China Relations Won't Work on Autopilot

May 30, 2007

China Relations Won't Work on Autopilot
Posted by Michael Schiffer

I want to pick up on the earlier China posts by Michael and Suzanne and flag some signs of impending difficulties in US-China relations. We can glimpse a preview in the underwhelming outcome of last week’s US-China Strategic Economic Dialogue.

The Bush administration came into office promising to rise to the strategic challenge of China. After all, the importance of great-power relations was a key mantra of the Vulcans. As we know, the US-China relationship was, along with everything else, put on the back-burner, after 9-11. To some degree, of course, this was to the good: The lack of high-level attention actually gave the bureaucracy room to work on the wide range of issues where the US and China share common interests. But it has also had the effect of papering over other differences and kicking things down the road at the precise moment when a number of different trends relating to the “rise of China” all seem to be coming together.

Although some of the sharpest questions about China’s rise have to do with its military plans and spending the disappointing results of the recent meeting are particularly troubling because economics are even more fundamental to continued good relations. US-China cooperation is premised on the assumption that as China rises the more it will integrate into the world economy, and the more vested China will become, in turn, in sustaining and supporting the liberal international order.

Yet there remains serious gaps between the US and China on a range of trade and economic issues – starting with currency, IPR protections, and labor standards, for example – that if they continue to fester could lead to a breach in US-China trade and economic ties, and perhaps even trigger a larger crisis in US-China relations.

All this, of course, takes place against a backdrop in which almost all the domestic political pressures in both the US and China are stacked against cooperation.

As David Shambaugh argues, the basic question for US China policy remains how best to balance hedging and engagement. Getting the mix right - a hedge is surely necessary given all the uncertainties about the rise of China – isn’t easy -- but, hey, that's what we pay our government for.

Even if the administration weren't consumed by the Iraq War, sustained high-level attention and political will would be a tall order in the waning days of any administration. But let's remember, a constant refrain from defenders of the administration is that whatever its mistakes, at least it has managed to get China right. It would be more accurate to say that it hasn't gotten China wrong. Getting it right will require wrestling with difficult issues that it has thus far glossed over.

May 30, 2007 at 06:27 AM | Permalink

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May 30, 2007