a similar approach: “I agree with people
who think that regime change is key a to a really stable peace.” Robert Kaiser and Steve Mufson, “Blue Team Draws a Hard Line on Beijing,”
Washington Post, February 22, 2000, p. A1.
59
Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis, Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China, Council on Foreign Relations Special Report No. 72, March 2015,
p. 4. See Ana Swanson, “A New Red Scare is Reshaping Washington,” New York Times, July 20, 2019.
60
For the classic argument about the importance of accommodation among great powers, see Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle
for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948).
61
See Report of the Select Committee on U.S. National Security and Military/Commercial Concerns with the People’s Republic of China, H.R. Rept
105-851, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GPO-CRPT-105hrpt851/pdf/GPO-CRPT-105hrpt851.pdf. In the wake of the report, Congress
enacted a number of new restrictions on the transfer of satellite and missile-related technology to China. See Congressional Research Service, “98-
485—China: Possible Missile Technology Transfers Under U.S. Satellite Export Policy—Actions and Chronology,” CRS Report 98-485 F, updated
October 6, 2003.
62
U.S.-PRC Joint Communique, August 17, 1982: “the United States Government states that it does not seek to carry out a long-term policy of arms
sales to Taiwan, that its arms sales to Taiwan will not exceed, either in qualitative or in quantitative terms, the level of those supplied in recent years
since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and China, and that it intends to reduce gradually its sales of arms to
Taiwan, leading over a period of time to a final resolution.”
63
Charles L. Glaser, “Time for a U.S.-China Grand Bargain,” Policy Brief, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School,
July 2015.
64
Charles Glaser’s take on the analogy: “The 1938 Munich agreement gave accommodation a bad name. But under certain circumstances, territorial
concessions can help a state protect vital interests. … [T]he U.S. commitment to Taiwan feeds Chinese concerns about motives in the region and
fuels competition over the sea lines of communication (SLOCs) in East Asia. Charles L. Glaser, “Time for a U.S.-China Grand Bargain,” Policy Brief,
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, July 2015. Hugh White offers a similar argument. Hugh White, The
China Choice: Why We Should Share Power (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2013).
65
Kori Schake, Safe Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017).
66
Robert B. Zoellick, “Whither China: From Membership to Responsibility,” Remarks to the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, September
21, 2005. “It is time to take our policy beyond opening doors to China’s membership in the international system: We need to urge China to become
a responsible stakeholder in that system.”
67
U.S.-China Joint Statement, Beijing, November 17, 2009.
68
During the press conference after the Sunnylands meeting, President Xi stated, “we had an in-depth, sincere and candid discussion . . . on our joint
work to build a new model of major country relations.” Obama then described progress on improving U.S.-China military-to-military communication
and observed “that’s an example of concrete progress that can advance this new model of relations between the United States and China.” “Remarks
by President Obama and President Xi Jinping of he People’s Republic of China After Bilateral Meeting,” June 8, 2013, https://obamawhitehouse.
archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/08/remarks-president-obama-and-president-xi-jinping-peoples-republic-china-. In a subsequent speech at
Georgetown, National Security Advisor Susan Rice stated, “When it comes to China, we seek to operationalize a new model of major power
relations.” “Remarks as Prepared for Delivery by National Security Advisor Susan E. Rice,” November 21, 2013, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.
gov/the-press-office/2013/11/21/remarks-prepared-delivery-national-security-advisor-susan-e-rice. Soon after, however, the Obama administration
stopped using the phrase.
69
In game theory terms, the parties believe the highest “payoff ” is from prevailing, and competing and losing is better than compromise.
70
Jeffrey Bader, Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider Account of America’s Asia Strategy (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2012), 79-80.
71
See Minnie Chan, ”We don’t want to replace U.S., says Dai Bingguo,” South China Morning Post, December 8, 2010, https://www.scmp.com/
article/732710/we-dont-want-replace-us-says-dai-bingguo. (Dai at the time was a state councilor, the highest ranking foreign policy official.) “The
notion that China wants to replace the United States and dominate the world is a myth.” The article quotes Professor Shi Yinhong, a well-connected
international scholar, noting that Dai’s comments indicated that Beijing “was trying to amend some senior officials ‘improper commentaries’ on
Sino-U.S. issues.” For the full version of Dai’s remarks, see Dai Bingguo, “Stick to the Path of Peaceful Development,” Beijing Review, No. 51
(December 23, 2010), http://www.bjreview.com.cn/document/txt/2010-12/24/content_320851.htm.
72
Although the phrase appears to have originated under Hu Jintao, (see Hideya Kurata, “Xi Jinping’s ‘New Model of Major-Power Relations’ and
South Korea,” https://www2.jiia.or.jp/en/pdf/digital_library/china/160331_Hideya_Kurata.pdf; Ren Xiao, “Modeling a ‘New Type of Major
Power Relations,” ASAN Open Forum, October 4, 2013, http://www.theasanforum.org/tag/new-type-of-great-power-relations/) it is most closely
associated with Xi. For a rich history of the concept, see Jinghan Zeng, “Constructing a ‘New Type of Great Power Relations’: The State of Debate
in China (1998-2014), The British Journal of International Relations 12, No. 2 (2016): 422-442. China’s leader now appears to have moved beyond the
expression. See David Wertime, “China Quietly Abandoning Bid for ‘New Model of Great Power Relations’ With U.S.” Foreign Policy, March 2, 2017,
https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/02/china-quietly-abandoning-bid-for-new-model-of-great-power-relations-with-u-s/.
73
Ernest R. May and Philip D. Zelikow, Dealing with Dictators: Dilemmas of U.S. Diplomacy and Intelligence Analysis (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006).
74
Dennis Hevesi, “Ernest May, International Relations Expert, Dies at 80,” New York Times, June 6, 2009.
75
Ernest R. May, Imperial Democracy (Chicago: Imprint Publications, 1991), 270.
The challenges President Trump decided to take on in the Indo-Pacific extend beyond
what any single country can address alone.
—MICHAEL PILLSBURY
Chapter 2 | The Trump Administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy 31
The Trump Administration’s Indo-Pacific Strategy
Michael Pillsbury
P resident Donald J. Trump laid the basis for his strategy toward China when he wrote about the challenge of
China in a book published in 2000, The America We Deserve. In a parallel manner, Ronald Reagan had formed
detailed ideas about how to deal with the Soviet Union at least two decades before he was elected president.
Victorious presidential candidates are not necessarily blank pages on which their national security advisers can
write freely. Both Reagan and Trump changed their advisers many times, perhaps seeking a team more in line with
their deeply held strategies.
In early December 2016, I first came to understand Mr. Trump’s thinking about China as a member of the
Presidential Transition Team on the 14th floor of Trump Tower in New York. Chinese delegations began to visit
Trump Tower, and several of Mr. Trump’s friends, including Henry Kissinger, offered to carry messages to China’s
President Xi Jinping. The president-elect announced his choice of a new ambassador to China within hours of
his election, and the media reported Iowa’s long-serving governor Terry Branstad was considered a “friend” of
Xi Jinping for decades since Xi’s visit to Iowa. The Chinese indicated a desire to meet President Trump as early as
possible and hinted a visit to Mar-a-Lago would be welcome, even if Xi did not play golf. Wilbur Ross contributed
ideas to the Transition Team and revealed to us he had made 84 trips to China. He soon took the lead on China
trade and economic issues.
Mr. Trump made it clear that he had an intense interest in China and that he would essentially serve as what
a diplomat might call the “desk officer” for his China policy. He approved several recommendations about China
during the transition, including to observe what he later called “our” one China policy, to terminate the Security
and Economic Dialogue process originally created by Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and replace it with four
dialogues among 2+2 Cabinet secretaries and to focus on getting a deal to end Chinese unfair trade practices, theft
of U.S. intellectual property, forced technology transfer, and in particular reduce the $500 billion trade deficit about
which he had spoken passionately during the campaign.
Other transition recommendations he endorsed were to foster a personal relationship with President Xi by at
least monthly telephone calls often an hour or more in length, to seek Xi’s help in toughening sanctions on the
DPRK at the UN Security Council and to maintain overall policy continuity on China. This included continuing
the traditional duties of the 2,300 employees of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, with nearly fifty federal agencies
located there and extending President Obama’s NSC senior director for Asia in his post before naming him U.S.
ambassador to Vietnam. The president authorized the proposal of his new Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to expand
military exchanges with China, including for Mattis to make the first visit to Beijing in his life. Indeed, by December
2017, one of the most far-reaching objectives of the National Defense Strategy was to set the military relationship
between the United States and China on a long-term path of extensive communication.
In my view, the three most important recommendations that the president-elect endorsed were to be sure that
China’s economy did not surpass America on his watch, to challenge China’s misconduct at the WTO by instructing
our ambassador there to criticize China bluntly and demand reforms, and to seek a whole-of-government approach
in which all federal agencies would focus on working with allies and partners building a “free and open Indo-Pacific”
region. This concept came to be known as the Indo-Pacific Strategy. The president instructed nearly a dozen agencies
and departments to coordinate in a larger regional context and to seek support from allies and partners.
In the thirty months since the transition, President Trump first unveiled these concepts at different moments.
For example, on November 10, 2017, at the APEC Summit in Vietnam he stated, “The story of the Indo-Pacific
in recent decades is the story of what is possible when people take ownership of their future.... This region
has emerged as a beautiful constellation of nations, each its own bright star, satellites to none.” However, he
never gave a major speech on his China policy. This permitted his critics to complain he must see China as an
enemy or be seeking a global confrontation with China. Yet when any fair-minded observer examines the four
main grand strategies described in Graham Allison’s Destined for War, it is clear President Trump did not choose
“accommodate,” or “undermine” or “negotiate a long peace” or “redefine the relationship,” but rather a unique
blend of elements drawn from all four of them. Indeed, by mid-2019, President Trump would propose three-way
arms control talks with China and Russia. Draft congressional legislation soon proposed that New START not be
extended in 2021 unless China joined the talks, too.
The conspiracy-minded hawks in Beijing I describe in The Hundred Year Marathon have their own assessment
of President Trump’s strategy toward China. They have become obsessed with the Indo-Pacific Strategy, a whole-
of-government commitment that was first spelled out in detail at the Indo-Pacific Business Forum in 2018, as
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross, U.S. Agency for International Development
Administrator Mark Green, and other cabinet-level officials launched new initiatives to expand U.S. public and
private investment in Indo-Pacific infrastructure, energy markets, and digital economy. Secretary Pompeo
announced the establishment of new development finance partnerships with Japan, Australia, Canada, and the
European Union, supported by significant new resources and authorities in the Better Utilization of Investments
Leading to Development Act, or the BUILD Act, which President Trump signed into law in October 2018. The
following month, Vice President Michael Pence announced efforts to coordinate with allies and partners, including
efforts across the spectrum of federal agencies for: diplomatic initiatives, governance capacity building, economic
cooperation and commercial advocacy, and military cooperation. Chinese hawks did not seem to notice or believe
that the United States does not oppose Chinese investment activities as long as they respect sovereignty and the
rule of law, use responsible financing practices, and operate in a transparent and economically sustainable manner.
The challenges President Trump decided to take on in the Indo-Pacific extend beyond what any single country
can address alone. Therefore, he decided to cooperate with like-minded allies and partners to address common
challenges. Unfortunately, that is not how Beijing’s hawks saw it.
Prior to his November 2017 trip to Asia, President Trump decided to strengthen our five military Asian alliances
with Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and Thailand. He also took steps to expand partnerships
with Singapore, Taiwan, New Zealand, and Mongolia. After meeting with Prime Minister Modi, he decided to
operationalize our Major Defense Partnership with India, while pursuing emerging partnerships with Sri Lanka,
the Maldives, Bangladesh, and Nepal. He is also continuing to strengthen security relationships with partners in
Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia, and sustaining engagements with Brunei.
Japan
In Japan, the government of Japan has already provided more than $2 billion of a $3.1 billion commitment for
construction of facilities for the U.S. Marine Corps realignment. The U.S. government will fund the balance of
construction, estimated at $8.6 billion, and is working toward an outcome that enhances our Indo-Pacific posture.
Republic of Korea (ROK)

South Korea has earned President Trump’s praise in part because it spends over 2 percent of its gross domestic
product on defense and increasing foreign military procurements from the United States, such as the KF-16 and
PATRIOT battery upgrades, AH-64E Apaches, the F-15K, RQ-4 Global Hawk variants, and the F-35A Joint Strike
Fighter. Seoul also has future procurement plans for the P-8, advanced munitions, upgrades to PAC-3 missiles, and
F-16 fighters—all of which will increase interoperability with the United States.
Significant improvements in U.S. force posture during 2018 include adding essential munitions, BMD systems,
and pre-positioned wartime stocks. The United States continues to work with the ROK to create an interoperable
BMD architecture that addresses the ballistic missile threat from North Korea.
In 2018, USFK and United Nations Command Headquarters relocated both commands from U.S. Army
Garrison Yongsan to U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, joining U.S. Eighth Army and 2nd Infantry
Division in new state-of-the-art facilities on the largest DoD facility outside of the continental United States. By
consolidating capability in Pyeongtaek, on facilities built mostly with ROK funds, we maximize our ability to
uphold U.S. security commitments, return large portions of downtown Seoul to the Korean people for economic
development, and improve the quality of life for our service members and their families.
Australia
Both the United States and Australia are strengthening security in the Indo-Pacific through more deliberate
coordination of the policies and priorities underlying regional engagements by promoting interoperability
to address new threats, increasing focus on the Pacific Islands, and leveraging the U.S.-Australia force posture
initiatives and the unique exercising and training opportunities created in the process.
In 2014, the United States and Australia signed the Force Posture Agreement, a twenty-five-year-plus agreement
governing our Force Posture Initiatives and providing our forces more opportunities to work bilaterally and in
trilateral and regional activities, in areas including maritime capacity building and humanitarian assistance and
disaster relief.
There are two Force Posture Initiatives in northern Australia: 1) the Enhanced Air Cooperation, improving
interoperability through longer duration, and more sophisticated training; and 2) Marine Rotational Forces-
Darwin, an annual rotational presence of up to 2,500 U.S. Marines. The Force Posture Initiatives promote a
combined capability to respond to crises and contingencies, strengthen interoperability, and further engagement
with regional partners.
In 2018, the U.S. Marine Rotational Forces-Darwin completed its seventh rotation, training with forces from
Australia and twelve other regional countries and deploying as part of Australia’s Indo-Pacific Endeavor—a flotilla
that conducted security cooperation activities in Southeast Asia and the Pacific Islands.
Philippines
We have 280 bilateral defense activities planned with the Philippines in 2019, and the Philippines hosts the
most bilateral exercises in the USINDOPACOM area of responsibility. This robust annual cooperation ensures our
forces will maintain a sufficient level of interoperability to respond in times of crisis.
President Trump met in Manila with the president and the armed forces of the Philippines and praised its
fifteen-year modernization plan to upgrade its capabilities for territorial defense. The main areas of emphasis are
maritime security, ISR, and aviation. In December 2018, then-Secretary James Mattis, with authority delegated by
the president, returned the Bells of Balangiga to the Philippines. The Bells were seized during the U.S.-Philippine
War in 1901 and are venerated as religious artifacts by the people of the Philippines.
The United States holds some ninety named military exercises in the Indo-Pacific each year, with the vast
majority of these exercises being conducted jointly or combined with our allies and partners. These forces and
exercises cooperate with militaries across the region in a range of activities from real-time disaster relief to the full
spectrum of conventional warfare skills to deter our adversaries.
There are now five Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) Agreed Locations arrayed throughout
the archipelago: Antonio Bautista Air Base, Basa Air Base, Fort Magsaysay Military Reservation, Lumbia Air
Base, and Mactan Benito Ebuen Air Base. The first projects under the agreement were completed in 2018 and an
additional twelve projects have been approved for implementation for 2019 and 2020. These investments provide
force posture enhancements, improve our future readiness, and improve the operational flexibility of the alliance
during contingencies.
In March 2019, Secretary of State Pompeo reaffirmed our commitment to the Mutual Defense Treaty, providing
assurances that, “as the South China Sea is part of the Pacific, any armed attack on Philippine forces, aircraft, or
public vessels in the South China Sea will trigger mutual defense obligations under Article IV of our Mutual
Defense Treaty.”
The United States and the Philippines continue to find new ways to meet our shared goals. For example, at
the invitation of the government of the Philippines, we concluded a bilateral air exercise at Basa Air Base that
incorporated fighter aircraft of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the U.S. Air Force.
Thailand
Thailand plays a key geostrategic role in the Indo-Pacific region. The access provided to Utapao Royal Thai
Naval Air Station and the associated deep-water port at Sattahip is a critical enabler for U.S. force projection. The
Royal Thai Army intends to update its Brigade Combat Team construct centered on the U.S. Stryker vehicle.
Singapore
Singapore provides access to U.S. Navy ships as well as U.S. military aircraft, including most recently littoral
combat ships and P-8 Poseidon aircraft, whose presence has contributed to the security and stability of Southeast
Asia and continues to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Singapore was the first and only Asian country to contribute assets and personnel to the Global Coalition
to Defeat ISIS and has participated in Operation Gallant Phoenix since May 2017. Singapore has commanded
Combined Task Force 151 in the Gulf of Aden five times.
New Zealand
New Zealand plays a critical role as a regional leader promoting stability, building capacity, and responding
to crises and contingencies in the Pacific Islands, such as natural disasters. In 2018, New Zealand announced
the “Pacific Reset,” its new whole-of-government policy to engage in the Pacific Islands, building capacity and
resilience in response to a range of threats. By collectively stepping up in partnership with Pacific Island nations
and other like-minded allies and partners, New Zealand’s Pacific Reset directly complements American efforts in
the Indo-Pacific.
President Trump seeks opportunities to broaden and strengthen partnerships with India, Sri Lanka, the
Maldives, Bangladesh, and Nepal to respond to shared regional challenges.
India
In June 2016, the United States designated India a “Major Defense Partner,” a status unique to India. The
designation seeks to elevate the U.S. defense partnership with India to a level commensurate with that of the United
States’ closest allies and partners. The establishment of the U.S.-India 2+2 Ministerial Dialogue in September 2018
also serves as a tangible demonstration of our commitment to promoting the shared principles of a free and open
Indo-Pacific.
President Trump has authorized a whole-of-government approach to pursue a range of initiatives with India
to enable cooperation, strengthen our interoperability, and establish a strong foundation for defense trade,
technology sharing, industrial collaboration, and broader cooperation on defense innovation. The signing of the
Communications, Compatibility and Security Agreement in 2018 represents a significant development in our
military-to-military relationship, facilitating greater interoperability and real-time secure information-sharing.
DoD and the Indian Ministry of Defence are increasing the scope, complexity, and frequency of our military
exercises. Later this year, the United States and India will conduct our first tri-service exercise, and we continue to
collaborate on maritime security and domain awareness, HA/DR, counter-piracy, counter-terrorism, and other
transnational issues.
India has purchased approximately $16 billion in U.S. defense equipment since 2008. Through the Defense
Technology and Trade Initiative, we are increasing cooperation in defense technology, building industry-to-
industry ties, and identifying opportunities for the co-development and co-production of defense systems for the
sustainment and modernization of military forces.
Sri Lanka
Since 2015, DoD has strengthened its relationship with Sri Lanka and increased military engagements
significantly, particularly with the Sri Lankan Navy. In 2017, we conducted the first port visit in thirty years by
a U.S. aircraft carrier—the USS NIMITZ Carrier Strike Group—and the first ever bilateral Cooperation Afloat
Readiness and Training (CARAT) Exercise. In 2019, we increased cooperation on mutual logistics arrangements in
support of Indian Ocean security and disaster response.
Maldives
Following the recent democratic transition in the Maldives, the United States started to explore avenues to
expand security cooperation, with particular emphasis on providing capacity-building opportunities to the Maldives
National Defence Forces and Maldivian Coast Guard. Key areas of focus include maritime domain awareness
(MDA)—to enable Maldivian forces the ability to monitor and patrol its sovereign maritime area and contribute to
regional efforts to protect sea lines of communication.
Through the implementation of the National Defense Strategy in the Indo-Pacific, the United States is
prioritizing new relationships with Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia—key players in ASEAN.
Vietnam
The U.S.-Vietnam defense relationship has grown dramatically over the past several years, as symbolized by the
historic March 2018 visit of a U.S. aircraft carrier for the first time since the Vietnam War.
President Trump seeks to improve Vietnamese defense capabilities by providing security assistance, including
Scan Eagle Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, T-6 trainer aircraft, a former U.S. Coast Guard high-endurance cutter,
and small patrol boats and their associated training and maintenance facilities. The U.S. military also engages in
numerous annual training exchanges and activities to enhance bilateral cooperation and interoperability with the
Vietnamese Army, Air Force, Navy, and Coast Guard.
Indonesia
Through the U.S.-Indonesia Comprehensive Partnership, the United States and Indonesia conduct an active
exercise program that enhances our respective capacity and interoperability based on common platforms such as
F-16 fighters and Apache attack helicopters.
Indonesia is a major recipient of IMET funds in the Indo-Pacific, which are used to enhance the military
professionalization of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard.
Malaysia
Under President Trump, we conduct more than 100 defense engagements with Malaysia annually, including
exercises and subject matter expert exchanges, and we partner on common objectives such as maritime security
and counter-terrorism. We improve our interoperability through combined air, maritime, and amphibious training
in multiple locations across the country.
The Malaysian armed forces have demonstrated the professionalism, capacity, and resolve to contribute to
regional security and international U.N. missions. We will continue to work closely with Malaysia to advance these
and similar efforts that support a free and open Indo-Pacific.
Brunei
The Bruneian government has welcomed the growth of military ties with the United States and like-minded
nations, including with respect to enhancing MDA. In 2018, in addition to the Brunei Navy’s participation in the
RIM OF THE PACIFIC Exercise and holding our annual bilateral CARAT Exercise, the Royal Brunei Land Forces
and U.S. Army conducted their first bilateral exercise—PAHLAWAN WARRIOR—in Brunei. This year, the United
States co-hosted with Brunei a multilateral Cooperation Against Transnational Threats workshop.
President Trump in 2018 began to revitalize our engagement in the Pacific. The Pacific Islands represent a region
distinct from other regions in the Indo-Pacific because of the relatively small size of states, unique geography,
and challenges to promote economic prosperity, and U.S. security guarantees to the Freely Associated States. We
believe strongly in respect for a safe, secure, prosperous, and free and open Indo-Pacific that must preserve small
states’ sovereignty, as signified by the 2018 Boe Declaration.
Three of the Pacific Islands have militaries: Papua New Guinea, Fiji, and Tonga. The United States works with
each to support improved capability within partner armed forces and, consistent with a partner-centric approach,
often in support of efforts from allies and partners such as Australia and New Zealand.
Allies such as the United Kingdom and France play a critical role in maintaining a free and open Indo-Pacific.
In addition to military capability and regional presence, these allies contribute vital support to upholding free and
open principles in the region and globally.
For example, the United Kingdom has increased deployments and operations in the region since 2017,
contributed to the coordinated, multinational initiatives to enforce UN Security Council sanctions on North
Korea, and performed its first naval operation aimed at asserting navigational rights and freedoms in the South
China Sea in 2018 with the transit of its frigate HMS SUTHERLAND and amphibious transport HMS ALBION,
followed by the transit of its frigate HMS ARGYLL in 2019. The United Kingdom shares our holistic view of the
region as the “Indo-Pacific.”
The United States and France have restarted the Indo-Pacific Security Dialogue and the U.S. took notice of
the deployment of the aircraft carrier FNS CHARLES DE GAULLE to the Indo-Pacific in 2019, accompanied for
portions of its deployment by ships from other NATO countries, Australia, and the United States. Paris published
its strategy on France and Security in the Indo-Pacific.
The president has been personally involved in developing a trilateral partnership with Japan and Australia.
Together, we are cooperating in tangible ways to enhance security across the region and increase our interoperability,
in part, by augmenting our exercises and training; increasing information sharing; and building capabilities. For
example, we are taking what would otherwise be separate or bilateral capacity-building initiatives in Southeast
Asia and ensuring that they not only complement one another, but are also tailored to assist in building up more
comprehensively capable partners. This grouping is also effectively improving our interoperability by trilateralizing
and multilateralizing key military exercises, including COPE NORTH GUAM and SOUTHERN JACKAROO.
The United States, India, and Japan also enjoy a robust trilateral partnership. The annual naval exercise, which
began as a U.S.-India exercise, has included Japan as a participating partner since 2014. The exercise has increased
our ability to operate trilaterally, including via real-time information sharing, and has increased in complexity
over time to incorporate surface, amphibious, and air components. Underpinning this cooperation is the State
Department-led trilateral dialogue, which completed its 9th iteration in April 2018. This dialogue enhances trilateral
cooperation in the areas of connectivity and infrastructure development, counter-proliferation, counterterrorism,
maritime security and domain awareness, and disaster relief. The first-ever trilateral meeting between the leaders
of the United States, India, and Japan took place in November 2018 at the G20 meeting and again at the G20
meeting in Osaka.
The United States continues to support ASEAN centrality in the regional security architecture, and the U.S. free
and open Indo-Pacific strategy seeks to further empower it.
Singapore’s Information Fusion Centre (IFC) is also an example of how countries in the region are collaborating
to facilitate information sharing and enhance maritime security. Since its inception in 2009, Singapore’s IFC has
served as a maritime information hub for the region, contributing actionable information to regional and global
navies and coast guards to cue timely operational responses to maritime threats such as piracy and drug smuggling.
The IFC has hosted over 100 international liaison officers from over twenty countries.
Last December, the United States also welcomed the inauguration of India’s maritime IFC, which will function
as a regional platform for the exchange of information in the maritime domain among partner nations. Likewise,
Sri Lanka, whose strategic location in the Indian Ocean through which 70 percent of maritime traffic passes, has
outlined a vision to become a regional hub for logistics and commerce. Supporting this vision, the U.S. Navy
recently initiated a series of temporary cargo transfer initiatives enabling non-lethal resupply of passing naval
vessels in Sri Lanka.
My impression is that President Trump’s team is open to suggestions about how and where to make mid-course
corrections in their strategy toward China. The Indo-Pacific Strategy that I have detailed, of course, is only a part
of the overall approach. Still, America’s annual two-way trade with the region is $2.3 trillion, with U.S. foreign
direct investment of $1.3 trillion in the region–more than China’s, Japan’s, and South Korea’s combined.
The Indo-Pacific contributes two-thirds of global growth in gross domestic product (GDP) and accounts for 60
percent of global GDP. This region includes the world’s largest economies—the United States, China, and Japan—
and six of the world’s fastest growing economies—India, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, Nepal, and the Philippines. A
quarter of U.S. exports go to the Indo-Pacific, and exports to China and India have more than doubled over the past
decade. And as we meet in Aspen, Secretary Pompeo will spend three days with ASEAN defense ministers at the
security forum in Bangkok before visiting Australia for an annual meeting of the U.S. and Australian foreign and
defense ministers. Newly sworn-in Defense Secretary Mark Esper will join him in Sydney for those talks. On his
return, Pompeo will become the first sitting secretary of state to visit Micronesia, meeting leaders from the Pacific
Islands that have compact associations with the United States, including Palau and the Marshall Islands.
Michael Pillsbury is the Senior Fellow and Director for Chinese Strategy at the Hudson Institute. He is a distinguished defense policy adviser, former high-
ranking government official, and author of numerous books and reports on China. During the Reagan administration, Dr. Pillsbury was Assistant Under
Secretary of Defense for Policy Planning and responsible for implementation of the program of covert aid known as the Reagan Doctrine. In 1975-76,
while an analyst at the RAND Corporation, Dr. Pillsbury published articles in Foreign Policy and International Security recommending that the United States
establish intelligence and military ties with China. The proposal, publicly commended by Ronald Reagan, Henry Kissinger, and James Schlesinger, later
became U.S. policy during the Carter and Reagan administrations. Dr. Pillsbury served on the staff of four U.S. Senate Committees from 1978-1984 and
1986-1991. As a staff member, Dr. Pillsbury drafted the Senate Labor Committee version of the legislation that enacted the US Institute of Peace in 1984.
He also assisted in drafting the legislation to create the National Endowment for Democracy and the annual requirement for a DoD report on Chinese
military power. In 1992, under President George H.W. Bush, Dr. Pillsbury was Special Assistant for Asian Affairs in the Office of the Secretary of Defense,
reporting to Andrew W. Marshall, Director of Net Assessment. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Institute for
Strategic Studies. Dr. Pillsbury is the author of China Debates the Future Security Environment (NDU Press, 2000), The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret
Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower, and editor of Chinese Views of Future Warfare (NDU Press, 1998). Dr. Pillsbury was educated at Stanford
University (B.A. in history with honors in social thought) and Columbia University (M.A., Ph.D.).
The Trump administration has rethought and reset U.S. policy toward China in
important new ways. What remains now is recalibration. This means reintroducing
and reinforcing the notion of U.S. engagement—both with China and with the broader
international community.
—ELIZABETH ECONOMY
Chapter 3 | Reimagining Engagement 41
Reimagining Engagement
Elizabeth Economy
Introduction
This year, 2019, marks 40 years since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and
China. Bilateral trade and investment between the two countries has grown exponentially from $2 billion in 1980 to
almost $750 billion in 2018; student exchange and tourism numbers have soared; and peace has been maintained in
the Asia-Pacific. Yet in the past several years, the U.S.-China relationship has entered a new, increasingly contentious
period that is marked more by overt confrontation and competition than by coordination and cooperation.
This deterioration reflects the collapse of two implicit understandings that have underpinned the bilateral
relationship for the past four decades: first, that both Beijing and Washington would minimize near-term disputes
around areas of conflict, such as trade, Taiwan, and human rights, to preserve a façade of accord; and second,
that they would operate within a paradigm of “constructive engagement,” in which the United States would
encourage China’s integration into the liberal international order, and that this process, coupled with the rise of
the middle class, would accelerate the process of economic and political liberalization within China.1
The reality of China’s politics today, however, has caused Washington to rethink this strategy. The promise
of continued reform and opening up at home has been replaced by a return to greater political control and state
intervention in the economy. In addition, Beijing’s foreign policy initiatives routinely challenge the values inherent
in the liberal international order, as well as U.S. leadership in the Asia-Pacific and beyond. Washington is no longer
willing to maintain the illusion of progress in hopes of future substantive cooperation, and China is no longer
willing to be tutored by the United States on how to reform at home and engage abroad.
In Washington, the result of this new understanding is a policy characterized less by “engage, but hedge” than
by “compete, counter, and contain.” It is an approach that accurately recognizes the range and seriousness of the
new challenges China poses and establishes some important defensive strategies but fails to advance an effective
counter-narrative and the policies to support it. What is needed now is to reimagine engagement in an era of U.S.-
China competition by 1) advancing a positive and proactive U.S. message and set of policies on the global stage
to counter China’s attack on the liberal international order; 2) strengthening the economic pillar of U.S. global
engagement; 3) leveraging U.S. allies and partners; 4) developing the political, economic, and security resources
at home to compete with China over the medium to long term; and 5) establishing new areas and approaches to
common action with China to minimize the risk of spiraling into a Cold War or hot conflict.
Engagement Through the Decades2

For the United States, engaging China has been a consistent theme of the bilateral relationship since well before
the establishment of diplomatic relations in 1979. And for much of that time, engaging China equated to changing
China. As early as the 1950s, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles delivered a series of speeches in which he
articulated the view that the United States should work to engender a peaceful evolution in Communist countries
toward democracy—through support for opposition forces, cultural subversion, and information warfare.3 Along
these same lines, even before becoming president, Richard Nixon laid out his vision for China in a 1967 Foreign
Affairs article: “We simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its
fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors. The world cannot be safe until China changes. Thus our aim,
to the extent that we can influence events, should be to induce change.”4 And President Carter, while arguing that
the United States and China should make their differences “sources not of fear, but of healthy curiosity; not as a
source of divisiveness, but of mutual benefit,” nonetheless believed that U.S. foreign policy should be rooted in its
moral values.5
In one form or another, U.S. administrations expressed a desire for China to reform and a belief that the United
States could contribute to that process. There was a clear link between Dulles’ notion of peaceful evolution
and Nixon’s commitment to bring China into the international system, which informed later administrations’
approaches to the same question. President Clinton, for example, in arguing for China’s entry into the World
Trade Organization (WTO) claimed, “Of course the path that China takes to the future is a choice China will
make. We cannot control that choice; we can only influence it. But we must recognize that we do have complete
control over what we do. We can work to pull China in the right direction or we can turn our backs and almost
certainly push it in the wrong direction. The WTO agreement will move China in the right direction. It will
advance the goals America has worked for in China.”6
Robert Zoellick, who served as deputy secretary of state during George W. Bush’s administration, delivered
perhaps the fullest articulation of engagement’s ultimate objectives in his keynote address at the National
Committee on U.S.-China Relations’ 2005 gala. Zoellick outlined a set of emerging challenges posed by China’s
rise—a lack of transparency in supporting bad actors on the global stage, a failure to protect foreign intellectual
property, a mounting U.S.-China bilateral trade deficit, and a potential for China’s desire for “predominance of
power” in Asia to cause conflict. The solution to these problems rested not only in addressing China’s behavior on
the international stage but also in transforming China’s political system at home: “Our goal … is to help others
find their own voice, attain their own freedom, and make their own way. … Closed politics cannot be a permanent
feature of Chinese society. It is simply not sustainable. China needs a peaceful political transition to make its
government responsible and accountable to its people.”7
China, for its part, participated in, and at times appeared transformed by, this process of engagement. The
country’s economy flourished as it gradually opened to greater levels of foreign investment. Multinationals
reinforced the importance of intellectual property rights protection and introduced practices around corporate
social responsibility. Chinese civil society also expanded dramatically throughout the 1990s and 2000s, as partnerships
were forged between domestic nongovernmental organizations and their foreign counterparts. By the mid-2000s,
foreign NGOs and foundations provided well over half of the funding for China’s rapidly developing environmental
NGO movement.8 And virtually every leader of a major Chinese environmental NGO had received training from
a U.S. partner organization. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) supported Chinese political activists,
exposing them to the world of election campaigns and monitoring; in 2010-2011, a prominent Chinese NGO,
supported by the Open Society and NED, openly educated Chinese citizens on how to run independent political
campaigns. And the United States served as a source of inspiration and financial and organizational support for
the Chinese labor, women’s, and LGBTQ activists: one leading Chinese blogger mentioned privately, for example,
that the legal recognition of same-sex marriage in the United States had a profoundly positive impact on the
LGBTQ movement in China. Most strikingly, the internet served to amplify new political voices, such as billionaire
bloggers who boasted ten million followers and more, and confidently opined on sensitive topics such as the need
for political reform. Internet-fueled demonstrations topped 180,000 in 2010, as Chinese people took to the streets
to rally against pollution, corruption, and labor violations, among other issues.
In addition, as a number of studies have documented, in areas as wide-ranging as trade, public health, and the
environment, China welcomed the international community’s capacity-building efforts, sending its officials for
training and modeling its domestic laws on those of the United States or other advanced economies.9 Partnership
between the United States and China, while limited, also contributed to addressing global challenges, such as the
2014 Ebola crisis in West Africa, and breathed new life into the international climate change negotiation process
in 2016.
Moreover, the Chinese government actively sought ways to reassure the United States and other countries
that as its economic and military power increased, it would not pursue a path of military dominance nor seek to
upend the established world order. Throughout the mid-2000s, the words of former senior Chinese Communist
Party (CCP) official Zheng Bijian concerning China’s peaceful rise were widely cited as evidence supporting
Beijing’s desire to maintain the status quo in the international system.10 Of course, there were discordant voices
that questioned the utility of the peaceful rise concept. Some Chinese believed that it improperly limited Beijing’s
choices with regard to Taiwan; force, they argued, should not be off the table as a means of resolving the question
of Taiwan’s status. Others considered it “demeaning” that China would attempt to subordinate its interests to
placate the United States.11
At the same time, where Chinese and U.S. interests clearly diverged, the two countries often developed alternative
but parallel narratives. The clearest example has been the effort by Beijing and Washington to manage their
differences around the status of Taiwan. Even as President Carter abrogated diplomatic recognition of Taiwan in
favor of formal ties with mainland China, he ensured that the United States and Taiwan would maintain cultural,
commercial, and other “unofficial relations,” and Congress passed the Taiwan Relations Act that called for the
United States to provide for the adequate defense of Taiwan. And in 1984, when Ronald Reagan traveled to Beijing
and met with Premier Zhao Ziyang, the official Chinese record of the visit acknowledged that President Reagan
“stressed his intention to continue arms sales to Taiwan and was an ardent defender of Taiwan’s independence”
but nonetheless noted that the president “listened with great care to a nine point Chinese plan for absorbing the
island state.”12 On the most sensitive issues, Chinese television simply deleted Reagan’s references to the need for
democracy and belief in God.13
The Game Changers

Beijing began to question the value of engagement as defined largely by the United States as early as 2008.
The global financial crisis and seeming collapse of the U.S. economy marked a turning point for many Chinese,
who no longer considered the United States’ system as worthy of emulation. As Vice Premier Wang Qishan told
U.S. Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson: “You were my teacher, but look at your system, Hank, we aren’t sure we
should be learning from you anymore.”14 At least one leading Chinese economic official called publicly for the
world to consider a new global currency to replace the dollar as the world’s reserve currency.15 China’s peaceful
rise narrative also lost currency during this time, replaced by a more forceful set of foreign policy voices that
began to envision China as the dominant player in the Asia-Pacific. In part in response to this new-found Chinese
assertiveness, the Obama administration in 2011 also articulated a more forward-leaning presence in the Asia-
Pacific, outlining a new U.S. strategy—the pivot or rebalance—that envisaged a greater degree of U.S. military,
economic, and political engagement in the region.16 This competitive process accelerated significantly, however,
with the advent of Xi Jinping as general secretary of the CCP in 2012 and the election of Donald Trump as
president of the United States in 2016.
After four decades of managed conflict, Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump have
introduced a new dynamic into the U.S.-China relationship. There is little interest in papering over differences,
developing parallel narratives, or subsuming conflict in the near term in the hopes of promoting cooperation over
the longer term. “Engagement” as a U.S. strategy for inducing change in Chinese behavior at home or abroad is no
longer discussed seriously. And even as this new, more competitive bilateral relationship emerges, the foundations
for managing it have not been established.
One of China’s leading scholars of the United States, Wang Jisi, places responsibility for the change in the U.S.-
China relationship’s dynamics squarely on China. In an October 2018 interview, he commented: “For over 200
years, the United States has never changed its strategic goals for its relationship with China: free flow of goods
and capital, and free flow of information and values. Chinese have always had reservations or imposed boycotts to
oppose these two goals. We should criticize and have reason to criticize the United States, but we should realize
that China’s own actions have changed Sino-US relations and US perception of China. … If we are looking for
the cause, it was the change in Chinese policy that led to adjustments in US policy towards China. US policy has
changed because China changed.”17
Certainly Xi Jinping has transformed China’s domestic and foreign policy landscape. He has introduced regressive
and repressive policies at home, consolidating power into his own hands and reasserting the Communist Party’s
authority into everyday Chinese political and economic life. He has limited opportunities for the international
community to influence Chinese political and economic development. Increasing numbers of foreign websites are
blocked; foreign television content has been slashed; the free flow of information via the internet is increasingly
constrained as Beijing widens the scope for what it considers threatening to national security; and in the wake
of the January 1, 2017, Law on the Management of the Activities of Overseas Nongovernmental Organizations
within Mainland China, the number of foreign NGOs operating in China has fallen from more than 7,000 to just
600. The Made in China 2025 industrialization policy constrains opportunities for multinationals to compete on
a level playing field in ten areas of advanced technology. In Sichuan province, for example, the local government
has passed a regulation preventing hospitals from being reimbursed for operations and procedures that use fifteen
types of devices unless those devices are Chinese-manufactured.18 Political and civil liberties have diminished
significantly with the introduction of a massive surveillance apparatus and the social credit system. This social
control manifests itself in its most extreme form in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, where millions of Uighur
Muslims are subjected to racial and ethnic profiling, denied religious and civil liberties, and forcibly interned in
labor and reeducation camps.
Xi also has adopted a far more ambitious foreign policy that seeks to enhance China’s role on the global stage
and to challenge traditional U.S. interests in important new ways:
• Over the past six years, Xi has moved from staking claims around sovereignty in the South China Sea, Hong
Kong, and Taiwan to realizing them through coercive economic, political, and military actions. Many of
these actions threaten freedom of navigation and overflight, the political and economic security of Hong
Kong and Taiwan citizens, and regional stability and security.
• China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which began in 2013 primarily as an effort to export Chinese
overcapacity and connect interior Chinese cities to external markets, has evolved into a far more expansive
endeavor with significant implications for the future geopolitical landscape.
o Through its deployment of both Chinese hard and digital infrastructure, Beijing is setting global
standards in equipment and technology for the 21st century.
o Beijing’s control of at least seventy-six ports in thirty-four countries provides it with new opportunities
for economic coercion as well as military expansion. According to one senior military official, China
plans to establish scores of overseas bases in the future.
o Xi Jinping also has suggested that the “China model” might offer a different path for countries
disenchanted with the Western model of market democracy. In 2018, Beijing conducted two- and
three-week courses on censorship and surveillance for officials from dozens of BRI countries and
sent officials to countries such as Uganda and Tanzania to train their counterparts on how to control
the media and manage civil society. Overall, China has exported its surveillance system to eighteen
countries and assisted thirty-six countries in developing the capacity to repress free speech.
• Xi Jinping has exploited the openness of other societies, including the United States, to advance PRC political
and economic interests. The CCP uses Confucius Institutes, Chinese Students and Scholars Associations,
and stakes in media companies to project a benign view of Chinese activities and limit dissenting views. It
also actively deploys cyber tools, as well as students, scholars, and businesspeople, to engage in intellectual
property theft from university labs and corporations.
• Finally, Xi Jinping has called for China to lead in reforming global governance and making international
norms and institutions more directly reflect Chinese values and interests. Such reform may be positive,
such as the establishment of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, which operates according to
existing international norms. In other arenas, however, Beijing uses international institutions to advance
PRC policies, such as inserting the BRI into UN resolutions or proposing arrangements in human rights
and internet governance that are antithetical to U.S. values and interests. And China’s promotion of a
“community of common destiny” is at the heart a call for the end of the U.S.-led system of alliances.
Yet, the traditional understandings of U.S.-China relations did not begin to unravel fully until the election of
Donald Trump. President Trump’s approach to China and his approach to the United States’ role on the global
stage have undermined the relationship’s foundations. On the one hand, President Trump places little value on the
U.S. role in upholding the liberal international order’s institutions. He has withdrawn the United States from the
Paris Climate Accord, the International Postal Union, and the United Nations Human Rights Council, and he has
threatened to withdraw from the WTO. He views multilateral institutions more as constraints on U.S. power than
as vehicles for advancing U.S. interests through global cooperation. As a result, he does not seek to bring China into
these or other international institutions.
At the same time, the Trump administration has rejected any pretense of papering over differences with
China or maintaining alternative narratives in order to preserve stability in the relationship. It has pushed back
against Chinese aggression in the South China Sea through regular Freedom of Navigation Operations, moved to
address unfair Chinese trade practices by imposing tariffs on Chinese exports, called out Beijing’s poor governance
practices around the BRI, sought censure in the United Nations for Chinese human rights abuses in Xinjiang,
adopted legislation to protect sensitive U.S. technology, and enhanced U.S. support of Taiwan, among other
measures. These policies have complicated Beijing’s efforts, and some have yielded noticeable success. Calling
China out for its weak governance standards around the Belt and Road Initiative, for example, has transformed
global discourse around Chinese investment practices and forced Beijing to rethink its practices. Importantly, many
Chinese intellectuals and entrepreneurs privately state that they appreciate the Trump administration’s tough
policies because they are the only bulwark against an ever-more ambitious and repressive Xi Jinping. And within
the United States, the focus on human rights abuses in Xinjiang has prompted universities to reconsider research
partnerships with Chinese companies involved in surveillance in Xinjiang and U.S. corporations to reconsider their
investments in the region.
Yet, there are also significant drawbacks to the Trump administration’s approach:
• President Trump’s bilateral approach to China (notwithstanding the efforts of many in his administration
to work in a more multilateral context) ignores the strength that derives from working with U.S. allies and
allows China to paint a picture of the United States as weak, isolated, and attempting to contain China.
• The lack of consistency in the Trump administration’s narrative—for example, suggesting at times that it
will trade out Taiwan or relax its policy on Huawei in exchange for a better trade deal—undermines U.S.
credibility in China and among U.S. allies.
• Publicly badgering other countries to bar Huawei from future 5G networks contributes to nationalistic
impulses in China, sets up a lose-lose proposition for allies, and makes the United States appear weak and
fearful in the face of advancing Chinese technological capabilities.
• The tariffs levied by the Trump administration on Chinese exports and efforts to decouple the two
economies have resulted overwhelmingly in greater hardship as opposed to benefits for U.S. companies,
workers, and consumers.
• The broad-based attack on Chinese students, scholars, and researchers in the United States contributes to a
McCarthy-like political atmosphere and almost certainly will result in the United States losing support from
some of the world’s most talented minds.
• The failure of the Trump administration to identify areas of common purpose with China costs the United
States the opportunity to support those in China most committed to a positive relationship with the United
States and to advance reform in China, as well as the chance to make meaningful progress in addressing
global challenges.
Engagement 2.0
The Trump administration has rethought and reset U.S. policy toward China in important new ways. What
remains now is recalibration. This means reintroducing and reinforcing the notion of U.S. engagement—both
with China and with the broader international community. Engagement cannot, however, simply reflect previous
understandings. It must be reimagined within the context of current Chinese and American interests and
capabilities. To begin with, Washington should:
1) Transform the narrative around U.S. policy toward China.

The United States should move away from the current reactive and defensive posture of “confronting and
containing China” to adopt a more proactive and positive approach of “contributing to advance global prosperity and
security.” China today poses significant threats to U.S. interests across all domains and at all levels of governance—
global, regional, and national. It is not surprising that, at least in the first years of the Trump administration, the
White House found itself in a highly reactive posture. However, President Trump’s narrower conception of when
and how the United States will lead, his rejection of international institutions to manage underlying challenges
in security and trade, and his “America First” rhetoric, all diminish U.S. leadership on the global stage. And when
coupled with a persistently confrontational and containment-oriented approach to China, the administration
appears weak and defensive. Without a positive global narrative—a U.S. vision for global prosperity and security,
and policies to support that vision—Beijing’s efforts will continue to gain traction because there is no alternative.
As an important first step, President Trump should fully embrace the concept of a free and open Indo-Pacific
(FOIP). In his speech before the APEC Forum CEO Summit in November 2017, he called for a free and open Indo-
Pacific, rooted in a rules-based order that embodied the principles of free and fair trade, freedom of navigation and
overflight, and human rights and good governance (rule of law, transparency, and official accountability).
FOIP offers several advantages: it reflects U.S. values and interests, and it provides a direct rebuttal to Beijing’s
narrative of state-directed economic growth, political repression, and expansive military aspirations. Particularly
important, FOIP effectively characterizes competition as not between China and the United States but instead
between two sets of values, one of which is broadly shared among the vast majority of politically stable and
economically successful countries in the world. FOIP should not exclude China; it should welcome Beijing’s
participation on equal terms. And like China’s welcoming of all countries into BRI, the United States should
welcome all countries supportive of its principles into FOIP.
FOIP must also be populated with meaningful initiatives. The 2018 Asia Reassurance Initiative Act (ARIA)
reflects many of the necessary building blocks of a forward-leaning and positive U.S. strategy toward China
and the Indo-Pacific. These include support for projects that help build democratic institutions in the region’s
developing economies, that enhance the defense capabilities of U.S. partners in the region, and that promote
cooperative investment, such as the U.S.-Australia-Japan-New Zealand project to electrify 70 percent of Papua
New Guinea by 2030.
2) Advance a more robust U.S. economic presence globally.

The United States operates at a deficit relative to China because much of the Asia-Pacific region—and the
world—believes that “the United States is essential for security, but China is indispensable for economic prosperity.”
China’s growing global economic footprint provides it with significant leverage in its pursuit of political and
military influence, both within other countries and in the arena of global governance. To counteract this situation,
the Trump administration needs to change both the form and substance of its global economic engagement.
To begin with, the administration should underscore the actual level and impact of U.S. investment globally.
While China is the largest trading partner for most countries in the world, it is not the largest investor in any region
in the world. In 2017, for example, U.S. firms invested more in Africa than China (as they do most years). Moreover,
in Southeast Asia, Japan and the European Union are more significant sources of investment than China. Such
facts are little known but provide an important counterpoint to the narrative that China is the only development
game in town.
The administration should also launch a smart and sustainable cities initiative within the context of FOIP,
beginning with the U.S.-ASEAN Smart Cities Partnership announced by Vice President Pence in November
2018 in Singapore. With the newly established U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (IDFC), the
administration has the wherewithal to develop and sustain such an initiative. Under the IDFC’s auspices, the Trump
administration should encourage the identification and financing of five to ten high-profile smart city projects in
developing Asia and Africa. These projects, likely in partnership with multinationals from other countries, would
underscore the U.S.’s natural leadership in sustainable cities, while at the same time competing and/or cooperating
with China based on principles of openness and transparency.
In advancing the United States as a leading generator of economic prosperity globally, Washington must also
re-engage in trade negotiations with the Asia-Pacific region. The ARIA embraces U.S. bilateral and multilateral
trade negotiations as a cornerstone of U.S. engagement in the Asia-Pacific. Congress should hold hearings around
the potential of rejoining the Trans-Pacific Partnership, now the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement
for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), and around the feasibility of a U.S.-ASEAN free trade agreement. In the
meantime, Congress should ensure that any trade agreements signed are aligned with the terms of the CPTPP.
3) Leverage U.S. allies and partners.

One of America’s greatest strengths in its relationship with China is its allies. Many countries in Europe and
Asia share the United States’ interest in finding an effective set of policies to manage Xi Jinping’s more walled-off
domestic environment and ambitious foreign policy. In spring 2018 Pew polls, a twenty-five-country median of 63
percent said they preferred a world in which the U.S. was the leading power, while only 19 percent favored China
(although President Trump, himself, fared worse in the polls than Xi Jinping).
The United States should seek to coordinate and cooperate with allies and partners, whenever possible, to
amplify its influence over Chinese government policy. Such partnerships will not be one-size-fits-all. Different
issues will engage different countries. For example, on the security front, China’s military expansionism in the
South China Sea and claim to sovereignty over Taiwan pose a significant threat to peace and stability in the Asia-
Pacific. In the South China Sea, France sailed through the disputed Spratly Islands and the UK joined the United
States in joint drills. The United States should similarly seek such support among its Asian and European allies
for upholding the basic principle of Taiwanese sovereignty and its freedom to develop without fear of Chinese
coercion; one possible avenue of engagement would be supporting Taiwan’s participation in FOIP capacity-
building projects in Asia’s developing economies.
The White House has worked with the European Union and other partners to bring pressure to bear on
China on the human rights crisis in Xinjiang. Moving forward, as the White House considers application of the
Global Magnitsky Act sanctions on Xinjiang’s Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, as well as other targets for economic
sanction, it should reach out to EU counterparts to assess their interest in adopting similar legislation.
Washington should also refrain from framing every issue in the context of a bilateral competition between the
United States and China. A country’s decision to join or not the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank or BRI, for
example, should not be understood as a choice between the United States or China. Instead, Washington should
reserve such pressure only for the highest-stake issues while focusing on advancing its own positive narrative and
ensuring that U.S.-supported institutions are robust enough to meet global needs.
4) Strengthen U.S. political and economic resilience.

The ability for the United States to engage and compete effectively with its allies and partners, as well as China,
is rooted in the resilience of its own domestic political and economic institutions. This means investing at home
to ensure competitiveness abroad.19 The United States already lags well behind China in some critical areas of
hard and digital infrastructure, such as high-speed rail, mobile payments, and 5G capabilities. As the United States
confronts policies such as Made in China 2025, the first line of defense must be to strengthen its own innovation
capacity. As numerous organizations and reports have advised, this means the development of a medium- and
long-term strategic plan; investment in innovation and the policy framework to encourage adoption of new
technologies; and sound policies around workforce capabilities, including education, training, and immigration.
China’s efforts to exploit U.S. openness for its own advantage, however, necessitate additional thinking around
political and economic resilience. American educational institutions, think tanks, media, and corporations are all
potential targets for subtle forms of inappropriate Chinese influence, such as that exerted by Confucius Institutes
(CIs) on university campuses, or outright malign interference, such as intellectual property theft.
In the concern to address these potential threats as quickly as possible, however, there is the danger of adopting
too blunt a set of policy tools or advancing too broad a mandate. The current debate around Confucius Institutes
provides a case in point. As the Trump administration considers measures designed to force universities to close
their CIs, it should weigh the potential consequences, trade-offs, and alternatives of such measures. For example,
without Confucius Institute funding, fewer Americans will study Chinese, thereby placing the United States at a
disadvantage in its long-term effort to understand and compete with China.
To avoid such an outcome, the administration could agree that if a university shuts down its Confucius
Institute, it is guaranteed government funding for Chinese language instruction; or it could encourage universities
to renegotiate their CI contracts such that the Chinese government pays for instruction, but the teachers and
curriculum are selected by the universities; or it could engage in reciprocity by insisting that the Chinese government
allow similar U.S.-type language and cultural centers on Chinese university campuses. All these options avoid the
worst possible outcome, which is to undermine U.S. long-term competitiveness by curtailing opportunities for
Chinese language study.
In helping U.S. institutions and communities respond to the potential threats posed by China’s various influence
operations, the White House should begin by consulting with the relevant actors through informal consultations
to ensure that both the administration and the affected communities share an understanding of the threat and
appropriate response. The measures that the White House adopts around Chinese investment in U.S. technology
companies, the role of Chinese students and professors in university labs, Confucius Institutes, and visas for
visiting Chinese scholars, among other concerns, will be more effective if they are developed in conjunction with
the people they affect most directly.
5) Establish common ground and purpose with China.

U.S. engagement with China is essential for addressing global challenges as well as for understanding China’s
strategic thinking and priorities. Particularly at a time of heightened bilateral tensions, Washington should not
ignore opportunities for traditional forms of U.S.-China engagement. For example, Brookings scholar Ryan Hass
has suggested reviving the practice of “no surprises”—negotiated between Washington and Beijing in 2013—to
reduce the risk that either side would misinterpret the other’s actions. In October 2018, American and Chinese
warships came dangerously close to a collision in the South China Sea. As Hass points out, the reinvigoration
of long-standing risk reduction exchanges would reduce the possibility that miscalculation would lead to rapid
escalation.20
The administration could also use reciprocity as a springboard to greater cooperation. Previous administrations
have long viewed reciprocity as precipitating a race to the bottom. However, in the current context, it can play
an important role in leveling the playing field before seeking to enhance cooperation. For example, the Trump
administration has moved to withhold visas from a number of Chinese scholars on the grounds that they are
advising security or military entities at home (and perhaps in retaliation for Beijing’s historically capricious visa
policy toward U.S. China scholars). Now that the administration has reset the terms of engagement, however, it
has the opportunity to use this new leverage to pressure Beijing to reform its visa policy and open the door to freer
exchange of U.S. and Chinese scholars and journalists.
The United States should also give careful consideration to cooperation when a positive initiative arises from
China. In some cases, a Chinese-led effort may impose unacceptable terms: for example, Beijing’s proposal for a
“community of shared destiny” holds within it the dissolution of the U.S.-led alliance system. In other instances,
such as that of the Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the United States should support Beijing’s
initiative because it reflects precisely the objective of forty years of U.S. constructive engagement: China’s
adherence to the norms of the liberal international order.
Conclusion
As China and the United States battle over Huawei, cyber-economic espionage, and the potential threats posed
by scientific exchange, it is difficult not to be nostalgic for the moment thirty-five years ago, when President Ronald
Reagan articulated a vision for U.S.-China partnership radically different from the one possible in the current
context: “Today, I bring you a message from my countrymen. As China moves forward in this new path, America
welcomes the opportunity to walk by your side.…The relaxing of export controls reflects my determination that
China be treated as a friendly non-allied nation and that the United States be fully prepared to cooperate in your
modernization … to share the knowledge that is America’s key technology—management and science skills to
develop a nation.”21
Yet, acknowledging that the bilateral relationship is not what proponents of engagement envisioned is not
the same as arguing, as some prominent U.S. analysts have, that engagement has failed.22 It is true that China is
not a thriving liberal democracy nor a reliable partner for the United States. But engagement has failed only if
we believe a set of mistaken assumptions: that the United States had the power to determine how China would
turn out, that China and Chinese society have not been positively affected by the country’s integration into the
international community, and that the Xi government is the end of the road for China’s political and economic
evolution. Engagement is not a panacea, but it is also not a dirty word. It just needs to be reimagined to reflect a
new reality.
Elizabeth Economy is the C.V. Starr senior fellow and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a distinguished visiting fellow at
Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. Her most recent book, The Third Revolution: Xi Jinping and the New Chinese State (Oxford University Press, 2018);
was shortlisted for the 2019 Lionel Gelber Prize for the best non-fiction book in English on foreign affairs. She is also the author of the award-winning The
River Runs Black: The Environmental Challenge to China’s Future (Cornell University Press, 2004; 2nd edition, 2010), and By All Means Necessary: How China’s
Resource Quest is Changing the World (Oxford University Press, 2014), co-authored with Michael Levi. She has published articles in policy and scholarly
journals including Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and the Harvard Business Review; and op-eds in the New York Times and Washington Post, among others. In
June 2018, she was named one of the “10 Names That Matter on China Policy” by Politico magazine. Dr. Economy serves on the board of managers of
Swarthmore College and the board of trustees of the Asia Foundation and the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations. She received her BA with
Honors from Swarthmore College, her AM from Stanford University, and her PhD from the University of Michigan. In 2008, she received an honorary
doctor of law degree from Vermont Law School.
1
The assumption that China would liberalize politically was advanced openly in the United States but not in China.
2
This section was adapted from Elizabeth Economy, “US-China Relations at 40: Normalization Meets the New Normal,” The Diplomat ( January 1,
2019), https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/us-china-relations-at-40/.
3
Geremie R. Barmé, “The Harmonious Evolution of Information in China,” The China Beat, January 29, 2010, http://www.thechinabeat.
org/?p=1422.
4
Richard M. Nixon, “Asia After Viet Nam,” Foreign Affairs, 1967.
5
“Jimmy Carter and Deng Xiaoping, Exchange of Comments and Toasts at the White House, Jan. 29, 1979 | US-China Institute,” USC US-China
Institute, January 27, 1979, https://china.usc.edu/jimmy-carter-and-deng-xiaoping-exchange-comments-and-toasts-white-house-jan-29-1979.
6
“Full Text of Clinton’s Speech on China Trade Bill,” New York Times, March 9, 2000, http://movies2.nytimes.com/library/world/asia/030900clinton-
china-text.html.
7
“Robert Zoellick’s Responsible Stakeholder Speech,” National Committee on US-China Relations, September 21, 2005, https://www.ncuscr.org/
content/robert-zoellicks-responsible-stakeholder-speech.
8
Lei Liu, Pu Wang, and Tong Wu, “The Role of Nongovernmental Organizations in China’s Climate Change Governance,” Wiley Interdisciplinary
Reviews: Climate Change 8, no. 6 (2017): e483, doi:10.1002/wcc.483.
9
Joanna Lewis, “The US-China Climate and Energy Relationship,” Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2017, https://www.csis.org/us-china-
climate-and-energy-relationship.
10
China’s Peaceful Rise: Speeches of Zheng Bijian 1997-2004 (Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2005).
11
Robert L. Suettinger, “The Rise and Descent of ‘Peaceful Rise,’” China Leadership Monitor (repr., Hoover Institution, 2004).
12
Howell Raines, “Reagan Meets with Chinese and Mexican Leadership,” New York Times, October 22, 1981.
13
Christopher S. Wren, “Reagan and Zhao Reportedly Clash on Foreign Policy,” New York Times, April 28, 1984.
14
Jun Mai, “China’s Top Graft-Buster Wang Qishan: Will He Stay or Will He Go?” South China Morning Post, October 4, 2017, https://www.scmp.com/
news/china/policies-politics/article/2110165/chinas-top-graft-buster-wang-qishan-will-he-stay-or.
15
Tania Branigan, “Replace Dollar as Global Reserve Currency, Says China,” The Guardian, March 24, 2009, https://www.theguardian.com/
business/2009/mar/24/china-reform-international-monetary-system.
16
“Obama Tells Asia US ‘Here to Stay’ as a Pacific Power,” The Guardian, November 16, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/nov/17/
obama-asia-pacific-address-australia-parliament.
17
Jisi Wang, “The US Trade War Aimed at Changing Chinese Behavior and Making More Money, Not Disengagement,” 高大伟 David Cowhig’s
Translation Blog, October 18, 2018, https://gaodawei.wordpress.com/2018/10/18/wang-jisi-the-us-trade-war-aimed-at-changing-chinese-behavior-
and-making-more-money-not-disengagement/.
18
Lorand Laskai, “Why Does Everyone Hate Made in China 2025?” Council on Foreign Relations, March 28, 2018, https://www.cfr.org/blog/why-
does-everyone-hate-made-china-2025.
19
Orville Schell and Susan L. Shirk, Course Correction: Toward an Effective and Sustainable China Policy, UC San Diego School of Global Policy and
Strategy, 2019.
20
Ryan Hass, “Principles For Managing U.S.-China Competition” (repr., Brookings Institution, 2018).
21
“Excerpts from Reagan Speech at Great Hall,” New York Times, April 27, 1984.
22
Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner, “The China Reckoning,” Foreign Affairs 97, no. 2 (March/April 2018), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/
china/2018-02-13/china-reckoning.
While still reflecting on the lessons of the past, it is time for U.S. strategists to focus
their arguments on the future, leaving the history to the historians.
—ELY RATNER
Chapter 4 | Toward a New China Debate 53
Toward a New China Debate:

The Strategic Logic of Blunting China’s Illiberal Order
Ely Ratner
U .S. policy toward China is undergoing a period of profound disruption. As the old consensus continues to fray,
this paper interrogates key fissures in the debate and, in doing so, makes the case for an alternative strategy.
The rationale for deconstructing the debate is simple: preexisting concepts and labels are increasingly ill-suited
to the China challenge now confronting the United States. Policy options don’t fall neatly into familiar camps, nor
do they easily map on a linear continuum from dovish and accommodating to hawkish and hardline. Moreover,
traditional concepts such as “engagement” and “containment” have become so polemical that they no longer serve
as useful anchors for debate. In their place, novel paradigms and schools of thought will have to emerge.
To that end, Part I of this paper assesses the current discourse on China policy, including what’s holding it
back and how to advance it. I argue that Washington needs to move beyond two prevailing disagreements that
are increasingly counterproductive: debating the past and over-focusing on President Trump. Instead, I offer three
principal lines of inquiry that are essential to developing an effective strategy going forward: the stakes in the U.S.-
China competition, the factors shaping China’s trajectory, and the subsequent choices for the United States.
Part II applies this framework and argues that America’s near-term strategy should be centered on preventing
China from consolidating an expansive and illiberal order in Asia and beyond. It describes the enormous stakes for
the United States and assesses why an illiberal China-led order is possible—even likely—in the absence of a concerted
effort by the United States to arrest it. I outline the logic of such a strategy, address the main counterarguments,
and describe the necessary requirements for successful implementation.
Part I: Deconstructing the Debate
The need for reassessment

U.S. policy after the Cold War was predicated on steering China’s development and shaping the regional
environment such that Beijing would ultimately decide not to challenge U.S. dominance in Asia. This approach
was guided by the promise that economic modernization and interdependence would lead to political and
market reforms internally while also creating overwhelming incentives for China to integrate into the prevailing
international order. At the same time, given uncertainties about China’s intentions, the United States and its allies
developed military capabilities and partnerships to deter Chinese aggression and dissuade Beijing from aspiring to
regional hegemony. At its core, it was a strategy designed to prevent a China challenge from ever surfacing in the
first place. There were ongoing debates in Washington about which element merited greater emphasis, but the
combination of “engagement” and “balancing” served as consensus U.S. strategy for decades.
This approach was valid as long as there were indications that it was working—or at least sufficient ambiguity
and uncertainty about China’s trajectory. Such was arguably the case throughout most of the 1990s and early
2000s, when China adhered to a fairly cautious and conservative foreign policy. But that era has ended. Contrary
to U.S. hopes, China is becoming more authoritarian, the Communist Party is tightening its grip on the economy,
and its foreign policies are increasingly ambitious and assertive in seeking to undermine and displace core features
of U.S. leadership in Asia and the liberal international order more broadly.1
Stuck in the wrong debates

The glaring disconnect between America’s aspirations and the reality of today’s China has instigated a vibrant
discussion over U.S. policy. Currently, however, much of the debate is mired in two distinct topics that, while
important, ultimately serve as a distraction to the central question of the future of U.S. policy toward China.
The first regards the past: Why did America “get China wrong,” and could things have turned out differently?
There’s no doubt that a better understanding of the past can inform how we might proceed going forward. That
being said, it is increasingly counterproductive to continue slugging it out over whether U.S. policy makers actually
believed China was going to democratize, or whether China’s path would have been fundamentally altered
if America had taken a different tack after the Tiananmen Square massacre or following China’s accession to
the World Trade Organization. These backward-looking debates in the China policy community have grown
unnecessarily (although perhaps unavoidably) personal, partisan, and acrimonious.2 While still reflecting on the
lessons of the past, it is time for U.S. strategists to focus their arguments on the future, leaving the history to the
historians.
A second prevalent debate has revolved around the Trump administration’s approach to China. Current policy
is unquestionably relevant to presidential politics, day-to-day tactics, and critical assessments of the likely starting
point for what comes next. But over-privileging the centrality of President Trump has at least two substantial
drawbacks. First, the emergent period of U.S.-China competition is deeper and more structural than a principal
focus on Trump would suggest. What we are witnessing today is not an episodic downturn or cyclical trough in the
U.S.-China relationship, nor is the current rise in tensions primarily due to President Trump or his administration.
Instead, China’s changing power position, its perceptions of geopolitical opportunity and American decline, and
Xi Jinping’s own predilections all arose around the same time that Washington started experiencing heightened
economic disillusionment and greater security concerns toward China.3 Some version of this more intensified
competition would have occurred without Donald Trump and will endure after his presidency; it is true that
Trump may have accelerated certain trends, but U.S.-China competition is not a Trump phenomenon.
Second, although the Trump administration’s National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy both
focused on strategic competition with China as a top priority for the United States, core features of the Trump
administration’s foreign and domestic policies (for example, on alliances, international and regional institutions,
nonproliferation, climate change, trade, human rights, and immigration) do not reflect a government committed
to enhancing American competitiveness or sustaining U.S. power and leadership in the world.4 Instead, the Trump
administration’s China policy is best described as confrontational without being competitive.
This matters diagnostically because the internal contradictions and weaknesses of Trump’s approach to China
are mostly distinct from the administration’s proposed shift toward strategic competition. Put another way, it is (at
best) misguided to argue against a more competitive U.S. strategy by pointing to the shortcomings of President
Trump. Nor is it valid to suggest that support for a more competitive approach is in any way an endorsement of
President Trump’s China policy. In general, reducing the focus on Donald Trump will improve the quality of the
debate on China.
Interrogating the key contours of debate

Provided we can move beyond pitched arguments about the past and pointed critiques of President Trump,
there are essential and emergent debates that should inform the next phase of U.S. strategy. Here I offer three
central lines of inquiry that provide the analytical foundations for a revised approach to the China challenge:
1. What are the stakes? Any reconsideration of U.S. policy should begin by asking why China matters to
the United States and the American people. We should be explicit about what, exactly, is the nature of the
challenge—on what issues, to what extent, and in what ways is China’s rise an opportunity or threat to
vital U.S. interests. Embedded in these questions are our visions of potential futures, and the likelihood of
arriving at them depending on the direction of U.S. policy. This sets the predicate for deciding what goals
should serve as the lodestar of U.S. strategy, whether avoiding a war with China, maximizing commercial
opportunities, collectively solving global problems, pushing back on Beijing, or something else entirely.
A clear-eyed description of the stakes in the U.S.-China relationship can also help to frame how we think
about the tradeoffs between these goals, and more generally between cooperation and competition. Finally,
differing perspectives of the stakes further shape the urgency with which we think U.S. policy makers
should devote attention and resources to managing the China question, including its relative prioritization
as compared to other pressing domestic and international issues.
2. What will shape China’s trajectory? Undergirding any strategy are a series of assumptions about what
drives China’s behavior. There is still a wide array of views about whether China is a revisionist power
aiming to displace the United States or instead just a regional power seeking greater voice and a seat at
the table. Related are assessments of China’s future power and the degree to which internal and external
factors will accelerate or constrain its development: Is China’s rise immutable, or will internal weaknesses
stall its ascent? Will other major powers oppose or make peace with China’s expanding influence, and how
will Washington’s actions shape those decisions? When all is said and done, we ought to have a clear view
on what we think will be the most important factors that shape the scale and scope of the China challenge.
3. What are America’s options? How the United States responds to the China challenge must be grounded
in questions of power and politics. Strategies should be based on realistic assessments about the future
of American power—economic and military, both alone and in concert with allies and partners. It is also
essential to be explicit about the costs and risks associated with various approaches. Beyond the Beltway,
others will have a vote in the nature and effectiveness of U.S. strategy, including friendly capitals, potential
adversaries, and, most important, the American people. If there’s one thing that most analysts can agree
upon, it’s that the United States should work with like-minded countries to advance its interests. But who
are the necessary allies and partners and on what issues, how much can really be expected of them, and
how formal and institutionalized must these relationships be? Finally, levels of political will at home and
abroad must be factored in. In particular, we should take a hard look at the domestic political viability of
any U.S. strategy toward China.
Different answers to these questions, in different constellations, can provide a starting point for new policy
approaches to China. In the following section, I apply this framework and argue that a thorough assessment
of these foundational questions should lead the United States to a near-term strategy focused on blunting the
development of an expansive and illiberal China-led order.
Part II: Reconstructing a New Strategy: The Logic of Blunting China’s Illiberal Order
The stakes: Envisioning China-led order

The United States and China are now locked in a geopolitical competition that is structural and deepening.
How this contest evolves will determine the rules, norms, and institutions that govern international relations
in the coming decades. Should the United States fail to rise to the China challenge, the world will likely see the
emergence of an illiberal and expansive Chinese sphere of influence. This is not to suggest that Beijing should
be denied a voice or sway commensurate with its position as a major power—but there’s a substantial difference
between greater Chinese power (even China being the most powerful country in the region) and a situation in
which Beijing exerts illiberal hegemonic control over Asia and beyond.
It is incomplete to view U.S.-China dynamics as a disparate set of competitive domains. Instead, we should be
principally concerned about the aggregate and mutually reinforcing consequences of a China-led order if Beijing
gains dominant control of vital regions and functional domains. Core features of this order would include the
People’s Liberation Army administering the South and East China Sea; regional countries sufficiently coerced into
not questioning or challenging China’s preferences on military, economic, and diplomatic matters; the de facto
unification of Taiwan; Beijing with agenda-setting power over regional institutions; a China-centric economic
order in which Beijing sets trade and investment rules in its favor; and the gradual spread of authoritarianism in
the developing world, reinforced by the proliferation of China’s high-tech surveillance state.5
For the United States, an illiberal China-led order would translate into weaker U.S. alliances, fewer security
partners, and a military forced to operate at greater distances; U.S. firms without access to leading markets and
disadvantaged by unique technology standards, investment rules, and trading blocs; U.S. participation in inert
international and regional institutions unable to resist Chinese coercion; and a secular decline in democracy and
individual freedoms around the world. Many of these effects are already occurring globally and particularly in
Asia, the center of gravity in the competition. Arresting and reversing these trends stands among the most urgent
and important tasks in U.S. foreign policy.
China’s trajectory: On China’s intentions, future power, internal constraints, counterbalancing coalitions,
and the role of the United States
This paper posits that China will not be easily steered away from pursuing an expansive and illiberal order.
This is primarily due to the inflexible exigencies of the ruling regime rather than an assessment of whether grand
strategists in Beijing harbor revisionist intentions or hegemonic designs. Beijing’s most problematic behavior
tends to stem from the Communist Party’s efforts to make the world safe for China’s state-led economy and its
authoritarian political system. The widening divergence between Washington and Beijing is further exacerbated
by the fact that China has expanding interests and ever-greater capabilities to protect and defend those interests
around the globe, thereby increasing the degree to which it is willing and able to wield influence in world politics.
Short of an exogenous shock, we should not expect Beijing to substantially alter its current course.
Nevertheless, that leaves the question of whether forces in and around China will come to constrain its illiberal
impulses. The test case of the last three decades suggests that integration into the global economy will not be
enough. Unfortunately, the liberal internationalist project did not lead to sufficient convergence, and political and
economic engagement did not adequately produce or empower liberals inside China. The oft-heard statement in
Washington that China has been the greatest beneficiary of the liberal international order is both debatable and
irrelevant. Many of the liberal elements of that order are threatening to the Communist Party, which is using its
newfound power and influence to revise key aspects of the prevailing system.
Other potential roadblocks to the maturation of an illiberal China-led order include its domestic and structural
weaknesses. These myriad challenges include a slowing economy, rising debt, increasing labor costs, environmental
degradation, social unrest, unfavorable demographics, an aging population, poor social services, and more. Two
points, however, should give us pause before assuming that China will get stuck in its own quicksand before Beijing
can consolidate an illiberal order. First, even if these structural factors eventually do come home to roost, China
will have opportunities between now and then to make substantial and irreversible changes in its favor. Second,
China has already amassed significant power such that Beijing is likely to be a major actor on the global stage
under almost any circumstance; from here on out, China will have significant throw-weight even if its economy
and military develop at much slower rates.
If not China’s internal problems, then external constraints are often assumed to preclude a China-led order. It
is an empirical fact that most countries in Asia do not want to live under a Chinese sphere of influence. A frequent,
but misguided, extension of this argument is that a counterbalancing coalition will necessarily develop to staunch
Beijing’s reach. But this is by no means assured. Absent the United States providing a viable alternative, regional
states would have to assume potentially unaffordable and unacceptable risk in standing up to China. Rather than
binding together, major powers including Australia, India, and Japan would more likely pursue fortress strategies in
which they harden their defenses and more acutely protect their core interests. This would all come at the expense
of their broader foreign policy goals, including challenging China on nonessential matters and in nonessential
regions.
These pressures to bandwagon with China would be reinforced by domestic political dynamics in foreign
capitals. Beijing would be able to wield outsized carrots and sticks using an array of economic, military, and
diplomatic tools. Combined with greater Chinese control of data, information, and media, there would be fewer
domestic constituencies in Asia calling for a tougher stance toward China.
The cardinal implication here is that the role of the United States is paramount: the region will either hang
together with the United States or hang separately without it. Beijing recognizes this as well, which is why so many
facets of China’s strategy are aimed at reducing U.S. power and influence, and weakening U.S. ties to Asia. Any
version of a consolidated China-led order would require the United States to fail to compete effectively. In other
words, the path to an illiberal Chinese sphere of influence would have to be paved by the failure or unwillingness
of the United States to prevent it. China cannot readily dominate key regions or functional domains if Washington
is focused and committed to defending its overseas values and interests.
America’s options: On blunting China’s illiberal order and questions of allies and political viability
For the next phase of U.S. China strategy, the United States should be squarely focused on preventing the
consolidation of an expansive and illiberal Chinese sphere of influence. Notably, this is distinct from attempting to
reassert U.S. primacy or predominance, goals that are increasingly out of reach. Instead, it is imperative that the
United States stop China’s advances toward exerting exclusive and dominant control over key geographic regions
and functional domains, including technology, finance, trade and investment, diplomacy, security, governance, and
information. If the United States can achieve the minimum threshold of sustaining conventional deterrence, then
the military dimensions of the contest will be neither central nor determinative.
Arresting and reversing momentum toward China-led order will require four interrelated lines of effort (the
specific policies associated with each are beyond the scope of this paper). First, the United States will have to
strengthen American competitiveness by bolstering the foundations of U.S. power and influence. This means
investing at home to make the United States run faster instead of just trying to slow China down. Second, the
United States will have to directly contest the most pernicious forms of Communist Party illiberalism, both
internal and external to China. Third, Washington will have to rally allies and partners. This can be achieved by
recommitting to America’s role in the world, leading by the power of its example, providing viable alternatives
to China-led order, cooperating with China when it is in America’s interest, and bolstering the ability of states to
resist Chinese coercion individually and collectively. Fourth and finally, the United States will have to rebuild the
regional order in Asia with a fresh set of rules, norms, and institutions that better reflect the realities and demands
of the twenty-first century. Importantly, none of these lines of effort will be sufficient in and of themselves. All
will be required simultaneously, meaning Washington cannot focus exclusively on American renewal, combating
Chinese illiberalism, building partnerships, or revising the regional order. The United States must do all at once.
Settling into a long-term competition with China will require considerable attention and resources. It’s
therefore worth asking whether Washington should instead seek to satisfy Beijing’s ambitions at acceptable cost
to the United States. If you believe the United States is capable of mounting a more competitive strategy (as I do),
then your answer should be: no, now is not the time to try and strike a grand bargain with Beijing. The dominant
perception among China’s leaders and throughout the region is that America is unreliable, uncommitted, and in
decline. Trying to settle the competition on favorable terms in this context is not only unlikely to succeed, it would
require bargaining from a position of weakness. This might be the most important strategic argument herein: a
more stable and cooperative U.S.-China relationship will only be possible if the United States is able to arrest and
reverse the current momentum toward China-led order. The United States should therefore seek to establish a new
strategic equilibrium only once it has successfully reasserted U.S. power and influence in ways that disabuse Beijing
and the region about the inevitability of U.S. decline and a Sino-centric future.
This speaks directly to the question of whether the United States can gather and lead the allies and partners
necessary to prevent an illiberal Chinese sphere of influence. America alone will not be enough. Present-day
dynamics only go so far in helping us answer this question. After all, we should not be surprised that capitals—
many of which are heavily dependent on China economically—are wavering in their desire to work with an
American side they view as unpredictable and waning. Instead, we should hope and expect that enhanced American
competitiveness will increase the degree to which countries see the United States as a viable and attractive
alternative to China-led order. Perceptions of the future, including America’s position in Asia and the world, are
of central importance.
It is often said that countries do not want to choose between the United States and China. The reality is that
countries make dozens of choices every day between the United States and China—and, on balance, we want
more of those choices to be in our favor. Fortunately, a strategy predicated on blocking an illiberal China-led order
does not envisage Cold War-style blocs or an Asian NATO, nor does it require a fundamental choice between
Washington and Beijing. Instead, the United States can be an advocate for greater foreign policy autonomy and
economic independence, free from Chinese coercion. This is a more appealing offer than asking countries to sign
on to an anti-China coalition.
There is no getting around the fact that, in the near term, a more competitive U.S. approach will affect Beijing’s
willingness to cooperate with Washington on bilateral and global issues. However, several caveats are in order.
First, competition does not preclude cooperation. Sustained political engagement and savvy diplomacy should be
able to yield collaboration in areas of overlapping interest, including climate change. Second, China is not going to
haphazardly act against its own national interests, which will limit the degree that it uses issues like North Korea
to spite the United States. Third, as previously argued, the only path toward a truly cooperative relationship will
require a period of heightened tensions in which the United States arrests and reverses China’s momentum toward
building an illiberal order.
There is no question that Washington should harbor positive aspirations beyond a forever competition defined
by blunting China-led order. At the same time, there is by necessity a sequencing that has to occur in U.S. strategy.
A more stable and cooperative U.S.-China relationship—or even a steady-state managed competition—will only
be possible if the United States, in concert with allies and partners, is able to arrest and reverse the current trend
toward an expansive Chinese sphere of influence. Otherwise, the necessary conditions simply will not exist for a
new strategic equilibrium. In this sense, competition and cooperation are not distinct or even alternative choices—
failure to stem the emergence of an illiberal China-led order will close off cooperation and invite any number of
negative outcomes, including confrontation and conflict.
This leaves the exceedingly important question of whether such a strategy is politically viable in the United
States. Building and sustaining a consensus on China will be of utmost importance to America’s long-term success.
At present, U.S. public opinion is not particularly galvanized by the China competition, which may not change
until there’s a crisis or catalyzing event. Nevertheless, there is growing bipartisan support for a more competitive
U.S. response. It is imperative that this endures both between and within the major political parties. Political
fissures on China will have at least three negative consequences: inhibiting the ability of the U.S. government to
focus attention and resources on the China challenge; undermining the necessary confidence of U.S. allies and
partners; and creating openings for Beijing to divide and conquer within the U.S. political system. To succeed, the
China challenge will have to be a top (if not the singular) organizing principle of U.S. foreign policy.
To that end, political leaders will have to be clear with the American people about the costs associated with
sustained competition with China but also about the extraordinary risks of inaction. Increasingly apparent are the
synergies between U.S.-China competition and American renewal. Right now, it is both good politics and good
strategy for the United States to do what is necessary to compete with China, including making transformational
investments in technology and innovation, education, and infrastructure; rebuilding American leadership and
partnerships around the world, including to defend against China’s predatory economic practices; and doubling
down on U.S. values at home and abroad. Let’s hope that the United States soon proves that it has the will and
wisdom to pursue such an approach.
Ely Ratner is the Executive Vice President and Director of Studies at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), where he is a member of the
executive team and responsible for managing the Center’s research and communications. Dr. Ratner served from 2015 to 2017 as the deputy national
security advisor to Vice President Joe Biden, and from 2011 to 2012 in the office of Chinese and Mongolian affairs at the State Department. He also
previously worked in the U.S. Senate as a professional staff member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and in the office of Senator Joe Biden.
Outside of government, Dr. Ratner has worked as the Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, a senior
fellow and deputy director of the Asia-Pacific security program at CNAS, and as an associate political scientist at the RAND Corporation. Dr. Ratner
received his B.A. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa. He earned
his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Berkeley.
1
Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner, “The China Reckoning: How Beijing Defied American Expectations,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2018), https://
www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-02-13/china-reckoning.
2
For example, see M. Taylor Fravel, J. Stapleton Roy, Michael D. Swaine, Susan A. Thornton, and Ezra Vogel, “China Is Not an Enemy,” Washington
Post, July 3, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/making-china-a-us-enemy-is-counterproductive/2019/07/02/647d49d0-9bfa-11e9-
b27f-ed2942f73d70_story.html; John Pomfret, “Why the United States Doesn’t Need to Return to a Gentler China Policy,” The Washington Post, July
9, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/07/09/why-united-states-doesnt-need-return-gentler-china-policy/; James E. Fanell,
“Stay the Course on China: An Open Letter to President Trump,” The Journal of Political Risk, July 18, 2019, http://www.jpolrisk.com/stay-the-
course-on-china-an-open-letter-to-president-trump/.
3
Ely Ratner, “There Is No Grand Bargain with China: Why Trump and Xi Can’t Meet Each Other Halfway,” Foreign Affairs, November 27, 2018,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-11-27/there-no-grand-bargain-china.
4
“National Security Strategy of the United States of America,” December 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-
Final-12-18-2017-0905-2.pdf; “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America,” January 2018, https://dod.defense.
gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf.
5
Ely Ratner, “Blunting China’s Illiberal Order: The Vital Role of Congress in U.S. Strategic Competition with China,” Testimony before the Senate
Armed Services Committee, January 29, 2019, https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Ratner_01-29-19.pdf.
This is not another Cold War. The more other powers use China-U.S. contention to
increase their influence and power, the more common ground China and the U.S. will
find on issues peripheral to their interests.
—SHIVSHANKAR MENON
Chapter 5 | The Case for Allies 61
The Case for Allies:

Coordinating a Response to China
Shivshankar Menon
T wo claims and a conclusion are today often presented as three simple and obvious truths: worse U.S.-
China relations are here to stay; China’s rise and behavior worries and provokes her neighbors and rising or
established powers; and, therefore, the U.S. should work with her allies and these powers to manage, balance, or
contain China. There is sufficient truth in these statements for them to have become, in a very short period, today’s
conventional wisdom.
But is it really just so? This paper attempts to provoke a discussion and add a dose of realism to the calculus by
considering each of these statements and their implications.
1. U.S.-China Contention Is Here to Stay

It is probably true that worse U.S.-China relations are here to stay for the foreseeable future, or at least for
as long as anything lasts in international relations. For the U.S. to accept a peer competitor in the world or to
abandon the Asia-Pacific to Chinese dominance would require a fundamental shift of epic proportions in U.S.
grand strategy and a disregard for the new bipartisan consensus in the U.S. At the same time, regime survival and
the fate of individual leaders in China hinges on the attainment of the “China Dream” to make China great again.
China cannot accept the changes to its economic, industrial, intellectual property, and manufacturing policies that
the U.S. seeks, and that China sees as constraining or preventing its rise.
But this conclusion needs to be moderated by the following considerations:
• There appears to be a fundamental rethinking of U.S. strategy underway. President Trump has often
expressed a willingness to accept Russian and Chinese interests in their regions if he can show victories in
his transactional trade agenda. In his dealings with the North Korean nuclear issue, by calling for better
relations with Russia, and by telling South Korea and Japan to go nuclear and take care of their own
security rather than rely on the U.S., President Trump suggested a fundamental shift in U.S. thinking that
could accommodate Chinese and Russian ambitions. There is of course no unanimity on this even within
the Trump administration, but the ambiguity causes allies to rethink their options.
• The U.S. and China are economically codependent to an extent rarely seen between a superpower and
a great power. For major U.S. tech and aeronautical companies, China represents a major share of their
profits, and U.S. manufacturing is heavily dependent on cheap Chinese intermediate goods. If China cannot
do without the products of U.S. high tech industry, neither can the U.S. do without Chinese manufacturing.
• The U.S. and China have common interests, such as preventing the rearmament of Japan, the nuclear
weaponization of the Korean Peninsula, and the emergence of a third or fourth pole or peer competitor.
Both expect to act as global leaders, where the gap between them and the rest will only widen in the
foreseeable future. If they are right, the elements of a binary world order are in place, but a binary order
very different from the Cold War for multiple reasons.
• At the same time, the power gap between the two most powerful states on earth and the rest is not what
it was after WWII or during the Cold War. As a consequence, U.S.-China agreements are less effective
than they were in the 1970s and 1980s at managing issues in the Asia-Pacific. For instance, both China and
the U.S. profess an interest in denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, but they are unable and unlikely
to achieve this. Both Chinese and U.S. scholars downplay or ignore the fact that power is more evenly
distributed in the global system than before and that other powers have risen thanks to globalization.
Two decades of globalization have made them all more linked and dependent on the world economically,
technologically, and politically. As those rising powers seek to protect their expanded interests, they seek
partners in the system.
So, while temporary trade deals to limit the U.S. trade deficit are possible, they are unlikely to change the
fundamental competitive dynamic of the strategic relationship. Equally, U.S.-China relations will continue to
contain several cooperative elements. This is not another Cold War. The more other powers use China-U.S.
contention to increase their influence and power, the more common ground China and the U.S. will find on issues
peripheral to their interests.
2. China’s Rise Worries Her Neighbors and Other Powers

Yes, but …
• Their reaction is to hedge, balance, and bandwagon, all at the same time, rather than to contain or ally
against China’s rise. None of them want to choose between the U.S. and China. India, Japan, Australia,
Vietnam, and others in China’s periphery have all strengthened their defense, security, and intelligence
cooperation with the U.S. and between themselves. But they have all tried to do so without affecting their
ties with China. (That China has not been clever enough to use this is a different matter and a weakness in
China’s diplomacy.) The hesitant and nebulous nature of the Quad in both its incarnations, 2007-8 and after
2015, is proof of their sensitivity to their ties with China. U.S. allies and partners see a world where power
is shifting and where technology and globalization are accelerating the change. The dual uncertainty about
Chinese and U.S. behavior is what leads them to their current reactions.
• In the last two decades, China has replaced the U.S. as the most important trading and economic partner
of the Asian region, with the exceptions of Bhutan and Afghanistan. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI),
and the response of most countries including U.S. allies, is proof of the limits to what China’s neighbors,
other rising powers, and even established U.S. allies are willing to do in response to China’s recent behavior.
• Asian states are only reacting to the new situation that they see around them. Asia is now economically
multipolar. The military balance is overwhelmingly in favor of the U.S. but has been tilted against other
Asian powers by China’s military modernization and buildup over the last two decades. Asia is also heavily
nuclearized and is likely to be even more so in the foreseeable future. Nuclear-armed states will act more
independently. Extended deterrence in Asia is no longer as credible as before. Hence recent hedging and
balancing between the U.S. and China by stronger Asian powers, and bandwagoning with China by weaker
Asian powers.
• China’s neighbors are increasingly working together on defense, security, and intelligence. This is not just
a response to China, but a hedging occasioned by uncertainty about the future course of U.S. policy and
recent shifts away from the post-Cold War U.S. role as the provider of global public goods.
In other words, life is complex; get used to it.
3. The U.S. Should Work with Allies and Partners to Craft a Response to China
Indeed, it should. But what sort of response?
First, we need clarity on the goal. Is it to isolate China, to contain China, or to change Chinese behavior?
Can China be isolated or contained? To my mind it is beyond any power’s capability to contain or balance
China today. Not even the sole superpower, the U.S., could do so alone. Nor is it certain that the present U.S.
administration wishes to do so or has a clear strategic goal for where it wishes its relationship with China to be in
five or ten years.
It is also moot whether the U.S. with its allies and partners could isolate or contain China in the Asia-Pacific
and Eurasia. The Trump administration has hit upon the inconvenient and unacknowledged truth that we all
wish to retain our beneficial economic and trade ties with China, improving them where we can while limiting
the political and security impact of China’s rise. We wish to have our cake and eat it too. China does not share this
unrealistic expectation and is certainly not evolving in a direction that would make it possible.
There is, however, an important caveat. Such outcomes might come into play if China makes significant
mistakes or chooses to change its behavior. Both are possible but unlikely, and we cannot plan on that expectation.
By some accounts, China has already over-reached with the BRI, and the internal social and economic condition
cannot sustain its ambitious and assertive regional and global goals. That remains to be seen. Nevertheless, it
is hard to foresee China’s external behavior changing unless the leadership sees change as serving the Chinese
Communist Party’s fundamental interest in continued single-party rule and regime stability.
Today, neither isolation nor containment is a reasonable goal for a response to China. Moderating Chinese
behavior, on the other hand, is a practical goal. Our aim should remain to change and influence China’s behavior
where necessary while accommodating its legitimate interests where we can.
This is not an outcome that is likely to result from transactional negotiations, short-term deals, episodic
pressure, or staged events. Nor will strategies so far announced or practiced by the U.S., its allies, or partners like
India produce this result. None of them have been sufficiently resourced, implemented, or coordinated to be
credible or effective—not the Quad, not the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy, nor any of the other catch
phrases that are now making the rounds.
Besides, in a world where power is more evenly distributed, the U.S. needs allies, but more than allies it needs
partners. Partners with congruent interests, or “aligned partners,” are more valuable for they will do of their own
accord what the U.S. wishes to see, will not depend on the U.S. for their security, and will enable the U.S. to work
within the largest possible international coalition for its purposes. The U.S. should be working with allies who can
pull their weight in a common purpose. Interestingly, the new authoritarians now in power in Asia, for all their
faults, are at least predictable in their behavior as potential allies and partners.
An effective response to China’s rise and recent behavior would include the following:
• It would go beyond the maritime strategy outlined for the Indo-Pacific to include the Asian continent and
Eurasia. The FOIP strategy implicitly concedes the continent to China and leaves Russia and the states on
the continent with no options but to work with China. Russia is a potential swing state and balancer that
the West (except President Trump) seems to have discarded from its calculations.
• It would multilateralize parts of the present U.S. hub-and-spokes defense and security arrangements in the
Asia-Pacific. Plurilateral arrangements would be politically easier for other countries to participate in.
• It would build issue-based coalitions of the willing on specific security issues: maritime security in the
Indian Ocean region, freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, cybersecurity, crisis management,
counter-terrorism, etc. Such diplomacy would also conform to the present balance of power in Asia.
• It would include China in the response to larger global challenges such as the global trading system, climate
change, and non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as none of them can be addressed without it.
• It would have in its strategy an economic and trade base. U.S. strategy in East and Southeast Asia in the
1980s and 1990s had that base and therefore succeeded beyond expectations. That situation is no longer
true. There is still considerable economic potential to be tapped as part of a broader China strategy. Japan’s
investment and commitment to connectivity and other projects in Southeast Asia is more than the total
Chinese commitments under the BRI. India, Australia, and Indonesia can do much more with other Asia-
Pacific countries. It is the linkage and integration of defense, security, and other ties with economic links
that gives Chinese policy in Myanmar, Korea, and elsewhere an edge today and provokes the reactions that
we see.
• The framing of the response is important, particularly at a time of uncertainty caused by a shifting global
power structure accelerated by globalization and technology. Referencing race with statements such as
“Chinese are not Caucasian” or describing U.S.-China relations as a clash of civilizations is not helpful or
conducive to the coalition politics required by the present situation.
• Most of all, the response requires diplomacy that is patient and persistent, is strategic and coherent, shapes
the environment, understands others—including China—and harnesses them to further common interests.
4. Case in Point—India
India has been hailed every few years as “a central partner in U.S. efforts to balance rising Chinese power.” This
is not just a twenty-first century phenomenon. It began in the mid-twentieth century under the Eisenhower and
Kennedy administrations. However, the surge in U.S.-India partnerships is typically followed by “India fatigue” in
Washington and “Washington fatigue” in Delhi. We seem to be going through a similar dip today. Both sides have
imposed tariffs on each others’ goods. We have reduced India-U.S. relations to a unending set of demands, most
of them tactical and some meaningless: list Masood Azhar as a terrorist in the UN, get India Nuclear Suppliers
Group membership, restore the Generalized System of Preferences, restore H-1B visas, don’t buy S-400s from
Russia, don’t buy Iranian oil, don’t let Huawei in, buy U.S. fighter aircraft, impose zero tariffs on Harley Davidson
motorcycles, don’t enact new e-commerce rules, and so on. This is mostly petty stuff that fills a vacuum created
by an absence of strategic thinking about the relationship.
The conventional explanation for this phenomenon is exaggerated expectations on both sides, which is partly
true. India expects broad asymmetric investments in the relationship by the U.S., and the U.S. expects India to
behave as a U.S. ally without adjusting their China, Pakistan, Iran, or Russia policies to suit India’s interests. Nor is
there recognition on either side of India’s limited capabilities. There seems to be diminishing U.S. interest in seeing
the relationship in anything other than transactional terms of deals done, money made, and things sold. India is
not a big player in international trade, and the Trump administration’s actions and threats will only ensure that it
is even less so in the future. Protectionist sentiment, always high in the Bharatiya Janata Party and its supporters,
will be vindicated and further drive this Indian government’s policies. That is hardly the outcome that the U.S. (or
India) should aim for if India is to work with the U.S. in response to China.
For me, the issues with significance for the future, on which India and the U.S. are yet to see eye to eye, are data,
internet governance, and intellectual property rights. Today, Huawei is an issue between the two countries. Both
government and private networks in India are already heavily dependent on Huawei technology and equipment—
three-quarters of all private telecom service companies in India use cheaper and more efficient Huawei equipment.
India could potentially remove Chinese equipment in government networks, as the UK says it will, but those
networks will still connect to other networks that do. A satisfactory solution to this problem requires both India
and the U.S. to think beyond bans and sales.
A broader alignment between India and the U.S. is possible if the U.S. is willing to accept that “informal allies”
like India need a different template. India too needs to limit its expectations of the U.S., as no single ally can put
out fires in west Asia, Pakistan, the subcontinent, and Southeast Asia simultaneously. Today’s India-U.S. priority
should be to build on commonalities and concentrate on what should be the single most important issue for both
countries—a response to China.
This means that non-China-related issues (like Iran and Russian defense sales) should be detached from the
India-U.S. relationship. Today, neither India nor the U.S. behave as though China is their overwhelming priority, as,
say, the Soviet Union was for the U.S. during the Cold War. If China were its priority, India would not be cutting
off all channels to Pakistan and engaging in low-level hostilities with it, and the U.S. would not be pushing Russia
into a de facto alliance with China.
India could help the U.S. manage instability in Pakistan and Afghanistan and the Indian Ocean region. India
should be a willing and significant contributor and participant in the issue-based coalitions mentioned above.
The India-U.S. goal should be an aligned partnership, not binary choices between allies and adversaries, while
both work with China. The U.S. has multiple advantages over China, which could overcome the Indian elite’s
traditional preference for pure “equidistance.” While this may not be the traditional U.S. way, it is probably a more
realistic response to the present balance of power in Asia and a reflection of what our polities can carry. It would
also require continuous diplomacy, a commodity that seems to be in short supply the world over.
Shivshankar Menon is Visiting Professor at Ashoka University, India; Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Institute of Chinese Studies in New Delhi;
and a Distinguished Fellow of Brookings India. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the International Crisis Group. He previously served as
the Indian National Security Advisor, Foreign Secretary and Ambassador of India to China, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Israel. He is the author of Choices:
Inside the Making of Indian Foreign Policy.
The competition for influence will be subtle, nuanced, and long term, with neither
Washington nor Beijing likely to score a decisive victory that would irreversibly change
the alignments of critical states.
—KURT CAMPBELL
Chapter 6 | How Asia Navigates the U.S.-China Rivalry 67
How Asia Navigates the U.S.-China Rivalry
Kurt Campbell
Introduction
As the era of engagement comes to a close, the U.S.-China relationship has, with remarkable and dizzying
speed, deteriorated to perhaps its lowest ebb since normalization in 1979. For the foreseeable future, the defining
characteristic of the relationship is likely to be intensifying competition across a wide range of policy domains.
Disputes over trade, technology, territorial waters, and China’s political trajectory under Xi have merged to bring
us to this point, producing an unstable and combustible relationship that Asia is now watching warily. For the
region’s states, a position of exquisite balance between the two vying superpowers is a pose that is difficult to
sustain; nevertheless, when Asian states are asked whether they will choose the United States or China in this test
of titans, the most common answer across the region is simply, “both.”
To compound matters, not only have Sino-American relations become more contentious, but the very nature
of policy making is changing in both capitals. Although these shifts are largely unrelated to the larger Sino-
American tensions, they are nonetheless exacerbating them. President Xi has emerged as the lone arbiter of policy
in China after systematically deconstructing the mostly moderating features of collective leadership. President
Trump views the “operating system” that the United States has painstakingly labored to create and sustain over
decades—weaving trade, diplomacy, defense, and fledgling institutions into a stabilizing framework—as less a sail
that has propelled the United States forward but more an anchor that has pulled America down.
The sudden reemergence of intense geopolitical competition has left analysts harkening back to the last
great power contest to make sense of the present one. References to a new “Cold War” are proliferating, but the
associated intellectual residue of that bygone era actually harms U.S. efforts in Asia. Asia today is a far cry from
Europe forty years ago, and it lacks neatly delineated lines that separate rival ideological blocs. Indeed, there is no
discernable Berlin Wall or “Checkpoint Charlie.” Asian countries are not monoliths, and the lines of demarcation
run not along the borders but often through capitals and corporate boardrooms. Increasingly, Asia is a contested
and blended region that remains deeply in flux. And even as Washington and Beijing increasingly pressure states
to align with them on a variety of policies, Asian nations have taken opportunities to maneuver between them.
Rivalry and Autonomy in a Contested Asia

Although the emerging standoff between Washington and Beijing is far from the existential stakes and nuclear
brinksmanship of the Cold War, there is little question that the bilateral relationship is increasingly rivalrous. In
October 2018, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence gave a stinging indictment of China’s behavior and declared that
President Trump “will not back down” from the threat that Beijing poses. This stubborn approach is apparent across
U.S. agencies: the Justice Department is prosecuting Chinese citizens accused of technology theft; the Committee
on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) is scrutinizing Chinese investments in U.S. companies; and
the Defense Department is reorienting to address the new great power threat that China poses. On Capitol Hill,
Democrats and Republicans who are bitterly divided on most issues nonetheless find common cause on China—
with members of both parties occasionally criticizing the Trump administration for being too lenient, especially on
issues related to the U.S. government’s campaign against Chinese telecommunications provider Huawei. Against
this backdrop is the continuing U.S.-China trade war, which probably puts a ceiling on the bilateral relationship.
Despite multiple summits between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, and repeated lower-level
negotiations, a fundamental, far-reaching trade deal seems unlikely.
On the other side of the Pacific, Chinese President Xi Jinping has taken China in a more confrontational
direction, hastening the collision with U.S. interests and values. On the political level, he has made it clear that
China will not pursue even moderate liberalization and will instead invest in perfecting the technologies behind
a new and virulent digital authoritarianism. On the economic level, President Xi has recommitted China to its
state-led industrial policy model and allowed intensified cyber-theft against U.S. companies. And at the security
level, President Xi has accelerated China’s blue-water modernization, constructed islands in the South China
Sea, meddled consistently in the domestic politics of neighboring states, and used military coercion short of war
against China’s neighbors in territorial disputes—notably Vietnam and the Philippines. These are the actions of a
more bold if not openly brash rising power, and they suggest that the pressures on the old model of Sino-American
relations comes from both sides of the Pacific.
The intensifying Sino-American rivalry has revealed that Asia is in many ways an increasingly contested region
with an uncertain political future, which has affected Asian autonomy in complex and sometimes paradoxical ways.
On some issues, Asian states see an opportunity in playing Beijing and Washington off one another in an effort
to extract better terms on infrastructure financing or security cooperation. But on other issues, Asian states have
seen their freedom to maneuver sharply reduced as Washington and Beijing become more comfortable wielding
pressure to force alignment with their priorities. Perhaps the clearest American cases are Washington’s assertive
campaign to persuade Asian states to exclude Huawei from building telecommunications infrastructure as well as
its lobbying efforts against the Belt and Road Initiative and, even earlier, the Asia Infrastructure and Investment
Bank (AIIB). For its part, China has aggressively lobbied countries throughout Southeast Asia to minimize collective
efforts to challenge Beijing’s claims in the South China Sea—essentially neutralizing the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations (ASEAN) as an effective multilateral body along the way (“splitting us like a cord of wood” is how
one senior Southeast Asian diplomat put it). Most recently, both the U.S. and China sought to mobilize competing
coalitions of states to either condemn or defend China’s camps in Xinjiang.
It is important to note that although both Washington and Beijing are dialing up the pressure on Asian states,
they are often pursuing different approaches to do so. The United States’ strategy is often more public and
confrontational, loudly encouraging countries to join its efforts against China and sometimes linking key benefits
(e.g., intelligence cooperation) to their choices. China’s strategy is less public and arguably more sophisticated
because it involves the multifaceted use of diplomatic channels, influence efforts, and quiet pressure through
issue-linkage. Despite a more subtle overall approach, Beijing is in some cases becoming increasingly comfortable
with open pressure. The detention of two Canadians—former diplomat Michael Kovrig and businessman Michael
Spavor—over Ottawa’s compliance with Washington’s request to extradite Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng
Wanzhou is an example of Beijing’s interest in more conspicuous punishment. So too is China’s growing willingness
to embrace coercive economic statecraft, including against South Korea, Canada, and nearly a dozen other states.
How have Asian states responded to the opportunities and constraints created by an intensifying U.S.-China
rivalry? Asia is a diverse region comprised of over three billion people and a wide variety of differing political
systems, historical backgrounds, cultural traditions, geostrategic circumstances, and economic structures—
accordingly, there is no singular “Asian” response to cope with the arrival of a U.S.-China strategic rivalry.
Based on their responses, Asian states can be divided into roughly four broad, if somewhat imperfect, categories.
The first category consists of the “balancers,” notably Japan, India, Australia, and Vietnam, all of whom have
strong reservations about China. Despite seeking closer ties with the United States, these countries continue
to hedge against U.S. unreliability through investments in themselves and ties with their neighbors. The second
group consists of the “swing states” of maritime Southeast Asia. These states have fewer troubles with China than
the “balancers” and are able to play Washington and Beijing off each other more effectively for better benefits. The
third group consists of the “reluctant bandwagoners” of continental Southeast Asia. Despite a desire for greater
autonomy, these states are constrained given China’s geographic proximity and are falling under its encompassing
sphere of influence. The fourth set of states includes unique outliers like South Korea and the Philippines, whose
approaches are more idiosyncratic given their respective political circumstances.
The Balancers—The Quad States and Vietnam

With the region caught between the United States and China, the balancers all share difficult relations with
Beijing but match this with a refusal to surrender their interests to China even amid growing concerns over U.S.
reliability. These states are the least likely to visibly bandwagon with Beijing and the most inclined to pursue
balancing.
The Quad is Australia, India, Japan, and the United States and has occasionally met on the sidelines of major
summits. Like an aging rock band, there have occasionally been long stretches between appearances. The Quad
was not explicitly designed to balance China’s influence but is nonetheless seen as an anti-China grouping by
Beijing. Vietnam is not a member of the Quad, but it is accumulating political influence in Southeast Asia and
similarly views China’s power with skepticism and occasional alarm.
These states do not approach their alignments with Washington and Beijing entirely in a vacuum; historical
context, cultural connections, and longstanding rivalries animate the fundamental decisions of each state. For
instance, among a certain strain of Japanese nationalists, there is a sense of resentment toward the United States
for its handling of Japan’s postwar status; toward China, there is a deep and growing anxiety about an Asia in
which Japan would play a secondary role. For India, there is a compatible sense of suspicion and envy toward
China, but for a certain group of prominent Indians, including the fading postcolonial Nehruvians and the rising
Hindu nationalists, there remains a matching wariness toward the United States. For Australia, the dominant
feature animating its attitudes toward global politics is its geographic and almost existential distance from the
great powers. Toward China, Australia continues to have a strong commercial and, at times, romantic draw that
is balanced by a deep historical regard for the United States based on culture and a shared history of standing
together in every major conflict over the last century. Finally, the Vietnamese have a centuries-long history of
complications and conflict with China that in some ways overshadows—but cannot fully dislodge—the more
proximate and searing experience of war with the United States.
As uncomfortable as these states are with Sino-American rivalry, the situation has ushered in a period of
remarkable maneuvering for Canberra, Delhi, Hanoi, and Tokyo. These states have sought to cultivate and
flatter President Trump where possible and have avoided directly challenging him even when their own interests
are threatened by new and unpredictable turns in U.S. policy. If there is one uniform “Asian” response, it is this
tendency to tread carefully around President Trump. But given concerns about U.S. unreliability, these four have
also worked to build ties with other similarly situated states—and especially each other—to proactively shape
their strategic situations and at times have even pursued quiet outreach to China. A paradox of the Sino-American
rivalry is that the middle powers have accumulated greater influence and room to maneuver, and their actions
have likely temporarily stabilized some features of the region’s great power politics.
Japan
Perhaps more than any other leader, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has developed a nuanced approach to
the new strategic circumstances emanating from the U.S.-China rivalry.
The core of Prime Minister Abe’s approach is to maintain close ties to the United States, including through
deeply personal touches. For example, Prime Minister Abe eschewed traditional norms by meeting with then
President-elect Trump in Trump Tower and gifting him a gold golf driver. (A senior Asian diplomat likened the
search for extravagant gifts that President Trump might approve of to “laying baskets of fruit before the volcano.”)
Since this initial, unorthodox offering, Prime Minister Abe has visited with President Trump multiple times in
his search to find areas of common cause, particularly on North Korea and China. The approach has had mixed
success. President Trump has spent more time in relaxed settings with Prime Minister Abe than any other leader,
but the Trump administration has also imposed tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from Japan and is considering
far more consequential tariffs on auto parts as well, even over stiff Japanese protests.
Wary of overreliance on an unpredictable American president, another key component of Japan’s approach has
been to proactively shape the region’s security and economic dynamics and boost its own independent capacity
for action. This has even meant sustaining elements of pre-Trump American strategy—including resuscitating the
Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) after the U.S. withdrawal—in the hope that the United States might slowly return to
its previous patterns of engagement. It has also meant using institutions like the G20 to push for higher regulatory
standards in infrastructure and technology in response to Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative. Japan has also sought
to improve ties with other powers, including the other Quad states and Vietnam, by deepening cooperation across
the full range of policy domains, especially security. Finally, in pursuit of greater freedom to maneuver, Japan has
sought to bolster its own defense spending by pursuing more offensive capabilities (including aerial refueling and
longer-range strike capacity). While some of these investments are complementary with current U.S. systems in
the region, many of them are redundant, suggesting a desire to pursue more independent capacities over time.
A final component of Prime Minister Abe’s regional strategy has been to pursue improved relations with
China, including through breakthrough accords with President Xi that will strengthen bilateral ties between the
two states. The two countries have discussed cooperation on some Belt and Road projects; meanwhile, Japanese
trade with China grew substantially in 2017 and 2018 before stalling in 2019. Despite lingering security tensions,
both countries see an advantage in a modest rapprochement given the uncertainty of their respective relations
with the United States.
India
India’s response to Sino-American rivalry shares some features with Japan’s, but its circumstances are arguably
more challenging given that it has no formal alliance with the United States and that it shares a long-contested border
with China. Like Japan, India under Prime Minister Modi has embraced closer ties with the United States, tightened
relations with other regional states, and pursued a broader improvement in its relationship to Beijing. And yet, New
Delhi is removed from East Asia and its flashpoints. Consequently, India can afford to pursue a more nuanced position
that primarily challenges Beijing most consequentially in continental South Asia and the Indian Ocean.
Like Prime Minister Abe, Prime Minister Modi believes that building a strong working relationship with
President Trump is essential. After President Trump’s election, Modi publicly embraced “Make America Great
Again” as a slogan similar to his vision for “New India,” and the two have met regularly since. Although this
personal diplomacy has brought some success on issues ranging from defense cooperation to counterterrorism,
as in Japan’s case, personal touches did not prevent President Trump from terminating India’s benefits under the
Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) or tightening H-1B enforcement. At the same time, Indian policy in
Kashmir has led to criticism from Capitol Hill—though not the executive branch—that has further complicated
the U.S.-India relationship and left some Hindu nationalists increasingly wary of the United States.
Prime Minister Modi shares with Prime Minister Abe a belief that U.S. unpredictability requires India to
increasingly make its own way in the Indo-Pacific. Modi dramatically increased India’s engagement with its
neighbors—especially those that had courted Chinese influence and beneficence, such as Sri Lanka and the
Maldives. Modi has similarly significantly increased defense ties with Southeast Asian states like Vietnam, Indonesia,
and Malaysia, and he has rejoined the Quad while pursuing steadily growing cooperation with Japan and India on
security and economic matters.
India has also pushed back on China’s assertiveness more quietly but firmly than any other Asian country (with
Vietnam close behind), though these efforts are confined almost entirely to its home region. Indian and Chinese
forces wage an almost daily “grey zone” conflict on the Sino-Indian border. India refuses to back down from the
skirmishes, and in 2017, the two sides came close to open conflict in an obscure region called Doklam. India
has also pushed previously China-friendly governments in Sri Lanka and the Maldives to pursue greater political
equidistance and has handsomely rewarded pro-Indian successors in both countries. And like Japan, India has
sought to improve its own defense capabilities so that it might independently deter Chinese adventurism. Prime
Minister Modi has increased defense spending, including by 6.6 percent in 2019, and has purchased a wide array of
technology from states around the world. Finally, U.S. sanctions on Russia mean that purchases of Russian defense
equipment risk incurring heavy sanctions; nevertheless, India has been unfazed by this possibility and proceeded
to purchase essential Russian equipment, including its S-400 air defense system, which could complicate some
defense cooperation with the United States.
India’s regional focus, its concerns over American leadership, and its desire to avoid being pulled into a wider
Sino-American rivalry has led it to also seek improved relations with Beijing. Perhaps the largest breakthrough
in China-India ties came in April 2018 when Xi hosted Modi in Wuhan—an informal summit that allowed the
countries to reset ties after a difficult 2017. The two leaders met in Bishkek on the sidelines of the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization summit in June 2019 and again in Mamallapuram in October 2019.
Australia
Australia enjoys the advantages of distance when contemplating the contours of increased U.S.-China rivalry.
On the one hand, China is a preferred export destination and an increasingly dominant player in the surrounding
region. Recent revelations, however, over Chinese influence in Australian politics have complicated the larger
relationship. On the other hand, Australia enjoys strong defense and intelligence cooperation with the United
States, which has helped anchor the country to the West for the last century.
Canberra has sought to avoid any overt choice between the United States and China. Like India and Japan,
Australia has sought a closer relationship with Washington—though with varying degrees of success. Most recently,
and after his surprise election last year, Prime Minister Scott Morrison sought to establish a strong rapport with
President Trump—a relationship that his predecessor, Malcolm Turnbull, struggled to develop after a rocky phone
call shortly after Trump’s inauguration. In September 2018, Prime Minister Morrison lauded President Trump
as a “very practical leader,” praising the president’s ability to connect with Americans who have not enjoyed
the benefits of globalization. The flattery seems to have paid off, and President Trump invited Prime Minister
Morrison for a state visit in September 2019, making Morrison the first Australian prime minister to receive the
honor since 2006.
In contrast to India and Japan, Australia’s relationship with China has been more profoundly and publicly
intertwined with domestic politics, scandal, and concerns over Chinese influence operations. These issues retained
a relatively low profile until 2016-2017, when Australian Senator Sam Dastyari was found to have accepted
contributions from and offered counter-surveillance advice to donors connected to China. Journalists began to
document how Australia’s relatively permissive election financing regime had allowed China to shape Australian
politics, and in response, Australian legislators passed sweeping anti-influence laws—a rare example of a state
with close economic ties standing up to Beijing’s assertive behavior. Relations with China deteriorated shortly
thereafter in public, with Beijing cutting Australian coal imports. Driven in large part by its concern over Chinese
influence, Australia effectively banned Huawei from participation in the country’s telecommunications systems.
Just as Japan and India have more purposefully engaged the region in the aftermath of intensifying rivalry,
so too has Canberra—particularly with the Pacific Islands. Growing Australian concern over China’s influence
in these strategically located states has led Prime Minister Morrison to launch a multidimensional campaign to
increase Australian engagement with them, especially given fears of a future Chinese military base there.
With less success than Japan and India, Australia has sought to improve its relationship with China following
these disputes—including through a new multi-stakeholder effort to engage China across government and private
domains. The imperative is largely economic: China’s trade with Australia dwarfs the combined value of Australia’s
trade with the United States and Japan, and nearly one-third of all Australian exports go to China. Although these
exports create a dependence on Beijing, the relationship is not entirely asymmetric because Beijing cannot easily
locate other ready sources for crucial commodities to power its industrial engine.
Canberra has also sought to bolster its own defenses, pursued greater cooperation with Japan and India
(including through the Quad), and pursued a multi-year effort to increase defense spending to 2 percent of its
GDP by 2021.
Vietnam
Vietnam and China have a long and troubled history dating back centuries that manifested more recently in the
Sino-Vietnamese War of 1979 and the ongoing skirmishes in the South China Sea. In 2014, protests over China’s
deployment of an oil rig in contested waters turned deadly, with Chinese and even Taiwanese factories inside
Vietnam attacked by rioters.
Given these tensions, Vietnam has generally sought closer ties with the United States, and defense cooperation
has expanded dramatically in recent years. Under President Nguyễn Phú Trọng’s leadership, Hanoi has strengthened
its relationship with President Trump, hosted the U.S. president’s second summit with Kim Jong-un, and even
opposed Huawei’s participation in the country’s telecommunications networks. And yet, Vietnam retains some
ambivalence toward the United States, fearing that Washington’s support for liberal values and human rights
could at some point pose a more existential threat to the regime than China. That same wariness extends to the
economic domain, where Vietnam is heavily reliant on the U.S. as an export market and investor and has benefited
enormously from the U.S.-China trade war, which has rerouted supply chains to Vietnam, boosted the country’s
exports, and could add more than 2 percent to its GDP. Against that opportunity, the Trump administration’s
criticism about currency and trade could curtail what Vietnam sees as a unique economic moment.
To hedge against these risks, Vietnam has looked across the region. It has increased security ties with Japan
and India and invested in its own defense capabilities. It has remained in the TPP despite the U.S. withdrawal, in
part to diversify its economic options. And it has also pursued closer ties with China. Both countries have handled
the July crisis in the South China Sea—during which a Chinese survey vessel joined by Chinese Coast Guard ships
entered disputed waters—with a degree of restraint. Vietnam has pursued steadily closer defense exchanges and
joint patrols with China’s military, all of which is intended to improve bilateral ties.
The Swing States—Maritime Southeast Asia

In contrast to the balancers, the “swing states”—especially Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Brunei—all
have fewer significant disputes with Beijing and maximal freedom to maneuver in the U.S.-China rivalry. Whereas
the balancers are in many ways players in the strategic competition between the United States and China, the
maritime states (as well as the continental states) are perhaps the object of Sino-American competition. Indeed,
these states sit astride critical trade routes and boast vibrant or growing economies.
Though these states have all adopted different approaches for dealing with the U.S.-China rivalry, they have
generally shared three common features. First, these “swing states” are essentially trading states, and their
prosperity will depend not only on their security and the safety of the region’s waterways, but also on the relative
openness of the regional and global economic system. Accordingly, states like Brunei, Singapore, and Malaysia
continued on with TPP even after Washington left the negotiations. Like Japan, many of these countries hope that
the United States may rejoin the pact. But even absent direct U.S. participation, the restored TPP (renamed the
Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, or CPTPP) provides an opportunity for
these countries to send a signal to China that they expect the continuation of a rules-based operating system, even
if the United States is unwilling to fully support it for the moment.
Second, these states—notably Malaysia and Indonesia—are looking to avoid major disputes with China over
their contested sovereignty claims in the South China Sea. While Beijing continues to militarize parts of the
disputed waterways, the maritime states have sought to avoid conflict with China. Instead, they have relied on
freedom of navigation patrols from the United States and other countries to send a message to China that these
moves are destabilizing. As U.S.-China competition increases, these countries may need to make more overt
decisions about what they are willing to sacrifice for these claims and how vocal they are willing to be.
Third, these states have been better able than most others to harness the opportunities that strategic rivalry
offers. Despite concerns about China’s behavior in the South China Sea, they recognize that China is a vital trading
partner as well as a critical investor through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which President Xi himself announced
during a 2013 visit to Indonesia as a way of solving Asian connectivity challenges. The BRI has at times seemed
inexorable and relentless—backed by a notional USD 1 trillion in infrastructure financing—but it has often failed
to live up to some of its lofty ambitions, as overpriced and substandard projects in places like Malaysia and Sri
Lanka come to light. Problems of graft, low standards, high-interest loans, and poor follow-through have afflicted
many BRI projects. Yet, these setbacks—especially within the context of U.S.-China rivalry—offer Southeast Asian
maritime states some maneuverability in extracting concessions.
Most notably, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad suspended the construction of the BRI-
financed East Coast Rail Link shortly after coming to power last year. And yet, once Beijing agreed to a 30 percent
reduction in the cost of the previously USD 20 billion rail line, Prime Minister Mahathir reversed his suspension.
In April 2019, speaking at the BRI Forum in Beijing, Mahathir pledged his “full support” for the BRI.
Other states have been able to benefit from U.S. efforts, however modest, to match Beijing’s BRI. Washington’s
infrastructure plan for the Indo-Pacific was unveiled in July 2018 and involves the Overseas Private Investment
Corporation (OPIC), an agency that will support digital economy, energy, and infrastructure investments around
the Indo-Pacific. Although these efforts and China’s BRI together offer states more choices, there is some evidence
that some countries (e.g., Sri Lanka) are at times reluctant to accept assistance from one state for fear of angering
the other.
The Reluctant Bandwagoners—Continental Southeast Asia

States in continental Southeast Asia have a limited ability to move outside of China’s orbit, especially as they
continue to play substantial roles in Beijing’s BRI. Although they share with the region’s maritime swing states a
degree of concern about China’s behavior and the growing competition between China and the United States,
they are generally less developed and more dependent on China and therefore unable to as effectively navigate
some of the opportunities that the current rivalry could provide. Some states, notably Cambodia and Laos, have
fallen largely within China’s sphere of influence, making concerted outreach to the United States challenging.
Others, like Myanmar and Thailand, have greater independence but behave as if they do not, in part because
tensions with the West over the treatment of minorities or democratic backsliding complicate their options. Taken
together, the states increasingly appear to be bandwagoners, albeit reluctant ones.
Geography in particular has forced the continental states, even more so than the maritime states, to proceed
cautiously as U.S.-China tension grows. For example, Chinese dams on the Mekong River have significantly
disrupted Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam’s food security, with the Lower Mekong dam network reducing fish
populations by almost 50 percent. As worrying as the situation already is now, these states realize that China’s
control of dams in the Tibetan Plateau and Yunnan make a rift with China politically unwise. Beijing will have the
advantage of geography in any Southeast Asian influence competition with Washington.
Moreover, both Chinese private and public investment in continental Southeast Asia has made China a more
attractive partner than the United States in many states. Through the BRI, Beijing has ambitious plans in the region
that will strengthen its own influence networks and that could provide sorely needed connectivity. For example,
Kunming-Singapore railway (also referred to as the Pan-Asia railway) would run through all of the continental
states in Southeast Asia.
Finally, while many in the region view these states as hopelessly behind Chinese lines, they all desire more
engagement from Washington. Continental ASEAN states traditionally welcome U.S. investment, especially amid
concerns about the strings attached to Chinese funds, and have tried to shape the region’s affairs when possible.
This year, as the rotating chair of ASEAN, Thailand has sought to sharpen the institution’s role in developing an
Indo-Pacific strategy that would keep Southeast Asia in the center of the region’s politics. Although these efforts
are unlikely to be successful, they demonstrate a desire to cultivate more vivid strategic options.
The Outliers—South Korea and the Philippines

As in all complex circumstances, some countries in the region fail to fit neatly into clear categorizations. Both
South Korea and the Philippines have approached the new strategic climate differently due to their respective
political situations.
South Korea
Under President Moon Jae-in, South Korea’s overriding focus has not been on the U.S.-China strategic rivalry—
though some of the country’s multinational firms may benefit from trade diversion away from China. The Blue
House has instead been focused on how to effectively build bridges to North Korea. Because of Washington’s
influence over this issue, President Moon has had to prioritize maintaining a positive relationship with President
Trump. President Moon helped convince President Trump to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. After
the collapse of the second such summit with Kim in Vietnam, President Moon flew out to Washington to advocate
against abandoning the fledgling diplomatic effort.
As with other Asian states, South Korea does share some concerns about U.S. reliability relating to President
Trump’s tough talk on trade and his insistence that South Korea pay a greater share of the costs for basing U.S.
troops within the country. As part of its hedging strategy, and to improve its ability to handle North Korea, South
Korea has looked to maintain good ties with Beijing even as the U.S.-China rivalry intensifies. At the start of his
term, President Moon said that his government would not deploy an additional Terminal High Altitude Area
Defense (THAAD) system or agree to an integrated missile defense network with the United States—concessions
to Beijing that were intended to bolster South Korea’s meager ties with China. But even after these soft attempts
to hedge, diplomacy with China remained tense. For instance, despite Seoul’s willingness to prevent another
THAAD deployment, Beijing has continued to ban group tours to South Korea—one of the penalties that it
initially imposed after President Moon’s predecessor agreed to install a THAAD system.
The Philippines
Unlike other maritime Southeast Asian states that sought to avoid offending Washington or Beijing, Philippine
President Rodrigo Duterte has vacillated between ingratiating President Xi and assuaging Washington—at times
unnecessarily offending both. The country’s foreign policy has appeared to be more a product of Duterte’s
mercurial, personality-based approach to diplomacy than any clear and consistent overriding strategic sense or
logic in dealing with the U.S.-China rivalry.
In contrast to his rocky relationship with the Obama administration, President Duterte has praised President
Trump, even serenading him with a Philippine love ballad during President Trump’s November 2017 trip to the
region. At the same time, he has denigrated U.S. alliances and aggressively courted China even to the point of
risking Philippine interests. For example, although the Philippines initiated the United Nations Convention on the
Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) arbitration case against China, which it won in 2016, President Duterte has downplayed
his own country’s claims in order to improve ties with Beijing. In June 2019, his government determined that
China’s sinking of a Philippine boat in Reed Bank, which endangered the lives of twenty-two crew members, was
simply a maritime mishap and not worthy of a robust response.
Forced to Choose?
In the current stage of the U.S.-China rivalry, Asia remains a contested region that is in flux, with the lines
of competition running as much within countries as between them. The competition for influence will be
subtle, nuanced, and long term, with neither Washington nor Beijing likely to score a decisive victory that would
irreversibly change the alignments of critical states.
For now, the balancers are likely to resist Beijing’s assertiveness but carefully hedge against U.S. unreliability
by working with each other, strengthening their independent capacities, and carefully managing relations with
China. Southeast Asia’s maritime swing states will continue to maneuver for advantage, while its continental
bandwagoner states will struggle to balance their engagements between China and the United States. Finally,
outlier states like South Korea and the Philippines will see their response to the U.S.-China rivalry driven by
overriding domestic concerns or competing international priorities.
In the period ahead, the intensifying U.S.-China rivalry will affect every Asian country. There will be opportunities
to extract concessions from Washington and Beijing, but in other cases, Washington and Beijing may endeavor to
force a choice. It has long been a truism of the region’s politics that Asian states would not choose a side; whether
that precept continues in the next decade will be the driving question behind Asian politics for the period ahead.
Kurt M. Campbell is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of The Asia Group, LLC, a strategic advisory and capital management group specializing in
the dynamic Asia-Pacific region. He also serves as Chairman of the Board of the Center for a New American Security, as a non-resident Fellow at Harvard
University’s Belfer Center, as Vice Chairman of the East-West Center in Hawaii, and as an external Director on the Lixil Board. He was also appointed as
the Henry A. Kissinger Fellow at the McCain Institute for 2018-19. From 2009 to 2013, he served as the Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific
Affairs, where he is widely credited as being a key architect of the “pivot to Asia.” For advancing a comprehensive U.S. strategy that took him to every
corner of the Asia-Pacific region, Secretary Hillary Clinton awarded him the Secretary of State’s Distinguished Service Award (2013) — the nation’s highest
diplomatic honor. Dr. Campbell was recognized in the Queen’s New Year’s list of honors in 2014 as an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia and as
an Honorary Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit for his work in support of American relations with Australia and New Zealand respectively.
He also received top national honors from Korea and Taiwan. Dr. Campbell is a contributor to the Financial Times of London and the author or editor of
ten books, most recently The Pivot: The Future of American Statecraft in Asia (Twelve Books, 2016). Dr. Campbell is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group.
Never before in history has a rising power ascended so far, so fast, on so many different
dimensions.
—GRAHAM ALLISON
Chapter 7 | The U.S.-China Strategic Competition 79
The U.S.-China Strategic Competition:

Clues from History
Graham Allison
C hurchill observed that the further back one can look, the farther ahead one can see. To help the Aspen
Strategy Group look ahead to prescriptions for the U.S. in the current strategic competition with China, the
organizers asked me to look back at previous great power rivalries. Specifically, they assigned me two Applied
History questions:
• “What are the lessons from history we should be aware of when two great powers collide?”
• “What should the U.S. learn from these to shape its policies on China?”
Since these questions are discussed at length in my book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape
Thucydides’s Trap? (2017), the organizers asked me to provide a succinct summary of key takeaways from the book
that may be helpful in analyzing the strategic-military dimension of this relationship today. This paper begins
with that overview, followed by a brief analysis of the current strategic-military competition, and concludes with
provocative questions.
Overview
In brief, consider five questions:
1. What is the Big Idea?
2. Tectonics: What has happened to the relative power of the U.S. and China since the unipolar moment at
the end of the Cold War?
3. Are confrontation and competition inevitable?
4. Is war—real bloody war that could become World War III—inevitable?
5. While today’s Washington and Beijing are stumbling toward great power conflict, could statesmen find a
way to escape Thucydides’s Trap?
Out of respect for the preferred form of communication in Washington today, I begin with a tweet-sized
answer to each.
The big idea comes from Thucydides. Why has China’s aspiration for a “peaceful rise,” and previous American
administrations’ hope that China would follow in the footsteps of Germany and Japan and take its place as a “responsible
stakeholder” in an American-led international order, been upended? In a phrase, the answer is: Thucydides’s Trap.
China is a meteoric rising power. The U.S. is a colossal ruling power. When a rising power threatens to displace a
ruling power, alarm bells should sound: extreme danger ahead. In the last sixteen cases this has happened, twelve
ended in war. As Henry Kissinger has argued, Thucydides’s Trap offers the best lens available for looking through the
noise and news of the day to the underlying dynamic in the relationship between the U.S. and China.
What has happened to the relative power of the U.S. and China since the U.S. victory in the Cold War introduced
what most of the American national security establishment thought would be a unipolar era? In two words: a
tectonic shift. Never before in history has a rising power ascended so far, so fast, on so many different dimensions.
Never before has a ruling power seen its relative position change so dramatically, so quickly.1 To paraphrase
former Czech President Václav Havel, things have happened so fast that we have not yet had time to be astonished.
Are confrontation and competition inevitable? Yes. As China realizes Xi Jinping’s dream to “make China great
again,” it will inevitably encroach on positions and prerogatives Americans have come to believe are naturally
our own. As Americans feel China growing into what we have come to think of as “our” space, they will become
increasingly alarmed and push back. The hope that this is just a Trumpian detour is an illusion.
Is war—real bloody war—inevitable? No. To repeat: no. If American and Chinese leaders settle for statecraft as
usual, they should expect history as usual—and that could mean war, even a Third World War. But if we recognize
how catastrophic such a war could be, and understand how such rivalries have so often ended in war, strategists
and statesmen can follow in the footsteps of predecessors who have risen above history as usual.
In the three years since my manuscript went to the publisher, I’ve been searching for a way to escape Thucydides’s
Trap. At this point, I’ve identified nine potential “avenues of escape”—none yet so compelling that I’m ready to
fully embrace it. About one thing, however, I am certain. There is no monopoly of strategic wisdom on this issue
in Washington or in Beijing—or in Cambridge!
Several more paragraphs of explanation and argument may be in order. Members of the Aspen Strategy Group
hardly need to be reminded of Thucydides. As the founder of history and author of The History of the Peloponnesian
War, Thucydides analyzed the causes of the war that destroyed the two great city-states of classical Greece. About that
war, he wrote famously: “It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.”
Thucydides’s Trap is a term I coined a decade ago to make vivid Thucydides’s insight. Thucydides’s Trap is
the dangerous dynamic that occurs when a rising power (like Athens, Germany a century ago, or China today)
threatens to displace a ruling power (like Sparta, Great Britain, or the U.S. today). In these conditions, both
parties become especially vulnerable to third-party provocations or even accidents. Remember 1914, when the
assassination of an archduke sparked a fire that ended up burning down the houses of all the great states of
Europe. In the dangerous Thucydidean dynamic, misperceptions are magnified, miscalculations multiplied, and
risks of escalation amplified. Extraneous events that would otherwise be manageable compel one or the other to
react, triggering a vicious cycle of reactions that can drag them into a war that neither wanted.
As Thucydides explains, this dangerous dynamic is driven by three factors: material reality, psychology, and
politics. At the material level, China really is rising and encroaching on positions and prerogatives Americans have
come to believe are naturally ours. Many Americans see this as an assault on who we are—since for us, USA means
number one. Others are still “China deniers”—refusing to acknowledge that China could be number one in any
race that matters.
Psychology combines perceptions and misperceptions with emotions and identity—often producing what
Thucydides called “fear” in the ruling power and “arrogance” in the rising power. (And as the Greeks taught us,
beyond fear lies paranoia; beyond arrogance, hubris.) As my colleague Joe Nye has pointed out, as rivals come to
see the other as an enemy, this can become a cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies in which whatever either does is seen
by the other as a hostile attempt to displace it or hold it down.2
Driver number three in this dynamic is politics. Within the struggle for leadership within each government,
a fundamental axiom declares: never allow a significant political competitor to get to your right on a matter of
national security. If he were looking for a poster child to illustrate this point, Thucydides could not find a better
example than Washington today.
The dramatic shift in the tectonics of international power is a subject for a separate paper. Power is an elusive
term, made even more so by the string of adjectives that have been attached to it. Yardsticks for measuring power
invite debate. Nonetheless, for big picture purposes, three stubborn facts should suffice. National GDP creates
the substructure of international power. America’s share of global GDP has shrunk from half in 1950 to a quarter
at the end of the Cold War in 1991; it is one-seventh today and is on a trajectory to be one-tenth by midcentury.3
In 1991, China barely appeared on any international league table. Since then, it has soared to overtake the U.S. in
gross domestic product at purchasing power parity, or GDP (PPP)—a measurement that the Central Intelligence
Agency (CIA) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) both regard as the single best yardstick for comparing
national economies.4 The impact of this tectonic shift is felt in every dimension of every relationship—not just
between the U.S. and China, but between each of them and their neighbors. Trade offers an instructive example.
When China entered the Word Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, the major trading partner of each major Asian
nation was the United States. Today, the predominant trading partner of each is who? China.5
In 2015, thanks to Senator Jack Reed, I was asked to make a presentation to the Senate Armed Services
Committee to provide a larger context for the committee’s review of the Obama administration’s major initiative
toward Asia. Under the banner of the “pivot” or “rebalance,” Obama called for the U.S. to put less weight on our
left foot (in the Middle East fighting wars) in order to put more weight on our right foot in Asia, where the future
lies. While applauding the objective, to illustrate the impact of the tectonic shift, I suggested we imagine the U.S.
and China as two kids on a playground sitting on opposite ends of a seesaw, each represented by the size of its
GDP (PPP). As we were debating aspirations, we barely noticed that both feet had lifted off the ground.
Chart 1
Chart 2 summarizes a quiz I give students in my course at Harvard (formerly with Joe Nye, now with David
Sanger). It asks students: When could China become No. 1? The full quiz currently has eighty arenas; the short
form asks about ten. Students write their best guesses in the righthand column—answering: 2025, 2040, or “not
in my lifetime.”
Chart 2
We then show them Chart 3—with its heading: ALREADY.
Chart 3
Because the publishers insisted on pushing the question mark to the end of the subtitle of Destined for War, the
most frequent misinterpretation of the argument accuses me of predicting that war with China is inevitable. To the
contrary, the book argues that war is not inevitable. As it says, its purpose is not to predict the future but to prevent it.
Chart 4
Harvard’s Thucydides’s Trap Case File has reviewed the past 500 years for instances in which a rising power
threatens to displace a major ruling power (Chart 4).6 To date, it has identified sixteen cases that meet the criteria.
The purpose of the case file is not to develop a database for statistical analysis. Rather, it is to analyze historical
analogues in order to illuminate a phenomenon: the dynamics in the rivalry between rising and ruling powers.
Nonetheless, the fact that in four of these cases there was no war lends support for the view that if war occurs
between the U.S. and China in the year or decade ahead, their leaders will not be able to blame Thucydides or some
iron law of history.
The penultimate chapter of the book is titled, “Twelve Clues for Peace.” Every one of the cases offers valuable
clues for statesmen as they attempt to meet the current challenge. In particular, the peaceful rise of the U.S. at
the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century to challenge and then eclipse Great Britain
(where the British learned to distinguish between “vital” and simply “vested” national interests), and the creation
of a strategy for “Cold” War to defeat an Evil Empire (that found ways to constrain competition between two
adversaries who aspired to bury each other) are instructive.
No presentation that fails to ask the “Marshall question” is complete. After listening to, or indeed making a
compelling case for a proposition, George Marshall would often say, “Just one more question: How could I be wrong?”
I can identify a dozen ways and am sure members of the group can think of more. Many forecast a significant
slowdown in China’s extraordinary growth rate—and indeed, have been doing so annually for the past nineteen years.
Of course, as Stein’s Law says: a trend that cannot continue indefinitely, won’t. But predicting that something will
happen is much easier than saying when it will. Xi’s attempt to revitalize the Party as the Leninist Mandarin vanguard
of 1.4 billion people may flounder. As Lee Kuan Yew told him directly, he’s trying to put twenty-first century apps on
a twentieth century operating system. China’s military may behave recklessly and provoke a military confrontation
that China loses—and that could lead to the overthrow of its new emperor. Xi could slip in his bathtub. And so forth.
While U.S. planners must consider all reasonable contingencies, basing our strategy to meet the China challenge on
the expectation that the Chinese economy or political system fails would be a mistake.
In most futures, avoiding a war both nations understand could erase each from the map will require extreme
caution, cooperation in preventing crises, and preparation for managing crises that nonetheless occur. Leaders
in both countries should reflect deeply on what happened in 1914. Minimum takeaways from the broader set of
cases include adapting lessons cold warriors summarized under five Cs: caution, communication, constraints,
compromise, and cooperation. Caution meant no surprises, especially in the others’ sphere of influence, like
Khrushchev’s gamble in the Cuban missile crisis. To ensure timely, secure communication, they created the hotline.
Constraints that JFK called the “precarious rules of the status quo” included no use of nuclear weapons, no bullets
or bombs fired by uniformed combatants against the other, and arms control agreements that prevented or limited
deployment of certain weapons. Compromise meant living for decades with otherwise unacceptable facts, like
Soviet domination of captive nations. To address common threats like the spread of nuclear weapons, the U.S.
and Soviet Union cooperated in creating the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. In addition,
the cases underline the importance of preventing third-party actions that could be deadly triggers, for example, in
North Korea (where the U.S. and China are working closely together) and Taiwan (where both have taken actions
that increase risks) and preparing for accidents or crises that nonetheless occur.
Military Competition in the Pacific

This is a big subject about which the details matter, making it difficult to avoid getting entangled in the weeds.
The Defense Intelligence Agency’s 2019 China Military Balance offers a good 140-page summary of the details of
China’s military program.7 For the purpose of our discussion, I have tried to climb up to the top of one of the
13,000-foot peaks around Aspen to try to identify the larger contours. Recognizing the risks from oversimplification,
nonetheless, to stimulate the debate, I hazard twelve key judgments—beginning with the bottom line up front.
1. The acid test of military forces is how they perform in combat. Short of that, war games provide the next
best indicator. Most of these war games are classified, and the most significant, the most highly so. Particularly
when the results are not favorable for Blue, they are rarely publicized. Yet, one of the features of the American
system is that former officials sometimes speak more candidly.
The March 2019 CNAS event on the military balance in the Pacific featured the recently retired Deputy Secretary
of Defense Bob Work and one of DoD’s key defense planners, David Ochmanek. Summarizing a series of war
games, their bottom line (in Ochmanek’s words): “When we fight China, Blue gets its ass handed to it.” Why? As
he explains, “all five domains of warfare are contested from the outset of hostilities” (emphasis added). And it gets
worse from there. In Work’s words: “In the first five days of the campaign, we are looking good. After the second
five days, it’s not looking so hot. That is what the war games show over and over again.”8
And according to The New York Times, “in eighteen of the last eighteen Pentagon war games involving China
in the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. lost.”9 These results raise questions about the utility of America’s recent combat
experience, which has never been against a near-peer competitor or in a contested battlespace since WWII. As
Work explained, in the past, “it didn’t really matter.…We would’ve crushed them like cockroaches once we
assembled the might of America.” But a conflict with China today would be different because “we have never
gone up against an adversary with the same capabilities and scale.”10
2. The most authoritative public assessment of the operational balance is still the RAND “U.S.-China Military
Scorecard.” As depicted in Chart 5, the report finds that by 2017, China will have an “advantage” or “approximate
parity” in six of the nine areas of conventional capabilities in a conflict over Taiwan or the South China Sea. The
report concludes that “Asia will witness a progressively receding frontier of U.S. dominance.”11
Chart 5
RAND’s publications since have confirmed that the balance continues to tilt in China’s favor, especially in the
Taiwan scenario. As one of RAND’s lead analysts, Jim Dobbins, explained in 2017, “the range and capabilities of
Chinese air and sea defenses have continued to grow, making U.S. forward-basing more vulnerable and the direct
defense of U.S. interest in the region potentially more costly.”12
3. One major reason why is that for the U.S., a military conflict over Taiwan or in the South China Sea is a
distant, regional contingency. As military planners say, Blue faces the “tyranny of distance.”13 For China, this would
be war on its border or adjacent sea.
4. Even more significant are the stakes in Taiwan. For China, Taiwan is seen as an existential challenge. China’s
constitution declares that Taiwan is an inseparable part of China. In Xi’s words: “We will never allow anyone, any
organization, or any political party, at any time or in any form, to separate any part of Chinese territory from
China.” China has done everything it can to communicate unambiguously that to prevent the loss of Taiwan, it is
prepared to go to war—even though war with the U.S. risks escalation to nuclear war.
5. In preparing for contingencies in East Asia, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command (PACOM)—now the
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM)—wrestles for resources, troops, and ships with four other combatant
commanders, which includes an area of responsibility (AOR) in which the U.S. has been actively fighting for almost
two decades and a second AOR in which Russia is waging a low-level war with Ukraine. The U.S. defense budget
is global, divided among commitments in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. The People’s Republic of China’s
(PRC) defense budget is local and concentrated in North East Asia.
6. But doesn’t U.S. defense spending dwarf that of China? While the answer is yes, the difference is less than
many think: the gap has shrunk from 16-1 in 1996 to 3-1 today (Chart 6). Moreover, this is the difference when
measured by the yardstick most favorable for the United States. If Chinese soldiers are priced at the rate they are
paid in RMB, China’s defense budget is roughly equal to that of the U.S. Furthermore, China’s budget for domestic
security is greater than its budget for external defense. When combined, even measured in MER (market exchange
rate), China may be outspending the U.S.
Chart 6
7. Others having difficulty acknowledging these new realities emphasize that as a result of expenditures more
than ten times those of China in the past two decades, the U.S. has acquired a military capital stock much larger
than China’s. While correct, it is also true that this arsenal is heavily weighted toward legacy platforms (carriers,
manned aircraft, heavy fighting vehicles) that are priorities for U.S. military services. These consist mostly of items
that are as exquisitely expensive as Augustine’s law (the cost of weapons doubles every five years) predicted, most
optimized for fighting in areas in which the U.S. enjoys uncontested dominance of air, space, surveillance, and
cyber.14 This includes America’s remarkable surveillance networks and drones—but as we saw recently, when Iran
shot down a U.S. Global Hawk (that cost $130 million) with an indigenous air defense missile (that cost $100,000),
these assets are more vulnerable than many recognize.
8. In contrast, China’s investments in defense modernization have emphasized new technologies, asymmetric
strategies, and “leapfrogging.” More importantly, its investments have been designed to exploit U.S. vulnerabilities.
China’s conventional missile strategy provides an instructive example. China has deployed hundreds of short- and
intermediate-range ballistic missiles to threaten U.S. and allied air bases in the region. They are also deploying
“carrier-killer” shore-to-ship missiles that pose a credible threat to sink U.S. carriers or destroyers operating within
1,250 miles of its shore. And the new DF-26 missiles are estimated to have a 2,500-mile range that could push
carriers further back. Although debate continues about the ability of China’s surveillance and reconnaissance
capabilities to target moving objects at such ranges, they have dramatically increased the cost of U.S. operations
within the first island chain and made the U.S. think twice about operating aircraft out of Guam or Japan during
a conflict. This has been achieved at a cost exchange ratio of approximately 1:10,000. China’s developments in
ballistic missiles, swarming drones, hypersonics, anti-satellite weapons, and AI tell a similar tale.
9. The view from INDOPACOM begins with a map.15 Its AOR has the largest swath of geography, the largest
population, and the largest GDP of any American command. It operates from more than 250 regional bases. And
most importantly, it has militarily significant allies, in particular Japan, Australia, and South Korea, as well as treaty
relationships with a number of additional countries. (The difference between Chinese activity in the South China
Sea and its caution in the East China Sea reflects its recognition of Japan’s military capabilities.)
In contrast, China has only one militarily significant relationship: the entente with Putin’s Russia that
has emerged so rapidly since Xi came to power that many Western observers have missed it.16 The quality of
cooperation between China and Russia has surpassed that of the U.S. and India. China’s defense pact with North
Korea is as much a liability as an asset. Moreover, the picture is clouded further by the fact that, if the U.S. found
itself at war with China over Taiwan or in the South China Sea, it is unclear whether the U.S. will be joined by
combatants from any of its Asian allies.
10. While Americans are rightly proud of what we declare the “finest fighting force the world has ever seen,”
more than one Chinese PLA interlocutor has asked me about Henry Kissinger’s question: How many wars has the
U.S. won since World War II?17
Americans score the Korean War as a “draw,” since it ended in an armistice at the line that had divided the North
from the South before the conflict began. Chinese put the Korean War in their “win” column—since from the point
at which they entered the war in November 1950 as U.S. forces approached their border, they beat the Americans
back to the divide that existed at the outset of hostilities. They point out that this was a China whose government
had just barely consolidated control of the country after a long civil war, with a GDP less than one-fiftieth of the U.S.
Moreover, they note that at the time, the U.S. was the unchallenged ruling superpower with a monopoly of nuclear
weapons that had just five years earlier dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II.18
11. The view from Beijing is another matter—and requires another paper authored by an expert on China’s
military who is fluent in Mandarin. Fortunately, this year’s Aspen Strategy Group featured Mike Pillsbury, the
Trump administration’s favorite outside China expert, whose provocative and informative book The Hundred-Year
Marathon addresses this topic.19 (For those interested in my perspective on the issue, Appendix 2 lists the first
thirteen points from Destined for War.)
12. Finally, to address the organizers’ question about strategic-military competition among great powers in the
twenty-first century, we must grapple with a new reality that emerged in the nuclear era. If Ronald Reagan was
right when he declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must therefore never be fought,” then between
nuclear superpowers (i.e., nations with robust reliable second-strike capabilities), the menu of viable strategic
options cannot include nuclear attack.
In rivalries between nuclear superpowers in which neither has dominance on every rung up the escalation
ladder from conventional war, the use of conventional military forces to attack the adversary also becomes almost
unthinkable—for anything short of a threat to national survival. History saw these constraints emerge in the
Cold War—beginning with the Berlin blockade of 1948; the U.S. government’s refusal to come to the rescue
of Hungarian freedom fighters when they rose up in 1956 or Czech freedom fighters trying to escape Soviet
domination in 1968; and analogous choices by successive presidents, including Bush 43 in Russia’s war with Georgia
and Obama when Russia annexed Crimea.
Under conditions that create a robust nuclear stalemate in rivalries between nuclear superpowers: What then are
military forces for? Of course, force can be used to coerce third parties and to assist third parties in fighting nuclear
opponents in proxy wars like Vietnam. They can create facts on the ground that deter an opponent by requiring it to
fire the first shot. But defense analysts have still not adequately engaged Bernard Brodie’s insight, stated bluntly just
one year after Hiroshima in his book, The Absolute Weapon. In his words: “thus far the chief purpose of our military
establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them.”20
Concluding Questions
In conclusion, if the balance of military power in a conventional war over Taiwan has shifted decisively in
China’s favor, are current understandings of U.S. commitments to Taiwan sustainable? Or is the gap between
capability and the policy community’s understanding of commitments a classic case of “overstretch” and strategic
“mismatch” that properly understood poses an unacceptable risk to Americans? Is this a prime candidate to become
the Sarajevo of the twenty-first century: the third party incident that provides the spark that drags Thucydidean
rivals into catastrophic war?
Second, if the proverbial Martian strategist makes a list of developments that impact the vital national interest
of each nation and presents them under two headings—one in which the two nations’ interest conflict, the second
where they converge—what would this grand master put under each heading?
Must U.S. and Chinese leaders recognize that technologies on a shrinking globe have made our two nations
inseparable, if sometimes insufferable, Siamese twins? Have the nuclear arsenals of each created a condition of
MAD (mutual assured destruction) that we cannot escape? Are the greenhouse gas emissions of each nation
impacting the biosphere in which the other also lives in ways that could make it uninhabitable for citizens of
either before the end of the twenty-first century? In a global economy where financial crises like 2008 happen
periodically, are the two largest economies in the world dependent on each other to prevent recessions from
becoming great depressions?21
Has the time come to expand the lexicon of diplomacy beyond friend and foe by reaching back to a concept
the Song Dynasty invented to stabilize its relationship with a northern Mongolian tribe, the Liao? The Treaty of
Chanyuan in 1005 established a “rivalry partnership” in which the two parties competed ruthlessly in some arenas
and cooperated intensely in others. Could this be combined with an insight President John F. Kennedy came to
after having survived the Cuban missile crisis? Just months before being assassinated, he proposed a major revision
of America’s strategy in the Cold War that required serious restraint by both nations in their competition to ensure
their survival and to build what he called a “world safe for diversity.”22
Finally, was Lee Kuan Yew right when he forecast that China was destined “to become the biggest player in the
history of the world,” requiring the U.S. and others to construct an entirely new global balance of power?23 Could
the U.S. organize and lead a coalition of allied and aligned partners who together would create a correlation of
forces to which this great China would have to adapt? Could the U.S. and China find a way, in Lee’s words, to “share
the twenty-first century in Asia?”
Appendix I: Maps of Asia
Source: Heritage Foundation, 2018.

Source: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, 2012.

Appendix II: The View from Beijing
The most confident, competent, and consequential leader on the international stage today is China’s president,
Xi Jinping. Destined for War sketches a profile of the new emperor and his thinking based on my conversations
with Lee Kuan Yew (whom like every Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping, he called “mentor”), Henry Kissinger,
former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, and others who collectively have spent hundreds of hours with Xi,
supplemented by analyses from Western experts. A chapter entitled “What Xi’s China Wants” summarizes Xi’s
ambition in one line: to make China great again—or in his words, “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”
To that end, Xi has initiated four ambitious transformations of China’s system: (1) revitalizing the Party to
cleanse it of corruption, restore its sense of mission, and reestablish its authority in the eyes of the Chinese people;
(2) reviving Chinese nationalism and patriotism to instill pride in being Chinese; (3) engineering a third economic
revolution—recognizing that this requires politically painful structural reforms to sustain China’s historically
unsustainable rates of growth; and (4) reorganizing and rebuilding China’s military. Any one of these initiatives
would be more than enough for most heads of state to attempt in a decade. But Xi and his team have chosen to
address all four at once, seeing them as critically interdependent.
While Michael Pillsbury’s assertion that the Chinese military has long had a secret hundred-year marathon
plan for global dominance has been disputed by other China scholars, a plain text reading of Xi’s major speeches
finds many points of resonance about China’s ambitions. If we simply read Xi’s 19th Party Congress speech, and
the associated discussion with the key working groups (which are reported quite accurately by Xinhua, the official
news agency of the Chinese government), it is possible to get the big picture. My thirteen takeaways are below.
1. China’s military modernization is motivated by its desire to be able “to fight and win.” In Xi’s words,
achieving the “great revival of the Chinese nation” requires a “unison between a prosperous country and
strong military.” The “Strong Army Dream” is essential to the “China Dream,” and Xi has vowed that by
the mid-twenty-first century, China’s army will be “fully transformed into world-class forces.”
2. While the unambiguous objective of Xi’s reorganization and modernization of the military is to “fight and
win,” the goal is to win without fighting. In Chinese strategic lore, this doctrine can be traced to Sun Tzu,
who first recognized “the highest victory is to defeat the enemy without ever fighting.” Chinese strategists
often seek victory not in a single decisive battle but through incremental moves designed to gradually
improve their position; just like in the game of Go, where winning consists of surrounding one’s opponent
by creating a correlation of forces in which his only rational choice is to yield without a military fight.24
3. Chinese leaders agree with Lee Kuan Yew’s assessment that in the twenty-first century, “the economic
balance of power will be more important than the military balance of power.”25 The evolution of relations
between the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) members and the two economic superpowers
offers an instructive example. While some Americans are now urging “game on,” the most astute leaders
in the region have concluded “game over.” As Lee Kuan Yew put it, “China is sucking the Southeast Asian
countries into its economic system because of its vast market and growing purchasing power. Japan and
South Korea will inevitably be sucked in as well. It just absorbs countries without having to use force…
China’s growing economic sway will be very difficult to fight.”
4. The implications of these developments for the relative position of China and the United States were
captured memorably in a comment by one of America’s wisest Asia hands—Stephen Bosworth, who had
served as ambassador to both the Philippines and South Korea in the 1980s and 1990s. In 2009, when
President Obama asked him to become his special envoy for North Korea, he returned from his first trip
across the region and reported that he could scarcely believe what he had seen. It was, he recalled, a “Rip
Van Winkle experience.” In “olden days,” when a crisis or issue arose, the first question Asian leaders
always asked was: What does Washington think? Today, when something happens, they ask first: What
does Beijing think?26
5. The priorities for which military force is relevant for as far as Xi can see are local and regional—not global.
They begin with the security of the nation within its own borders—which in China’s thinking includes
its renegade province of Taiwan. The principal threat to China’s reintegration of Taiwan is the U.S. The
experience of 1996 seared into Chinese consciousness the cost of military inferiority. As the former co-chair
of the Aspen Strategy Group, Brent Scowcroft, said at the time, after this humiliating experience of backing
down, the Chinese military from that day forward would deploy weapons that assured this could never
happen again. The buildup of DF-21 and DF-26 “carrier killer” missiles has in fact pushed the U.S. Navy
back behind the first island chain and fundamentally altered planning for Taiwan contingencies.
6. Chinese leaders do not think “just like us.” Consider China’s nuclear arsenal. For decades after acquiring
nuclear weapons, the Chinese lived with a nuclear deterrent that was vulnerable to an American disarming
strike. Since they’ve deployed a reliable second-strike capability against the U.S., they have been satisfied
with a “minimum deterrent.” In contrast to the American and Russian arsenals of many thousands of
nuclear warheads, the International Institute for Strategic Studies estimates that China’s strategic force is at
approximately 400 today. Somehow, their comparatively smaller arsenal has, in their view, been enough to
achieve their objective (that is, to deter a nuclear attack upon them).
7. Chinese leaders’ thinking reflects China’s strategic culture and history (as they interpret it). They think
long term rather than short term (can one imagine an American leader proposing to shelve an issue for
a decade as Deng Xiaoping did with the islands in the East China Sea?); see challenges not in American
terms as “problems to be solved,” but rather as evolving processes that began decades or a century ago;
and give high priority to what they call Shi, the essence of which Pillsbury captures when he discusses it
as the equivalent of the “force” in Star Wars. Or as I’ve suggested, Obama’s “arc of history,” or Bismarck’s
“footsteps of God.”
8. Chinese believe that their government is as capable of setting long-term goals, developing coherent plans,
establishing targets, and holding managers accountable for results as Jack Welch was for GE or Jeff Bezos
is for Amazon today. Thus, Xi has laid out an ambitious plan with specific targets for 2020, 2025, 2030, and
2049.
9. The Chinese leadership believes that China’s time has arrived. When Teddy Roosevelt became president in
1901, he was supremely confident that he was leading the U.S. into what would be an American Century.
One hears echoes of TR in Xi Jinping’s 19th Party Congress speech, where he claimed that “the Chinese
nation, with an entirely new posture, now stands tall and firm in the East.”
10. China’s leaders see their rise as a restoration to their natural position of predominance in Asia. They see
U.S. dominance of the Western Pacific as an accident of history—an anomaly that came with the tide of
World War II but is now receding. They liken this to Britain, whose navy had dominated the Atlantic Ocean
during the nineteenth century. With the rise of the United States, it withdrew, and China expects the U.S.
to do likewise. As Lee Kuan Yew said when asked whether China is serious about displacing the U.S. in Asia
in the foreseeable future: “Of course. Why not? How could they not aspire to be number one in Asia, and
in time the world?”
11. Chinese leadership see the U.S. as the principal obstacle to their ambitions. As Kissinger has noted, every
Chinese leader he has ever met with believes that America’s strategy is to “contain” China. In 2014, after
the Obama administration’s announcement of the “rebalance” to Asia, Kevin Rudd and Brent Scowcroft
each came back from extensive conversations with Chinese leaders with a common assessment. According
to both statesmen, China’s leaders believe that America’s grand strategy for dealing with China involves
five “to’s”: to isolate China, to contain China, to diminish China, to internally divide China, and to sabotage
China’s leadership.
12. Chinese leadership sees technology, and especially advanced technologies, as the driver of economic
growth in the twenty-first century. Their Made in China 2025 program—which triggered severe criticism
from the West and has thus been airbrushed out of official pronouncements—strives to take the lead in
next-generation technology sectors, including information technology (such as AI and big data), high-end
robotics, aerospace, maritime engineering, advanced rail, and biomedicine.
13. Analyzing U.S. behavior in the twenty-first century, China’s leaders have concluded that the world has
entered what Xi calls a “new era.” They agree with former President Jimmy Carter’s observation that while
the U.S. has wasted almost $10 trillion in pointless wars in the Middle East, China has invested an equivalent
in modern high-speed rail, airports, subways, and highways. While they heard Obama’s rhetoric about a
“pivot” to Asia, they remain hopeful that the U.S. will be sucked deeper into the sands of the Middle East,
even possible war with Iran.
The financial crisis and Great Recession that followed shattered Chinese belief that the financial “masters of
the universe” knew what they were doing. President Trump’s assault on American alliances and treatment of long-
standing allies has, as one Chinese colleague noted, done more to advance China’s objectives than China could
have imagined.
During my October 2019 visit to Beijing, a Chinese intellectual (who is no longer in government) asked me,
“Don’t American policy makers have a saying: ‘If your opponent is committing suicide, just don’t get in the way’”?
Graham Allison is the Douglas Dillon Professor of Government at Harvard University and a leading analyst of national security with special interests in
nuclear weapons, Russia, China, and decision-making. He was the “Founding Dean” of Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and until 2017,
served as Director of its Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, which is ranked the “#1 University Affiliated Think Tank” in the world. As
Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Clinton and Special Advisor to the Secretary of Defense under President Reagan, he has been a member
of the Secretary of Defense’s Advisory Board for every Secretary from Weinberger to Mattis. He has the sole distinction of having twice been awarded
the Department of Defense’s highest civilian award, the Distinguished Public Service Medal, first by Secretary Cap Weinberger and second by Secretary
Bill Perry. His first book, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (1971), ranks among the all-time bestsellers with more than 500,000 copies
in print. Dr. Allison’s latest book, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (2017), is a national and international bestseller. He is a
member of the Aspen Strategy Group.
1
Except after a decisive defeat in war.
2
Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “The Cooperative Rivalry of U.S.-China Relations,” Project Syndicate, November 6, 2018, https://www.project-syndicate.org/com-
mentary/china-america-relationship-cooperative-rivalry-by-joseph-s--nye-2018-11.
3
“World Economic Outlook Data Mapper,” International Monetary Fund, October 2019; and “World Development Indicators Data Bank,” The
World Bank, October 28, 2019, https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/dataset/world-development-indicators.
4
“References: Definition and Notes: GDP methodology,” CIA World Factbook, undated, accessed July 15, 2019, https://www.cia.gov/library/pub-
lications/the-world-factbook/docs/notesanddefs.html; and Tim Callen, “Purchasing Power Parity: Weights Matter,” International Monetary Fund,
December 18, 2018, https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/fandd/basics/ppp.htm. For the judgment of the world’s leading central banker, see
Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can American and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017), pp. 11-12.
5
“Direction of Trade Statistics,” International Monetary Fund, accessed July 15, 2019, https://data.imf.org/?sk=9D6028D4-F14A-464C-A2F2-
59B2CD424B85.
6
Harvard Thucydides’s Trap Project, “Thucydides’s Trap Case File” (Cambridge, Mass: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs: Harvard
Kennedy School, 2017), https://www.belfercenter.org/thucydides-trap/case-file.
7
U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, China Military Power: Modernizing a Force to Fight and Win (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Defense Intelligence Agen-
cy, DIA-02-1706-085, 2019), https://www.dia.mil/Portals/27/Documents/News/Military%20Power%20Publications/China_Military_Power_
FINAL_5MB_20190103.pdf.
8
In Ochmanek’s assessment: “We lose a lot of people, we lose a lot of equipment, and we usually fail to achieve our objective of preventing aggres-
sion by the adversary.” Center for a New American Security, “How the U.S. Military Fights Wars Today and in the Future,” event transcript (Wash-
ington, D.C.: Center for a New American Security, March 7, 2019), https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/documents/ANAWOW-Transcript-
07MAR19.pdf ?mtime=20190408162617.
9
Nicholas Kristof, “This is How War with China Could Begin,” New York Times, September 4, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/04/opin-
ion/china-taiwan-war.html.
10
See “How the U.S. Military Fights Wars Today and in the Future.”
11
Eric Heginbotham et al., The U.S.-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power, 1996-2017 (Santa Monica, Calif: RAND
Corporation, 2015), https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR300/RR392/RAND_RR392.pdf.
12
James Dobbins et al., Conflict with China Revisited: Prospects, Consequences, and Strategies for Deterrence (Santa Monica, Calif., RAND Corporation, 2017),
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE200/PE248/RAND_PE248.pdf.
13
The first map in Appendix I is instructive on this point.
14
“Defense Spending in a Time of Austerity,” The Economist, August 26, 2010, https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=Defense+Sp
ending+in+a+Time+of+Austerity.
15
See the second map in Appendix I.
16
Graham Allison, “China and Russia: A Strategic Alliance in the Making,” The National Interest, December 14, 2018, https://nationalinterest.org/
feature/china-and-russia-strategic-alliance-making-38727.
17
Graham Allison, Destined for War.
18
In this debate, I always remind Chinese interlocutors that as a result of the Korean War, China lost Taiwan for at least a generation.
19
For Pillsbury’s account, see Michael Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China’s Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (New York:
Henry Holt and Co., 2016). For a rebuttal, see, e.g., Alastair Ian Johnston, “Shaky Foundations: The ‘Intellectual Architecture’ of Trump’s China
Policy,” Survival Vol. 61, No. 2 (April-May 2019), pp. 189-202.
20
Bernard Brodie, ed., The Absolute Weapon: Atomic Power and World Order (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1946).
21
Henry Paulson, “The U.S. and China at a Crossroads” (Chicago: Paulson Institute, November, 6, 2018), https://www.paulsoninstitute.org/press_re-
lease/remarks-by-henry-m-paulson-jr-on-the-united-states-and-china-at-a-crossroads/.
22
Graham Allison, “Could the United States and China Be Rivalry Partners?” The National Interest, July 7, 2019, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/
could-united-states-and-china-be-rivalry-partners-65661.
23
Graham Allison, Robert D. Blackwill, and Ali Wyne, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World (Cambridge,
Mass.: The MIT Press, 2013).
24
On this point, the Army War College’s David Lai instructively compares chess with its Chinese equivalent of Go. In chess, players seek to dominate
the center and conquer the opponent. In Go, players seek to surround the opponent and compete for relative gain. Lai wisely concludes that “it is
dangerous to play Go with a chess mindset.” David Lai, “Learning from the Stones: A Go Approach to Mastering China’s Strategic Concept, Shi”
(Carlisle Barracks, Penn.: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, May 2004), pp. 5, 28.
25
26
The U.S.-China dynamic is the most consequential international relationship of this
century. Advancing U.S. interests in this dynamic should be the focus of American
strategy, not the tactics of the gray zone itself. However, U.S. success in any such China
strategy will depend on its ability to deter, campaign through, and respond to the
growing range of gray zone tactics China employs.
—KATHLEEN H. HICKS AND JOSEPH P. FEDERICI
Chapter 8 | Campaigning through China’s Gray Zone Tactics 97
Campaigning through China’s Gray Zone Tactics
Kathleen H. Hicks and Joseph P. Federici
Introduction
President Xi Jinping’s assertive foreign policy creates a generational challenge for the United States. In pursuing
its goals—including maintaining Communist Party control domestically and securing China’s great power status
globally—China relies on a broad spectrum of tools, from diplomacy to military power. Notable within this
range is a subset of approaches that fall somewhere between routine statecraft and open warfare—the gray zone.
Although terminology for the gray zone phenomenon varies, analysts generally agree that savvy rivals like China
are investing in ways to achieve their security goals that sidestep known thresholds for conflict escalation with the
United States and its allies.1 China, Russia, and others want to change or exploit the rules of international relations
for their benefit, but they do not (yet?) want to face the United States in combat. This motivation, long present,
can now be married to new means and opportunity provided by a confluence of trends, including the diffusion of
traditional power, the domestic disarray of numerous democracies, and the birth of exploitable technology.
This paper briefly summarizes the main lines of Chinese gray zone activity, which fall into four broad categories:
information operations, political and economic coercion, cyber and space operations, and the use of proxy forces.
The paper then describes an interests-based U.S. campaign planning framework for deterring, campaigning
through, and responding to gray zone challenges and concludes with specific actions the United States can take
now to gain advantage in the face of Chinese gray zone actions.
China’s Gray Zone Activities2

China’s information operations are significant, if not as audacious as those of Russia. China’s social credit
and monitoring systems not only allow the government to monitor activity within China, but also provide the
government information on the activities of Chinese citizens outside the country.3 Confucius Institutes, established
by the Chinese Ministry of Education across the globe, appear to have a role in providing intelligence on Chinese
critics and perhaps even hampering them.4 The director of national intelligence has cited China as one of several
state actors active in influence operations during the 2018 U.S. midterm election cycle.5
China leverages economic sticks and carrots in conducting gray zone operations. Three cases exemplify China’s
use of punitive economic coercion in the Western Pacific. In 2010, China drastically curtailed the export of rare
earth metals to Japan following a maritime dispute between the two countries.6 Amid their 2012 territorial dispute
over Scarborough Shoal, China began increasing its inspection and even quarantine of fruit from the Philippines,
and Chinese tour groups cancelled visits in large numbers.7 In 2016, China used restricted tourism as a weapon
with South Korea in the wake of the United States deploying a THAAD missile defense battery to that nation.8
Chinese economic carrots have also been used to influence desired political behavior in the region. China’s Belt
and Road Initiative and Digital Silk Road are creating inducements in Asia that could convince states to “deter
confrontation or criticism of China’s approach to or stance on sensitive issues.”9 In Australia and New Zealand,
there is credible evidence that the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department is guiding efforts
to fundraise on behalf of pro-Chinese politicians and political parties.10
China’s influence operations and economic and political coercion extend well beyond Asia. Europe provides a
compelling case. As Europe’s economic dependency on China has grown, so too has concern about its potential
side-effects for European democracy and security. Ballooning Chinese investment in European ports and other
infrastructure, such as high-speed rail, is a prominent worry. 11 Evidence supports the conclusion that European
companies looking to do business with China are being pressured into forced technology transfers, as has occurred
in the United States.12 EU members who heavily court Chinese investment, such as Italy, the first G7 nation to join
the Belt and Road Initiative, encouraged the EU to water down screening measures on foreign direct investment.13
In the information realm, Chinese-funded journalism programs and think tanks are hiring prominent former
European politicians, with an aim to project a positive image of China.14 Springer Nature, the German publisher of
Scientific American, is reported to have pulled content seen as politically sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party.15
Cyber operations are a frequently used Chinese tactic in the gray zone. Chinese units such as APT10 regularly
launch attacks against regional neighbors as well as American businesses and European entities. Cybersecurity
experts have repeatedly detected activities originating from Chinese hacking groups that target foreign entities,
including Japanese business lobbies, Taiwan’s government ministries, and Singapore’s health database.16 Targeted
U.S. entities have included the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, military contractors, and universities.17
British officials have presented the European Union with evidence that a Chinese hacking group, Area 1 Security,
infiltrated the EU’s diplomatic communications system.18 Huawei’s success in signing twenty-three contracts to
supply 5G in Europe brings with it concern about China’s ability to exploit the state-controlled enterprise’s access
for future security purposes.19
China is also exploiting space.20 Through its testing program, China has demonstrated the ability to develop co-
orbital anti-satellite weapons. Its directed energy program, electronic warfare capabilities, and cyber operations can
also threaten U.S. and other space systems. In the absence of clear escalation thresholds, rules, and norms in space,
the gray zone uses of these capabilities are easy to imagine. For instance, China could coerce the United States
and its allies by degrading or threatening to degrade their commercial and/or government satellites. The Chinese
have already placed jamming equipment on the Spratly Islands, which could be used to disrupt communications
or satellites in the South China Sea region.21
Perhaps China’s most aggressive gray zone activity has been its use of nominally civilian maritime militia to
harass its neighbors and secure strategic positions in the South China Sea. These “little blue men” are supported
by the Chinese Navy and Coast Guard in blocking access to disputed islands, harassing neighboring vessels, and
collecting intelligence.22 China’s recent island-building campaign in the South China Sea has continued despite
international legal decisions, official complaints by its neighbors, and the presence of American military assets.23
More and more Chinese weaponry and aircraft have begun to appear on these artificial islands, as China cements
its strategic position in the South China Sea.24 Complementing these maritime actions is China’s declaration of
an air defense identification zone over disputed waters in the East China Sea, albeit without enforcement to date.25
U.S. Campaigning and the Gray Zone26

The United States has been both late to recognize the patterns in rivals’ gray zone tactics and often maladroit
in responding. Four significant gaps stand out. First, the intelligence community’s indicators and warning are
not attuned to detecting gray zone activity. As such, the United States often does not realize a gray zone activity
is being undertaken until it is too late. Second, even when activity is detected—as with China’s artificial island
building in the South China Sea—the United States has been both slow and ad hoc in its responses. This is related
to a third weakness: the failure to adopt a campaigning mindset aimed at succeeding in the strategic competition
“war” rather than surviving the immediate crisis “battle.” Finally, U.S. responses to date have failed to leverage
the full breadth of the nation’s multidimensional power potential, especially its public and private sources of soft
power. U.S. civil society, the business community, and the public are often the targets of gray zone tactics, yet their
active partnership has not been a priority in U.S. strategy.27
There has been a temptation by some to attribute the above pitfalls to the nature of democratic society. Some
even argue that democracies are destined to be outwitted by authoritarian regimes, such as Xi’s China, and thus
must adopt autocrats’ tactics to survive. American history does not bear out this view. Conversely, the United
States’ greatest relative strategic advantages over potential rivals derive directly from its attachment to the rule of
law at home and abroad. The U.S. has work to do in demonstrating its continued commitment to these principles. It
is this commitment that should be the basis upon which U.S. competitive strategy rests. Covert action, undertaken
in accordance with U.S. laws and legislative oversight, will of course be an important component of U.S. national
security strategy, but it is not and should never be the leading one.28
The U.S.-China dynamic is the most consequential international relationship of this century. Advancing U.S.
interests in this dynamic should be the focus of American strategy, not the tactics of the gray zone itself. However,
U.S. success in any such China strategy will depend on its ability to deter, campaign through, and respond to the
growing range of gray zone tactics China employs. Doing so will incorporate proactive and defensive elements;
carrots and sticks; and allies and other third-party actors, including the private sector at home. Moreover, the U.S.
approach must be dynamic—the context and Chinese actions will change, and the United States must be agile
enough to shift faster. To avoid cycles of reactivity, the United States should frame its approach around advancing
its own vital interests. These are its constitutionally derived democratic system and way of life, its economic vitality,
and its ability to influence events overseas, such as through its alliances and partner networks. These interests are
profoundly bipartisan in nature, enduring across multiple American presidential administrations and ideologies.29
The next section provides specific examples of how the United States can improve its efforts to advance each of
these interests in the face of Chinese gray zone tactics.30
Protecting U.S. Constitutional Tenets

The institutions of American democracy are under assault. Since Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential
election, U.S. intelligence officials have added China and Iran to the list of nations that sought influence in the 2018
midterm elections and are still seeking to influence the upcoming 2020 election. There is no reason to think the
judicial branch will be protected from such foreign attacks.31 Although the security of our electoral mechanics is
vital, the American public is an even greater target than its voting machines. To build resiliency at home and to
attract allies and markets abroad, the United States should be building out civil society, increasing and incentivizing
national service opportunities, improving civics education and media literacy training, and improving trust and
communication between American businesses and federal, state, and local governments. Social media regulation
is also warranted in order to improve transparency at the same time it respects First Amendment principles.32
Promoting Economic Vitality

A more affirmative approach to multilateral trade would improve the U.S. competitive position amid Chinese
economic coercion. The Trans-Pacific Partnership remains the primary missed opportunity for the United States
in the Indo-Pacific region.33 Foreign aid is another key lever that the United States is underusing. The passage of
the BUILD Act in late 2018 was a step in the right direction, opening the pathway for greater U.S. organization
efforts in infrastructure funding in Southeast Asia to respond to China’s Belt and Road Initiative.34 The United
States should put more resources behind the new U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, but
the goal should not be for government spending to outmatch Chinese government investment in overseas
infrastructure.35 Instead, the United States can promote transparency in such investments and provide technical
assistance to countries considering agreements with China. It can also support the infrastructure efforts of allies in
the region, making common cause with the Japanese and Australians, as it did in Papua New Guinea on liquified
natural gas, and via such regional initiatives as the Japanese-Indian growth corridor.36 Such cooperation is vital
not only on infrastructure, but also on cybersecurity. The United States could provide full support for the U.S. and
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) Smart Cities Partnership to create alternatives to digital
infrastructure monopolization by China.37
At home, the United States can find a more fruitful middle ground between the light touch of the Obama
administration and the securitization of the Trump administration to protect the American economy from
Chinese intellectual property theft and cyberattack. Investing more federal research and development dollars
into priority technology fields will help American innovators compete with Chinese state-owned enterprises
and put the U.S. government in a position to employ their solutions.38 Expanding H1-B visa opportunities for
international STEM researchers to work in the United States will assist in the same way.39 It is notable that Chinese
universities are “counterprogramming” U.S. messaging by offering more scholarships for ASEAN students to study
in China and relaxing its immigration rules on high-skilled workers (as of July 2019).40 Strengthened domestic
counterintelligence efforts and cybersecurity requirements tied to critical infrastructure sectors and federal grant
receipt by states, localities, and businesses are also warranted.
Advance U.S. Influence Abroad

U.S. alliance and partner networks are a powerful asymmetric advantage for advancing American influence
overseas. China knows alliances are a key U.S. center of gravity, and it is well positioned to take advantage of
fissures as they open. One fissure benefiting China is the growing divide between the United States and its
European allies. President Trump’s harsh rhetoric around European defense spending has proven an unhelpful
backdrop to subsequent U.S. government pushes for Europeans to deny or counter China’s gray zone efforts.41
Many Europeans are disinclined to work with Washington on issues relating to China. Nowhere is this tension
clearer than in the current debate over Huawei’s efforts to build a 5G network in various parts of Europe.
The United States must gain greater strategic appreciation of the advantages alliances and partnerships
can provide rather than dwell endlessly on their costs. Having frequent, high-level affirmations of U.S. security
commitments, facilitating alternative economic partnership opportunities, working closely with ASEAN,
prioritizing positive Japanese-South Korean relations in a U.S. regional strategy, and building on nascent quadrilateral
security initiatives are all likely to advance U.S. influence and build resiliency against Chinese coercive tactics. The
United States should also work closely with like-minded nations to build out norms of conduct in cyberspace and
space, as well as continue its legitimate freedom of navigation operations in international seas and airspace, to
make interests and potential conflict thresholds as clear as possible.
Advancing American influence overseas will fundamentally rest on the capability and capacity of the U.S.
national security enterprise. Here, there is much that the nation can do to better compete with China as it employs
gray zone tactics. Relatively static conventional military capability, threats of coercive action, the use of economic
sanctions, and the direct diplomatic intervention of senior-most officials are the mainstays of current U.S. foreign
policy. Moreover, in the past several years, the Trump administration has actively sought to defund many activities
of the U.S. State Department.42 In the context of gray zone approaches, this strategy is especially self-limiting
because it reinforces reliance on many of the tools that gray zone approaches are designed to skirt. This includes
thresholds for military action, legal definitions, and at times even attribution.43 The United States should be seeking
to strengthen strategic narrative and information operations; deepen its diplomatic and development capabilities,
including a full complement of economic statecraft tools; generate more dynamic intelligence and warning; and
ensure it has nimble and scalable military options.44 A simple but critical first step would be to speed ambassadorial
appointments while ensuring those appointed have requisite diplomatic qualifications.45
Conclusion
Advancing U.S. interests in the presence of a rising and assertive China requires a comprehensive, interests-
based national strategy executed through means ranging from routine diplomacy to preparations for combat.
Realizing the potential of U.S. societal strengths and improving resiliency around its potential vulnerabilities aids
the U.S. when in competition with an authoritarian state such as China.
As part of that strategy, the United States must better deter, campaign through, and respond to China’s gray
zone tactics. If China believes its gray zone actions pay off, they are unlikely to abate. U.S. foreign policy should
not be optimized for gray zone interaction, but it must account for it.
Kathleen Hicks is senior vice president, Henry A. Kissinger Chair, and director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies (CSIS). She served in the Obama Administration as the principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy and the deputy under
secretary of defense for strategy, plans, and forces. She led the development of the 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance and the 2010 Quadrennial Defense
Review. She also oversaw Department of Defense contingency and theater campaign planning. From 2006 to 2009, Dr. Hicks was a senior fellow in
CSIS’s international security program. Prior to that, she spent almost thirteen years as a career official in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, rising
from Presidential Management Intern to the Senior Executive Service. Dr. Hicks is concurrently the Donald Marron Scholar at the Kissinger Center for
Global Affairs, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She serves on the Boards of Advisors for the Truman Center and SoldierStrong
and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Dr. Hicks served on the National Commission on the Future of the Army and the Commission
on the National Defense Strategy. She is the recipient of distinguished service awards from three Secretaries of Defense and a Chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, the 2011 DOD Senior Professional Women’s Association Excellence in Leadership Award, and the National Capital-Area Political Science
Association’s 2018 Walter Beach Award. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Joseph Federici is an associate director and associate fellow with the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
(CSIS), where he works on a variety of projects pertaining to geopolitics, national security, and defense matters. Mr. Federici also assists in coordinating the
CSIS Military Fellows program. He holds a J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law and a B.A. in history and political science from Rutgers University.
Most recently, he graduated, with distinction, from Georgetown University with an M.S. in foreign service.
1
The authors define gray zone approaches as follows: “Efforts intended to advance one’s own security objectives at the expense of a rival using means
beyond those associated with routine statecraft and below means associated with direct military conflict between rivals. In engaging in a gray zone
approach, an actor seeks to avoid a threshold that results in open war.” Kathleen H. Hicks, Alice Hunt Friend, et al., By Other Means Part I: Campaign-
ing in the Gray Zone (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 2019), https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/
publication/Hicks_GrayZone_interior_v4_FULL_WEB_0.pdf.
2
This section is adapted from Kathleen H. Hicks, Joseph Federici, and Connor Akiyama, China in the Grey Zone (Helsinki, Finland: The European Cen-
tre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats, 2019), https://www.hybridcoe.fi/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Strategic-Analysis-4_2019_rgb.
pdf.
3
See, e.g., Catherine Porter, “Chinese Dissidents Feel Heat of Beijing’s Wrath. Even in Canada,” New York Times, April 1, 2019, https://www.nytimes.
com/2019/04/01/world/canada/china-dissident-harassment-sheng-xue.html.
4
Thomas Lum, Confucius Institutes in the United States: Selected Issues, U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, April 15, 2019, https://
fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF11180.pdf.
5
Jonathan Landay and Mark Hosenball, “Russia, China, Iran Sought to Influence U.S. 2018 Elections: U.S. Spy Chief,” Reuters, December 21, 2018,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-interference/russia-china-iran-sought-to-influence-u-s-2018-elections-u-s-spy-chief-idUSKC-
N1OK2FS.
6
Keith Bradsher, “Amid Tension, China Blocks Vital Exports to Japan,” New York Times, September 22, 2010, https://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/23/
business/global/23rare.html.
7
Josephine Cuneta and James Hookay, “China Dispute Threatens Philippine Industries,” Wall Street Journal, May 16, 2012, https://www.wsj.com/
articles/SB10001424052702303879604577407730408858666; Milton Ezrati, “China’s Rare Earth Ploy,” Forbes, June 14, 2019, https://www.forbes.
com/sites/miltonezrati/2019/06/14/chinas-rare-earth-ploy/#366388a47b6c; Laura Zhou, “South Korea and China Relations Warming but Chilly
Restrictions Remain,” South China Morning Post, October 18, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2169183/south-korea-
and-china-relations-warming-chilly-restrictions.
8
Jethro Mullen, “China Can Squeeze Its Neighbors When It Wants. Ask South Korea,” CNN, August 30, 2017, https://money.cnn.com/2017/08/30/
news/economy/china-hyundai-south-korea-thaad/index.html.
9
U.S. Department of Defense, Assessment of the Defense Implications of China’s Expanding Global Access, December 2018, p. 12, https://media.defense.
gov/2019/Jan/14/2002079292/-1/-1/1/EXPANDING-GLOBAL-ACCESS-REPORT-FINAL.PDF.
10
Rob Schmitz, “Australia and New Zealand Are Ground Zero for Chinese Influence,” All Things Considered, National Public Radio, October 2, 2018,
https://www.npr.org/2018/10/02/627249909/australia-and-new-zealand-are-ground-zero-for-chinese-influence.
11
Andrew Chatzky, “China’s Belt and Road Gets a Win in Italy,” Council on Foreign Relations, March 27, 2019, https://www.cfr.org/article/chinas-
belt-and-road-gets-win-italy; “China’s Spreading Influence in Eastern Europe Worries West,” Voice of America, April 11, 2019, https://www.voanews.
com/europe/chinas-spreading-influence-eastern-europe-worries-west.
12
Don Weinland, “European Companies Forced to Hand Tech to China,” Financial Times, May 20, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/f2f4dca0-7abc-
11e9-81d2-f785092ab560.
13
Theresa Fallon, “When the China Dream and the European Dream Collide,” War on the Rocks, January 7, 2019, https://warontherocks.
com/2019/01/when-the-china-dream-and-the-european-dream-collide/.
14
Thorsten Benner and Kristin Shi-Kupfer, “Europe needs to step up vigilance on China’s influence,” Financial Times, February 18, 2019, https://www.
ft.com/content/a58b0a0c-127b-11e8-940e-08320fc2a277.
15
Thorsten Benner and Kristin Shi-Kupfer, “Europe needs to step up vigilance on China’s influence,” Financial Times, February 18, 2019, https://www.
ft.com/content/a58b0a0c-127b-11e8-940e-08320fc2a277.
16
Kyodo Staff Report, “Experts Say China Hackers ‘APT10 Group’ Likely Behind Attack on Major Japanese Business Lobby in 2016,” The Japan Times,
January 14, 2019, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/01/14/national/experts-say-china-hackers-known-apt10-group-likely-attacked-major-
japanese-business-lobby-2016/#.XTCGVOhKjcs; John Follain, Adela Lin, and Samson Ellis, “China Ramps Up Cyberattacks on Taiwan,” Bloomberg,
September 19, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-19/chinese-cyber-spies-target-taiwan-s-leader-before-elections; “Singa-
pore Personal Data Hack Hits 1.5m, Health Authority Says,” British Broadcasting Corporation, July 20, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-
asia-44900507.
17
Gordon Lubold and Dustin Volz, “Chinese Hackers Breach US Navy Contractors,” Wall Street Journal, December 14, 2018, https://www.wsj.com/
articles/u-s-navy-is-struggling-to-fend-off-chinese-hackers-officials-say-11544783401.
18
“EU Says Sanctions Against Beijing Are Possible After Britain Alleges Chines Group Is Responsible for Cyberattacks,” South China Morning Post, Feb-
ruary 19, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2185795/eu-says-sanctions-against-beijing-are-possible-after-uk-alleges.
19
Klint Finley, “Huawei Still Has Friends in Europe, Despite US Warnings,” Wired, April 25, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/huawei-friends-
europe-despite-us-warnings/.
20
See Todd Harrison, Kaitlyn Johnson, and Thomas G. Roberts, Space Threat Assessment 2019 (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International
Studies, April 2019), 11, https://www.csis.org/analysis/space-threat-assessment-2019.
21
Michael R. Gordon and Jeremy Page, “China Installed Military Jamming Equipment on Spratly Islands, US Says,” The Wall Street Journal, April 9, 2018,
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-installed-military-jamming-equipment-on-spratly-islands-u-s-says-1523266320.
22
Gregory Poling, “Illuminating the South China Sea’s Dark Fishing Fleets,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, January 9, 2019, https://
ocean.csis.org/spotlights/illuminating-the-south-china-seas-dark-fishing-fleets/.
23
Michael Green, et al., Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2017), https://csis-prod.
s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/170505_GreenM_CounteringCoercionAsia_Web.pdf ?OnoJXfWb4A5gw_n6G.8azgEd8zRIM4wq.
24
“Island Tracker,” Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, 2019, https://amti.csis.org/island-tracker/.
25
Michael Green, Kathleen Hicks, Zack Cooper, John Schaus, and Jake Douglas, “Counter-Coercion Series: East China Sea Air Defense Identification
Zone,” Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, June 13, 2017, https://amti.csis.org/counter-co-east-china-sea-adiz/.
26
This section draws on the findings in Kathleen H. Hicks, Alice H. Friend, et al., By Other Means Part I: Campaigning in the Gray Zone (Washington,
DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, July 2019), https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/Hicks_GrayZone_in-
terior_v4_FULL_WEB_0.pdf.
27
Kathleen H. Hicks, Alice H. Friend, et al., By Other Means Part I: Campaigning in the Gray Zone (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International
Studies, July 2019), https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/Hicks_GrayZone_interior_v4_FULL_WEB_0.pdf.
28
29
30
A more detailed action plan can be found in Kathleen H. Hicks, Melissa Dalton, et al., By Other Means Part II: Adapting to Compete in the Gray Zone
(Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, August 2019), https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/
Hicks_GrayZone_II_interior_v8_PAGES.pdf.
31
See, e.g., Suzanne Spaulding, Devi Nair, and Arthur Nelson, Beyond the Ballot: How the Kremlin Works to Undermine the U.S. Justice System (Washington,
DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, May 2019), https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/190430_RussiaUSJus-
ticeSystem_v3_WEB_FULL.pdf.
32
33
See, e.g., John J. Hamre, Michael Green, Matthew Goodman, et al., “The Strategic Case for TPP,” Center for Strategic and International Studies,
April 20, 2016, https://www.csis.org/analysis/strategic-case-tpp; Matthew Goodman, “From TPP to CPTPP,” Center for Strategic and International
Studies, March 8, 2018, https://www.csis.org/analysis/tpp-cptpp.
34
Daniel Runde, “The BUILD Act Has Passed: What’s Next?” Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 12, 2018, https://www.csis.org/
analysis/build-act-has-passed-whats-next.
35
Daniel Runde, “The BUILD Act Has Passed: What’s Next?” Center for Strategic and International Studies, October 12, 2018, https://www.csis.org/
analysis/build-act-has-passed-whats-next.
36
Hisao Kodachi, “Japan, US and Australia Begin Own ‘Belt and Road’ in South Pacific,” Nikkei Asian Review, June 25, 2019, https://asia.nikkei.com/
Politics/International-relations/Japan-US-and-Australia-begin-own-Belt-and-Road-in-South-Pacific; Frank-Jurgen Richter, “The Alternative to Chi-
nese Debt for Africa from Japan and India,” Nikkei Asian Review, November 23, 2018, https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/The-alternative-to-Chinese-
debt-for-Africa-from-Japan-and-India.
37
Kim Mai Tran and Andreyka Natalegawa, “Supporting Southeast Asian Smart Cities is Critical for the Region & the United States,” Center for Stra-
tegic and International Studies, December 21, 2018, https://www.cogitasia.com/supporting-southeast-asian-smart-cities-is-critical-for-the-region-
the-united-states/.
38
39
Rani Molla, “Visa Approvals for Tech Workers Are on the Decline. That Won’t Just Hurt Silicon Valley,” Vox, February 28, 2019, https://www.vox.
com/2019/2/28/18241522/trump-h1b-tech-work-jobs-overseas.
40
Zhuang Pinghui, “China Relaxes Immigration Rules to Attract and Retain More Highly Skilled Overseas Talent,” South China Morning Post, July 17,
2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3019034/china-relaxes-immigration-rules-attract-and-retain-more-highly.
41
Robbie Gramer, “Trump Wants NATO’s Eyes on China,” Foreign Policy, March 20, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/20/us-wants-nato-to-
focus-on-china-threat-critical-infrastructure-political-military-huawei-transatlantic-tensions/.
42
Courtney McBride, “Trump Keeps the Pressure on State Department Spending,” Wall Street Journal, March 11, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/ar-
ticles/trumps-keeps-the-pressure-on-state-department-spending-11552326475.
43
44
45
Doyle McManus, “Almost Half the Top Jobs in Trump’s State Department Are Still Empty,” The Atlantic, November 4, 2018, https://www.theatlan-
tic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/state-department-empty-ambassador-to-australi/574831/; Harry Stevens, “U.S. Ambassadors Have Become Less
Qualified Under Trump,” Axios, February 20, 2019, https://www.axios.com/trump-ambassadors-less-qualified-campaign-contributions-b01cda50-
2bf8-4868-9b4d-37d125eda347.html.
Openness in Asia is attainable without American primacy, but it is far from guaranteed.
—MIRA RAPP-HOOPER
Chapter 9 | From Primacy to Openness 105
From Primacy to Openness:

U.S. Strategic Objectives in Asia
Mira Rapp-Hooper
T he United States no longer possesses military-strategic primacy in Asia, and a combination of structural
factors and Communist Party of China (CCP) regime intentions mean it is unlikely to recoup it soon. Despite
this condition, much remains to be determined about the strategic landscape in Asia, and Washington retains
significant ability to shape it. The United States reserves an abiding interest in ensuring that Asia is not dominated
by a hostile hegemon in whole or in part and must hedge against this possibility by ensuring that China does not
establish a closed regional sphere of influence. In the service of this strategic objective, the United States should
seek to keep Asia open, preserving freedom of action for regional states, an open global commons, the free flow
of information, and positive interstate cooperation. An open Asia will require a significant U.S. military presence
and demands a credible defense strategy. It also calls for significantly improved coordination on sub-conventional
threats among U.S. agencies and with foreign partners. Finally, it depends on economic, technological, and domestic
investments, without which the United States cannot credibly preserve a viable balance of power. Openness in Asia
is attainable without American primacy, but it is far from guaranteed.
Before proceeding, a definition of the term “primacy” is appropriate. Primacy is the condition of being the
most powerful state in a global or regional system, including on military dimensions, albeit one against whom
discrete military challenges may still be possible. Primacy implies that the leading state has no great power rivals
within the system in question.1 If a country lacks primacy in a given regional system, it definitionally does not
possess it globally. Primacy is distinct from preeminence, however—a condition in which a state leads on most
critical metrics of national power, even if one or more other states boasts significant capabilities in some areas.2 A
preeminent state may have near-peer rivals and be susceptible to their military challenges. To argue that American
military-strategic primacy in Asia has passed is to acknowledge that China is a military-strategic rival within Asia,
but not necessarily on a global level. The United States may (and likely will) remain the leading global power
despite the loss of military primacy in Asia. It therefore remains globally preeminent.
The Demise of Pacific Primacy

A combination of structural factors and regime intentions mean that China is likely to be a significant military-
strategic challenger to the United States for the next several decades. Barring a stark discontinuity with present
trend lines, Washington will find it difficult or impossible to reestablish primacy in Asia in the near term.3 First,
structural trends are likely to continue to support the growth of Chinese economic and military power in the
region. Following decades of astounding development, China’s economy will probably sustain at respectable
levels. Even if annual growth dips below 5 percent, China will still likely be the world’s largest economy by 2030.4
Beijing’s technology sector may also overtake the United States’ in both research and development spending
and market size.5 Clear headwinds include its demographic cliff and labor force, as well as unknowns around its
incomplete economic transition to a consumption-based economy.6 Nonetheless, China can afford growth-related
setbacks and still continue to encroach upon the United States’ relative position in Asia.
For the last 25 years, moreover, China’s military budget has grown with its GDP, rising from $17 billion in
1990 to $152 billion in 2017—a 900 percent increase.7 Beijing’s development of anti-access/area denial (A2/AD)
capabilities already calls into question the ability of the United States to mount a direct defense of its allies.8
Moreover, its recent Five-Year Program addresses weaknesses in command structures and force coordination9
while shifting priority away from ground forces and toward naval and air assets, which are likely to strengthen
joint operations capabilities and overall military effectiveness.10 China is therefore already a leading military power
in Asia and can rival the United States in the quantitative, local military balance, as well as below the traditional
conflict threshold, even if it cannot accomplish either of these globally.11 From a strict and definitional military
perspective, then, American primacy in Asia has withered, and China’s broader economic picture gives us no
reason to expect an imminent reversal.
The CCP leadership, moreover, has made it abundantly clear that American regional military primacy is inimical
to its strategic objectives. Since the 2008 financial crisis and Xi Jinping’s 2012-2013 ascent, the CCP has been explicit
about its goal of re-establishing regional hegemony in Asia and of climbing to the status of global superpower by
mid-century.12 The CCP’s “Two Centenaries” may make China one of the most transparent great powers in history.
Not only has it issued timestamps for its goals of regional hegemony and global power status, but it has identified
some general requirements of those strategic conditions, including the attenuation of American power in Asia, a
restoration of significant regional influence, and the reestablishment of control over disputed territories.13
Furthermore, as China’s favorable trendlines have sustained and Xi has declared his strategic ambitions, the
CCP has undeniably become more authoritarian at home. Xi’s domestic accolades include an even stronger role
for the government in the Chinese economy, the systematic internment of ethnic minorities, the manufacture of
a sophisticated surveillance state with a closed internet at its core, and the abolition of the notion of collective
leadership in favor of Xi’s permanent installation.14 American analysts cannot presume that China’s propitious
tailwinds will blow in a linear fashion or that they are irreversible. Yet, the United States does not itself possess the
ability to upend China’s growth trajectory, military spending, stated strategic objectives, or current preference for
authoritarianism. For the time being, then, American strategists must devise an approach that allows the United
States to live with and protect vital interests from an authoritarian near-peer in Asia.
Undesirability of this condition notwithstanding, the strategic picture in Asia is more fluid than structural
trends or CCP goals would suggest. Xi’s declared objectives of regional hegemony and global power status hardly
guarantee that Beijing will achieve them or elucidate the form they will take if it does. Xi’s goal of cross-Straits
reunification, for example, may be accomplished in two radically different ways, and along a timeline that will
remain malleable.15 Regional and global power status may also be defined in a variety of ways, and we should
expect the exertions of a twenty-first-century great power to look different than those of its nineteenth-century
peers. We do not anticipate the CCP will engage in outright territorial conquest to reassert its role in Asia, for
example, with the possible exception of Taiwan. It is much more likely to attempt to secure its vision for twenty-
first-century power through economic, technological, and sub-conventional approaches, and its choice of means
will be at least somewhat responsive to the international environment. The exact form that China’s regional
influence takes is far from determined.
This is all the more true because rising powers have a reliable history of risk aversion. Precisely because they seek
to reach global heights, ascending states often eschew forms of belligerence that would catalyze countervailing
coalitions or derail their rise.16 While he has adopted an assertive foreign policy, Xi has also demonstrated risk
aversion, preferring to advance China’s aims where little or no general U.S. deterrence is present, as with his
South China Sea campaign or the westward push with the Belt and Road Initiative.17 When Washington has
sought to establish immediate deterrence in the face of Beijing’s advances, these have proven effective, as with the
establishment of a clear declaratory policy around the Senkaku Islands in 2013-2014 and a stark warning about
Scarborough Shoal in 2016.18 Indeed, the vagaries of and risk aversion embedded in Beijing’s stated objectives
bestow the United States with valuable advantages—namely, the ability to deter and defend against some of
China’s most significant advances, so long as it can define its own vital interests and accept some risk. The loss
of American military primacy in Asia, therefore, does not portend an Asia dominated by hostile Chinese power.
Washington will retain the ability to secure its vital interests in Asia and, to some extent, to shape China’s own
conception of its regional objectives.
Strategic Objective: Openness in Asia

While the United States cannot avoid a stronger China able to exert significant regional influence, it can
nonetheless secure its longstanding political, security, and economic interests in the region and avert the conditions
that would most directly threaten them. Since the late nineteenth century, the United States has sought to prevent
a hostile hegemon from dominating Eurasia, as this condition would impede commercial interests and potentially
expose the U.S. homeland to military threats.19 Potential domination may come in novel forms, but the same
objective remains worthy today. The United States should seek to avert the hostile domination of Asia.
We cannot envision the precise form it will take, but Xi Jinping is seeking some form of a sphere of influence in
Asia.20 And while a state’s domestic regime preferences do not neatly predict its regional behavior, Xi’s affection for
a closed Chinese information environment already has a foreign policy analogue.21 Other international governance
attempts may have similar features. For several years, strategists have argued that the United States must oppose a
Chinese regional sphere—a geographic area in which China exercises predominate influence in military, diplomatic,
or economic terms.22 Chinese influence in parts of Southeast or Central Asia, however, is not a prima facie threat to
American interests. Nonetheless, U.S. strategy must hedge against the possibility that China’s regional aspirations
are fundamentally irreconcilable with its own objectives.
Washington should seek to prevent China from establishing a closed sphere of influence—a bloc that would
allow it to dominate part or all of Asia in a manner that displaces U.S. political, economic, or military power. An
exclusive zone could leave the United States unable to access vital markets and strip it of its forward defensive
position, thereby threatening U.S. prosperity and national security and, by extension, domestic freedom. This
grave condition would occur if China co-opted the political, economic, or military independence of other states,
preventing them from making free choices through coercion. Closure of the global commons could have similarly
grievous effects.
The positive objective of U.S. strategy should therefore be an open Asia.23 Openness characterizes both American
strategic priorities in the region as well as the types of interactions the United States should seek to facilitate in
their service. An open Asia is one in which regional states have political and economic freedom of action and are
able to make independent strategic decisions without being forced into blocs or camps that could result in their
hierarchical dominance. Under this concept, Asia’s commons must also remain open, essential as they are to
international commerce. Openness favors sustained interstate cooperation, beneficial trade, and the free flow of
information across borders. It also calls for transparent international governance, even among those states that are
not themselves full-fledged democracies.
An openness-based strategy seeks to prevent shuttered economic, political, and security spheres in Asia
by helping regional states preserve their flexibility and independence and doing the same in the skies and sea
lanes. It rejects the notion that regional states should “choose” between the United States and China and instead
incentivizes them to eschew great power dominance in favor of agency. At a time when the CCP seeks a more
closed Chinese society, commons, and domestic and international information space, the United States should
strive to preserve the region’s dynamism and fluidity. An openness-based strategy acknowledges that the United
States will not retain strategic primacy in Asia. It also recognizes that Washington does not require unequivocal
regional dominance to prevent China from establishing a hierarchy of its own.
Securing Openness
Openness in Asia will not be easily obtained. It will require the United States to focus consistently on Asia as its
primary foreign policy theater, allocate substantial military resources to the region, develop a viable island chain
defense strategy, improve its coordination against sub-conventional threats within U.S. agencies and with foreign
partners, and invest in regional openness economically, technologically, and domestically. Despite a relatively more
constrained position in Asia, the United States can secure openness, but its objective is far from guaranteed.
Regional openness requires a strong American military presence but does not demand military primacy. The
United States and its allies must retain sufficient strength to deter China from making a bid that could result in
its hierarchical dominance of any part of the region, to defend against it if it were to mount one, and to keep
the global commons open.24 These defensive requirements, in turn, mean that the United States absolutely must
maintain its treaty alliances and forward position in Asia. Since the early Cold War, Washington has understood the
First Island Chain archipelago to be its defensive front line, but China’s anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) approach
makes the direct defense of allies increasingly tenuous.25 If it lacks the ability to defend and deter on behalf of its
treaty allies, the United States will struggle to maintain the regional position that will allow it to meet its minimum
deterrence requirements. Washington currently lacks a strategy for First Island Chain defense. A counter-A2/AD
strategy that relies on land- and sea-based missiles may be the most feasible approach but will be politically taxing
to enact.26 Beyond an ally-focused defense strategy, military openness will be far easier to obtain if the United
States can continue to strengthen its strategic position in Southeast Asia. It should buttress capacity-building
efforts with Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines; prioritize defense cooperation with India; and synchronize
similar disparate efforts with Japan and Australia. Despite modest improvements, it must also increase significantly
its Foreign Military Financing to the region.27
Openness will not be guaranteed through military strategy alone. Indeed, China’s regional and global objectives
mean it should prefer to establish its sphere without triggering the conflict that could derail its rise. We should
therefore expect China’s regional expansion to continue to occur largely below the military threshold. American
military-strategic objectives will therefore need to rely heavily on non-military tools. The 2018 National Defense
Strategy (NDS) recognizes the persistence of so-called “grey zone” challenges, but the NDS does not articulate an
approach to sub-conventional competition, nor does the Department of Defense’s 2020 budget request refer to it
at all.28 By their nature, sub-conventional incursions occur outside of the traditional Pentagon purview and at the
seams of other agencies, making them more difficult to address.29
Whether incursions come in the form of maritime grabs, cyber intrusions, economic coercion, or information
and influence campaigns, sub-conventional deterrence generally requires swift transparency, specific deterrent
threats, clear messaging, and some tolerance for risk.30 The United States has most of the diplomatic, intelligence,
and economic tools it should want to more fully engage these types of threats, yet many of the relevant offices
lack the ability to coordinate among themselves or with their foreign government counterparts.31 The United
States cannot seek to deter or prevent all Chinese coercion, but it should focus on thwarting sub-conventional bids
that may contribute to closed spheres, such as efforts to restrict freedom of navigation in the South China Sea, to
shutter the regional information environment, or to imperil states’ political independence. It will need to improve
its interagency and international coordinating capacities to do so.
The promotion of openness as a strategic objective also has components that are entirely nonmilitary. Economic
openness requires that the United States abandon reflexive protectionism and restore itself as a credible trading
partner. Technological openness requires that Washington and its allies provide alternatives to closed and unreliable
systems of information provision.32 It calls for the United States and others to promote new openness-based rules
and regimes in under-governed spaces like the internet and cyberspace, lest China’s preferences crystallize into
new international norms.33 It suggests that the same states should give infrastructure and development aid that
promotes transparency, and to push China to meet those standards. Finally, all of the forgoing requires that the
United States harness its own competitive capacity through strategic domestic investments in education, high-
skills immigration, and government-backed research and development. Openness does not require primacy, but it
does demand American innovation, dynamism, and the ability to marshal them for geostrategy.
Openness, Not Overreach

Just as important as the requirements for securing openness in Asia is a clear understanding of what the United
States should not do if it wishes to achieve it. While Washington should devote a significant percentage of its
considerable defense resources to Asia, it should not seek to recoup commanding military primacy in the region at
the expense of other tools of foreign policy. Diplomatic, intelligence, and economic instruments and coordination
among them are arguably more deserving of budgetary augmentation given how frequently they are likely to be
used.34
Moreover, the United States should not hope to match the exercise of Chinese power symmetrically, seeking
to thwart it everywhere it springs. This is a recipe for national exhaustion and one that does not guarantee success
even if it were possible. Rather than devise a Belt and Road analogue, for example, Washington and its partners
should make available selective high-standards infrastructure opportunities. China’s projects have already begun to
generate countervailing effects of their own, and the mere existence of more open options restores a measure of
political independence to the states in question. Likewise, the United States need not seek to undermine China’s
closer relationships with individual states, such as Laos and Cambodia. Some increase in Chinese influence in
Southeast and Central Asia is impossible to prevent and does not necessarily result in problematic regional closure.
Third and finally, the United States will be unable to separate its strategic objectives in Asia from its domestic
imperatives. Washington cannot offer openness-promoting digital and infrastructure alternatives if it is not fully
exploiting its own innovative capacity, for example. While China’s growing power presents a significant challenge
to the United States and the region, it need only result in a closed Asia if the United States fails to sustain openness.
Indeed, the United States’ security and prosperity face peril if its own foreign policy erraticism persists in an
environment of intense political polarization.35 American global preeminence absent military primacy is sufficient
to prevent a closed Chinese sphere in Asia: a strategically steady United States, however, is necessary.
Mira Rapp-Hooper is a senior fellow for Asia Security at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). She is also a senior fellow at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai
China Center. At CFR, Dr. Rapp-Hooper’s work explores national security and strategy issues in Asia, including great power competition, alliances, nuclear
issues, and territorial disputes; the implications of China’s rise for the international order; and the future of American strategy toward Asia and China. Dr.
Rapp-Hooper was formerly a senior fellow with the Asia-Pacific Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, a fellow with the CSIS Asia
Program, and the director of the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. She was also a Stanton Nuclear Security fellow at CFR. Dr. Rapp-Hooper’s
academic writings have appeared in Political Science Quarterly, Security Studies, and Survival. Her policy writings have appeared in The National Interest,
Foreign Affairs, and The Washington Quarterly, and her analysis has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and on NPR, CNN, MSNBC,
and the BBC. Dr. Rapp-Hooper was the Asia Policy coordinator for the 2016 Hillary Clinton presidential campaign. She is a David Rockefeller Fellow of
the Trilateral Commission and a senior editor at War on the Rocks. Her first book, Shields of the Republic: The History and Hereafter of America’s Alliances is
forthcoming with Harvard University Press. Her second, The Day After Trump: The Future of American Strategy and the International Order, co-authored with
Rebecca Lissner, is forthcoming with Yale. She holds a B.A. in history from Stanford University and an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in political science from
Columbia University.
1
Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “American Primacy in Perspective,” Foreign Affairs ( July/August 2002): 20-21.
2
Stephen G. Brooks and William C. Wohlforth, “American Primacy in Perspective,” Foreign Affairs ( July/August 2002): 20-21.
3
For arguments on structural trends and China’s rise, see Arvind Subramanian, “The Inevitable Superpower: Why China’s Rise Is a Sure Thing,”
Foreign Affairs 90, no. 5 (September/October 2011): 66-78; Gideon Rachman, “American Decline: This Time It’s for Real,” Foreign Policy, no. 184
( January/February 2011): 59-65; Wu Xinbo, “Understanding the Geopolitical Implications of the Global Financial Crisis,” Washington Quarterly 33,
no. 4 (October 2010): 155-163; Christopher Layne, “The Waning of U.S. Hegemony—Myth or Reality? A Review Essay,” International Security 34,
no. 1 (Summer 2009): 147-172; Robert A. Pape, “Empire Falls,” National Interest, no. 99 ( January/February 2009): 21–34; Martin Jacques, When China
Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World (New York: Penguin, 2009); National Intelligence Council (NIC),
Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World (Washington, DC: NIC, 2008); National Intelligence Council (NIC), Global Trends 2030: A Transformed World
(Washington, DC: NIC, 2012).
4
World Bank, “Global Economic Prospects, June 2018,” 2018; Cao Jing and Mun Ho, “China: Economic and GHG emissions Outlook to 2050,”
September 15, 2014, in The New Climate Economy Report, Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, 2016, p. 28. Note that China already has the
world’s largest economy by purchasing power parity; see Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, “Gross Domestic Product,”
OECD Data, 2018, https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gross-domestic-product-gdp.htm.
5
Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2018); Organization for Economic Cooperation
and Development, “Gross Domestic Product,” OECD Data, 2018, https://data.oecd.org/gdp/gross-domestic-product-gdp.htm; Duncan Clark,
“China Is Shaping the Future of Global Tech,” Financial Times, January 12, 2018.
6
For work that takes a more skeptical view toward China’s rise, see Michael Auslin, The End of the Asian Century: War, Stagnation, and Risks to the World’s
Most Dynamic Region (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2017); Michael Beckley, Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower
(Ithaca: Cornell, 2018); Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Future of Power (New York: Perseus, 2011), chap. 6; Daniel W. Drezner, “China Isn’t Beating the U.S.,”
Foreign Policy, no. 184 ( January/February 2011): 67; Eric S. Edelman, Understanding America’s Contested Primacy (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic
and Budgetary Assessments, 2010), chap. 3.
7
Andrew J. Nathan, “The Chinese World Order,” The New York Review, October 12, 2017, https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2017/10/12/chinese-
world-order/.
8
Andrew F. Krepinevich, Maritime Competition in a Mature Precision-Strike Regime, CSBA, April 2015, http://csbaonline.org/publications/2015/04/
maritime-competition-in-a-mature-precision-strike-regime/; Thomas G. Mahnken, “Weapons: The Growth & Spread of the Precision-Strike
Regime,” Daedalus 140, no. 3 (Summer 2011); Aaron Friedberg, Beyond Air-Sea Battle: The Debate Over US Military Strategy in Asia (London: International
Institute for Strategic Studies, 2014).
9
Testimony of Cortez A. Cooper III of RAND before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, “PLA Military Modernization:
Drivers, Force Restructuring, and Implications,” February 15, 2018, pp. 1-2; Michael S. Chase, et al., “China’s Incomplete Military Transformation:
Assessing the Weaknesses of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA),” RAND, 2015, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_
reports/RR800/RR893/RAND_RR893.pdf; Joel Wuthnow and Phillip C. Saunders, “Chinese Military Reform in the Age of Xi Jinping: Drivers,
Challenges, and Implications,” Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs, Institute for National Strategic Studies, China Strategic Perspectives,
no. 10 (March 2017).
10
Joel Wuthnow and Phillip C. Saunders, “Chinese Military Reform in the Age of Xi Jinping: Drivers, Challenges, and Implications,” Center for the
Study of Chinese Military Affairs, Institute for National Strategic Studies, China Strategic Perspectives, no. 10 (March 2017).
11
Eric Heginbotham, et al., U.S.-China Military Scorecard: Forces, Geography, and the Evolving Balance of Power, 1996-2017, RAND, 2015, https://www.
rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR300/RR392/RAND_RR392.pdf; Michael J. Green, Kathleen H. Hicks, John Schaus, Zack
Cooper, and Jake Douglas, “Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia: Theory and Practice of Grey Zone Deterrence,” CSIS, May 9, 2017, https://
www.csis.org/analysis/countering-coercion-maritime-asia.
12
For the most comprehensive treatment of China’s foreign policy objectives under Xi Jinping, see Elizabeth C. Economy, The Third Revolution: Xi
Jinping and the New Chinese State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). See also Zheng Wang, “The Chinese Dream: Concept and Context,” Journal
of Chinese Politics, no. 19 (2014); Christopher K. Johnson, Decoding China’s Emerging ‘Great Power’ Strategy in Asia (Washington, DC: CSIS, 2014);
Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell, “How China Sees America: The Sum of Beijing’s Fears,” Foreign Affairs (September/October 2012); Rush
Doshi, “Xi Jinping Just Made it Clear Where China’s Foreign Policy is Headed,” Washington Post, October 25, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.
com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/10/25/xi-jinping-just-made-it-clear-where-chinas-foreign-policy-is-headed/?utm_term=.515bba46a6c0.
13
See, e.g., Graham Allison, “What Xi Jinping Wants,” The Atlantic, May 31, 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/
what-china-wants/528561/.
14
Carl Minzer, End of an Era: How China’s Authoritarian Revival is Undermining its Rise (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018).
15
Chris Buckley and Chris Horton, “Xi Jinping Warns Taiwan that Unification is the Goal and Force Is an Option,” New York Times, January 1, 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/01/world/asia/xi-jinping-taiwan-china.html?login=email&auth=login-email.
16
David Edelstein, Over the Horizon: Time, Uncertainty, and the Rise of Great Powers (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2017).
17
On this point and BRI, see, e.g., Yun Sun, “March West: China’s Response to the US Rebalancing,” Brookings, January 31, 2013, https://www.
brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2013/01/31/march-west-chinas-response-to-the-u-s-rebalancing/.
18
Demetri Sevastopulo and Geoff Dyer, “Obama Forced Xi to Back Down Over Scarborough Shoal Dispute,” Financial Times, July 12, 2016, https://
www.ft.com/content/c63264a4-47f1-11e6-8d68-72e9211e86ab.
19
Michael J. Green, By More Than Providence: Grand Strategy and American Power in the Asia-Pacific (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).
20
See, e.g., Oriana Skylar Mastro, “The Stealth Superpower: How China Hid Its Global Ambitions,” Foreign Affairs ( January/February 2019); Jennifer
Lind, “Life in China’s Asia: What Regional Hegemony Would Look Like,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2018).
21
Adrian Shahbaz, “Freedom on the Net, 2018: The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism,” Freedom House, October 2018, https://freedomhouse.org/
sites/default/files/FOTN_2018_Final%20Booklet_11_1_2018.pdf.
22
Hal Brands and Charles Edel, “The Disharmony of the Spheres,” Commentary, December 2017, https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/
the-disharmony-of-the-spheres/; Thomas Wright, All Measures Short of War: The Contest for the 21st Century and the Future of American Power (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2017).
23
For an earlier, globally focused iteration of this argument, see Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Lissner, “The Open World: What America Can
Achieve After Trump,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2019). For a fuller version of the strategic concept see: Rebecca Lissner and Mira Rapp-Hooper, After
Trump: The Future of American Strategy and International Order (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020).
24
For an explication of a similar standard of “military sufficiency,” see Van Jackson, “Wagering on a Progressive Versus Liberal Theory of National
Security,” Texas National Security Review, December 4, 2018, https://tnsr.org/roundtable/policy-roundtable-the-future-of-progressive-foreign-
policy/.
25
Aaron Friedberg, Beyond Air-Sea Battle: The Debate Over US Military Strategy in Asia (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2014);
Thomas G. Mahnken, “Weapons: The Growth & Spread of the Precision-Strike Regime,” Daedalus 140, No. 3 (Summer 2011); Evan B. Montgomery,
“Contested Primacy in the Western Pacific: China’s Rise and the Future of US Power Projection,” International Security 38, No. 4 (2014): 115-149.
26
Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr., “How to Deter China: The Case for Archipelagic Defense,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2015); Evan Braden Montgomery,
“Managing China’s Missile Threat: Future Options to Preserve Forward Defense,” Testimony Before the U.S. China Economic and Security Review
Commission, April 1, 2015.
27
Eric Sayers, “Assessing America’s Indo-Pacific Budget Shortfall,” War on the Rocks, November 15, 2018, https://warontherocks.com/2018/11/
assessing-americas-indo-pacific-budget-shortfall/.
28
National Defense Strategy, p. 18-19; Office of the Secretary of Defense (Comptroller), “Defense Budget Overview: U.S. Department of Defense
Fiscal Year 2020 Budget Request,” March 2019, https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/fy2020/fy2020_Budget_
Request_Overview_Book.pdf.
29
Eric Edelman, et al., “Providing for the Common Defense: The Assessment and Recommendations of the National Defense Strategy Commission,”
Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States, https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/2018-11/providing-for-the-common-
defense.pdf, pp. 9, 63.
30
John Schaus, Michael Matlaga, Kathleen H. Hicks, Heather A. Conley, and Jeff Rathke, “What Works: Countering Grey Zone Coercion,” CSIS Brief,
July 2018; Kathleen H. Hicks and Alice Hunt Friend, “By Other Means: Part I-Campaigning in the Grey Zone,” CSIS International Security Program,
July 2019.
31
Eric Edelman, et al., “Providing for the Common Defense: The Assessment and Recommendations of the National Defense Strategy Commission,”
Commission on the National Defense Strategy for the United States, https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/2018-11/providing-for-the-common-
defense.pdf, p. 9.
32
Tom Wheeler and Robert D. Williams, “Keeping Huawei Out of the U.S. Is Not Enough to Secure 5G,” Lawfare, February 20, 2019, https://www.
lawfareblog.com/keeping-huawei-hardware-out-us-not-enough-secure-5g.
33
Mira Rapp-Hooper and Rebecca Lissner, “The Open World: What America Can Achieve After Trump,” Foreign Affairs (May/June 2019).
34
For examples of non-defense counter-grey-zone proposals, see Kathleen H. Hicks and Alice Hunt Friend, “By Other Means: Part I-Campaigning in
the Grey Zone,” CSIS International Security Program, July 2019, pp. 19-27.
35
Kenneth A. Schultz, “The Perils of Polarization for U.S. Foreign Policy,” The Washington Quarterly 4, No. 4 (Winter 2018): 7-28.
Are we destined for a forever-war between two technological giants, whose battleground
will be network control, rather than geography?
—DAVID E. SANGER
Chapter 10 | Managing the Fifth Generation 113
Managing the Fifth Generation:

America, China, and the Struggle
for Technological Dominance
David E. Sanger1
I n February 2019, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo took a tour through Europe, issuing a dire warning to foreign
officials every stop along his route.
In visits to Hungary and Poland, and later to Germany and Britain, he warned American allies that they faced
a stark choice: They could reject the efforts of Chinese firms to build the next big thing in telecommunications
networks (called 5G for “fifth generation”) inside their borders and stay firmly within the American defense camp.
Or they could take the Chinese technology and low-cost financing that comes with it—and, he threatened, lose
access to sensitive American intelligence and perhaps American military bases.2
For many of the countries he visited, Pompeo’s ultimatum seemed shocking: officials had been treating the
building of new cellular networks largely as a procurement decision. While they had heard warnings that installing
Chinese-made equipment in their networks could give Beijing a foothold to install “backdoors” that could allow
intelligence agencies to read or divert digital traffic, the security issues had been considered background noise, not
a festering national security crisis. Now, suddenly, the U.S. was presenting 5G as a loyalty test—a choice between
staying in the Western alliance or placing at least one foot in the Chinese camp. The Trump administration was
insisting that nations declare their allegiances.
Pompeo’s demands were followed by quiet visits from American intelligence officials armed with a slide deck
laying out the specific dangers that Washington was worried about. They described the 5G hardware as the leading
edge of a broader Chinese effort to gain influence everywhere from Latin America to Africa to the former Soviet
states—including some of the newer members of NATO. Those efforts, they warned, ranged from overt to covert:
subsidizing universities and libraries (as the United States did in the 1950s and 1960s), using the Belt and Road
Initiative to create trade dependencies, and providing “donations” to politicians. But American officials contended
the 5G initiative was the most insidious. Their argument boiled down to this: if Chinese firms—led by Huawei,
China’s national telecommunications champion and the world’s second-largest cell phone maker after it edged ahead
of Apple in 2018—were allowed to install the hardware and software of the next-generation networks, the Chinese
government would gradually amass an unprecedented amount of control over a vast array of infrastructure. “It’s
not just the communications,’’ one of the officials who conducted those classified briefings warned. “It would be
the gas pipelines, the water supplies, the factory floors, the ‘smart cities’ of the future.” Under Chinese law, he
argued, Huawei and other Chinese firms are required to comply with any request from Chinese intelligence services
to create a “backdoor” into another nation’s communications networks. This would allow them to spy or—more
ominously—use that power in time of conflict to turn off the networks of their clients.
It was a dire picture—but an entirely speculative one, as the Europeans and others argued in response. So far,
there was scant evidence that China had used Huawei for nefarious purposes. So by early summer 2019, the battle
to keep Chinese-made technologies out of allied 5G networks was not going well for the United States. Much
of Europe was hedging its bets, not willing to give up the subsidized, low bids that Chinese manufacturers were
offering. Other countries, including close U.S. military allies such as Bahrain, home of the Fifth Fleet, were either
planning to incorporate Huawei into at least part of their network or refraining from making a public decision.
The Philippines, once a centerpiece of American air and naval power in the Pacific, outright balked, announcing it
would go with the Chinese system. India—one of the largest telecommunications networks—was sending mixed
signals. As of July 2019, only Australia had formally announced that it would ban Huawei components in its 5G
networks—though New Zealand and Japan were moving that way. By the fall, no new countries had announced
a ban. Instead, Huawei steadily picked up more 5G contracts around the globe, announcing sixty contracts by
October—just over half of which were with carriers in Europe. (However, most were for cell towers and radio
components of the networks, rather than the core switching systems that are of particular concern to military and
intelligence officials.)
The argument between Washington and its allies over 5G had run headlong into the always-difficult balancing
act inherent in simultaneously treating China as an economic partner, an intelligence adversary, an intellectual-
property thief, and a potential military foe. But the 5G problem went deeper. At a moment when America’s
influence around the globe appears waning, allies were essentially looking into the crystal ball and trying to discern
which of the world’s two largest economies would be more critical to their future. While they acknowledged the
risks of putting Chinese firms at the core of their national networks, they were weighing that risk against the
potential for job creation and the fear of Chinese retaliation if they sided with Washington. (“We sell five million
cars to China every year,’’ a senior German official said amid this debate. “What happens to that the year after we
ban Huawei?”)
Even inside the Trump administration, there was no unanimity on the issue. While a cluster of powerful
China hawks, led by Pompeo, made the case that banning Huawei was non-negotiable, Treasury Secretary Steve
Mnuchin led a camp arguing that, just as the trade relationship could be managed, so could Huawei’s presence
in Western networks. President Trump vacillated. For much of the spring of 2019, he described 5G networks as
an issue of national security and went so far as to impose a ban on exporting sensitive American technology to
Chinese manufacturers. (Although U.S. companies promptly discovered loopholes in the ban that permitted them
to sell some products.3) Then, in June, he partially lifted the ban, saying it was a trade issue. One of his own senior
advisers conceded that he had no idea whether the president might trade away America’s long-range security
concerns for a trade deal that included a Chinese purchase of billions of dollars in American soybeans.
The result, not surprisingly, has been confusion among American firms and American allies. And the absence
of a clear administration strategy has contributed to a fear that the United States is falling behind not only in 5G
but in the technologies it will enable, from artificial intelligence to advanced robotics to autonomous vehicles. All
are considered the next technological battleground with a rising China.
A Core Debate: 5G and the Future of the Internet

Beyond the specific debate about whether to let Chinese firms build the telecommunications infrastructure of
the Western and Asian allies of the United States lies competing visions of what the internet will look like in a few
years—and how China’s central role in 5G technology may shape the internet’s future.
Those in one camp see the 5G networks inevitably leading to the creation of a new Berlin Wall—elements
of which are already partly in place. While the analogy draws from the Cold War, this wall would be virtual,
not physical. It would stretch around the globe and essentially divide the world into two internets. On one side
would be the familiar anarchy of the Western version of the internet, awash in constant commerce, largely free
speech, and the inevitable abuses and chaos that come with a vast, unregulated space. On the other would lie a
Chinese-controlled “authoritarianet.” This second internet, in Pompeo’s words, would be “based on the principles
of an authoritarian, Communist regime.” Inside the authoritarianet, content is controlled by the government,
facial recognition is employed to tighten the ruling party’s control, and artificial intelligence is deployed to sniff
out dissent. And its traffic may pass over Chinese-provided undersea cables, to which the United States and its
allies would, presumably, have limited access. It would, in essence, replicate elements of what China has created
at home: an increasingly self-reliant network that uses Chinese search engines that filter inquiries for political
correctness, Chinese social networks, and Chinese mobile payment systems. The appeal to a rising class of
authoritarian leaders, from Hungary to Bolivia, is obvious. For insecure leaders looking for a bargain, it will all
come in a subsidized surveillance-and-control package.
The alternative to this back-to-the-Cold-War view belongs to techno-realists. They note that China’s control
over a substantial portion of the world’s networks is inevitable, just as China’s rise is beyond America’s control.
But in their view, the two-internet system is a flawed concept. While China has been more successful than most
could have imagined at walling off its own population from outside influences, stretching that wall beyond China’s
shores would interfere with Beijing’s own ability to trade around the world. In this view, dividing the world into
two internets defeats the grand political achievement of the digital age: the benefits of tying together billions of
global citizens.
So in this view, even if there are “sovereign” corners of the internet, the world will still have to exchange
data among them at blazing speeds. And that means your data will traverse free and authoritarian internets, and
secure and less secure environments. As Sue Gordon, then deputy director of national intelligence, put it bluntly:
“You have to presume a dirty network,” and adjust accordingly. “We are going to have to figure out a way in a 5G
world that we’re able to manage the risks in a diverse network that includes technology that we can’t trust.”4 Her
meaning was clear: the nation that dominated the world of communications since Alexander Graham Bell, that
built the internet and benefited from the fact that the most critical connections flowed through American territory,
must accept the reality that we can no longer control our digital environment.
These two visions likely oversimplify how the next decade will unfold. If there is a lesson from the first three
decades of the internet, it is that cyberspace is a messy place. It defies planning. That is especially true as the 5G
networks are rolled out around the world. And there is no assurance that the American approach to developing
these networks will prevail.
The Defense Innovation Board made a convincing case in 2019 that the United States cannot depend on
stumbling its way to a lead merely by assuming that the wizards of Silicon Valley will stay ahead. “The country
that owns 5G will own many of these [critical] innovations and set the standards for the rest of the world,’’ the
board concluded. “That country is currently not likely to be the United States.”5
So it is no surprise that 5G has already become a political battlefield. Its deployment over the next few years has
struck at one of America’s existential fears: that once the West’s digital communications are dominated by Chinese
firms, Beijing will have more than just an innovation advantage; it will have the power to divert internet traffic at
will or, with the flick of a switch, turn off the communications spine of the United States.
Are we destined for a forever-war between two technological giants, whose battleground will be network
control, rather than geography? Or is there room for accommodation of a rising technological power—even in the
West’s networks—and the potential to craft rules of the road that might exempt the most critical communications
networks from the daily, low-level cyber conflicts that major states are fighting every day?
How We Got Here

When the world embraced 3G and 4G technologies in the first decades of the twenty-first century, it was
joining a system that was essentially designed, built, and controlled by the West. The technology was dominated
by American makers: the wireless systems were heavily dependent on switching systems built by Cisco and wireless
radio technology designed by Qualcomm, among others. Western allies and Japan invested heavily in deploying
their networks first, and the Chinese were usually a few years behind. That meant the West was able to define the
technical standards and promote their versions of devices and regulations, granting them a significant competitive
advantage.
But the Chinese understood quickly that 5G was their moment to catch up—a revolution in manufacturing that
would also create new opportunities in artificial intelligence, autonomous vehicles, and other technologies that
are key components of their “Made-in-China” goals. They invested heavily in research and development, licensing
some of the technology from American makers (though not always paying for it). Huawei, which began as a
domestic telecommunications firm founded by the famously reticent former People’s Liberation Army engineer
Ren Zhengfei, became the symbol of China’s global ambitions. By mid-2018 it held an estimated 28 percent
share of the world’s telecommunications equipment market.6 And it dominated markets in Southeast Asia, Latin
America, and Africa. Now it has begun using that market dominance to sign 5G contracts with dozens of countries
worldwide, aided by low-cost financing provided by the Chinese government.7 And it has begun to push back at
American and European dominance of the key leadership roles on the international bodies responsible for setting
the standards for 5G communications.8 Today, roughly 10 percent of patents necessary for 5G are held by Chinese
companies, including Huawei—though the leading technology, and the ability to integrate it into a network, still
belongs to the U.S. and a smattering of European competitors.9
Senator Mark Warner, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee and a former
telecommunications executive, has described the change to his colleagues this way: “We are accustomed to a
world in which America invented the internet, set the standards, and manufactured all the key parts. And that
world is going away. It’s not coming back.”
Yet few in the United States saw this Chinese initiative coming. Huawei was founded in 1987, but it hardly
seemed a threat for its first two decades, as it mostly focused on consolidating its market share in China and
expanding to developing countries. But by the mid-2000s, the company’s successes set off at least a few alarm
bells in the ranks of the U.S. government. And by 2012, Huawei was frozen out of U.S. government supply chains
following a congressional report warning that installing Huawei gear in the U.S. would be tantamount to letting
the Chinese Communist Party wire up the country. While Huawei has always maintained that it is privately owned
by its employees, public reporting on the company has revealed a very close relationship between Huawei and the
Chinese government. It thrives largely because of a tight web of state-backed financing, government clientele, and a
talent pool with overlap in the military and intelligence services. Yet the U.S. has never been able to prove—at least in
the unclassified world—that Huawei is an instrument of the Communist Party, or of the People’s Liberation Army,
in which Zhengfei served as a young man. Even Operation Shotgiant, mounted by the National Security Agency
(NSA) to reveal Huawei’s secret connections, turned up little. And when the operation was exposed by Edward J.
Snowden, the former NSA contractor now in exile in Russia, it merely convinced the Chinese that the United States
was doing to China exactly what American officials charged Huawei would do to the United States.10
The absence of a smoking gun connecting Huawei to any direct spying has not halted American officials from
warning of a danger to the West. Instead, they start with China’s two-year-old national security laws, noting
that Huawei officials are bound, by Chinese law, to give Chinese intelligence agencies any access they demand to
networks where Huawei operates.11 That fear is one reason a handful of acquisitions, mergers, and other deals
between Huawei and U.S. companies have been blocked.
Finally, in 2018—with the advent of the first 5G networks now imminent—Congress formally banned much
of Huawei gear from government use. And in December 2018, the chief financial officer of Huawei, Meng
Wanzhou—Zhengfei’s daughter—was arrested on charges of violating sanctions against Iran by shipping it
Huawei technology. The Chinese cried foul, arguing that Meng was being held in Canada merely for leverage by
President Trump. And Trump gave credence to the charge by suggesting she might be let go if there was a good
enough trade deal—thus mixing trade, national security, and the integrity of the American justice system.
Promises and Reality

While dozens—if not hundreds—of recently published articles talk about the need for the U.S. to “win the
race to 5G,” the conversation rarely focuses on what 5G actually is, what it promises, or what a technological lead
might look like. Many are tempted to view 5G as simply a faster version of 4G. It is true that speeds achievable
with 5G technology dwarf 4G many times over—a Netflix movie that might take several minutes to download
on an existing 4G cellular network will be downloaded in a flash. And latency—the lag time between a command
or inquiry and the response—is greatly reduced, a necessity for autonomous vehicles, which have to decide in a
split second whether to take an exit ramp. The networks also have vastly increased capacity, meaning they are not
overwhelmed by huge amounts of data flowing simultaneously.
Yet the real promise of 5G lies not in its speed, but the future applications that speed allows—and the ability to
exploit those for new technologies. (This is hardly a new phenomenon: Uber wouldn’t have been possible without
real-time mapping.) Previous generations of network connectivity were generally designed for consumers: the
traffic was primarily calls and data. 5G is different: it is designed for machines talking to machines and will enable
connections between the billions of sensors, robots, autonomous vehicles, and other devices that will continuously
feed one another vast amounts of data in the coming years. It will continuously swap information through the
cloud—and will update more frequently and autonomously than previous generations. The implications for
industry, national security, and human welfare are clear and revolutionary in scope.
But the question of whether or not the U.S. is in a good position to collect on these benefits of 5G is hotly
debated—and has been the subject of a number of meetings between key leaders in Congress, the executive
branch, and private wireless carriers. Many of these are asking whether—Huawei aside—the U.S. is actually on
track to deploy its networks in a competitive manner.
One of the biggest problems is that there is a disagreement over which segment of the electromagnetic
spectrum should be used for 5G. China and a number of other countries seem to have settled on spectrum in the
“sub-6” region—that is, below 6GHz. In the U.S., however, much of the key sub-6 spectrum is reserved for defense
use, leaving industry to develop 5G technologies that will operate at a much higher band—between 24GHz and
about 300GHz, so-called “mmWave.” While faster, the higher frequencies can be more difficult to manage and
don’t cover as much area as the lower- to mid-range sub-6 spectrum. As a result, it will be more effective in cities
and harder to deploy in already-underserved rural areas.
Most worrisome is the question of which spectrum will dominate globally: if the rest of the world mostly follows
China into the sub-6 spectrum, the U.S. may have a high-speed network—but one with significant interoperability
issues with other countries’ networks. It’s a problem that has a number of experts—from the Defense Innovation
Board12 to an FCC Commissioner13—highly concerned. And no one even knows for sure whether the great promise
of this new architecture—that its blinding speeds for cellular communications will give birth to autonomous vehicles
constantly communicating with the cloud, revolutionize manufacturing, and bring vast streams of data for farmers in
the most distant, poorest nations—will yield the promised benefits. Even as billions of dollars are spent to construct
it, 5G networks have become the digital Field of Dreams: build it, we are told, and they will come.14
Is It Too Late? Managing China, and Managing the 5G Future

If Russia has spent the past decade focused on disruption of the West, China, by contrast, is focused on its goal
of dominating the technologies that make the world work. The way to get there, China’s leadership has been
convinced, is not with nukes or the world’s largest navy, but with control of the world’s servers, software, and
undersea cables.
The United States woke up too late to the 5G challenge and to many of the issues associated with it. The fear
of falling behind—on 5G and the advances it will help spur in artificial intelligence, robotics, autonomous vehicles,
and weapons, among others—is now pervasive in Washington. But all is not lost, just as it was not lost in 1990,
when American politicians feared that the U.S. was on the way to becoming a “techno-colony” of Japan.
So what would be the elements of a national 5G strategy? Here are some suggestions.
1) Threatening allies doesn’t work. Devising a credible alternative might.

There are lessons in the apparent failure of Pompeo’s pressure tactics to lock Huawei out of American allies’
networks. The first is that, unsurprisingly, other governments don’t like to be threatened, and many see resisting
Washington on this point as a way of pushing back on an “America First” agenda. But the second is that NATO
allies, and allies in Asia, seem more likely to respond to a positive incentive: an argument that they can profit by
building a Western supply chain with the reach, effectiveness, and affordability of Huawei.
There are many ideas floating around about how to do this. One is to combine Nokia and Ericsson, two
European suppliers that do not enjoy Huawei’s market reach. A second is to combine them with an American
partner. But whatever the corporate configuration, it is clear that the United States and its partners need a Western
“champion” of their own: one that creates jobs, innovates, and may be the beneficiary of some Western industrial
policy, much as Huawei benefits from Chinese industrial policy. Clearly the United States already recognizes the
importance of keeping home-grown technology in American hands, because it has used CFIUS—the Committee
on Foreign Investment in the United States—to prevent the foreign takeover of Qualcomm and other key
technology providers.
Another critical question now is whether the U.S. is ready to go further than simply protecting companies from
takeover to assure that the country’s own technological base is not hollowed out. For decades, such “industrial
policy” was a political issue that divided Democrats and Republicans. While the Manhattan Project is often cited
as a prime example of government-sponsored innovation, it was driven by wartime necessity and the fear that
Nazi Germany had both the talent to develop a nuclear bomb and the means to deliver it. Later efforts never
quite matched that success. The Strategic Computing Initiative, designed by DARPA to take on Japan, never lived
up to its hype. The Microelectronics and Computer Technology Corporation, a consortium of major American
companies, was not responsible for the major breakthroughs that Americans associate today with the mobile-
computing revolution. When a small Obama-era energy program failed to produce many results, there were
objections in Congress to “picking winners.” That may help explain why the U.S. underreacted at first to China’s
announcement of dedicated funding to a range of advanced technologies, many focused on artificial intelligence,
alternative energy vehicles, and 5G.
Of course, the United States has never been as hands-off as it advertises. DARPA has long financed promising
defense technologies. In-Q-Tel has long served as a small-scale venture capitalist for the intelligence community.
Defense Innovation Unit (formerly Defense Innovation Unit-Experimental, or DIUx) has been particularly
successful at finding commercial firms and products that could be useful for warfighters—and it has invested in
a few. But all these have survived by flying under the radar. Their work has not been tied together as part of a
national strategy. The official Trump administration position is that none is needed—the competitive genius of
Silicon Valley will always outperform China’s step-by-step, incremental innovation. Maybe it will, but the early
evidence in 5G, machine learning, AI, and autonomous vehicles suggest that scale and organization count.
The U.S. has to choose—it can pursue both paths, as long as government leaders understand that failure is a
routine part of the process. So far, there is little evidence of a broader strategy.
2) Learn to live in a world of “dirty networks.’’

No one knows what the internet will look like in a decade. Yet even if the United States is wildly successful—if
it keeps Huawei and other Chinese firms out of the core of its 5G networks, if it builds a Western “champion” of
its own to compete—that won’t be enough. China didn’t need 5G to steal the plans for the F-35. It didn’t need it to
steal the most sensitive personal information of twenty-two million Americans—including our country’s national
security elite, military, top academics, and contractors—which was contained in security clearance files at the
Office of Personnel Management.
Even if America learns to lock down its domestically held data, in a world of global communications and trade,
sensitive American data will be running through networks dominated by China and other nations that also seek
our intellectual property. In short, we will need to learn to live with dirty networks. Just as we don’t get to choose
other nations’ political systems, we don’t get to choose their communications infrastructure either.
What does that mean in practical terms? It requires developing a strategy for keeping the most sensitive defense
data inside national networks—with better technologies for walling them off—and developing far more reliable
encryption technologies for even routine communications going around the world. Such a policy, however, would
require the administration to revise its views on encryption. After the Snowden revelations in 2013, a commission
appointed by President Obama and composed of intelligence officials, industry executives, and academics called
for the United States to greatly strengthen encryption—both to give assurance to foreigners that the NSA has not
undermined the safety of American products and to assure Americans that their own data is safe. The commission
insisted that the U.S. “not in any way subvert, undermine, weaken, or make vulnerable generally available
commercial software’’ and that it “increase the use of encryption and urge U.S. companies to do so, in order to
better protect data in transit, at rest, in the cloud, and in other storage.”15
President Obama never acted on this recommendation. Under President Trump, Attorney General William Barr
has argued that law enforcement agencies need to always maintain a legal “backdoor’’ to any encrypted system.
He did not explain, however, how to manage the risk that any skilled foreign power—starting with China—would
leap through that backdoor.
Barr’s strategy is at odds with other parts of the administration. The Defense Innovation Board has already
publicly recommended transitioning Defense Department networks to a “zero-trust” model that deemphasizes
perimeter-based security in favor of encryption and resiliency.16 Securing future networks—and the data moving
through them—will increasingly require internal safeguards and the ability to prevent unauthorized entities from
spreading from one system into another.
3) Exploiting national security issues for trade concessions is bound to backfire.

When President Trump hinted that he might intervene in the criminal case of Huawei’s chief financial officer,
Meng Wanzhou, if it would help him win trade concessions from China, it fed into the Communist Party’s narrative
that Meng’s arrest was a political move designed to pressure Huawei. When he issued an export ban of sensitive
U.S. technology to Huawei and then walked it back, he undercut not only his iterated rationale for having blocked
the technology in the first place but turned national security into a pawn in the large trade game.
As former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Tom Wheeler wrote in July 2019, “The
Trump administration’s focus on Huawei equipment is not a cybersecurity strategy, and by melding trade policy
with cybersecurity, damages each.”17
The division here should not be difficult. Trade deals are negotiable; national security considerations are, by
and large, non-negotiable. Every presidential administration violates that precept to some degree. But President
Trump opens himself—and the country—to a new set of dangers when he hints that Huawei’s troubles might
end in return for trade concessions. And the Chinese government is already exploiting that difference. It believes,
perhaps rightly, that it can solve its long-term competitive issues by buying off the Trump administration. If so,
we are in new territory.
4) Standards-setting and supply chains are boring. And they matter.

It is easy for national security officials to map China’s expanding presence in the South China Sea: satellites
record every newly created island, measure every landing strip, and count airplanes and munitions bunkers. But
only recently did government officials begin to appreciate how Chinese engineers were flooding the zone of
standards-setting meetings, looking to set the parameters of how internet-of-things (IoT) devices will communicate
with 5G networks.
This is a new phenomenon: in the past, China rolled its networks out after the United States and Europe paved
the way, meaning standards were set by the time they engaged with the technology. Chinese leaders learned
from the mistake. In 5G, they expect China to have a major voice from the start. They are churning out patents,
hoping that numbers alone will triumph over true breakthroughs. Their interest is understandable: China already
makes a vast number of IoT devices. But the country that sets the standards has a clear advantage in developing
intelligence strategies as well. For years, Washington benefited enormously from the fact that so many internet
communications flowed through U.S. territory. Beijing is now moving to tilt the playing field in the other direction.
Maintaining U.S. technological leadership in global standards-setting won’t be easy, and it will require the U.S.
government to display both leadership and flexibility. But it is well worth the relatively small cost. The most
immediate action should be to recommit to assertive diplomacy at the standards-setting bodies: that is, moving
U.S. and allied representatives into key leadership positions and advocating strongly for U.S.-patented technologies
to be adopted as standards.
Playing a big role in setting standards is only the first step; manufacturing the parts that fit those standards
comes next. Here, the answer seems straightforward: building Western systems on a foundation of untrusted
parts defeats the purpose of the exercise. Just as the U.S. has trusted suppliers for the F-35, it cannot depend on
components, or software, of uncertain origin.
The battle over 5G is only a small part of the broader effort to manage the rise of China. But it has become
both technologically and symbolically important. It gets to the heart of who will control the systems that make
our societies tick. And it will be key to the perception of who holds the levers of global power. We have one last
shot at getting it right.
David E. Sanger is a national security correspondent and a senior writer at The New York Times. In a 37-year reporting career, he has been on three Times teams that
have won Pulitzer Prizes, most recently in 2017 for international reporting on Russia’s cyber activities surrounding the 2016 presidential election. His newest book,
The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age, examines the emergence of cyberconflict as the primary way large and small states are competing and
undercutting each other, changing the nature of global power. He is also the author of two Times best sellers on foreign policy and national security: The Inheritance:
The World Obama Confronts and the Challenges to American Power, published in 2009, and Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power,
published in 2012. Mr. Sanger has served as Tokyo bureau chief, Washington economic correspondent, White House correspondent during the Clinton and Bush
administrations, and chief Washington correspondent. He was a leading member of the team that investigated the causes of the Challenger disaster in 1986, which
was awarded a Pulitzer in national reporting the following year. A second Pulitzer, in 1999, was awarded to a team that investigated the struggles within the Clinton
administration over controlling technology exports to China. A 1982 graduate of Harvard College, Mr. Sanger co-teaches “Central Challenges in American National
Security, Strategy and the Press” with Graham T. Allison Jr. at the Kennedy School of Government. He is a member of the Aspen Strategy Group.
1
My thanks to Mary K. Brooks, who conducted much of the research and reporting on the chapters dealing with 5G technology and the competition
with China for the revised edition of The Perfect Weapon: War, Sabotage and Fear in the Cyber Age. Her reporting and editing were critical for this paper.
2
Julian E. Barnes and Adam Satariano, “U.S. Campaign to Ban Huawei Overseas Stumbles as Allies Resist,” New York Times, March 17, 2019, https://
www.nytimes.com/2019/03/17/us/politics/huawei-ban.html.
3
Paul Mozur and Cecilia Kang, “U.S. Tech Companies Sidestep a Trump Ban, to Keep Selling to Huawei,” New York Times, June 25, 2019, https://
www.nytimes.com/2019/06/25/technology/huawei-trump-ban-technology.html.
4
Zak Doffman, “Huawei May Have Claimed 5G Victory Over The U.S. But Is Now In A Street Fight,” Forbes, April 5, 2019, https://www.forbes.com/
sites/zakdoffman/2019/04/05/spy-games-huawei-claims-5g-victory-over-the-u-s-but-is-now-in-a-street-fight/#14ccc7ca4639.
5
Milo Medin and Gilman Louie, The 5G Ecosystem: Risks & Opportunities for DoD, Defense Innovation Board, April 3, 2019, https://media.defense.
gov/2019/Apr/03/2002109302/-1/-1/0/DIB_5G_STUDY_04.03.19.PDF.
6
7
“Huawei Obtains 46 Commercial 5G Contracts in 30 Countries,” XinhuaNet, June 6, 2019, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-06/06/
c_138122365.htm.
8
Todd Shields and Alyza Sebenius, “Huawei’s Clout Is So Strong It’s Helping Shape Global 5G Rules,” Bloomberg, February 1, 2019, https://www.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-01/huawei-s-clout-is-so-strong-it-s-helping-shape-global-5g-rules.
9
Raymond Zhong, “China’s Huawei Is at Center of Fight Over 5G’s Future,” New York Times, March 7, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/
technology/china-huawei-5g-standards.html.
10
David E. Sanger and Nicole Perlroth, “N.S.A. Breached Chinese Servers Seen as Security Threat,” New York Times, March 22, 2014, https://www.
nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-chinese-servers-seen-as-spy-peril.html.
11
Murray Scot Tanner, “Beijing’s New National Intelligence Law: From Defense to Offense,” Lawfare, July 20, 2017, https://www.lawfareblog.com/
beijings-new-national-intelligence-law-defense-offense.
12
13
Jessica Rosenworcel, “Choosing the Wrong Lane in the Race to 5G,” Wired, June 10, 2019, https://www.wired.com/story/choosing-the-wrong-lane-
in-the-race-to-5g/.
14
See Secure 5G: The Eisenhower National Highway System for the Information Age, as published in “Scoop: Trump Team Considers Nationalizing 5G
Network,” Axios, January 28, 2018, https://www.axios.com/trump-team-debates-nationalizing-5g-network-f1e92a49-60f2-4e3e-acd4-f3eb03d910ff.
html.
15
Richard A. Clarke, Michael J. Morell, Geoffrey R. Stone, Cass R. Sunstein, and Peter Swire, Liberty and Security in a Changing World, Report
and Recommendations of The President’s Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technologies, December 12, 2013, https://
obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2013-12-12_rg_final_report.pdf.
16
17
Tom Wheeler, “5G in Five (Not So) Easy Pieces,” Brookings, July 9, 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/research/5g-in-five-not-so-easy-pieces/.
China views technological supremacy as a core driver of the economic and military
dominance in the world they aspire to—so too should the United States.
—ANJA MANUEL AND PAVNEET SINGH
WITH THOMPSON PAINE
Chapter 11 | Compete, Contest, and Collaborate 123
Compete, Contest, and Collaborate:

How to Win the Technology Race with China*
Anja Manuel and Pavneet Singh

with Thompson Paine
Summary
China systematically extracts advanced technology from the West. It does so legally, by mining open-source
databases, investing in our most advanced companies, and compelling technology transfer as a condition for doing
business in China, as well as illicitly through cybertheft and industrial espionage.
How we choose to react will define the United States as the leader or laggard in the development of critical
technologies. Previous U.S. presidents of both parties were unable to shape China’s behavior. So far, the Trump
administration has focused on trade negotiations and on “defensive” measures: tightening foreign investment
restrictions and export controls and slowing cross-border collaboration.1 But these defensive measures alone will
not be enough; the U.S. must have an affirmative strategy that includes deepening our engagement with allies,
competing with China where we must, and, in some cases, finding ways to collaborate.
This paper is designed to give Congress and current and future administrations a firm grasp of the tools that
are available to win the technology race with China. It proposes a three-pronged approach to addressing China’s
rise—contest, compete, and collaborate—with concrete policy actions.
We support continued engagement with China; that engagement cannot succeed if China pays no costs for bad
behavior. We outline a narrowly tailored set of defensive measures below. Offensively, we must augment the U.S.
innovation system so that we can compete with China or other challengers. We propose doing so by increasing
investment in talent and R&D and engaging in diplomacy to proactively set the international norms and standards
that govern technology development. Finally, where possible, we should collaborate with China on technologies
that do not implicate U.S. national security and where technical advancements would help humanity as a whole.
The Challenge
There is nothing wrong with China’s desire to grow, and, in fact, the U.S. and its allies should welcome the
contributions China can make to future technological innovations. But China often does not play fair: Chinese
mercantilism undermines the norms and basic trust that support the global economic order.
If the United States does not act, we risk ceding technological leadership and influence to set the norms,
values, and standards for technology, with four potentially disastrous consequences. First, and most clearly, is
the role foundational technologies play in spurring economic growth. A second and closely related issue is that
* A longer version of this proposal was first developed for the Technology and Public Policy Project at Stanford University. Disclaimer: The views
and opinions expressed in this paper are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of Stanford University; the Geopolitics,
Technology and Governance Program; or the Technology and Public Policy Project.
the Chinese military will have direct, seamless access to the frontier technologies through China’s military-civil
fusion. Such a direct transfer will provide the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) with a military edge in future
conflicts and destabilize the Asia-Pacific region. Third, the spread of China’s Orwellian AI-enabled social control
and surveillance systems to other countries will strengthen copycat authoritarian regimes. Finally, if the U.S. does
not lead in setting global technological standards, and as cyber-attacks become more common, the world risks a
minor digital conflict becoming a major kinetic one.
To recommend effective solutions, we must first understand China’s goals and how China is pursuing leadership
in cutting-edge technologies that will underpin the world’s economy.
How China Acquires Technology: Through Licit and Illicit Means

China engages in aggressive behaviors to acquire advanced technologies, including:2
• compelling some Chinese students and researchers at U.S. universities to spy on the state’s behalf;3
• engaging in protectionism that blocks American internet firms from the Chinese market, thus insulating
Chinese “national champions” like Tencent and Baidu from competition; and
• sponsoring economic espionage of private- and public-sector intellectual property (IP), which the IP
Commission estimates costs U.S. companies $180 billion to $540 billion a year.4
Simultaneously, China employs legal means that additionally pose challenges to America’s technological
leadership, including:
• state subsidies to develop competitors in strategic technology sectors;5
• forcing Western companies to transfer their technology as a condition of doing business in the Chinese
market;
• investments in and acquisitions of U.S. companies with strategic technologies;
• real innovation by Chinese companies that have scale, capital, and excellent researchers, such as Tencent,
Huawei, or DJI, a Chinese drone company;
• mining Western open-source databases, especially in AI;6
• research partnerships with companies like Baidu in Silicon Valley and Microsoft in China and, until recently,
with universities like Berkeley and MIT;7 and
• recruiting U.S. talent and enticing many Chinese students and researchers in the United States to come back
to China.8,9
Critical Technologies China Is Focused On

While “Made in China 2025” identifies ten priority sectors, we believe that if China dominates the following
three critical technology sectors, it could have an enormous negative impact on our military and economic security.
Artificial intelligence: AI is a “general purpose technology,” akin to the steam engine or electricity, with
the potential to revolutionize a wide range of sectors. China has a whole-of-government approach to achieve
dominance in AI, investing in key areas of talent, data, and hardware and ensuring its top AI firms do not compete
with each other while also sharing their innovations with the government. It further provides regulatory support,
including loose privacy and data protection regulations.10
Semiconductors: Semiconductors are the most crucial building block of the information economy, and the U.S.
currently leads in global semiconductor production. China consumes one half of the world’s semiconductors but
currently produces only about 3 percent.11 Its goal is to produce 70 percent of domestic demand in China by 2025.12
China has massive public-private funding vehicles, espionage efforts directed at leading American companies like
Micron, and strategic partnerships with leaders like Intel.13
5G: 5G will be the backbone of the new economy, providing the antennas and routing infrastructure on which
everything from cellphones to the entire “internet of things” will rely, including electricity grids, smart cities,
and autonomous vehicles. Our economy will grow highly dependent on 5G and thus will be more vulnerable
to sabotage.14 China has an advantage and is several years ahead in deploying 5G because its national champion,
Huawei, is both genuinely innovative and has benefited tremendously from state subsidies and industrial espionage
against Western companies.15 Huawei is building 5G networks in many countries at an equivalent quality to
Ericsson and Nokia but for 35 percent less,16 and is gaining valuable know-how along the way.
Other technologies: In addition to AI, semiconductors, and 5G, China’s “Internet Plus” and “Made in China
2025” call for the government to invest in and push innovation in sectors including robotics, aerospace, autonomous
vehicles, cleantech, quantum computing, and biomedicine. In some of these sectors, the U.S. and China could
usefully cooperate, while in others the potential for dual-use military applications is too great.
The Proposal
This paper outlines a three-pronged approach of contesting (“defense”), competing with (“offense”), and
collaborating with China to ensure the U.S. maintains its leadership position in global technology. The proposal
aims to reduce the severity of China’s illicit behaviors, compel China’s adherence to norms and rules in the
development and trade of technology, and ensure America’s continued leadership in next generation technologies.
“Defensive” Measures: Contesting Chinese Efforts

“Defensive” measures are a crucial way to protect the United States from cyber-espionage and other “leakage”
of key technology secrets. Thus far, Congress and the Trump administration reformed the Committee on Foreign
Investment in the United States (CFIUS) in 2018, proposed the tightening of export controls, scrutinized and
slowed cross-border collaboration, and publicly aired the possibility of restricting Chinese student visas. However,
the administration has not articulated a clear strategic vision for which technologies it wants to protect and why.
This paper proposes a clear, purposeful application of these tools to reduce China’s transgressions.
Prevent IP leaks via foreign transactions (investment, M&A, joint ventures, and partnerships): In 2018,
Congress substantially reformed the law that governs foreign investment to make it more difficult for foreign
companies to invest in cutting-edge technology in the United States. This was a commendable start, but it needs
to be refined and strengthened over time. Currently, CFIUS, through FIRRMA (Foreign Investment Risk Review
Modernization Act) provides only a vague list of “critical technologies” and requires reviews of investment into
the United States by all countries, even NATO allies that do not present security concerns. Draft regulations
published in October 2019 began to fix some of these problems. We believe that the current administration should
additionally create a scientific and private sector advisory panel that defines—on an ongoing basis—which “critical
technologies” we need to protect. This panel can help strike the right balance between ensuring security while not
stifling innovation.
Exact costs for transgressions: Chinese firms should incur consequences when they break the rules. In
addition to pursuing World Trade Organization (WTO) actions against China, the United States should narrowly
exercise available executive investigative and sanctioning powers as appropriate under the International Emergency
Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the “Entity List” of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security
(BIS), and Section 337 (1930 Tariff Act) actions to punish specific Chinese firms or industry sectors for forced
technology transfer, economic espionage, and market protectionism.17
The Trump administration has used the Entity List to punish firms like ZTE and Huawei. The Entity List is a
powerful tool that can generate unintended consequences, however, and we believe it should be used in a narrowly
tailored and measured way. For example, when Huawei was listed in May 2019, it lost access not just to the U.S.
5G market, which is a legitimate concern, but also to Intel’s chips and Google’s Android operating system, which
arguably does not implicate national security and harms U.S. companies in the process.
Don’t go it alone: Defensive actions will carry even more weight if we do them jointly with like-minded
nations. This will encourage the norms of behavior the United States and its allies expect in a global technology
economy moving forward. (Please see our proposal for the “Tech 10” below.)
Sanction support for China’s techno-authoritarianism: The United States should take a clear stand against
China’s increasingly brazen use of technology to create an advanced surveillance state that abuses human rights.18
The Uyghurs, a Turkic Muslim group of Chinese citizens, have suffered the most under this system, and China
has shown a willingness to export its methods to other authoritarian states.19 The United States could, at the very
least, use the Global Magnitsky Act to sanction implicated Chinese officials and add to the Entity List firms that
materially support these abuses, as it did in October 2019. The Senate’s Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019
(S. 178) is a good start.20
“Offensive” Measures: Competing with China

While we must take basic precautions to protect our technology, pulling up the drawbridge and digging a moat
around U.S. technology is impossible and will not alone help us win this high-stakes race. Instead, we must once
again set global norms and values for technology and reinforce our own ability to innovate.
Global Diplomacy: Shape the Global Norms for Technology

After World War II, the U.S. led the creation of the international order as we know it today—including
multilateral institutions like the WTO, International Monetary Fund, and the International Atomic Energy
Agency—to establish norms for peaceful economic relations and technology standards. It was an enormous effort,
and it paid off. It is time for a comparable effort to form a robust international innovation ecosystem among
countries that share the same values in tech development: a proposal we call the “Tech 10.”
The Tech 10 would join the United States with other technology powers with shared values to coordinate
national postures on technology development, use, and access. The inaugural members would include the United
States, the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Israel, Japan, and South Korea. Others
could apply to join as long as they agree to adhere to the same high standards. Regular coordination and working
group meetings would occur through respective ministries of defense, intelligence, and trade with the input of
academic and private institutions.
From the defensive perspective, these countries should share information and coordinate on narrowly tailored
export controls, investment restrictions, and cybersecurity. The Tech 10 would share best practices and intelligence
and shape shared perspectives and norms related to deterrence policy tools (e.g., CFIUS, export controls), supply
chain security, and investment in and licensing of critical infrastructure and dual-use technologies, among other
relevant topics.
The Tech 10 could further coordinate research and pool resources and talent to tackle key opportunities in
advanced AI, semiconductor research, and quantum computing. Members could also form working groups with
other stakeholders—in particular the private sector and academia—to begin to define norms to govern safe uses
of AI and other advanced technology.
U.S. Government Actions

Federal R&D: Many of the fundamental breakthroughs underlying the U.S. economy today benefited from
federally sponsored research through the military, national labs, or corporate labs. These breakthroughs include
the transistor, microprocessor, sequencing the human genome, the internet, GPS, and many others.21 Federally
funded research increased rapidly in the 1950s and early 1960s, reaching a peak of almost 2 percent of GDP
in 1964.22 Today, that figure has declined to 0.7 percent.23 To foster the breakthroughs needed for tomorrow’s
economy, the United States must commit to a generational national investment in science and technology.
Over time, we believe the U.S. should aspire to grow federal R&D to 1 percent of GDP or more, an increase to
approximately $200 billion.24 This approach could include:
• increasing funding at Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy (ARPA-E), Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA), National Laboratories, universities, and federally funded research and
development centers through competitive grant frameworks;
• coordinating this increase in funding with strategic national priorities for innovation;
• funding research in areas where the venture capital market is not investing so that more capital-intensive
and riskier ideas can be pursued;
• reorienting the Small Business Innovation Research program so that federal agencies provide more money
for seed and pre-seed ideas with a streamlined application process;
• forming a U.S. government investment fund that matches funds invested by private capital going into
sectors of national interest that are under-funded, such as semiconductors and 5G; and
• identifying a handful of “moonshots” for public-private cooperation and providing economic incentives for
academic institutions, labs, and private firms to partner and strive toward ambitious goals.
Talent and Workforce Development

Science and technology talent are the foundations of America’s success, and we are falling behind. The United
States must make a generational investment in the nation’s technological talent base by improving the science,
technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education system; recruiting more tech-savvy talent into the federal
government; and reforming our immigration policy.
STEM education: In the recent Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development’s (OECD)
Programme for International Student Assessment worldwide ranking of student math, science, and reading
scores in 2015-2016, China ranked tenth, while the U.S. was thirty-first.25 The United States must reverse this trend
by building the pipeline of STEM talent starting in K-12. The federal government should provide funding for
school districts that establish computer science (CS) as a core, non-elective curriculum offering and provide loan
forgiveness for CS graduates who teach K-12 CS courses.
Technical chops in government service: We need more competence among U.S. policy makers on issues of
technology. Congressional questioning of Mark Zuckerberg at hearings in April 2018 showed that some members
of Congress are woefully unprepared to govern on issues of advanced technology. The federal government should
support technologists who want to do less lucrative but invaluable service in the government through fellowship
programs, expanding loan forgiveness, supporting tech companies’ efforts to place employees in short secondments
in government, or even ROTC-like programs to recruit students with STEM training into public service.26
Finally, we should reestablish the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). As a neutral research agency within
the U.S. Congress staffed by scientists and technologists, OTA used to provide nonpartisan advice to members of
Congress on science and technology issues. It was unwisely defunded during the “Gingrich Revolution” in 1994.
Attract and retain the best global talent: The United States must embrace perhaps our deepest advantage
over China—that the best and brightest international STEM talents aspire to study at American universities and
work for U.S. companies. As of 2017, the United States had twenty-six of the top fifty universities in the world
(compared to China’s two) and eight of the ten top technology companies.27 Expanding the U.S. educational
advantage could include increasing the annual allocation of H1-B visas and extending post-graduate work visas to
foreign graduates.
The United States should not block Chinese students from studying or working in the U.S. technology sector.
Not only is China a leading contributor of top AI talent to American companies, but data suggests most want
to stay in the United States.28,29 To protect against espionage, the United States should set narrowly tailored
federal guidelines on research topics that students from “countries of concern” may not participate in, strictly
punish students or employees caught spying, and proactively educate Chinese students and employees on China’s
blackmail efforts targeting overseas Chinese.
Public-private sector collaboration: In addition to the federal R&D investments listed above, this paper
proposes enhancing channels of information sharing regarding resources and opportunities for funding and
collaboration, including 1) building a web-based, data-driven IP map outlining strategic sectors for prioritized
investment and collaboration; 2) developing sophisticated roadshows to demonstrate federally funded technology
to investors; and 3) establishing competent interagency outposts in innovation centers in Silicon Valley, Boston,
Austin, New York, etc.
Collaborate: Opportunities to Work with China

Although China is a serious strategic competitor, the United States should continue to seek trade and economic
cooperation with China as long as the playing field is fair. If we identify and capitalize on opportunities to build
trust, we can increase the odds of better behavior from China in the long term.
Private capital: Turning away all Chinese capital would be short-sighted and harmful to U.S. competitiveness.
China invested $49 billion in the United States in 2016, though that figure was down approximately 90 percent
by 2018.30 As long as private Chinese capital meets the standards and accepts the restrictions set by CFIUS, U.S.
companies should welcome the financial support for our economy.
Problems of the global commons: A range of technologies can help mitigate international threats such as
climate change, nuclear non-proliferation, and intellectual property theft. The United States should continue to
engage China in addressing such problems, including by sharing non-critical technologies to facilitate those efforts.
Non-critical technologies: There are areas of Chinese technological investment where the United States
should leverage China’s success. For example, China’s investment in solar panels has reduced the cost of solar
deployment in the United States, accelerating our shift to a clean energy economy.31
Conclusion
China’s technological rise is a real challenge to the United States and the international system. To respond
effectively, the U.S., with its allies, must clarify what lines cannot be crossed—such as industrial espionage and
forced technology transfer—amid China’s otherwise legitimate efforts, and promptly enforce those rules by
exacting costs for transgressions.
However, defense alone will not be sufficient. We must reinvest in America’s own ability to compete and lead in
innovation—including talent development and federal R&D—and strengthen our global alliances in order to lead
the norms, rules, and institutions that will govern technological innovation for the coming century.
China views technological supremacy as a core driver of the economic and military dominance in the world
they aspire to—so too should the United States. Such focus will help us out-compete China in this strategic contest
and secure American leadership for the twenty-first century.
Anja Manuel is Co-Founder and Principal along with former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley and
former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, in RiceHadleyGatesManuel LLC, a strategic consulting firm that helps U.S. companies navigate international
markets. She is the author of the critically acclaimed This Brave New World: India, China and the United States, published by Simon and Schuster in 2016.
From 2005-2007, she served as an official at the U.S. Department of State, responsible for South Asia Policy. She currently serves on two corporate boards:
Overseas Shipping Group, Inc., a NYSE listed energy transportation company, and Ripple Labs Inc., a leading blockchain payments company. Ms. Manuel
also serves on advisory boards of Flexport Inc., Synapse Inc., Center for a New American Security, and the boards of the American Ditchley Foundation,
National Committee on US-China Relations, and Governor Brown’s California Export Council. She serves as a Senior Fellow for the Harvard Initiative on
Technology and Public Purpose with former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter and is a Director of the Aspen Strategy Group and a member of the Council
on Foreign Relations. A graduate of Harvard Law School and Stanford University, Ms. Manuel now also lectures at Stanford.
Pavneet Singh is an independent consultant on technology and national security affairs. He is based in Silicon Valley and works with technology
developers, investors, and government officials to focus on the development and prudential use of dual-use technologies such as AI/ML, communications,
and biotechnology. Mr. Singh previously served in several roles on the National Security Council and National Economic Council at the White House,
where he managed the U.S.-China and U.S.-India economic relationships and broader U.S. participation in multilateral fora. Prior to the White House,
he worked as an analyst on the World Bank’s Commission on Growth and Development. The commission’s charge was to explore the economic, social,
and political factors necessary for sustainable and inclusive economic growth. Mr. Singh earned his master’s with distinction in international relations at
Georgetown University, where he was an Institute for the Study of Diplomacy fellow and a Yahoo! fellow. He earned his undergraduate degrees in business
administration and political economy from the University of California, Berkeley.
Thompson Paine is an operations leader at Stripe, a San Francisco-based technology company that builds economic infrastructure for the internet. He
heads operations for Stripe Atlas, providing tools for entrepreneurs in over 140 countries to launch technology start-ups. Before Stripe, Mr. Paine led global
business operations, including new market expansion and policy, privacy, and compliance programs, at Quizlet, one of the largest digital learning platforms
in the U.S., serving 50 million students and teachers a month. Mr. Paine has been involved in China-related work and research for the better part of two
decades. Fluent in Mandarin Chinese, he previously served with the U.S. State Department in Beijing, and he worked with the U.S. Trade Representative’s
Office, Apple, and Morrison Foerster on legal and business matters in China. Mr. Paine has lectured at Stanford University and Stanford Graduate School
of Business on Chinese politics and social impact entrepreneurship. He earned his J.D. and M.B.A. from Stanford University, where he also worked with
the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and he studied law at Peking University Law School in Beijing as a Foreign Language Area Studies
Fellow. Mr. Paine has a B.A. in political science and Asian studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was a Morehead-Cain
Scholar.
1
Alexandra Yoon-Hendricks, “Visa Restrictions for Chinese Students Alarm Academia,” The New York Times, July 25, 2018, https://www.nytimes.
com/2018/07/25/us/politics/visa-restrictions-chinese-students.html; see also reports of banning Chinese student visas: Susan Adams, “Stephen
Miller Tried to End Visas for Chinese Students,” Forbes, October 3, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2018/10/03/stephen-miller-
tried-to-end-visas-for-chinese-students/.
2
Michael Brown and Pavneet Singh, “China’s Technology Transfer Strategy,” Defense Innovation Unit, January 2018, https://admin.govexec.com/
media/diux_chinatechnologytransferstudy_jan_2018_(1).pdf.
3
Elizabeth Redden, “Stealing Innovation,” Inside Higher Ed, April 29, 2019, https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2018/02/15/fbi-director-
testifies-chinese-students-and-intelligence-threats.
4
Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, “Update to the IP Commission Report,” National Bureau of Asian Research, 2017,
http://www.ipcommission.org/report/IP_Commission_Report_Update_2017.pdf; Center for Responsible Enterprise and Trade (CREATe.org)
and PricewaterhouseCoopers, “Economic Impact of Trade Secret Theft: A Framework for Companies to Safeguard Trade Secrets and Mitigate
Potential Threats,” February 2014, https://create.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/CREATe.org-PwC-Trade-Secret-Theft-FINAL-Feb-2014_01.
pdf; note some critique of the IP Commission’s estimate and discussion of the difficulty of accurately quantifying the massive impact of IP theft:
Mark Cohen, “The 600 Billion Dollar Chinese IP Echo Chamber,” China IPR (blog), May 12, 2019, https://chinaipr.com/2019/05/12/the-600-
billion-dollar-china-ip-echo-chamber/.
5
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, “Made in China 2025: Global Ambitions Built on Local Protections,” 2017, https://www.uschamber.com/sites/default/
files/final_made_in_china_2025_report_full.pdf; Congressional Research Service, “The Made in China 2025 Initiative: Economic Implications for
the United States,” August 29, 2018, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10964.pdf.
6
Michael Brown and Pavneet Singh, “China’s Technology Transfer Strategy,” Defense Innovation Unit, January 2018, p. 19, https://admin.govexec.
com/media/diux_chinatechnologytransferstudy_jan_2018_(1).pdf.
7
8
9
Michael Brown and Pavneet Singh, “China’s Technology Transfer Strategy,” Defense Innovation Unit, January 2018, pp. 19-20, https://admin.
govexec.com/media/diux_chinatechnologytransferstudy_jan_2018_(1).pdf.
10
See, e.g., Jeffrey Ding, “Deciphering China’s AI Dream.” Future of Humanity Institute, University of Oxford, March 2018, https://www.fhi.ox.ac.
uk/wp-content/uploads/Deciphering_Chinas_AI-Dream-1.pdf.
11
“U.S. Companies Dominate Worldwide IC Marketshare.”IC Insights, June 18, 2019; Note that 3% market share represents that of Chinese companies.
The number grows to 16% if you include chips produced in China by non-Chinese companies, available at http://www.icinsights.com/news/
bulletins/US-Companies-Dominate-Worldwide-IC-Marketshare/.
12
James A. Lewis, “Learning the Superior Techniques of the Barbarians: China’s Pursuit of Semiconductor Independence,” CSIS, January 2019, p. 14,
https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/publication/190115_Lewis_Semiconductor_v6.pdf.
13
David McLaughlin and Chris Strohm, “China State-Owned Firm Charged with Micron Secrets Theft,” Bloomberg, November 1, 2018, https://www.
bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-01/u-s-says-china-state-owned-co-stole-micron-trade-secrets.
14
“Eurasia Group White Paper: The Geopolitics of 5G,” Eurasia Group, November 15, 2018, p. 7, https://www.eurasiagroup.net/siteFiles/Media/
files/1811-14%205G%20special%20report%20public(1).pdf.
15
See, e.g., “Chinese Telecommunications Device Manufacturer and its U.S. Affiliate Indicted for Theft of Trade Secrets, Wire Fraud, and Obstruction
of Justice.” Department of Justice, January 28, 2019, https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/chinese-telecommunications-device-manufacturer-and-its-
us-affiliate-indicted-theft-trade.
16
Eurasia Group White Paper: The Geopolitics of 5G,” Eurasia Group, November 15, 2018, p 4, 9, https://www.eurasiagroup.net/siteFiles/%20
Media/files/1811-14%205G%20special%20report%20public(1).pdf.
17
Lee G. Branstetter, “China’s Forced Technology Transfer Problem - And What to Do About It,” pp. 7-8. Peterson Institute for International
Economics, June 2018, https://www.piie.com/system/files/documents/pb18-13.pdf.
18
Chris Buckley and Paul Mozur, “How China Uses High-Tech Surveillance to Subdue Minorities,” New York Times, May 22, 2019, https://www.
nytimes.com/2019/05/22/world/asia/china-surveillance-xinjiang.html.
19
Melissa Chan, Jonah M. Kessel, and Paul Mozur, “Made in China, Exported to the World: The Surveillance State,” The New York Times, April 24, 2019,
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/24/technology/ecuador-surveillance-cameras-police-government.html.
20
Uyghur Human Rights Policy Act of 2019 (S. 178), https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/senate-bill/178/text. In October 2019, the
administration did add some firms to the Entity List that are accused of facilitating surveillance of the Uighur minority.
21
Examples of technology initially funded by the federal government include: Google search engine (NSF); GPS (DARPA, Navy, DoD); supercomputing
(USAF, Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore, DoD); AI and speech recognition—SIRI, Dragon Systems (Air Force/RAND, DARPA, MIT, CMU,
Stanford); internet (ARPANET, DARPA, NSF, UCLA); closed captioning (NIST); smartphones—semiconductors, touch screens (NASA, USAF,
DARPA-SEMATECH, NSF, SBIC); shale gas hydraulic fracturing (DOE, National Labs); 3D and 4D seismic imaging (DOE, MIT); LED technology
(DOE, Air Force); MRI machines (NIH, NSF); prosthetics (DARPA, VA); Human Genome Project (NIH, DOE); HIV/AIDS (NIH, FDA); reverse
auctions (NSF); kidney-matching algorithm (NSF, RAND, Office of Naval Research); fast multipole method (DARPA, NYU); SCALE-UP education
method (NSF); civil aviation, aeronautical design, jet engines (Army, Navy, NASA); hybrid corn (NSF, DOE, USDA); lactose-free milk (USDA).
22
“Federal Support for Research and Development,” Congressional Budget Office, June 2007, https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/
ftpdocs/82xx/doc8221/06-18-research.pdf.
23
American Association for the Advancement in Science, Historical Trends in Federal R&D, https://www.aaas.org/programs/r-d-budget-and-policy/
historical-trends-federal-rd.
24
We understand that this is an enormous increase. The U.S. government could offset some of the cost by investing less in outdated and enormously
expensive legacy weapons systems and finding other efficiencies. Chris Brose, Richard Danzig, and others have written compelling arguments in
favor of an R&D-forward approach.
25
FactsMaps, “PISA Worldwide Ranking – average score of math, science and reading,” http://factsmaps.com/pisa-worldwide-ranking-average-score-
of-math-science-reading/. See also, Andy Chun, “China’s AI dream is well on its way to becoming a reality,” South China Morning Post, April 22, 2018,
https://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2142641/chinas-ai-dream-well-its-way-becoming-reality. China’s Ministry of Education
has a new five-year AI talent training program to train 500 more AI instructors and 5,000 students at top Chinese universities.
26
See, e.g., Eric Rosenbach, Prepared Statement for Senate Hearing: “China: Challenges to US Commerce,” March 7, 2019, https://www.belfercenter.
org/publication/eric-rosenbach-china-challenges-us-commerce; and Amy Webb, The Big Nine: How the Tech Titans and Their Thinking Machines Could
Warp Humanity (New York: Hachette Book Group, 2019), p. 249.
27
William A. Carter, “Building Jobs for the Future Is Losing Us the AI Race,” CSIS, 2017, https://www.csis.org/analysis/plan-build-jobs-future-losing-
us-ai-race.
28
Joy Dantong Ma, “The AI Race is Wide Open, if the US Remains Open,” Macro Polo, April 15, 2019, https://macropolo.org/us-china-ai-race-
talent/.
29
Zack Cooper and Samm Sacks, “Bad Idea: Banning Chinese Students from Studying in the United States,” Defense360 (CSIS), December 8, 2018,
https://defense360.csis.org/bad-idea-banning-chinese-students-from-studying-in-the-united-states/.
30
Thilo Hanemann, CassieGao, and Adam Lysenko, “Net Negative: Chinese Investment in the US in 2018,” Rhodium Group, January 13, 2019,
https://rhg.com/research/chinese-investment-in-the-us-2018-recap/.
31
As Chinese manufacturers have reduced panel costs, total installations have increased in the U.S.; see, e.g., “China Ramps Up Solar Exports After
Reforms Hit Home Market,” Bloomberg, December 6, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-12-06/china-ramps-up-solar-panel-
exports-after-policy-hits-home-market; Denise Robbins, “What Will Accelerate US Solar Adoption?” Chesapeake Climate Action Network, January
24, 2018.
The United States holds high cards in its poker hand, but hysteria could cause us to fail
to play our cards skillfully.
—JOSEPH S. NYE, JR.
Chapter 12 | The Rise of China 133
The Rise of China
Joseph S. Nye, Jr.*
Failure to cope with the rise of China successfully could have disastrous consequences for America and the
rest of the world. Robert Blackwill argues that American presidents’ misunderstandings of China’s long-term
objective to become number one in Asia, and in time the world, ranks with the Vietnam and Iraq wars as one of
the three most damaging U.S. foreign policy errors since the end of World War II.1 Moreover, the interaction of
an established power and a rising power could lead to miscalculations that could disrupt this century much as the
twentieth was devastated in 1914. Graham Allison warns about repeating such a “Thucydides Trap.” While his
numbers have been contested, his metaphor remains an important warning.2
Many observers believe that the rise of China will spell the end of the American era, but it is equally dangerous
to over- or underestimate Chinese power. Underestimation breeds complacency, while overestimation creates
fear—either of which can lead to miscalculation. History is replete with misperception about changing power
balances.3 Just since 1945, Nixon and Kissinger interpreted as decline what was really the return to normal of
America’s artificially high postwar share of world product. They proclaimed multipolarity when what actually
transpired over the next two decades was unipolarity. At the same time, opponents of Nixon’s détente in the 1970s
exaggerated Soviet power, which then collapsed. And after that, Americans misunderstood the unipolar reach of
American power. It proved far easier for American technology to dominate the global commons of air, sea, and
space than to control the domestic politics of social revolutions in urban jungles.4
Contrary to current conventional wisdom, China has not yet replaced the United States as the world’s largest
economy. Measured in purchasing power parity, the Chinese economy became larger than the American economy
in 2014, but purchasing power parity is a valid economist’s device for comparing estimates of welfare, not for
measuring power. For example, oil and jet engines are imported at current exchange rates, and by that measure,
China is about two-thirds the size of the United States.5 Moreover, gross domestic product (GDP) is a very crude
measure of power. For the first half of its “century of humiliation” that started with the opium wars with Britain
in 1839, China had the world’s largest GDP (and military).6 Including per capita income gives a better index of the
sophistication of an economy, and American per capita income is many times that of China.
Many economists expect China to pass the United States someday as the world’s largest economy (measured
as GDP in dollars), but the estimated date varies from 2030 to midcentury depending on what one assumes about
the rates of Chinese and American growth. By any measure, however, the gravitational pull of China’s economy is
increasing. President Clinton’s secretary of treasury, Lawrence Summers, poses the future foreign policy questions
well: “Can the United States imagine a viable global economic system in 2050 in which its economy is half the size
of the world’s largest? Could a political leader acknowledge that reality in a way that permits negotiations over
what such a world would look like? While it may be unacceptable to the United States to be so greatly surpassed
in economic scale, does it have the means to stop it? Can China be held down without inviting conflict?”7
* This is adapted from my forthcoming book Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump (New York: Oxford University Press,
January 2020).
Thucydides famously attributed the Peloponnesian war to two causes: the rise of a new power and the fear
that creates in an established power. Most people focus on the first half of his statement, but the second is more
within our control. Summers properly doubts that U.S. foreign policy can prevent the rise of China’s economy, but
we can avoid exaggerated fears that could create a new cold or hot war if we use our contextual intelligence well.
Even if China someday passes the United States in total economic size, that is not the only measure of geopolitical
power—witness the American experience in the first half of the twentieth century. Economic might is just part
of the equation, and China is well behind the United States on military and soft power indices. U.S. military
expenditure is several times that of China. While Chinese military capabilities have been increasing in recent years,
and pose new challenges to our forces, analysts who look carefully at the military balance conclude that China is
not a global peer and will not be able to exclude the United States from the Western Pacific so long as the United
States maintains its alliance and bases in Japan. The RAND Corporation estimated that a non-nuclear war would
be costly for both the U.S. and China, but even more so for China.8 And in soft power, opinion polls as well as a
recent index published by Portland, a London consultancy, ranked China in twenty-sixth place, while the United
States ranked near the top.9 Mao’s communism had a far greater transnational soft-power appeal in the 1960s than
“Xi Jinping thought” does today.
On the other hand, China’s huge economic scale matters. The United States was once the world’s largest
trading nation and largest bilateral lender. Today, nearly a hundred countries count China as their largest trading
partner, compared to fifty-seven that have such a relationship with the United States. China plans to lend more than
$1 trillion for infrastructure projects with its Belt and Road Initiative over the next decade, while the United States
has cut back aid. China’s economic success story enhances its soft power, and government control of access to
its large market provides hard-power leverage. Moreover, China’s authoritarian politics and mercantilist practices
make its economic power readily usable by the government. China will gain economic power from the sheer size
of its market as well as its overseas investments and development assistance. Of the seven giant global companies
in the age of artificial intelligence (Google, Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent), nearly
half are Chinese.10 With its large population, the world’s largest internet, and data resources becoming the “new
oil” of world politics, China is poised to become the Saudi Arabia of big data. Overall, Chinese power relative to
the United States is likely to increase.
China is a country of great strength but also important weaknesses. The United States has some long-term
power advantages that will persist regardless of current Chinese actions. One is geography. The United States is
surrounded by oceans and neighbors that are likely to remain friendly. China has borders with fourteen countries
and has territorial disputes with India, Japan, and Vietnam that set limits on its soft power. Energy is another
American advantage. A decade ago, the United States seemed hopelessly dependent on imported energy. Now the
shale revolution has transformed it from an energy importer to an exporter, and the International Energy Agency
projects that North America may be self-sufficient in the coming decade. At the same time, China is becoming
more dependent on energy imports, and much of the oil it imports is transported through the Indian Ocean and
the South China Sea, where the United States and others maintain a significant naval presence. Regional analyses
that ignore this are mistaken because eliminating this vulnerability will not happen quickly.11
The United States enjoys financial power derived from its large transnational financial institutions as well as
the role of the dollar. Of the foreign reserves held by the world’s governments, just 1.1 percent are in yuan,
compared with 64 percent for the dollar. While China aspires to a larger role, a credible reserve currency depends
on currency convertibility, deep capital markets, honest government, and the rule of law—all lacking in China and
not quickly developed. While China could divest its large holdings of dollars, such action would risk damaging
its own economy as much as the U.S. economy. Dumping dollars might bring the U.S. to its knees, but it would
have a similar effect on China. Power in interdependent relations depends upon asymmetric vulnerability, and
there are too many symmetries in U.S.-China interdependence at this point, though that might change if there is
a much more radical decoupling. Although the dollar cannot remain preeminent forever, and American overuse
of financial sanctions creates incentives for other countries to look for other financial instruments, the yuan is
unlikely to displace the dollar in the near term.
The United States also has demographic strengths. It is the only major developed country that is currently
projected to hold its place (third) in the demographic ranking of countries. While the rate of American population
growth has slowed in recent years, its population is not shrinking as will happen to Russia, Europe, and Japan.
Seven of the world’s fifteen largest economies will face a shrinking workforce over the next decade and a half, but
the U.S. workforce is likely to increase by 5 percent, while China’s will decline by 9 percent.12 China will soon lose
its first place population rank to India, and its working-age population already peaked in 2015. Chinese sometimes
say they worry about “growing old before growing rich.”
America has been at the forefront in the development of key technologies (bio, nano, information) that are
central to this century’s economic growth, and American research universities dominate higher education. In a
2017 ranking by Shanghai Jiaotong University, sixteen of the top twenty global universities were in the United
States; none were in China. At the same time, China is investing heavily in research and development, competes
well in some fields now, and has set a goal to be the leader in artificial intelligence (AI) by 2030. Some experts believe
that with its enormous data resources, lack of privacy restraints on how data is used, and the fact that advances
in machine learning will require trained engineers more than cutting-edge scientists, China could achieve its AI
goal.13 Given the importance of machine learning as a general-purpose technology that affects many domains,
China’s gains in AI are of particular significance.
Chinese technological progress is no longer based solely on imitation. The Trump administration is properly
punishing China for cybertheft of intellectual property, coerced intellectual property transfer, and unfair trade
practices. Reciprocity needs to be enforced. If China can ban Google and Facebook from its market for security
reasons, the U.S. can take similar steps. Huawei or ZTE, for example, should not be allowed to build American
5G networks. However, a successful American response to China’s technological challenge will depend upon
improvements at home more than external sanctions.14 American complacency is always a danger, but so also is
lack of confidence and exaggerated fears that lead to overreaction. In the view of John Deutch, former provost of
MIT, if the U.S. attains its potential improvements in innovation potential, “China’s great leap forward will likely
at best be a few steps toward closing the innovation leadership gap that the United States currently enjoys.” But
notice the “if.”
The United States holds high cards in its poker hand, but hysteria could cause us to fail to play our cards
skillfully. When the Clinton administration published its East Asian Strategy Report in 1995 to cope with the rise
of China, we decided to reaffirm the U.S.-Japan alliance well before seeking to engage China in the World Trade
Organization. Discarding our high cards of alliances and international institutions would be a serious mistake. If
the U.S. maintains its alliance with Japan, China cannot push the U.S. beyond the first island chain, because Japan
is a major part of that chain. Another possible mistake would be to try to cut off all immigration. When asked
why he did not think China would pass the United States in total power any time soon, former Singapore Prime
Minister Lee Kuan Yew cited the ability of America to draw upon the talents of the whole world and recombine
them in diversity and creativity that was not possible for China’s ethnic Han nationalism.15 If the United States
were to discard its high cards of external alliances and domestic openness, Lee could be wrong.
As China’s power grows, many observers worry we are destined for war, but few consider an opposite disruptive
danger. Rather than acting like a revolutionary power in the international order, China might decide to be a free
rider like the United States was in the 1930s. I have called this the “Kindleberger Trap” after the renowned MIT
economist who attributed the depths of the Great Depression to a rising America’s failure to contribute to global
goods at a time when Great Britain could no longer do so alone. In this version of the failure of hegemonic power
transition, China may act too weakly rather than too strongly and refuse to contribute to an international order
that it did not create. Some sinologists say that this fear overstates the “not invented here” problem and that China
knows it benefited from the post-1945 international order. In the United Nations Security Council, China is one of
the five countries with a veto. China is now the second-largest funder of UN peacekeeping forces and participated
in UN programs related to Ebola and climate change. China has also benefited greatly from economic institutions
like the World Trade Organization and the International Monetary Fund, and China agreed to the 2015 Climate
Accords.
On the other hand, China has started its own Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and a Belt and Road
Initiative of international infrastructure projects that some see as an economic offensive. China has not practiced
full reciprocity as a market economy, and its rejection of a 2016 Hague tribunal ruling regarding the South China
Sea raised questions about whether China would treat its legal obligations a la carte (as the United States has
sometimes done). American and allied navies’ freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea remain
essential to maintain this point.
Thus far, China has not tried to overthrow but rather to increase its influence within the world order from
which it benefits, but this could change as Chinese power grows.16 Appetites sometimes grow with eating. The
Trump administration labeled China a revisionist power, but so far it is moderate revisionism, unlike extreme
revisionist powers such as Hitler’s Germany. China is not interested in kicking over the card table but in tilting the
table so it can claim a larger share of the winnings. As a RAND study concludes, “It is not entirely appropriate to
speak of China’s interaction with ‘the’ international order—its posture has been highly differentiated depending
on the component of the order.”17 At the same time, China’s growing economic power will create problems for
the United States and the international order, and this friction will likely be over market access, forced technology
transfer, state-directed industrial policies to support national champions, overcapacity, and theft of intellectual
property. The American approach to an open international economy will need to be adjusted for greater oversight
of Chinese trade and investments that threaten our technological and national security objectives, but there is still
a basis for fruitful interdependence and rules of the road to govern it.
As Chinese power grows, the American liberal international order will have to change. China has little interest
in liberalism or American domination. Americans would be wise to discard the terms “liberal” and “American” and
think in terms of an “open and rules-based” world order. This would mean framing an open international order
in terms of John Rawls’s approach to liberalism as institutional cooperation rather than democracy promotion.
That latter part of Woodrow Wilson’s legacy might remain a happy, unexpected long-term consequence, as the
prospects for long-term pluralization would be enhanced by such a situation compared to the alternative of
conflict. We can express our disagreement over values and human rights while cooperating on rules of the road
related to matters where there are joint interests.
As China, India, and other economies grow, the United States’ share of the world economy will be less than it
was at the beginning of this century, and the rise of other countries will make it more difficult to organize collective
action to promote global public goods. But no other country—including China—is about to replace the United
States in terms of overall power resources in the next few decades. Russia is in demographic decline and heavily
dependent on energy rather than technology exports; India and Brazil (each with a $2 trillion economy) remain
developing countries, and their allegiance to a BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) alliance
is limited. Despite Russia and China’s current alliance of convenience against the United States, a real alliance
of authoritarian countries similar to the Axis of the 1930s or the Sino-Soviet alliance of the 1950s is unlikely
given the underlying mistrust between Russia and China and the difficulty of coordinating competing nationalist
ideologies.18
Today’s alliance of authoritarians lacks the soft-power appeal of the 1950s Comintern, though steps will need
to be taken to counter their covert “sharp-power” threat to democratic values.19 China makes major efforts to
promote its soft power by promoting its authoritarian social model through economic inducements as well as
manipulation of social media. However, while Maoism used to bring protesters into the world’s streets, it is
unlikely that many protesters will march under the banner of “Xi Jinping Thought about Socialism with Chinese
Characteristics” (even though that term is now enshrined in the constitution of the Chinese Communist Party).
Since Nixon, China and the United States have cooperated despite ideological differences. Now China’s use of
artificial intelligence applications for domestic surveillance technology and the export of such practices will place
new burdens on the relationship, but it will not prevent all cooperation.
Rapid Asian economic growth has encouraged a horizontal power shift to the region, but Asia has its own
internal balance of power. Chinese power is balanced by Japan, India, and Australia among others. None want
to be dominated by China. The United States will remain crucial to that Asian balance of power.20 If the United
States maintains those alliances, the prospects are slight that China can drive the United States from the Western
Pacific, much less dominate the world.
The more relevant question for an effective foreign policy will be whether the United States and China will
develop attitudes that allow them to cooperate in producing global public goods while competing in other areas.
Exaggerated fears and worst-case analyses may make such a balanced policy impossible. Yan Xuetong, a Chinese
realist speculates that with the end of unipolarity and American hegemony, China will carefully avoid war and
a “bipolar U.S.-Chinese order will be shaped by fluid issue-specific alliances rather than rigid opposing blocs . .
. [and] most states will adopt a two-track approach siding with the United States on some issues and China on
others.”21 The U.S.-China relationship is a cooperative rivalry where a successful strategy of “smart competition”
as advocated by Orville Schell and Susan Shirk will require equal attention to both aspects of that description.22
But such a future will require good contextual intelligence, careful management on both sides, and no major
miscalculations. And that is a tall order.
Joseph S. Nye, Jr. is University Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus and former Dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He has served
as Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chair of the National Intelligence Council, and a Deputy Under Secretary of State.
His recent books include Soft Power, The Power Game: A Washington Novel, The Powers to Lead; The Future of Power; Presidential Leadership and the Creation of
the American Era; Is the American Century Over?; and the most recent Do Morals Matter? He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the
British Academy, and the American Academy of Diplomacy. In a recent survey of international relations scholars, he was rated the fifth most influential
over the past 20 years; ranked as the most influential scholar on American foreign policy, and in 2011, Foreign Policy named him one of the top 100 Global
Thinkers. He received his bachelor’s degree summa cum laude from Princeton University, won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford, and earned a Ph.D. in
political science from Harvard. He is co-chair of the Aspen Strategy Group.
1
Robert Blackwill, Trump’s Foreign Policies Are Better Than They Seem (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2019), 9-10.
2
Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’ Trap? (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2018). Michael Beckley challenges
this analysis and argues that power transition theory is littered with false positives and false negatives: Michael Beckley, “The Power of Nations:
Measuring What Matters,” International Security 43, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 42-43. Kori Schake argues that there has been only one case: Kori Schake, Safe
Passage: The Transition from British to American Hegemony (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2017). Regardless of the numbers, Allison’s
warning merits attention.
3
See Joshua Shifrinson, Rising Titans: Falling Giants (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2018).
4
Barry Posen, “Command of the Commons,” International Security 28, no. 1 (Summer 2003): 5-46.
5
“World GDP Ranking 2016,” Knoema, April 10, 2017, ranks China first if purchasing power parity is used.
6
Michael Beckley, “The Power of Nations: Measuring What Matters,” International Security 43, no. 2 (Fall 2018): 22.
7
Lawrence H. Summers, “Can Anything Hold Back China’s Economy?” Financial Times, December 3, 2018.
8
Terrence Kelly, David Gompert, and Duncan Long, Smarter Power, Stronger Partners, Vol. I: Exploiting US Advantages to Prevent Aggression (Santa Monica,
CA: RAND Corporation, 2016).
9
Portland Consultancy, “The Soft Power 30,” 2018.
10
Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2018), 83.
11
Meghan O’Sullivan, Windfall: How the New Energy Abundance Upends Global Politics and Strengthens America’s Power (New York: Simon & Schuster,
2017).
12
Adele Hayutin, Global Workforce Change: Demographics Behind the Headlines (Stanford, CA: The Hoover Institution, 2018).
13
Kai-Fu Lee, AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2018).
14
John Deutch, “Assessing and Responding to China’s Innovation Initiative,” in Maintaining America’s Edge, eds. Leah Bitounis and Jonathon Price
(Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute, 2019), 163.
15
Conversation with Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore, September 22, 2012. See also Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Is the American Century Over? (Cambridge, UK: Polity
Press, 2015), 77.
16
Ceri Parker, “China’s Xi Jinping Defends Globalization from the Davos Stage,” World Economic Forum, January 27, 2017; “Statement by Wang Yi,”
filmed February 17, 2017, Munich Security Conference, 23:41.
17
Michael Mazarr, Timothy Heath, and Astrid Cevallos, China and the International Order (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2018), 4.
18
See Bobo Lo, A Wary Embrace: What the Russia–China Relationship Means for the World (Docklands, VIC: Penguin Random House Australia, 2017).
19
Larry Diamond and Orville Schell, Chinese Influence ad American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press,
2018).
20
Bill Emmott, Rivals: How the Power Struggle Between China, India and Japan Will Shape Our Next Decade (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008).
21
Yan Xuetong, “The Age of Uneasy Peace,” Foreign Affairs 98 ( January/February 2019): 46.
22
Orville Schell and Susan L Shirk, Chairs, Course Correction: Toward an Effective and Sustainable China Policy, Asia Society Task Force, February 2019.
China is the challenge of our time—and the United States must get to grips with the
totality of the competitive challenge in all its dimensions.
—DAVID SHAMBAUGH
Chapter 13 | Toward a “Smart Competition” Strategy for U.S. China Policy 141
Toward a “Smart Competition” Strategy for

U.S. China Policy
David Shambaugh
“For any administration, China is in its own category—too big to ignore, too repressive to embrace, difficult to
influence, and very, very proud.”
—Madeleine Albright, Madam Secretary (2003, p. 430)
The U.S.-China relationship and American policy toward China have rarely been in as much tumult as over the
past three years. It would be a mistake, however, to think that this is due to some new or recent development—
such as President Trump or his administration. To be certain, the Trump administration’s trade war and overall
confrontational posture toward China has been a significant contributing factor. But the Chinese side has also
contributed to the deterioration through its own actions. Moreover, the American side views its toughened policies
toward China as retaliation against it for many years of transgressions.
When viewed over this longer period of time, the relationship experienced secular decline throughout the
Obama years. In this perspective, the current fraught state of relations is the culmination of a decade or more
of deterioration and cumulative strains. It did not occur overnight, is not temporary, and can be expected to
endure indefinitely. Therefore, a comprehensive competitive relationship filled with frictions (with some elements
of cooperation) is the “new normal.” This chapter seeks to understand the sources, and map the parameters, of
this state of relations—while identifying a roadmap for pursuing a “smart competition” strategy vis-à-vis China.
Understanding the Deterioration of Sino-U.S. Relations

On the American side, during this ten-year period, a variety of constituencies became progressively more
frustrated with Chinese behavior in their respective professional spheres: the U.S. military, diplomats, educators,
members of Congress, media and journalists, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) of a wide variety, intelligence
and law enforcement agencies, and the business community. Even among experienced foreign policy practitioners
there has been a rather considerable rethinking. These growing frustrations with trying to carry on what should be
normal cooperative interactions with Chinese counterparts (based on the theory of “engagement”) have resulted
in a progressive groundswell of antipathy and a shift in attitudes about China among these constituencies and
across the country.
The consequence of this national gestalt has been a sea change in American thinking about China. This has led to
a lively and healthy debate, befitting of a robust democracy.1 This is how foreign policy can—and should—be shaped
by domestic constituencies in a democracy. Doing what the American policy community does so well, it churns out a
tsunami of “task force” reports, advocacy papers, journal articles, op-eds, and speeches. While a broadly agreed upon
new consensus has yet to fully emerge, and the China policy debates in Washington and across the foreign policy
community nationally remain contested and divisive, some themes and cleavages have crystallized.
For most, and particularly on Capitol Hill, there has been an evident and widely shared shift toward advocating a
“tougher” and more “competitive” strategy, as China is now viewed as a strategic rival.2 The Trump administration
and its National Security Strategy both reflect and drive this hardened perspective.3 The Trump administration
consequently has pursued a “whole-of-government” hardline approach towards China—as spelled out publicly by
Vice President Pence, Secretary of State Pompeo, and others.4
Another distinguished group of specialists and former officials sought out a less confrontational and more
middle ground of “smart competition” in a task force report published by the Asia Society.5 This chapter is in the
vein of that report (of which I was a member).
Some have questioned the fundamental assumptions concerning “constructive engagement” that have
undergirded and driven U.S. policy for nearly half a century and across nine presidencies.6 If engagement was
intended to liberalize China in multiple dimensions, then it has been deemed a relative failure (not only politically,
but economically and socially as well). However, some others have pushed back by making the case that the
purpose of engagement was never to liberalize China, but rather to advance American interests. They argue for
continued “engagement” and eschewing a confrontational approach to Beijing.7 Those advocating this perspective
includes a group of more than 100 distinguished former officials and China scholars who published an “open
letter” to the Trump administration in July 2019.8 They laid blame for the deteriorated relationship primarily at
the doorstep of the Trump administration, and they bemoaned its deterioration. This triggered a counter-letter
signed by many conservatives and former military officers.9 Even the Committee on the Present Danger has been
resurrected from the ashes of the Cold War with a new mission: China.10
China also seems to be the one policy area where there is also considerable bipartisan consensus and a shared
approach between Congress and the executive branch in this administration.11 A broad swath of congressional
representatives and senators alike agree on a toughened China policy, while the US-China Congressional Working
Group (which generally advocates engagement) has been marginalized. Multiple pieces of legislation critical of
China are pending and have been passed in Congress, and enjoy cross-aisle sponsorship.
The new anti-China zeitgeist is also reflected in an apparent overall shift in public opinion. According to a
recent Chicago Council on Global Affairs survey, there has been a sharp uptick in the number of Americans who
view China as a “rival.”12
A recent Pew poll shows a similar sharp deterioration in American attitudes of China.13
Throughout all of this, many of us who have spent our professional lives and careers working on China, in
and out of government, and participating in the ongoing China policy debates over the decades, have had to
reexamine our long-held beliefs and positions (those who haven’t should). Like the broader shift described above,
my own views of China have also hardened in recent years. While I have always tried to approach China in a
practical fashion and as a scholar, I have also done my best to think of China in terms of the American national
interest. There are many reasons—including my own personal experiences—for the evolution in my own thinking
and advocacy of a toughened approach, but a principal one is China itself. The China that the United States and
the world have been dealing with since about 2010 has undertaken some qualitatively new and negative turns:
becoming much more repressive domestically and expansionist abroad.
I thus have now come to believe that China is challenging the United States on multiple fronts, is an actual threat
in some, and is a competitor and rival in most policy areas. While I view China as a competitor and rival, it is not
(yet) an adversary or enemy. The task ahead, for both countries, is to “manage competition” while preventing the
emergence of a fully adversarial relationship.
I now believe that the United States and China have entered a lengthy and indefinite period of comprehensive
competition. I hasten to add that “competition” is not a code word for confrontation or containment. Competition
means just that—to compete with China on all fronts. Simply using the term “strategic competition” is insufficient—
because to many “strategic” primarily signifies the military/security domain—while today’s competition between
the U.S. and China affects multiple realms: military/security, political systems, diplomacy, economic/commercial,
ideology, values, media, culture and soft power, governance practices, public diplomacy and “influence operations,”
espionage, technology, innovation, Indo-Pacific regional and global competition in all of the aforementioned
areas, and in some international institutions and areas of “global governance.” In every one of these areas, the
United States and China find themselves in disagreement and competition for advantages and influence vis-à-vis
the other. In each area, China is a competitor and rival of the United States and must be dealt with as such. This is
an increasingly intensified dynamic, although not yet a zero-sum one in all domains.
Compete First, Cooperate Second

Recognizing that this is now a primarily competitive relationship, as delineated below, we must also recognize
that there remain some areas of important potential cooperation between the United States and China—primarily
in the arena of “global governance.” This includes working together with China on global economic stability,
counter-terrorism, climate change, pandemics, sea lane security, nuclear nonproliferation, regional security
and peacekeeping, counter-narcotics production and smuggling, managing migration, and other transnational
problems. These are significant and important issues, on which the United States and China (together with others
in the international community) should always try to collaborate. Bilateral and multilateral bureaucratic efforts
should be made to forge cooperation where possible in these areas. In this respect, the Trump administration’s
withdrawal from treaties and disinclination to working with China (and others) on global governance issues has
been very deleterious and damaging. If there is one “good news” story in Chinese diplomacy during Xi Jinping’s
tenure, it is that China has really “stepped up” in this sphere, but the bad news is that the United States has “stepped
down.”14
The United States and China are also bound tightly together through extensive webs of interdependence:
commerce, students, tourists, travel, migration, telecommunications, technologies, and some areas of security.
These are mutually beneficial and bring tangible gains to the United States. These ties are the real foundation and
fabric of the Sino-American relationship, and they help buffer the stresses and strains encountered in other areas.
They are a reality that cannot be undone. “Decoupling” the U.S.-China societal relationship is both unrealistic and
undesirable.15
Recognizing the potential for limited cooperation in global governance areas where our national interests
overlap, I also agree with Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan that “Washington should avoid being the eager suitor
on transnational challenges.”16 I also agree with them that placing competition over cooperation (what they call
“sequencing”) makes practical sense. The United States has many more differences with China than things in
common. As such, a strategy of “competing first and cooperating second” is realistic and prudent.17
Yet, no matter how competitive and fraught the U.S.-China relationship is, we can never stop engaging in
dialogue with Chinese interlocutors at all levels, bilaterally and multilaterally. The dialogues may not always be
fulfilling on our side (often not), as the Chinese tend to reflexively adhere to their talking points, use formulaic
slogans (口号), are sometimes rude and scolding, and eschew flexibility or real give-and-take. But cutting off
dialogue is counterproductive. That said, constant reevaluation and retooling the formats of such dialogues is
always a good idea. For example, the Trump administration’s suspension of the Strategic & Economic Dialogue
was appropriate. That dialogue consumed enormous bureaucratic time and financial resources with minimal pay-
off, as actual implementation of the lengthy communiqués foundered.
The Road Ahead

If this is the background to how U.S. relations with China got to where they are now, where are we going in
American policy toward China? To invoke Lenin, what is to be done? And how to get there? If, as I argue, the
United States and China are engaged in indefinite comprehensive competition, then how should the U.S. proceed?
Before identifying some specific recommendations for a strategy of “smart competition,” let me make several
general observations.
First, “competition” is not a dirty word or an illicit concept. It is not the opposite of cooperation. Competition
is just that: to compete. Competition is indeed a very healthy part of human life. Competition is intrinsic to
the economic/commercial marketplace, to the intellectual “marketplace of ideas,” to scientific and technological
research, to sports teams, even to individuals “competing against nature.” Competition is hardwired into American
DNA, and Americans believe that competition brings out the best in us.
To use the metaphor of sports, to be effective in a competition one must play to one’s own strengths and defend
and shore up one’s weaknesses while identifying and exploiting the opposition’s weaknesses and not playing into
their strengths. To effectively counter the opposition, good and accurate scouting (intelligence) as well as rigorous
training is required. You also need a game plan—which is proactive and not reactive, understands temporal flow
and when to deploy certain assets, and is not overly punishing (the art of diplomacy is allowing the other party
an “off ramp”). There may be limits to the metaphor of sports for the real world of competition in international
relations—but I also think there are instructive parallels.
I thus advocate that the United States embrace comprehensive competition with China! We should not shy away from
it or think it is some kind of negative approach simply because it is not of the Kantian paradigm of cooperation
with which we may be accustomed or prefer. We are again living in a more Realist age of great power rivalry.18 We
need to throw off the mental and policy shackles that lead us to instinctively think solely in terms of “engagement,”
diplomacy, and cooperation19—and, rather, adopt a much more tough-minded and competitive mindset.20 Doing
so requires a higher tolerance for friction in the relationship and not an illusory search for “stability.”21 Sometimes
competition requires confrontation.
Second, comprehensive competition requires a comprehensive strategy. The elements need to interrelate and
be parts of a broad holistic strategy. Ad hoc and uncoordinated efforts will be far less successful that those that
follow a design and set of thought-through purposes. “Whole-of-government” and “whole-of-society” approaches
are to be encouraged. “Pushback” in itself is not a strategy, although it is a principal tactic of competition.22 The
United States must work in tandem and effectively with Asian, European, and other countries vis-à-vis China.
Third, while the U.S.-China competitive rivalry is not exactly the same as Cold War 1.0, it is worthwhile to
revisit and “dust off ” the previous toolboxes and playbooks used by the United States during the Cold War. Some
Chinese tactics—such as “united front” and disinformation operations, technological and other types of espionage,
cultivating intelligence assets in the U.S. government, development of asymmetric weapons, global military
deployments, cultivation of client states and proxies, and two-against-one “strategic triangle” maneuvering—were
all staples of the USSR/CPSU, and our tactics for combatting them vis-à-vis China could benefit from drawing on
earlier experiences and practices.23 In many real ways, the organization and behavior of the Chinese communist
party-state remains a Soviet byproduct (I have always told my students: “to understand China, you need to
understand the Soviet Union first”). We also have prior experience competing with China during the Cold War,
which is instructive.24
While these negative elements of Soviet/Chinese behavior are still very relevant, so too are the cooperative
dimensions of the Cold War—diplomatic détente, arms control agreements, military confidence-building measures
(CBMs), Track II dialogues, etc. Yet, I also agree with Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan that while some instruments
from the Cold War may be reusable, equating China with the Soviet Union is not applicable. While they have
several similarities, there are also fundamental differences. As Campbell and Sullivan observe: “China today is
a peer competitor that is more formidable economically, more sophisticated diplomatically, and more flexible
ideologically than the Soviet Union ever was.”25 I would add to this list that China is thoroughly institutionally
integrated into the international system, while the Soviet Union was not.
How to Compete Smartly with China?

Moving from broad guidelines to more targeted ones, what follows are ten recommendations for how the
United States can effectively and “smartly” compete with China.
1. The best defense is an offense. Be proactive. Develop targeted policies and actions to counter and offset
China’s presence and malign activities worldwide. China’s mere presence in, and influence on, other
countries should be seen as a challenge to American interests. The United States has been a global power
since the Second World War and should remain so. If we are in a competition for global influence with the
world’s other major power, and China is now truly a global power,26 then we need to invest in resources to
counter China and to offer other countries alternatives to China.
This is particularly true for priority regions: throughout the western hemisphere (Caribbean, Central and
South America), throughout Southeast Asia, the South Pacific, central and southeastern Europe, and Africa.
Some of these alternatives can be American, whereas in other areas—such as building infrastructure—we
can rely on Japanese, European, or other allies and partners to provide alternatives. No nation wants to
be beholden to China (as is increasingly evident along the “Belt and Road”), and all seek multiple external
partners. The U.S. approach should be to dilute and frustrate China’s attempts to create client states, create
regional spheres of interest, lock up resources, and become hegemonic.
2. In order to do this, we need to develop systematic and comprehensive knowledge about China’s
activities worldwide. Our intelligence agencies and every U.S. embassy in the world should prioritize
tracking China’s activities,27 and this information needs to be pooled by the National Intelligence Council
(NIC) and fed into an interagency process that should determine effective counteractions to be taken by
different U.S. Government departments and agencies around the world.
3. Coordinate closely with allies and work with a wide range of partner countries. Many countries around
the world have anxieties about China, they are growing in number, and this can be used to American
advantage. As Campbell and Sullivan note: “The United States needs to get back to seeing alliances as assets
to be invested in rather than costs to be cut. In the absence of any meaningful capacity to rebuild its own
network of capable allies, Beijing would like nothing more than for the United States to squander this long-
term advantage.”28
In competing with China worldwide, it would be a profound mistake to ask or push countries to “choose”
between the two (the U.S. over China). That would be, as the Singaporean foreign minister has observed,
an “invidious choice.”29 Most countries seek to have positive relations with both Washington and Beijing.
The U.S. needs to “help them hedge.” The United States has a strong hand to play, but it is being damaged
by the current administration’s “America First” approach to diplomacy, trade, and security. We cannot bash
our allies and partners and then turn around and expect them to work with us in countering China. Also,
several of our alliances—notably with Thailand, the Philippines, and South Korea—need real shoring up,
and China has made significant inroads in each case. Further, China has a much larger presence across
Africa and is eroding the U.S. footprint in Latin America. Remedial efforts are urgent in these regions.
4. Be confident and exhibit it. The United States possesses many strengths to bring to the competition with
China, but we currently exhibit confusion, dysfunction, self-doubt, and weakness domestically. Externally,
we have a much longer history of relations with most countries than the People’s Republic of China (PRC),
and a greater network of formal allies (thirty-eight), while China has one (North Korea). The U.S. also
has many non-allied security partners, while China provides little in the military realm to others. Security
assistance is one of America’s real comparative advantages vis-à-vis China. U.S. corporations also have a
much better reputation for corporate social responsibility (CSR), transparency, and lack of corruption than
their Chinese counterparts. Similarly, many U.S. aid (ODA) programs compare favorably with Chinese
ones.30 Concerning soft power and cultural exchange more broadly, the U.S. again possesses many strengths
vis-à-vis China.31 The U.S. also possesses many other admirable attributes but none more important than its
openness.
But we also need to rebuild at home. This is obvious, but it requires restating and reminding. Our long-
term competition with China will only be successful if we invest in core elements of competitiveness here
in the United States—education, science and technology, innovation, infrastructure, finance, young people,
etc.32 And we need to remain firmly committed to and practice our liberal democratic political values.33
We will not be a role model for other countries and peoples, and effectively compete with the appeal of
China’s authoritarian model, if the United States’ political system is dysfunctional, if we cannot conquer
the existing racism and sexism in our society, if we cannot narrow the income gap, if we cannot rebuild our
infrastructure, and if we do not correct other maladies that compromise the American Example.
5. Invest in, and dramatically ramp up, U.S. public diplomacy efforts. Among other arenas, the U.S.-
China global competition is being waged in—and to a significant extent may be determined in—the public
information domain. We live in an unprecedented, instantaneous information age. To be successful in the
competition with China, the U.S. must effectively influence the international narratives about China—its
domestic and international behaviors—as well as the narratives about the United States. Perceptions matter,
a lot.
This involves both governmental public diplomacy and nongovernmental media, as well as cultural
exchange programs. In some regions—notably Southeast Asia, Latin America, and Africa—China is already
dominating regional media. In these regions, China is simultaneously daily news and is providing the news
via feeds from Xinhua and other PRC state media sources,34 while the United States is covered infrequently
and its media feeds are too expensive for many foreign outlets to subscribe to. Moreover, the reporting on
China is overwhelmingly positive—while reporting on the U.S. tends to be negative.
The Department of State’s Global Engagement Center has begun to focus on this issue and is mounting an
effort to counter Chinese propaganda worldwide, but the State Department’s Bureau of Public Diplomacy
is woefully under-resourced and lacks strategic thinking concerning China. Public diplomacy officers in the
field really need to step up their games and proactively promote the value and contributions of the United
States in their countries/regions while raising public concerns about Chinese practices. There may also be
a role for U.S. intelligence services in this area.
6. At home and abroad, China’s “influence activities” also need to be carefully monitored and countered.
This is a relatively new issue on the U.S.-China agenda (as well as for other countries). It is real and is not
“fake news.” As the Hoover Institution/Asia Society’s publication, China’s Influence & American Interests,
amply demonstrates,35 the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), government, military, state security, media,
and other official organs are investing heavily and worldwide in a wide range of efforts to influence and
control information, narratives, media, government policies, and public and expert opinion about China.
The CCP’s united front (统战), party-to-party (党际关系), and external propaganda (对外宣传) work is taken
right out of the Soviet playbook and is extremely well resourced. These activities go well beyond accruing
“soft power”—and involve deliberate state-controlled efforts to affect international opinions about, relations
with, and policies toward China. Inside the United States, responsibility for monitoring and countering
these efforts largely falls to the FBI and Department of Justice (under the Foreign Agent Registration Act),
but the Federal Communications Commission, Department of Education, and even local law enforcement
should shoulder their appropriate roles. Abroad, this is largely the responsibility of the Department of State
and CIA to monitor and counter.
7. At home in the United States, we should remain open to China and not overreact and see threats where
they do not truly exist—but, at the same time, we should increase vigilance and educate our society about
the very real threats that China does present to our democracy, our freedoms and norms, and our
security. As FBI Director Christopher Wray has rightly warned, we need a “whole of society” approach
to combatting China’s pernicious espionage, intellectual property theft, and illicit influence activities.36
Many institutions—notably universities—are naive and uneducated about these dangers, and they require
education about them (the effort is underway). It is not only a matter of Chinese stealing intellectual
property from labs, but also China’s state efforts to export censorship abroad.
At the same time that we need to heighten vigilance, we must be ruthlessly empirical in approaching these
issues and not unnecessarily target ethnic Chinese. We must take particular care to protect our Chinese-
American communities—as well as innocent Chinese from the PRC—from inuendo, racial profiling, or
intimidation/censorship tactics by the Chinese state. The United States has an unfortunate and disgraceful
history in this regard—dating back to the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act, but also including the McCarthy “red
scare” in the 1950s, and other mistaken cases such as Wen Ho Lee in 1999. We do not need to repeat this
stained legacy.
8. Call China out publicly on its malign domestic and international behavior. Transparency is a key
tool to combat China’s malign influence at home and abroad (“the best disinfectant is sunlight”). In this
context, a spotlight should be shone on Chinese activities—whether it is “debt trap diplomacy” on Belt and
Road projects, Beijing’s political and economic squeezing of Hong Kong, increased pressures on Taiwan,
economic support for Iran, ethnic and religious repression in Xinjiang and Tibet, other restrictions of
human rights, the surreptitious ownership of American media, exporting censorship, co-opting foreign
politicians, manipulating Chinese diaspora communities, or other malign activities.
The best way to do this, though, is generally not via the U.S. government—but through independent
investigative reporting and media coverage, investigations by NGOs, and normal governance and oversight
in institutions (such as universities). On occasion, however, speeches by senior U.S. officials can also be an
effective tool (e.g., Secretary of State Tillerson’s and Pompeo’s criticisms in Latin America and Africa of
China’s Belt and Road defects), as is the annual State Department report on human rights in China37 or the
Defense Department’s annual report on China’s military.38 The 2018 National Defense Authorization Act
also mandated a similar annual report on Chinese influence activities (although the first has yet to appear).
9. In the realm of technological competition with China, we need to also heighten vigilance and invest
in cutting-edge research. Chinese cyber hacking, espionage, and intellectual property theft have reached
epidemic proportions. We need to strengthen our defenses in many ways—including increasing awareness
among universities of the threats. Export controls should also be strengthened vis-à-vis China (including
via third countries).
Decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies is neither desirable nor feasible, but in the areas of advanced
technology and protecting U.S. comparative advantages as well as national security, some decoupling from
China is advisable. It just makes prudent sense. We also need to invest considerable sums into basic research
in order to maintain any and all U.S. comparative advantages, as China has achieved “peer competitor”
status in the tech domain.
10. Do not overestimate China. It is a big and increasingly strong country, but it is also filled with systemic and
multiple weaknesses: its population size, aging population, and gender imbalance; rigid single party-state
political system; state-dominated fiscal system and non-convertible currency; rigid educational system;
high income inequality (.47 Gini coefficient); repression of civil society, dissent, and religion; draconian
controls over Tibet and Xinjiang; controlled media; high level of corruption and kleptocracy; capital out-
flight; industrial overcapacity; ballooned corporate and local government debt (nearing 300 percent of
GDP); slowing growth; the middle income trap; housing market bubbles and overbuilding (ghost cities);
environmental degradation; and a dictatorial leader with no succession plan. In the competition with
the United States, these are all Achilles heels for China. China is not a ten-foot-tall giant—we should not
overestimate it, and we should be cognizant of its multiple weaknesses.
Avoid a “Dumb” Competition Strategy

If these elements are guides to a “smart competition” strategy, what might be considered elements of a “dumb”
competition strategy?
1. Thinking of the competition as a zero-sum contest of finite battles. This is a protracted and long-term
contest, with considerable fluidity across multiple functional and geographic domains (like an indefinite
soccer match).
2. Developing a comprehensive competition strategy and then under-funding and under-resourcing it.
This will require sustained resource allocations over decades—similar to the Cold War against the Soviet
Union—which, in turn, requires sustained bipartisan consensus.
3. Failure to see this as a comprehensive competition and thus overemphasizing one or two dimensions to the
exclusion of others (e.g., military or trade).
4. Forcing others to “choose” the U.S. over China in the contest. This is a certain way to drive other countries
into the Chinese camp. Conversely, neglect of and inattention to other countries can have the same result
and be equally counterproductive. This is a constant rivalry that requires constant attention.
5. “Scare mongering” or racially profiling ethnic Chinese-Americans, tarnishing the reputations of China
specialists, and going on witch hunts for nefarious Chinese activities where they likely do not exist.
6. Closing our doors to Chinese students, investment, and exchanges. The openness of the United States is
one of—if not the—major asset we have in the competition with China. Our doors to China must remain
open, even while we more vigilantly monitor who passes through them.
In devising and implementing a comprehensive competition strategy against China, we must be careful not to
fall into these “dumb” traps.
Proceeding Prudently and Democratically

Competing effectively with China over the long term will require a fuller national conversation and forging a
new national consensus. As noted at the outset of this chapter, the conversation is well underway in recent years—
and it has been very healthy for the American body politic.
Various NGOs can assist in this process. Among them, this includes the National Committee on United States-
China Relations (based in New York), a national organization that has drifted from its original mission of public
education to one of pro-China engagement. Many other foreign policy organizations can also play a very useful
role—such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Committees on Foreign Relations, the American Foreign Policy
Council, the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, the World Affairs Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and
similar bodies. Washington-based think tanks also have an important national role to play, as do our universities—
not only in the classroom, but through convening on-campus programs.
Congress also has a very important role to play by holding numerous and open hearings on China and U.S.
relations with China. Recall—and replicate—the 1966 Fulbright hearings on China. Executive branch officials,
beginning with the president, also have important roles to play in the national conversation.
Through all of these mechanisms, a full and appropriate national discussion concerning American relations
with China can blossom democratically. It must be conducted with respect and based on facts—not caricatures,
innuendo, and empirical falsehoods.
China is the challenge of our time—and the United States must get to grips with the totality of the competitive
challenge in all its dimensions. The U.S. may need a “Sputnik moment” on China to fully focus attention. Following
a thorough national discussion and debate, consensus can hopefully be more fully forged (there already exists
considerable agreement), and then the federal government (in partnership with state governments and the private
sector) can work out a systematic national strategy, resources can then be allocated to a variety of programs, and
our country can get on with competing fully and effectively with China.
David Shambaugh is a scholar and award-winning author on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia. An active public intellectual
and frequent commentator in the international media, he serves on numerous editorial boards, and has been a consultant to governments, research
institutions, foundations, universities, corporations, banks, and investment funds. Dr. Shambaugh currently is the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies,
Political Science & International Affairs, and the founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George
Washington University. From 1996-2015 he was also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program at The Brookings Institution. Dr.
Shambaugh was previously Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, and Reader in Chinese Politics at the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies
(SOAS), 1987-1996, where he also served as Editor of The China Quarterly (1991-1996). He has served on the Board of Directors of the National Committee
on U.S.-China Relations, and is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and other public policy organizations. He has been selected for numerous
awards and grants. As an author, Dr. Shambaugh has published more than thirty books. His books China’s Future and China Goes Global were both selected
by The Economist as “Best Books of the Year.” His next books Where Great Powers Meet: America & China in Southeast Asia and China & the World will both be
published in 2020. He was educated at George Washington University, Johns Hopkins SAIS, and the University of Michigan.
1
For summaries of the evolving debate, see Gilbert Rozman, “The Debate on China Policy Heats Up: Doves, Hawks, Superhawks, and the Viability
of the Think Tank Middle Ground,” The Asan Forum, July 16, 2019, http://www.theasanforum.org/the-debate-over-us-policy-toward-china-heats-
up-doves-hawks-superhawks-and-the-viability-of-the-think-tank-middle-ground/.
2
See, for example, Aaron L. Friedberg, “Competing with China,” Survival 60, No. 3 (2018); Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis, Revising U.S. Grand
Strategy Towards China, Council on Foreign Relations Special Report No. 72, March 2015, http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Tellis_Blackwill.pdf;
Nikki Haley, “How to Win Against Beijing: Getting Tough on Trade is Just the First Step Toward Countering China,” Foreign Affairs, July 18, 2019,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2019-07-18/how-confront-advancing-threat-china.
3
White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America, December 2017, https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/
NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf.
4
See, for example, The White House, “Remarks by Vice President Pence on the Administration’s Policy Towards China,” October 4, 2018, https://
www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-vice-president-pence-administrations-policy-toward-china/; The White House, “Remarks by
Vice President Pence at the Frederic V. Malek Memorial Lecture,” October 24, 2019, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-
vice-president-pence-frederic-v-malek-memorial-lecture/; “2019 Herman Kahn Award Remarks: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on The China
Challenge,” The Hudson Institute, October 31, 2019, https://www.hudson.org/research/15444-2019-herman-kahn-award-remarks-us-secretary-of-
state-mike-pompeo-on-the-china-challenge.
5
Orville Schell and Susan L. Shirk, eds., Course Correction: Toward an Effective and Sustainable China Policy, Center on U.S.-China Relations, February
2019, https://asiasociety.org/sites/default/files/inline-files/CourseCorrection_FINAL_2.7.19_1.pdf. In the same vein, see David Shambaugh,
“Dealing with China: Tough Engagement and Managed Competition,” Asia Policy ( January 2017); Timothy R. Heath and William R. Thompson,
“Avoiding U.S.-China Competition Is Futile: Why the Best Option is to Manage Strategic Rivalry,” Asia Policy (April 2018).
6
See Kurt Campbell and Eli Ratner, “The China Reckoning: How Beijing Defied American Expectations,” Foreign Affairs (March-April 2018); the
rejoinders: Wang Jisi et al., “Did America Get China Wrong? The Engagement Debate,” Foreign Affairs ( July-August 2018); and Alastair Iain Johnston,
“The Failures of the ‘Failure of Engagement’ with China,” The Washington Quarterly 42, No. 2 (2019). Also see Aaron L. Friedberg, “The Debate Over
US China Strategy,” Survival ( June-July 2015); Harry Harding, “Has America’s China Policy Failed?” The Washington Quarterly (October 2015).
7
See, for example, Michael Swaine, “A Counterproductive Cold War with China,” Foreign Affairs, March 2, 2018; Michael Swaine, “A Relationship
Under Extreme Duress: U.S.-China Relations at a Crossroads,” The Carter Center, January 16, 2019, https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/01/16/
relationship-under-extreme-duress-u.s.-china-relations-at-crossroads-pub-78159; Jonathan D. Pollack and Jeffrey A. Bader, Looking Before We Leap:
Weighing the Risks of U.S.-China Disengagement, Policy Brief, The Brookings Institution, July 2019, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/
uploads/2019/07/FP_20190716_us_china_pollack_bader.pdf.
8
M. Taylor Fravel et al., “China Is Not an Enemy,” Washington Post, July 3, 2019.
9
“Stay the Course on China: An Open Letter to President Trump,” The Journal of Political Risk, July 18, 2019, http://www.jpolrisk.com/stay-the-
course-on-china-an-open-letter-to-president-trump/.
10
Committee on the Present Danger: China, https://presentdangerchina.org.
11
See Robert Sutter, “The 115th Congress Aligns with the Trump Administration in Targeting China,” PacNet, No. 62 (August 30, 2018), https://www.
pacforum.org/analysis/pacnet-62-115th-congress-aligns-trump-administration-targeting-china; David Shambaugh, “The New American Bipartisan
Consensus on China Policy,” China-US Focus, September 21, 2018, https://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/the-new-american-bipartisan-
consensus-on-china-policy.
12
Craig Kafura, “Public and Opinion Leaders’ Views on US-China Trade War,” The Chicago Council on Global Affairs, June 27, 2019, https://www.
thechicagocouncil.org/publication/public-and-opinion-leaders-views-us-china-trade-war.
13
Laura Silver et al., “U.S. Attitudes Towards China Turn Sharply Negative Amid Trade Tensions,” Pew Research Center, August 13, 2019, https://
www.pewresearch.org/global/2019/08/13/u-s-views-of-china-turn-sharply-negative-amid-trade-tensions/.
14
See David Shambaugh, “China and the Liberal World Order,” in The World Turned Upside Down: Maintaining American Leadership in a Dangerous Age,
eds. Nicholas Burns, Leah Bitounis, and Jonathon Price (Washington, DC: The Aspen Institute, 2017); David Shambaugh, “China Rethinks its Global
Role in the Age of Trump,” Bloomberg, June 13, 2017; Melanie Hart and Blaine Johnson, Mapping China’s Global Governance Ambitions, Center for
American Progress, 2019, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/reports/2019/02/28/466768/mapping-chinas-global-governance-
ambitions/.
15
This said, there are some areas of technology and national security where decoupling is advisable.
16
Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan, “Competition without Catastrophe: How America Can Both Challenge and Coexist with China,” Foreign Affairs
(September/October 2019): 109.
17
(September/October 2019).
18
See, for example, Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World (New York: Knopf, 2018); Robert Kagan, The Return of History
and the End of Dreams (New York: Vintage, 2008); John J. Mearsheimer, The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2018); John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2014); Graham Allison, Destined for War? Can
America & China Escape Thucydides’ Trap? (New York: Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt, 2017).
19
See, for example, Susan A. Thornton, “Is American Diplomacy with China Dead?” Foreign Service Journal ( July/August 2019), https://www.afsa.org/
american-diplomacy-china-dead.
20
In this regard see Christopher Ashley Ford, “Re-learning a Competitive Mindset in Great Power Competition” (speech, Washington, DC, March 14,
2019), https://www.state.gov/re-learning-a-competitive-mindset-in-great-power-competition/.
21
On the latter tendency, see, for example, Paul D. Gewirtz, “Can the US-China Crisis Be Stabilized?” The Brookings Institution, June 26, 2019, https://
www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/06/26/can-the-u-s-china-crisis-be-stabilized/.
22
The Trump administration is definitely pushing back against China across multiple domains and bureaucracies, but it is unclear if there is either a
thought-through underlying strategy or if there is centralized coordination from the National Security Council. As distinguished retired diplomat
Susan Thornton has noted, this [allegedly] uncoordinated approach has resulted in “open season” where every U.S. bureaucracy thinks it has a
“hunting license” to go after China in their policy domain. See Susan Thornton, “Is American Diplomacy with China Dead?” The Foreign Service
Journal ( July/August 2019), https://www.afsa.org/american-diplomacy-china-dead.
23
It would be a useful exercise for a think tank or university to receive a grant for such a research project, bringing together former Cold War
practitioners and scholars, to scrutinize the record for appropriate tools, experiences, and lessons from the Cold War that may be applicable to China.
24
See Gregg A. Brazinsky, Winning the Third World: Sino-American Competition During the Cold War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
2017).
25
26
See David Shambaugh, China Goes Global (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013) and David Shambaugh, China & the World (Oxford, UK: Oxford
University Press, 2020).
27
I have been shocked to learn, when visiting U.S. embassies in Southeast Asia and Latin America over the past two years, that most do not have
embassy officers dedicated to tracking China’s activities. This has begun to change over the past year, I gather, as the Trump administration is now
mandating such data collection and reporting.
28
Kurt Campbell and Jake Sullivan, “Competition Without Catastrophe: How America Can Both Challenge and Coexist with China,” Foreign Affairs
29
Edited Transcript of Minister for Foreign Affairs Dr Vivian Balakrishnan’s Remarks on “Seeking Opportunities Amidst Disruption - A View from
Singapore,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, May, 15 2019, https://www.mfa.gov.sg/Newsroom/Press-Statements-Transcripts-and-
Photos/2019/05/20190516_FMV-Washington---CSIS-Speech.
30
China does have a good track record in Africa in the areas of public health, tertiary education, infrastructure, and agriculture.
31
See Joseph Nye, “China Will Not Surpass America Anytime Soon,” Financial Times, February 19, 2019, https://www.ft.com/content/7f700ab4-306d-
11e9-80d2-7b637a9e1ba1.
32
See Richard Haass, Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order (New York: Basic Books, 2014).
33
See the excellent recent book by Larry Diamond, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency (New
York: Penguin Press, 2019).
34
As part of its major global external propaganda efforts, the CCP and PRC also feed Xinhua and other state reports into local media in many
countries, and PRC sources now dominate Chinese diaspora media worldwide. See Sarah Cook, The Implications for Democracy of China’s Globalizing
Media Influence, Freedom House, 2019, https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-media/freedom-media-2019#china-essay; Sarah Cook, “The
Long Shadow of Chinese Censorship: How the Communist Party’s Media Restrictions Affect News Outlets Around the World,” Center for
International Media Assistance, October 22, 2013, http://www.cima.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/CIMA-China_Sarah%20Cook.pdf;
Emily Feng, “China and the World: How Beijing Spreads the Message,” Financial Times, July 12, 2018, https://www.ft.com/content/f5d00a86-3296-
11e8-b5bf-23cb17fd1498; Louisa Lim and Julia Bergin, “Inside China’s Audacious Global Propaganda Campaign,” The Guardian, December 7, 2018,
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/dec/07/china-plan-for-global-media-dominance-propaganda-xi-jinping; David Shambaugh, “China’s
Soft Power Push—The Search for Respect,” Foreign Affairs ( July/August 2015); Daniel Wagner, “China Is Waging a Silent Media War for Global
Influence,” The National Interest, September 19, 2019, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-waging-silent-media-war-global-influence-81906.
35
Larry Diamond and Orville Schell, eds., China’s Influence & American Interests: Promoting Constructive Vigilance (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press,
2019).
36
Christopher Wray, “The FBI and the National Security Threat Landscape: The Next Paradigm Shift” (speech, Washington, DC, April 26, 2019),
https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/the-fbi-and-the-national-security-threat-landscape-the-next-paradigm-shift; Michal Kranz, “The Director of
the FBI Says the Whole of Chinese Society Is a Threat to the US — and that Americans Must Step Up to Defend Themselves,” Business Insider,
February 13, 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com/china-threat-to-america-fbi-director-warns-2018-2.
37
U.S. Department of State, China page, https://www.state.gov/countries-areas/china/.
38
U.S. Department of Defense, “Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2019,” May
2, 2019, https://media.defense.gov/2019/May/02/2002127082/-1/-1/1/2019_CHINA_MILITARY_POWER_REPORT.pdf.
Attractive as it may be in theory, Washington should accept that under foreseeable
circumstances and given the many impressive dimensions of rising Chinese power, it
no longer has the option of broadly based Asian primacy. At the same time, the United
States certainly has the national and alliance resources if adequately deployed to prevent
Chinese primacy in the Indo-Pacific.
—ROBERT D. BLACKWILL
Chapter 14 | U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China 155
U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China:

Seventeen Policy Prescriptions
Robert D. Blackwill
“Any one of these systems of order bases itself on two components: a set of commonly accepted rules that
define the limits of permissible action and a balance of power that enforces restraint where rules break down,
preventing one political unit from subjugating all others.
“Yet today this ‘rules-based’ system faces challenges. The frequent exhortations for countries to do their fair
share, play by twenty-first-century rules, or be responsible stakeholders in a common system reflect the fact that
there is no shared definition of the system or understanding of what a fair contribution would be.
“None of the most important countries which must build a new world order have had any experience with
the multistate system that is emerging. Never before has a new world order had to be assembled from so many
different perceptions, or on so global a scale. Nor has any previous order had to combine the attributes of
the historic balance-of-power systems with global democratic opinion and the exploding technology of the
contemporary period.”
—Henry A. Kissinger, World Order
“You never see the end of things when you’re in them.”

—Joseph Kanon, Leaving Berlin: A Novel
Introduction1
Both the U.S. and Chinese governments are currently striving for illusionary primacy in Asia: Washington
having possessed primacy for many decades and Beijing wishing to acquire it.2 Attractive as it may be in theory,
Washington should accept that under foreseeable circumstances and given the many impressive dimensions of
rising Chinese power, it no longer has the option of broadly based Asian primacy. At the same time, the United
States certainly has the national and alliance resources if adequately deployed to prevent Chinese primacy in the
Indo-Pacific. If both nations actively seek primacy in the region, the road will be open to sustained confrontation
and perhaps even military conflict. As Henry Kissinger put it in his book Diplomacy regarding the period before
World War I, “After the formation of the Triple Entente, the balance of power ceased to function. Tests of strength
became the rule and not the exception. Diplomacy as the art of compromise ended. It was only a question of time
before some crisis would drive events out of control.”3
China’s Grand Strategy

The American national security elite have not entirely digested the profound implications of the rapid and
extraordinary rise of Chinese power. To put it mildly, China is not just another of many major U.S. foreign policy
problems. As Lee Kuan Yew observed, “The size of China’s displacement of the world balance is such that the world
must find a new balance.…It is not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in
the history of the world.”4
In that context, Beijing seeks to:
• replace the United States as the primary power in Asia;
• weaken the U.S. alliance system in Asia;
• undermine the confidence of Asian nations in U.S. credibility, reliability, and staying power;
• use the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) economic power to pull Asian nations closer to China’s geopolitical
policy preferences;
• increase PRC military capability to strengthen deterrence against U.S. military intervention in the region;
• cast doubt on the U.S. economic, political, and societal model;
• ensure U.S. democratic values do not diminish the Chinese Communist Party’s hold on domestic power; and
• avoid a major confrontation with the United States in the next decade.
A Revised U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China

Lee Kuan Yew also emphasized this regarding China, “How could they not aspire to be number one in Asia, and
in time the world?”5 He further remarked, “Why not? They have transformed a poor society by an economic miracle
to become now the second-largest economy in the world—on track, as Goldman Sachs has predicted, to become
the world’s largest economy.…They have followed the American lead in putting people in space and shooting down
satellites with missiles. Theirs is a culture 4,000 years old with 1.3 billion people, many of great talent—a huge and
very talented pool to draw from.”6 Put simply, “It is China’s intention to be the greatest power in the world.”7
Not recognizing the clarity of Lee’s analysis and conclusions, successive U.S. administrations spoke routinely about
a strategic partnership with China and an “engage and hedge” strategy against Chinese misbehavior. This mistaken
approach continued long after Beijing had seriously misbehaved and when that hedging should have changed into
something much stronger and more decisive to counter China’s threats to vital U.S. national interests. History is filled
with such miscalculations, going back to the Romans, the Greeks, the Egyptians, and the Chinese, among others.8
The necessity for a balancing strategy that seeks to limit China’s capacity to misuse its growing power, even as
the United States and its allies continue to interact with China diplomatically and economically, is driven by the high
likelihood of a long-term strategic rivalry between Beijing and Washington. China’s sustained economic success
over the past thirty-odd years has enabled it to aggregate formidable power, making it the nation most capable of
dominating the Asian continent and thus undermining the traditional U.S. geopolitical objective of ensuring that
this arena remains free of hegemonic control. The meteoric growth of the Chinese economy, even as China’s per
capita income remains behind that of the United States, has already provided Beijing with the resources necessary to
challenge both the security of its Asian neighbors and Washington’s influence in Asia, with dangerous consequences.
Only a fundamental collapse of the Chinese state would free Washington from the obligation of systematically
balancing Beijing, because even the alternative of a modest Chinese stumble would not eliminate the dangers
presented to the United States in Asia and beyond. Even as China’s overall gross domestic product (GDP) growth
slows considerably, its relative growth rates are likely to be higher than those of the United States for the foreseeable
future, thus making the need to balance its rising power important. In any case, Washington should hardly pursue a
grand strategy based on the expectation that Beijing’s many domestic problems will render it incapable of contesting
with the United States for leadership in Asia and beyond.9
Accordingly, the U.S. grand strategy toward China at its core would replace the central goal of integrating Beijing
into the international system with that of consciously balancing its rise—as a means of protecting U.S. and allied
security, reestablishing U.S. leadership in the global hierarchy, and promoting the strength of the liberal international
order, which ultimately depends on the robustness of American relative power.
There is no better basis for analyzing and formulating U.S. grand strategy toward China than connecting that
strategy directly to U.S. vital national interests, listed below, which are conditions that are strictly necessary to
safeguard and enhance Americans’ survival and well-being in a free and secure nation.10
(Note how exceedingly rigorous this definition of vital national interests is. Most foreign policy issues on the front
page of the New York Times and in the media do not meet these definitional requirements. While others routinely
claim that America has vital national interests from Yemen to Syria to Taiwan to Afghanistan to the South China Sea,
only five vital U.S. national interests today are listed here, consistent with the austere definition above.)
U.S. vital national interests are as follows:
1. Prevent the use and deter and reduce the threat of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons and catastrophic
conventional terrorist or cyberattacks against the United States or its military forces abroad;
2. Prevent the use and slow the global spread of nuclear weapons, secure nuclear weapons and materials, and
reduce further proliferation of intermediate- and long-range delivery systems for nuclear weapons;
3. Maintain a global and regional balance of power that promotes peace and stability through domestic American
robustness, U.S. international power and influence, and the strength of the U.S. alliance systems;
4. Prevent the emergence of hostile major powers or failed states on U.S. borders; and
5. Ensure the viability and stability of major global systems (trade, financial markets, supplies of energy, and the
environment).
Instrumentally, these vital interests will be enhanced and protected by promoting U.S. leadership, military and
intelligence capabilities, credibility (including a reputation for adherence to clear commitments and evenhandedness
in dealing with other states), and strengthening critical international institutions.
These U.S. vital national interests, which are meant to safeguard and enhance Americans’ survival and well-being
in a free and secure nation, would be potentially threatened by an Asia dominated by China.11
The Critics
Experts critical of this proposed grand strategy toward China likely fall into at least seven categories.
First, some will argue that China has no grand strategy. Although there may be those in Beijing who disagree with
Xi Jinping’s current strategic approach, its dominating elements are not a mystery. Chinese officials insistently argue
that the U.S. alliance system in Asia is a product of the Cold War and should be dismantled; that the United States’
Asian allies and friends should loosen their U.S. ties and that failure to do so will inevitably produce a negative PRC
reaction; that U.S. efforts to maintain its current presence and power in Asia are dimensions of an American attempt
to contain China and therefore must be condemned and resisted; that U.S. military power projection in the region is
dangerous and should be reduced (even as the People’s Liberation Army continues to build up its military capabilities
with the clear objective of reducing U.S. military options in the context of a U.S.-China confrontation); and that the
U.S. economic and political model is fundamentally exploitative and should have no application in Asia. To not take
seriously official Chinese government statements along these lines is to not take China seriously. That Beijing does
not hope to realize these policy goals in the short term does not reduce their potential undermining effect in the
decades ahead. In short, if China were to achieve the policy objectives contained in these official statements, it would
clearly replace the United States as Asia’s leading power. If that does not represent a PRC grand strategy, what would?
Henry Kissinger in A World Restored may be helpful in this regard: “For powers long accustomed to tranquillity
and without experience with disaster, this is a hard lesson to come by. Lulled by a period of stability which had
seemed permanent, they find it nearly impossible to take at face value the assertion of the revolutionary power that
it means to smash the existing framework. The defenders of the status quo therefore tend to begin by treating the
revolutionary power as if its protestations were merely tactical; as if it really accepted the existing legitimacy but
overstated its case for bargaining purposes; as if it were motivated by specific grievances to be assuaged by limited
concessions. Those who warn against the danger in time are considered alarmists; those who counsel adaptation
to circumstance are considered balanced and sane, for they have all the good ‘reasons’ on their side: the arguments
accepted as valid in the existing framework.”12
Second, some may say that the analysis and policy recommendations are too pessimistic and are based on a
worst-case appraisal of Chinese behavior. To the contrary, these conclusions are drawn from China’s current actions
regarding its internal and external security, its neighbors, and the U.S. presence in Asia. Nothing is projected that is not
already apparent in China’s present policies and strategic intentions. Nevertheless, this hardly represents the worst
case if China began to behave like the Soviet Union, necessitating something a great deal more far-reaching and costly
than an attempt to maintain balance.
Third, others might argue that China’s international behavior is “normal” for a rising power, that China is gradually
being socialized into the international system, and that it is far too early for Washington to give up on comprehensive
engagement and strategic reassurance toward Beijing. The issue here is how long the United States should pursue
a policy toward China that is clearly not sufficiently protecting U.S. vital national interests. Kurt Campbell, former
assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama administration, has stressed, “We were
always looking for deeper cooperation with China and attempts to have on-the-ground cooperation—for example,
on aid or humanitarian support operations, we weren’t able to bring about; in military-to-military relations, on the
diplomatic agenda, on aid, we found it very difficult to get meaningful results.”13
Fourth, some may assert that China’s integration into the international system broadly serves important U.S.
purposes, binds Beijing to a rules-based system, and increases the costs to the PRC of going against it and thus should
transcend other Washington concerns about China’s internal and external behavior. Attempts to integrate China into
international institutions will continue, and the United States will accrue some benefits from that activity. However,
basing U.S. grand strategy primarily on Chinese global integration ignores the strategic reality that China has made
far greater relative gains through such processes than the United States has over the past three decades. China has
increased its national power in ways that could deeply threaten U.S. national interests in the long term. The United
States needs to understand and internalize this disturbing fact and respond to such PRC international assimilation
with much more robust American policies and power projection into Asia.
Fifth, critics may also say that the United States’ Asian allies and friends will never go along with the grand strategy
outlined in this document. This concern seems to concentrate not on the merits of this strategic approach, but rather
on its reception in the region. Our allies want to maintain ties with China, have increased U.S. capabilities in the region,
have bolstered reassurance of American protection, and intensify Washington’s support for their own economic
growth and security. The grand strategy outlined here advances all of these objectives. Indeed, the worry across Asia
today is not that the United States will pursue overly robust policies toward China; rather, it is that Washington may
not be up to the challenge of consistently and effectively dealing with the rise of China over the long term.
Sixth, a familiar concern is that if the U.S. treats China as an enemy, China will become an enemy. A recent
declaration by more than one hundred prominent China and other foreign policy experts warned against “U.S.
efforts to treat China as an enemy.…”14 This worry is difficult to understand. No U.S. administration in the past
half-century, including the current one, has treated China as an “enemy.” Moreover, over a nearly twenty-year
period wherein Washington sought a strategic partnership with China, Beijing has implemented a grand strategy
designed to undermine U.S.-Asian alliances, which has accelerated under Xi Jinping; used geoeconomic tools to
coerce its neighbors and others, including more recently through the Belt and Road Initiative; violated international
commercial practices, including committing massive theft of U.S. intellectual property; manipulated its currency for
trade benefits; threatened Taiwan with invasion; built up its military forces to push the United States beyond Japan
and the Philippines; constructed and militarized artificial islands in the South China Sea in violation of international
law; systemically and brutally violated the human rights of its own people; and patiently and incrementally built its
power and influence with the strategic goal of replacing the United States as the primary power in Asia.15 Who is
treating whom as an enemy, or at least as a strategic adversary?
Seventh, the question arises regarding how China will respond to the U.S. grand strategy recommended here. Are
not the risks of pursuing this grand strategy too great? One could certainly expect a strong Chinese reaction. But it
is likely that Beijing would continue to cooperate with the United States in areas that it thinks serve China’s national
interests—on the global economy, international trade, climate change, counterterrorism, the Iranian nuclear weapons
program, North Korea (which cannot be managed without Beijing’s agreement), and Afghanistan. Put differently, a
fit of pique by the Chinese leadership—hardly in China’s strategic tradition—would act in ways that damage its policy
purposes and its reputation around Asia. In short, this strategic course in U.S. policy toward China would certainly
trigger a torrent of criticism from Beijing because it would begin to systemically address China’s goal of dominating
Asia, but it would not end aspects of U.S.-China international collaboration based on compatible national interests.
Although there are risks in following the course proposed here, as with most fundamental policy departures, such
dangers are substantially smaller than those that are increasing because of an inadequate U.S. strategic response to
the rise of Chinese power.
U.S. Policy Prescriptions16

1. The United States should revitalize the sources of its own national power, including skillfully managing its
economy, modernizing its basic infrastructure, reforming the immigration system and entitlement spending,
and addressing the serious political, economic, and societal divisions within the country.17 With the U.S.
contest with China over international power and influence likely to be decades long, a prosperous and well-
functioning America is the first requirement to ensure that the United States is well positioned not to lose that
competition.
2. The U.S. should protect the integrity of its democratic institutions, both for the good of the country and to
offer a powerful alternative model to China’s authoritarian archetype.
3. Washington should, in a measured way and, at best, through a bipartisan consensus, educate the American
people regarding the nature and long duration of China’s challenges to U.S. vital national interests and
democratic values.
4. The United States should avoid being diverted from the China question by other problems around the globe and
should consider, in making virtually every foreign policy decision, its effects on meeting the China challenge.
Decisions based on diplomatic, economic, military, or regional stovepipes are particularly dangerous in the
comprehensive context of the rise of Chinese power. Although, of course, the United States has vital national
interests in other parts of the world, perhaps a large sign that says “Think China” should be placed on the wall
of the White House Situation Room. As Friedrich Nietzsche observed, “Forgetting our objectives is the most
frequent of all acts of stupidity.”18
An American president who understood the China challenge would not pull the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP). An American president who understood the China challenge would not provoke trade
dispute after trade dispute with the closest allies of the United States at a time when allied solidarity is an
indispensable requirement to deal successfully and peacefully with a rising China. An American president who
understood the China challenge would ask how NATO enlargement would likely affect Moscow’s interaction
with Beijing and whether ever-closer Russia-China relations are consistent with U.S. national interests. An
American president who understood the China challenge would wonder whether Washington should rush to
impose long-term sanctions against Moscow when Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, thus helping drive Russia
toward an alliance with China. An American president who understood the China challenge would ask if it
is wise to continue the draining war in Afghanistan and U.S. military involvement in the Syrian civil war. And
an American president who understood the China challenge would do everything possible to avoid attacking
Iran and thus triggering America’s third long war since 2001.
5. Washington should intensify its diplomatic, economic, and military ties with its allies and partners across
Asia. The United States cannot successfully compete with China over the long term as a solitary actor, as a
unilateralist. Beijing recognizes that one of its great advantages in this strategic competition is how much time
and attention Washington spends on challenges elsewhere. As China steps up its use of geoeconomic tools, its
diplomatic reach and influence, and its military modernization, the price of U.S. absence or hesitance in Asia
has never been higher.19
6. The United States should substantially strengthen its military power projection into Asia, shifting resources
from the Middle East and European theaters to improve the capability of U.S. military forces to effectively
project power along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese opposition.20 The United States needs more
frequent and formidable naval activities, more robust air force deployments, and more capable expeditionary
formations, as well as greater partner capacity, to reinforce its preeminent role in preserving peace and stability
in Asia. This will allow it not only to conduct freedom of navigation transits, but also to seek to deter Chinese
provocations, respond to regional crises, and reassure allies.
7. The United States should take the following steps in concert with its Asian allies and partners:
Japan. The United States should continue to work with Japan, America’s most important ally in the world, to
enhance the operational capabilities of the Japan Self-Defense Forces. In addition, the United States should
upgrade its ballistic missile defense (BMD) interaction with Japan, reinforce Japan’s cooperation with other
Asian allies and partners, and regularly and resoundingly signal that the United States will come to Japan’s
defense if Japan is attacked.
South Korea. The cornerstone of America’s relationship with South Korea is the shared commitment to
defending the latter from North Korean aggression. In that regard, the United States should promote stability
on the Korean peninsula by maintaining enough military forces there to deter provocative North Korean
action, reaffirm its nuclear guarantees to South Korea, and enhance South Korea’s BMD capabilities.
Australia. Australia is a linchpin of America’s Indo-Pacific strategy. Canberra should host more, and more
frequent, deployments of U.S. military assets in the region. The United States and Australia should boost their
partnerships on BMD, cybersecurity, intelligence gathering, and naval operations.
India. Washington should greatly intensify technology transfers and enhance security cooperation with New
Delhi. In particular, the United States should increase collaboration between the U.S. and Indian navies and
continue to assist the Indian navy with modernization efforts to offset ambitious Chinese naval expansion.
8. Since strict reciprocity should encompass all dimensions of U.S.-China relations, Washington should continue
to confront Beijing on its trade violations, which have been enduring and significant. China subsidizes state-
owned industries, including its steel and aluminum companies, and the resulting overcapacity dramatically
undercuts metals prices.21 It refuses to grant market access to U.S. and other firms across most of its economy.22
It steals U.S. intellectual property and advanced technology. It forces foreign tech firms that want to operate
and sell goods in the country to work directly with Chinese firms and give them access to their secrets.23 It
steals new technology from foreign firms inside China using cyber tools. According to the cybersecurity firm
CrowdStrike, China was “the most prolific nation-state threat actor during the first half of 2018” and “made
targeted intrusion attempts against multiple sectors of the economy, including biotech, defense, mining,
pharmaceutical, professional services, transportation, and more.”24 These attacks have continued into 2019.25
Only the immediate fear of stringent U.S. retaliation will persuade Beijing to begin to cease and desist with its
trade violations; as is obvious from more than two decades of policy failure, urbane U.S. diplomatic dialogue
behind closed doors or public shaming on trade issues will not achieve what is necessary. As Kurt Campbell has
stressed, “President Trump has basically received and gotten more Chinese leverage…by this brutal approach
than we got by treating China as a partner and with deep respect.”26
9. Washington should launch a national private and public effort regarding advanced machine reasoning,
learning, and problem solving, which could define the future balance of authoritarian and democratic power,
to ensure that the U.S. does not lose the artificial intelligence (AI) race to China and thus allow Beijing to shape
AI ethical norms and technical standards.27
10. Washington should recognize that neither its public rebukes nor its private entreaties are likely to change
China’s domestic policies and practices, including its brutal human rights record, and fruitlessly advocating
regime change in China is a recipe that would sharply accelerate the downward spiral in U.S.-China relations.
Getting the right balance in responding to China’s pervasive human rights abuses is not easy given American
values. Henry Kissinger observes in Diplomacy that, “No nation has ever imposed the moral demands on itself
that America has. And no country has so tormented itself over the gap between its moral values, which are by
definition absolute, and the imperfection inherent in the concrete situations to which they must be applied.”28
That torment regarding human rights and China will continue.
11. The United States should respond to Chinese cyberattacks with offensive cyber operations and stiff economic
sanctions. China presents a persistent cyber espionage threat and an increasing attack threat to U.S. core
military and critical infrastructure systems, such as power grids and financial networks, as well as to the
American private sector. It must pay a serious price for these brazen cyber activities.29 Regarding the latter, so
far, “U.S. policy still lacks a coherent approach to protecting critical digital assets outside of the government
and, in most cases, relies on the voluntary participation of private industry.”30
12. The United States should not seek a China-first approach to the region. Such a G2 bilateral focus would suggest
a great power condominium that puts China at the center of U.S. strategy in Asia. Instead, the United States
should embed its China policy within a larger Asia-wide framework, intensifying every one of Washington’s
other bilateral relationships in the region. Deepening and diversifying contacts throughout Asia will allow the
United States greater influence in the region’s affairs and greater capacity to shape China’s external choices.
13. The United States should work with its Asian alliance members and other partners to devise a set of policies
to deal with China’s coercive geoeconomic pressures. This is especially important because for the next decade,
the China challenge is most likely to be geoeconomic rather than military.31 Currently, Beijing pays no price
for using its economic instruments to bully nations to acquiesce to its external objectives. To counter this,
the U.S. should join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP),
formerly known as the TPP, and launch a comprehensive campaign against such coercive Chinese policies,
including those in the Belt and Road Initiative.
14. The United States should marshal its diplomacy with nations within the region, as well as those outside it
(e.g., European countries that favor rules-based approaches, although this will require awakening Europe
from its strategic stupor), to make progress on priorities such as world order, climate, free trade, regional
security, and freedom of navigation.
15. The U.S. should attempt to initiate an extended conversation with Vladimir Putin and the Russian government
on world order and the security of Europe and Asia. In analyzing threats to American security, Zbigniew
Brzezinski warned that “the most dangerous scenario” would be “a grand coalition of China and Russia…
united not by ideology but by complementary grievances.”32 Thus, the increasing Russian embrace of China
is clearly not in the U.S. national interest, and it would be useful to introduce in Beijing the idea that Russia’s
current bear hug may not be permanent. In that context, NATO enlargement should be over and done, and
the U.S. should incrementally lift its sanctions against Russia regarding its annexation of Crimea in return for
the end of Moscow’s interference in eastern Ukraine. Since it is inconceivable that Moscow will ever withdraw
from Crimea, do enthusiasts for those sanctions want them to stay in place in perpetuity?
16. The United States, even as it looks for areas of cooperation with the PRC, should make clear to Beijing that
any Chinese attempt to challenge fundamental U.S. national interests in Asia will be met by resolute resistance
and will not advance Chinese grand strategy.
17. Washington, as it implements policies to deal with the threatening aspects of the rise of Chinese power, should
construct a plausible path of classic diplomacy with Beijing that would seek to ameliorate the growing tension
between the two countries.33 A supreme effort by both sides is necessary to avoid a situation of permanent
confrontation, which could eventually lead to war, in particular over the issue of Taiwan, where tensions
between Beijing and Taipei are on the rise.34
If Washington and Beijing do not stop the downward turn in the bilateral relationship and lurch into prolonged
intense confrontation or even conflict, the American and Chinese people would be the first to pay the price
of this policy failure. Most of the rest of the world would soon join the suffering. Consequences would
emerge for the United States’ and China’s formidable domestic challenges and national economies. Effects
on the global economy would be devastating. Tension would dramatically increase throughout Asia, since
no country in that vast region wants to have to choose between the United States and China. The effect
on potential U.S.-China collaboration on climate change and other issues of global governance would be
corrosive. Attempts to deal with the nuclear weapons program of North Korea and potentially that of Iran
would fall apart.
In restricted private exchanges, U.S. and Chinese leaders should, first, candidly address how the application
of their countries’ perceived national interests could be circumscribed and restrained to avoid U.S.-China
confrontation. In what ways should world order be rebalanced, and with what set of mutually accepted
international rules and practices?35 To be blunt, it is unrealistic to believe that in such a bilateral agreement
only China would be required to make concessions. Without this sustained strategic dialogue to discuss what
sorts of restraint are required, the future relationship between the United States and China looks exceedingly
bleak, and a restoration of a stable world order seems highly unlikely. Although such extended high-level
exchanges between Washington and Beijing will not end the strategic competition between the two, which
will last for decades, they could help avoid worst-case outcomes. At this writing, there is reason to doubt that
either side at present is capable of mounting a serious strategic dialogue, but what is the alternative to giving
it a try?
However, for an intensified high-level bilateral dialogue between Washington and Beijing to be fruitful, the
United States should first clearly establish that it is enhancing its military, diplomatic, and economic power
projection into Asia, intensifying interaction with allies and friends and helping to build up allies’ military
strength—not just making speeches about U.S.-China strategic competition. Nothing less will convince
Beijing that it has reasons, based on its national interests, to negotiate seriously with the United States. This
will take some time, for Beijing will wait to see if Washington becomes distracted and diverts its attention to
other lesser issues in the daily headlines, as is its wont.
Many of these suggested policy proposals are familiar and have been debated in public discourse in recent years.
Thus, prescriptive familiarity is not the problem with respect to U.S. policies toward China and Asia writ large. Rather,
it is that most such efforts have seen too little policy intensity and too little policy follow-through. As Leonardo da
Vinci stressed, “I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being
willing is not enough; we must do.”36
Yes, Leonardo, with respect to the rise of Chinese power, we must do.
Robert D. Blackwill is the Henry A. Kissinger senior fellow for U.S. foreign policy at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York, and the Diller–
von Furstenberg Family Foundation Distinguished Scholar at the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced
International Studies. Ambassador Blackwill served as the U.S. Ambassador to India from 2001 to 2003. In 2016, he became the first U.S. Ambassador to India
since John Kenneth Galbraith to receive the Padma Bhushan Award from the government of India for distinguished service of a high order. He was then deputy
national security advisor for strategic planning from 2003 to 2005, during which he was responsible for government-wide policy planning to help develop and
coordinate the mid- and long-term direction of U.S. foreign policy. He also served as presidential envoy to Iraq and was the administration’s coordinator for
U.S. policies regarding Afghanistan and Iran. Ambassador Blackwill was a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation from 2008 to 2010 and president of Barbour
Griffith & Rogers International. His book, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft (Harvard University Press, April 2016), coauthored with Jennifer M.
Harris, was named one of the best foreign policy books of 2016 by Foreign Affairs. His CFR Council Special Report titled Trump’s Foreign Policies Are Better Than
They Seem was published in April. He is a member of CFR, the Aspen Strategy Group, and the International Institute for Strategic Studies.
1
This essay draws on Robert D. Blackwill, “Managing the U.S.-China Great Power Relationship” (presentation, World Cultural Forum, Shanghai, June
18, 2014), http://belfercenter.org/publication/managing-us-china-great-power-relationship; Robert D. Blackwill, “Indo-Pacific Strategy in an Era
of Geoeconomics” (speech, Tokyo, July 31, 2018), http://cfrd8-files.cfr.org/sites/default/files/pdf/8-20%20Tokyo%20Presentation.pdf; Robert D.
Blackwill, Trump’s Foreign Policies Are Better Than They Seem (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2019), http://cfr.org/report/trumps-foreign-
policies-are-better-they-seem; Robert D. Blackwill and Kurt M. Campbell, Xi Jinping on the Global Stage (New York: Council on Foreign Relations,
2016), http://cfr.org/report/xi-jinping-global-stage; Robert D. Blackwill and Jennifer M. Harris, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016); Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis, “The India Dividend: New Delhi Remains Washington’s
Best Hope in Asia,” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 5 (September/October 2019): 173-183; Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis, Revising U.S. Grand Strategy
Toward China (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2015), http://cfr.org/report/revising-us-grand-strategy-toward-china. However, the author is
solely responsible for the substance of this text.
2
See Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017).
3
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 182.
4
Graham Allison and Robert D. Blackwill, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2013), 42; Nicholas D. Kristof, “The Rise of China,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 5 (November/December 1993): 74.
5
Graham Allison and Robert D. Blackwill, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World (Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press, 2013), 2.
6
Lee Kuan Yew, quoted in Graham Allison and Robert D. Blackwill, Lee Kuan Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 2.
7
Lee Kuan Yew, “China’s Growing Might and the Consequences,” Forbes, March 28, 2011.
8
Pharaoh clearly did not sufficiently take into account Moses’s strategic and tactical assets, in this case his God, as he led the Israelites out of captivity
in Egypt and into the land of Canaan. The Egyptian intelligence community’s failure regarding collection, collation, evaluation, analysis, integration,
and interpretation reportedly cost Pharaoh his entire army and all its equipment in the Red Sea.
9
For an explanation of China’s many domestic problems, see Lee Kuan Yew’s enumeration in Graham Allison and Robert D. Blackwill, Lee Kuan
Yew: The Grand Master’s Insights on China, the United States, and the World (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2013), 7-11. Also see James T. Areddy, “China’s
Economy Shows Fresh Signs of Weakness,” Wall Street Journal, June 16, 2019, http://www.wsj.com/articles/chinas-economy-shows-fresh-signs-of-
weakness-11560512903; Keith Bradsher, “China’s Economic Growth Slows as Trade War With U.S. Deepens,” New York Times, July 14, 2019, http://
nytimes.com/2019/07/14/business/china-economy-growth-gdp-trade-war.html; Chris Buckley, “2019 Is a Sensitive Year for China. Xi Is Nervous.,”
New York Times, February 25, 2019, http://nytimes.com/2019/02/25/world/asia/china-xi-warnings.html; George Friedman, “The Hong Kong
Extradition Bill and China’s Weakness,” Geopolitical Futures, June 18, 2019, http://geopoliticalfutures.com/the-hong-kong-extradition-bill-and-
chinas-weakness; Karine Lisbonne-de Vergeron, “China’s Strengths and Weaknesses,” Fondation Robert Schuman, April 4, 2012, http://robert-
schuman.eu/en/european-issues/0235-china-s-strengths-and-weaknesses; Joseph S. Nye, Jr.,“Commentary: China a Country with Great Strengths,
but Also Important Weaknesses,” Channel News Asia, April 12, 2019, http://channelnewsasia.com/news/commentary/china-us-rivalry-cooperation-
strengths-weaknesses-11424970; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Does China Have Feet of Clay?” Project Syndicate, April 4, 2019, http://project-syndicate.org/
commentary/five-key-weaknesses-in-china-by-joseph-s--nye-2019-04?barrier=accesspaylog; Gordon Orr, “What Can We Expect in China in 2019?”
McKinsey & Company, December 2018, http://mckinsey.com/featured-insights/china/what-can-we-expect-in-china-in-2019; Nathaniel Taplin,
“China’s Inward Tilt Could Cripple It,” Wall Street Journal, June 26, 2019, http://wsj.com/articles/chinas-inward-tilt-could-cripple-it-11561543149;
“The Geopolitics of China: A Great Power Enclosed,” Stratfor, March 25, 2012, http://worldview.stratfor.com/article/geopolitics-china-great-
power-enclosed.
10
This rigorous definition of U.S. national interests has been developed over twenty years in an enduring conversation and partnership with Graham
Allison.
11
The list of U.S. vital national interests draws on Graham Allison and Robert Blackwill, America’s National Interests, Commission on America’s National
Interests, July 2000, http://belfercenter.org/files/amernatinter.pdf.
12
Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace, 1812-1822 (London: Phoenix Press, 2000), 2–3.
13
James Massola, “Barack Obama’s China Policy Has Not Been Successful, Says US Official,” Sydney Morning Herald, November 2, 2014.
14
M. Taylor Fravel et al., “China Is Not an Enemy,” Washington Post, July 3, 2019, http://washingtonpost.com/opinions/making-china-a-us-enemy-is-
counterproductive/2019/07/02/647d49d0-9bfa-11e9-b27f-ed2942f73d70_story.html?utm_term=.e1a207ec8cf2.
15
Lily Kuo, “‘Divide and Conquer’: China Puts the Pressure on U.S. Allies,” Guardian, February 2, 2019, http://theguardian.com/world/2019/feb/02/
divide-and-conquer-china-puts-the-pressure-on-us-allies; Robert D. Blackwill and Jennifer M. Harris, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 93-151; Robert D. Blackwill, “Indo-Pacific Strategy in an Era of Geoeconomics” (speech, Tokyo,
July 31, 2018), http://cfrd8-files.cfr.org/sites/default/files/pdf/8-20%20Tokyo%20Presentation.pdf; Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J. Tellis, Revising
U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2015), http://cfr.org/report/revising-us-grand-strategy-toward-china.
See also the Commission on the Theft of American Intellectual Property, Update to the IP Commission Report: The Theft of American Intellectual Property;
Reassessments of the Challenge and United States Policy (Washington, DC: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2017), http://ipcommission.org/report/
IP_Commission_Report_Update_2017.pdf; Gerry Shih, “Xi Offers Promises and Threats as He Calls China’s Unification With Taiwan Inevitable,”
Washington Post, January 2, 2019, http://washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/xi-offers-promises-and-threats-as-he-calls-chinas-unification-with-
taiwan-inevitable/2019/01/02/85ae5ece-0e82-11e9-92b8-6dd99e2d80e1_story.html; “Advance Policy Questions for Admiral Philip Davidson, USN,
Expected Nominee for Commander, U.S. Pacific Command,” U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, April 17, 2018, http://armed-services.
senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Davidson_APQs_04-17-18.pdf; Robert D. Blackwill and Kurt M. Campbell, Xi Jinping on the Global Stage (New York:
Council on Foreign Relations, 2016), http://cfr.org/report/xi-jinping-global-stage; “China,” in World Report 2019, Human Rights Watch, http://
hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/china-and-tibet; Anne Applebaum, “‘Never Again?’ It’s Already Happening.,” Washington Post,
February 15, 2019, http://washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-west-ignored-crimes-against-humanity-in-the-1930s-its-happening-
again-now/2019/02/15/d17d4998-3130-11e9-813a-0ab2f17e305b_story.html.
16
Virtually every one of these policy prescriptions would be more effective if they were done in concert with America’s allies and friends. It is also clear
that much of the analysis and many of the policy proposals in this essay are unlikely to be accepted by the current administration.
17
See Richard N. Haass’s encompassing Foreign Policy Begins at Home: The Case for Putting America’s House in Order (New York: Basic Books, 2013).
18
Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 360.
19
In my book with Jennifer M. Harris, War by Other Means, we define geoeconomics as “the use of economic instruments to promote and defend
national interests and to produce beneficial geopolitical results, and the effects of other nations’ economic actions on a country’s geopolitical goals.”
20
See Salvatore Babones, “America Must Pivot Toward China and Away from the Middle East,” The National Interest, May 1, 2019, http://nationalinterest.
org/feature/america-must-pivot-toward-china-and-away-middle-east-55302; Hal Brands, “New U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy Isn’t Going to Scare
China,” Bloomberg, June 18, 2019, http://bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-18/u-s-indo-pacific-strategy-isn-t-going-to-scare-china; Robert
W. Merry, “The Great Power Game Is On and China Is Winning,” The American Conservative, May 22, 2019, http://theamericanconservative.com/
articles/the-great-power-game-is-on-and-china-is-winning; Mark Montgomery and Eric Sayers, “Addressing America’s Operational Shortfall in the
Pacific,” War on the Rocks, June 18, 2019, http://warontherocks.com/2019/06/addressing-americas-operational-shortfall-in-the-pacific; Will Saetren
and Hunter Marston, “Washington Must Own Up to Superpower Competition With China,” The Diplomat, March 8, 2018, http://thediplomat.
com/2018/03/washington-must-own-up-to-superpower-competition-with-china.
21
Jim Zarroli, “China Churns Out Half the World’s Steel, and Other Steelmakers Feel Pinched,” NPR, March 8, 2018, http://npr.
org/2018/03/08/591637097/china-churns-out-half-the-worlds-steel-and-other-steelmakers-feel-pinched.
22
“Factbox—Barrier to Entry: China’s Restrictions on U.S. Imports,” Reuters, March 14, 2018, http://reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-china-factbox/
factbox-barrier-to-entry-chinas-restrictions-on-u-s-imports-idUSKCN1GQ0PQ.
23
See Lee G. Branstetter, “China’s Forced Technology Transfer Problem—And What to Do About It,” Peterson Institute of International Economics,
June 2018, http://piie.com/system/files/documents/pb18-13.pdf.
24
“CrowdStrike Report Reveals Cyber Intrusion Trends from Elite Team of Threat Hunters,” CrowdStrike, 2018, http://crowdstrike.com/resources/
news/crowdstrike-report-reveals-cyber-intrusion-trends-from-elite-team-of-threat-hunters.
25
Nicole Perlroth, “Chinese and Iranian Hackers Renew Their Attacks on U.S. Companies,” New York Times, February 18, 2019, http://nytimes.
com/2019/02/18/technology/hackers-chinese-iran-usa.html.
26
Kurt Campbell, interview with Kaiser Kuo, “Kurt Campbell on U.S.-China diplomacy,” Sinica Podcast, June 28, 2018, http://supchina.com/podcast/
kurt-campbell-on-u-s-china-diplomacy.
27
See Henry A. Kissinger, “How the Enlightenment Ends,” The Atlantic, June 2018, http://theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/henry-
kissinger-ai-could-mean-the-end-of-human-history/559124; Henry A. Kissinger, Eric Schmidt, and Daniel Huttenlocher, “The Metamorphosis,”
The Atlantic, August 2019, http://theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/henry-kissinger-the-metamorphosis-ai/592771; Kaveh Waddell,
“The Global Race between China and U.S. to Set the Rules for AI,” Axios, July 14, 2019, http://axios.com/artificial-intelligence-china-united-states-
5bea5020-c5c6-4527-8d25-7bf0036f6384.html.
28
Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994), 22-23.
29
There is no better public source on cyber issues than David Sanger’s frequent revelations on the front page of the New York Times.
30
Jonathan Masters, “Confronting the Cyber Threat,” Council on Foreign Relations, May 23, 2011, http://cfr.org/backgrounder/confronting-cyber-
threat. For compelling conceptual examinations of cyber issues, see Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Deterrence and Dissuasion in Cyberspace,” International Security
41, no. 3 (Winter 2016/2017): 44-71; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “The World Needs New Norms on Cyberwarfare,” Washington Post, October 1, 2015, http://
washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-world-needs-an-arms-control-treaty-for-cybersecurity/2015/10/01/20c3e970-66dd-11e5-9223-70cb36460919_story.
html; Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “Cyberspace Wars,” New York Times, February 27, 2011, http://nytimes.com/2011/02/28/opinion/28iht-ednye28.html.
31
Robert D. Blackwill and Jennifer M. Harris, War by Other Means: Geoeconomics and Statecraft (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 110.
32
Graham Allison, “China and Russia: A Strategic Alliance in the Making,” The National Interest, December 14, 2018, http://nationalinterest.org/
feature/china-and-russia-strategic-alliance-making-38727.
33
The classic work on the characteristics of Chinese diplomacy is Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011). See also Kevin Rudd’s
thoughtful U.S.-China 21: The Future of U.S.-China Relations Under Xi Jinping (Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs,
2015); Kevin Rudd, “China’s Political Economy into 2020,” (speech, London, July 11, 2019); and Rudd’s many other more recent publications on the
subject.
34
See Graham Allison, Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2017); Derek Grossman,
“No Smiles Across the Taiwan Strait,” Foreign Policy, January 9, 2019, http://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/07/no-smiles-across-the-taiwan-strait; Michael
Mazza, “Is a Storm Brewing in the Taiwan Strait?,” Foreign Affairs, July 27, 2018, http://foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2018-07-27/storm-brewing-
taiwan-strait; Chris Buckley and Chris Horton, “Xi Jinping Warns Taiwan That Unification Is the Goal and Force Is an Option,” New York Times, January
1, 2019, http://nytimes.com/2019/01/01/world/asia/xi-jinping-taiwan-china.html; John Pomfret, “China’s Xi Jinping Is Growing Impatient With
Taiwan, Adding to Tensions With U.S.,” Washington Post, February 18, 2019, http://washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/02/18/chinas-xi-jinping-
is-growing-impatient-with-taiwan-adding-tensions-with-united-states. See also Eric Heginbotham and Rajan Menon, “Taiwan’s Balancing Act,” The
National Interest, February 11, 2019, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/taiwans-balancing-act-44247.
35
For definitive examinations of world order definitions and practices, see Henry Kissinger, A World Restored: Metternich, Castlereagh and the Problems of
Peace, 1812-1822 (London: Phoenix Press, 2000); Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994); Henry Kissinger, World Order (New
York: Penguin Press, 2014).
36
There is some controversy regarding whether Da Vinci actually said this. A version of this quote has also been attributed to Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe, The Maxims and Reflections of Goethe, trans. Bailey Saunders (London: Macmillan, 1906), 130.

The Struggle For Power

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Struggle For Power

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

THE STRUGGLE FOR

Foreword by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and Condoleezza Rice

Edited by Leah Bitounis and Jonathon Price

CHAIR EMERITUS MEMBERS

Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

The Ernest May Memorial Lecture

The Trump Administration’s Indo-Paciﬁc Strategy

Republic of Korea (ROK)

Engagement Through the Decades2

The Game Changers

1) Transform the narrative around U.S. policy toward China.

2) Advance a more robust U.S. economic presence globally.

3) Leverage U.S. allies and partners.

4) Strengthen U.S. political and economic resilience.

5) Establish common ground and purpose with China.

Toward a New China Debate:

Part I: Deconstructing the Debate

The need for reassessment

Stuck in the wrong debates

Interrogating the key contours of debate

The stakes: Envisioning China-led order

The Case for Allies:

1. U.S.-China Contention Is Here to Stay

2. China’s Rise Worries Her Neighbors and Other Powers

How Asia Navigates the U.S.-China Rivalry

Rivalry and Autonomy in a Contested Asia

The Balancers—The Quad States and Vietnam

The Swing States—Maritime Southeast Asia

The Reluctant Bandwagoners—Continental Southeast Asia

The Outliers—South Korea and the Philippines

The U.S.-China Strategic Competition:

We then show them Chart 3—with its heading: ALREADY.

Military Competition in the Paciﬁc

Appendix I: Maps of Asia

Source: Heritage Foundation, 2018.

Source: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, 2012.

Appendix II: The View from Beijing

Campaigning through China’s Gray Zone Tactics

Kathleen H. Hicks and Joseph P. Federici

China’s Gray Zone Activities2

U.S. Campaigning and the Gray Zone26

Protecting U.S. Constitutional Tenets

Promoting Economic Vitality

Advance U.S. Inﬂuence Abroad

From Primacy to Openness:

The Demise of Paciﬁc Primacy

Strategic Objective: Openness in Asia

Openness, Not Overreach

Managing the Fifth Generation:

A Core Debate: 5G and the Future of the Internet

How We Got Here

Promises and Reality

Is It Too Late? Managing China, and Managing the 5G Future

1) Threatening allies doesn’t work. Devising a credible alternative might.

2) Learn to live in a world of “dirty networks.’’

3) Exploiting national security issues for trade concessions is bound to backfire.

4) Standards-setting and supply chains are boring. And they matter.

Compete, Contest, and Collaborate:

Anja Manuel and Pavneet Singh

How China Acquires Technology: Through Licit and Illicit Means

Critical Technologies China Is Focused On

“Defensive” Measures: Contesting Chinese Efforts

“Offensive” Measures: Competing with China