[Economic and business ties had long been the ballast that kept the relationship stable, but they have now become a source of conflict. Climate change had provided a narrative of cooperation rather than competition, but it has been taken off the table. Meanwhile tensions over the North Korea’s nuclear program, the disputed waters of the South China Sea and the status of Taiwan loom larger than ever.]
By Simon Denyer
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U.S.
Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, right, meets with Chinese State Councilor
Yang
Jiechi before their meeting at the State Department on Feb. 28.
(Yuri
Gripas/Agence France-Presse via Getty Images)
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BEIJING
— For China’s Communist
Party, it’s hard to know whether to laugh or cry.
Hardly a day goes by without some opinion
piece in state media here reveling in the demise of democracy and American
global leadership under President Trump.
But underneath the triumphalism, China’s
government is deeply anxious, experts say, as it faces a government packed with
hawkish voices led by man who sees Beijing as one of the United States’
fiercest competitors.
On Monday, China’s most senior diplomat began
a two-day trip to Washington, which included a brief meeting with Trump, aimed
at finding a new basis for what former president Barack Obama called the most
important bilateral relationship of the 21st century.
It won’t be an easy task for State Councilor
Yang Jiechi.
Economic and business ties had long been the
ballast that kept the relationship stable, but they have now become a source of
conflict. Climate change had provided a narrative of cooperation rather than
competition, but it has been taken off the table. Meanwhile tensions over the
North Korea’s nuclear program, the disputed waters of the South China Sea and
the status of Taiwan loom larger than ever.
“China is keen to find something to replace
climate change as the notional glue to hold the relationship together,” said
Christopher Johnson, a former senior CIA China analyst and now an expert at the
Center for Strategic and International Studies.
“But what really keeps the relationship from
tipping into an adversarial one is the economic relationship,” he said. “If
that gets scratchy, the whole stability of the relationship becomes impacted.”
It is not unusual for new presidents to face
tough adjustment periods when it comes to China policy — Ronald Reagan clashed
with Beijing over Taiwan, Bill Clinton over human rights — but with Trump it is
“qualitatively different,” said Evan Medeiros, formerly Obama’s chief adviser
on Asia and now the Eurasia Group’s managing director for Asia
“The current agenda of potentially
contentious issues is quite large,” he said. “Plus this administration appears
to be packed with senior officials who have an ideological and/or an
interest-based concern about China and see it as a strategic competitor, and a
president who, to the extent he has a coherent view about China, appears
antagonistic.”
Indeed, the past three months have been a
roller-coaster ride for the Chinese.
Exultation greeted Trump’s victory, just as
it did in Moscow — here was a business executive and a dealmaker, the argument
went in China, a man who won’t try to subvert our regime by promoting democracy,
like Hillary Clinton might have done.
But the mood soon turned to horror as Trump
reached out to Taiwan and questioned the principle that there was only one
China, the bedrock of diplomatic ties between Washington and Beijing.
But Beijing stood firm, and Trump appeared to
back down, finally agreeing to honor the one-China policy in a “very warm”
phone call with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Lines of communication between the two
governments, previously somewhat scarce, opened up: Secretary of State Rex
Tillerson met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Munich, while Treasury
Secretary Steve Mnuchin spoke with China’s economic leaders.
Collision course avoided, proclaimed the
China Daily newspaper, as China and the United States “restore belief that they
can reduce frictions.”
There was a sense, too, that the
administration’s more radical impulses toward China, personified by National
Trade Council chief Peter Navarro, are being tempered by an array of more
conventional figures from the conservative establishment, such as Defense
Secretary Jim Mattis, Tillerson or the Goldman Sachs duo of Mnuchin and Trump’s
chief economic adviser Gary Cohn.
“These guys have got to deal with the real
world as it is,” said Douglas Paal of the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace.
“I tend to see this as a contest between the
deep state — the old poles of intelligence, State, Defense and Congress — trying
to keep the ship of state floating, when there are a lot of other people trying
to rock the boat,” Paal said.
An early sign of this moderating influence
came when Mattis visited Tokyo and Seoul, and stressed diplomatic rather than
military solutions to the dispute in the South China Sea.
Another indication: While Trump last week
told Reuters that the Chinese were the “grand champions” of currency
manipulation, Mnuchin was telling Bloomberg any decision to label China a
manipulator would only follow a review by the Treasury Department.
Nevertheless, there is a widespread belief
that the administration will unveil a package of trade and investment measures
aimed at China, when (and if) Robert Lighthizer is confirmed as U.S. trade
representative.
He and the new commerce secretary, Wilbur
Ross, are expected to take a tough line with China on trade, while Mnuchin
told Chinese officials he wanted “a more balanced bilateral economic
relationship.”
Although the business community has been
lobbying hard against Trump’s most radical proposals, reciprocity is now the
buzzword in Washington. Why should China’s subsidized state-owned giants get a
pass to export to and invest in the United States, when China erects barriers
the other way?
“Brace for U.S.-China trade conflict,” the
analysis firm Gavekal Dragonomics said in a client report, warning that the
coming months will probably bring “aggressive trade actions” by the United
States and a firm Chinese response.
The best outcome, it argued, was that Trump’s
“get tough” approach wins some cosmetic concessions from China, before the two
sides resume more productive discussions. “The worst outcome is that the Trump
administration gets trapped by the fantasy it can simply force China to change,
and the world gets stuck with a full-scale trade war.”
War isn’t likely in the South China Sea, but
tensions could easily rise again, with Trump promising a big rise in naval
spending and voices in the Pentagon arguing for a greater U.S. naval presence
there, experts said. China, meanwhile, appears to be continuing its slow,
steady construction of military facilities there, with buildings that U.S.
officials say could one day house surface-to-air missiles.
North Korea is another point of tension, with
the recent assassination of leader Kim Jong Un’s half brother in Malaysia ,
apparently with a VX nerve agent, a reminder of the regime’s ruthless nature.
“The mood in Washington is that the
administration is more open to thinking about military options than in the
past,” said Medeiros. In other words, “taking the kinds of military actions,
like joint exercises and missile defense, that China is very uncomfortable
with.”
On Monday, China’s Foreign Ministry again
signaled its firm resistance and strong dissatisfaction with plans to deploy a
U.S. missile defense system in South Korea, warning that both countries would
bear the consequences.
On the global stage, China has been nimble in
reacting to Trump, reaching out to Germany and the European Union, which have
been deeply hurt by Trump’s rebuffs, or, as Xi did in Davos, Switzerland,
presenting Beijing as a somewhat unlikely defender of “economic globalization.”
But when it comes to U.S. relations, Beijing
has been outmaneuvered so far by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who stole
a march on his Chinese rivals with a round of golf and a visit to the
president’s Florida home, Mar-a-Lago.
At the American Enterprise Institute, Daniel
Blumenthal said that Trump has been smart to rock the Chinese back on their
toes, adding that it is time for a tougher approach on everything from the
economic relationship to the South China Sea and Taiwan.
Walter Lohman of the Heritage Foundation
welcomed Trump’s commitment to the military, saying that a bigger Navy is
crucial to defending U.S. security interests in Asia’s waterways.
But others said that Trump could be tipping
the relationship with China into a new period of contention and conflict that
doesn’t help anyone
“Uncertainty is okay, I don’t have a problem
with that,” said Johnson. “But too much uncertainty and unpredictability
becomes scary to China and perhaps more importantly to our allies. It requires
a lot of nuance and skill to walk that line finely.”
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