US-China relations: Towards strategic partnerships

Introduction

The influential Aspen Strategy Group’s framing of US-China relations suffers from a groupthink mentality. More meaningfully, the US strategy ought to reflect an immediate end and reversal of Trumpism in foreign policy especially in relation to China in order to rebuild a permanent global framework for multilateral institutions based on economic and trading partnerships. The Biden administration needs to build a new kind of internationalism that is not tied to Anglo-American ethnocentric assumptions but recognizes the priority of rule-based, open trading partnerships that should take precedence over preferred styles of government and old security arrangements that date from WWII. After the era of liberal internationalism, strategic partnerships offer a means to end power politics and an end to the trade and technology wars in order to develop and open an era of strategic economic partnerships. Already strategic partnerships have become a significant feature of the international system with the US and China forging over 130 strategic partnerships as a specific form of bilateral relations, together with another 50 among EU, Russia, Brazil, India, Japan, South Africa and Australia. As Anna Michalski (2019) makes clear strategic partnerships;

have introduced a new quality to the engagement between states through the ordering of bilateral hierarchies into dense networks of privileged partnerships that form elaborate patterns of interaction and the projection of state soft power in parallel to, but largely outside, the structures of the liberal world order.

Michalski (2019) explains strategic partnerships have provided a way of addressing the ‘rebalancing of power provoked by the relative decline of US hegemony and the rise of new powers, primarily Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa’.

The framing of US-China relations: The Aspen strategy group

In August 2019 the Aspen Strategy Group (ASG) members and invited experts met in Aspen Colorado to discuss US-China relations. It was a meeting of the most distinguished scholars and commentators in the US. The Aspen Strategy Group leadership counts among its fifty plus members Condoleezza Rice, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Madeleine K. Albright, US Senators Dianne Feinstein and Dan Sullivan, and professors of top US universities and CEOs of major US think tanks and corporations.¹ The ASG is part of the Aspen Institute that is ‘a global nonprofit organization committed to realizing a free, just, and equitable society. Founded in 1949, the Institute drives change through dialogue, leadership, and action to help solve the most important challenges facing the United States and the world’² The ASG’s ‘mission is to convene decision makers in resolutely non-partisan public and private forums to address key foreign policy challenges facing the United States.’³ The ASP represents the most distinguished and influential scholars and thought leaders of American foreign policy and its meetings and publications are highly regarded.

The 2019 ASG meeting led to a set of commissioned papers presented during working sessions reflecting ‘the lessons learned, options, challenges, and potential policy options for the next phase of U.S.-China relations’ compiled and published as The Struggle for Power: US-China Relations in the Twenty-First Century (Bitounis & Price, 2020). The publication comprises a Foreword by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. and Condoleezza Rice and a Preface by Nicholas Burns, as well as fourteen chapters that pictures US-China relations, as James B. Steinberg, puts it ‘at a crossroads’. Other papers examine Trump’s Indo-Pacific strategy (Michael Pillsbury), reimaging engagement (Elizabeth Economy), and the new China debate (Ely Ratner), while others investigate the case for allies (Shivshankar Menon), how Asia navigates China (Kurt Campbell), US-China strategy competition (Graham Allison), China’s ‘gray zone tactics’ (Kathleen H. Hicks and Joseph P. Federici), US strategic objectives in Asia (Mira Rapp-Hooper), the struggle for technological dominance (David E. Sanger), the tech race with China (Anja Manuel and Pavneet Singh). Joseph S. Nye, Jr. examines ‘The Rise of China (Chapter 12), David Shambaugh discusses ‘smart competition’ strategy (Chapter 13), and Robert D. Blackwill ends the collection with a discussion of ‘grand strategy’ and ‘Seventeen Policy Prescriptions’ (Chapter 14). It is an impressive collection and probably the most authoritative single volume on US-China relations especially in relation to Asia.

It is also very Americentric with not a single Chinese scholar contributing nor a single Chinese official text mentioned. Clearly what the Chinese Government or Chinese scholars have said on the matter is of little importance. I think if an Aspen meeting had taken place with some Chinese contributors the results may have been very different and more meaningful because it would have offset the ‘groupthink’ assumptions that has vitiated US foreign policy thinking, represented notoriously by the Bay of Pigs missile crisis in 1961, and the Vietnam and Iraq wars.⁴ The official explanation for the Bay of Pigs failure included ‘political miscalculations, a new administration set in an old bureaucracy, secrecy to the point of excluding experts and threats to personal reputation and status’.⁵ Irving Janis (1971) refers to ‘the mode of thinking that persons engage in when concurrence-seeking becomes so dominant in a cohesive ingroup that it tends to override realistic appraisal of alternative courses of action’ and he defines the main principle of groupthink as ‘The more amiability and esprit de corps there is among the members of a policy-making ingroup, the greater the danger that independent critical thinking will be replaced by groupthink, which is likely to result in irrational and dehumanizing actions directed against outgroups’. I am not suggesting a rigid conformity or psychological blind-siding at the Aspen meeting, but rather a harmonising of a certain mind-set that starts from the premise of a new watershed of foreign relations with a more assertive China representing the ‘end of engagement’. Consequentially, the group attitude emphasized the need for a more hawkish confrontation by the US in competition with China especially for ‘winning’ Asia, territorially, militarily, economically and diplomatically.

The Aspen collection is also probably the best source for understanding ‘the American mind’ of foreign policy relations with China and as such it provides a network of overlapping issues that will form aspects of a coherent policy that centres on Asia. The Aspen collection also collectively represents an inchoate feeling of a rapidly disappearing time-horizon within which to act in any way that is significantly different from Trump’s anti-China policies that focused on containment and was characterized by the trade and technology wars. The Aspen authors foreshadow the enhanced engagement with India as a central security partner and Australia as a chosen ally (along with the other Quad countries). There is a realist recognition of the strategic significance of advanced technologies in driving the Chinese economy and military retooling. There is also a glancing observation concerning national self-determination of Asia countries, their complexity and the growing importance of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), some thirteen countries of Southeast Asia that, together with the maritime states, represents 650 million people with China as the major trade partner. It is rather surprising that there was no mention of associations such as Shanghai Cooperation Association, or the renewed Sino-Russian-Iran agreements, the development of the Eurasian bloc or recent regional trade agreements like the new silk road under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) or the Regional Comprehensive Economic partnership (RCEP) – partnerships that now have the power to frame the future of economic activity in the Asian region and beyond.⁶ One Aspen author reminds us of Lee Kuan Yew’s remark that in the twenty-first century the economic balance of power will be more important than the military balance of power.

The fact is that both countries do not want a repeat of the arms escalation that characterized the Cold War. War is inconceivable in that it could lead to mutual destruction and an uninhabitable planet where no one wins. Advanced technologies – what I call ‘technoscience’ (Peters, 2020)⁷ – now drives economic growth and the Chinese have been making strategic investments of tens of billions in AI, ML, 5 G, quantum computing and intelligent systems for some decades. After 2008 and the Global Financial Crisis the Chinese lost faith in the US model as a way forward, just as they jettisoned the Soviet model after its breakup in 1989. Ultimately, Chinese strategic pragmatism now depends upon a distinctive Chinese model that offers a viable means to develop a China-centric economic order in Asia of strong, state-led, trade-based capitalism increasingly channelled through the BRI and RCEP. It is in this economic framework that the issue of Taiwan’s reintegration with China will be finally settled based on the influence of a regional trade model based on common interests, Asian politics, economic co-dependency and network control.

Joseph S. Nye, Jr. (2020, p. 133) in ‘The Rise of China’ argues:

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.

Thus, China’s ascendancy is just not the story of the of the rise of another economic power to rival the US, it is an event of a more fundamentally different order that revitalises a culture and civilizational cultural repertoires that spans five millennia consisting of culturally preferred ways of doing things, of, for instance, carrying out diplomacy, of partnership and of trade. The dialogue with China needs to be based on respect for the deep cultural knowledge of China, on Confucianism in terms of philosophy and values, and on Chinese Marxism considered in relation to political economy.

It is difficult to assess the roll-on effects for higher education given the effects of Covid-19 and deteriorating US-China relations. The so-called blue book Annual Report on the Development of Chinese Students Studying Abroad (2020–2021) provides some data, indicating that destinations for outbound study are more diversified with a small decline (1.8%) of international students studying in the US but a significant decline in PhD students (26% in 2016–17). Chinese students’ demand for outbound study remains robust and ‘Covid-19 has not obviously impacted the demand for studying abroad.’⁸ It is probably too early to register the political effects of the deteriorating relationship. Australia is a different story (Peters et al., 2021c).

Kevin Rudd (2021), President of the Asia Society and an ex-Prime Minister of Australia, describes the unfolding US-China contest:

Officials in Washington and Beijing don’t agree on much these days, but there is one thing on which they see eye to eye: the contest between their two countries will enter a decisive phase in the 2020s. This will be the decade of living dangerously. No matter what strategies the two sides pursue or what events unfold, the tension between the United States and China will grow, and competition will intensify; it is inevitable. War, however, is not. It remains possible for the two countries to put in place guardrails that would prevent a catastrophe: a joint framework for what I call ‘managed strategic competition’ would reduce the risk of competition escalating into open conflict.

Rudd is critical of the ‘drum of war’ and Dutton’s (Defence Minister) talking up the prospect of war with China, seeing it as a repositioning of Morrison’s government at home away from the mishandling of the vaccine roll-out and sexual harassment in Canberra.⁹ He also draws attention to the Christian fundamentalism of Morrison’s and how it motivates a hawkish braggadocio within in party. There is no doubt that China-Australia relations is at a historic low point since the moment Australia, following Pompeo’s lead, called for a China witch-hunt on Covid-19 to the unhappy suspension of economic dialogue announced by China’s National Development and Reform Commission in early May because of Australia’s ‘cold war mind-set’ and the ‘current attitude of the Australian Commonwealth Government toward China-Australia cooperation’. This will set back any hope of reconciliation at least a year and maybe longer. In part this is no doubt retaliation for the fact that the Commonwealth government tore up Victoria’s non-binding Belt and Road Initiative Memorandum of Understanding, regarded as being at odds by Canberra with Australia’s foreign policy. The consequences will be damaging to the Australian economy having already lost some nearly $40 billion over the Covid year in terms of tariffs and other trade costs. In particular, this action also spells the end to Australian universities and education sector student exchange and export education with the loss of billions over the short term. Half of Australian foreign student intake in previous years was comprised of Chinese students. This is now at an end for the foreseeable future with a commensurate diminution of Australian soft power and influence with future Chinese students. It is not simply the loss of Chinese international students but also the loss of prestige in the Asia region with knock-on effects for many Asian students who will prefer to study at home or Asia countries who will be careful not to offend Beijing. Perhaps, most dangerously, it also indicates a fuelling of the heightened Australian disrespect and perpetration of cold-war mentality.

One source in The Sydney Morning Herald indicates:

Chinese students account for about 60 per cent of international enrolments at the Group of Eight overall, including 69 per cent at the University of Sydney, 66 per cent at UNSW, 56 per cent at the University of Melbourne and 57 per cent at Monash University. They make up 37 per cent at RMIT and 53 per cent at UTS. Education agents are responsible for 73 per cent of Chinese student enrolments at Australian education providers. Analysis of enrolment figures and university financial results indicates around 110,000 Chinese enrolments were worth approximately $3.1 billion to these 10 universities in 2018, the bulk of a total $5.4 billion they took in from international student fees.¹⁰

Covid-19 plus deteriorating Australia-China relations is the biggest disruption to Australian international education in history. In charting the reaction to the Biden administration Rudd (2021) remarks on the changed posture in Beijing and the emergent national security discourse detects a new self-confidence and assertiveness reflected in foreign policy discourse and events on the ground, enhanced by the rapid economic revival of the economy after Covid-19, the disastrous response of liberal democracies to Covid-19 and the patchy economic responses, plus the feeling that ‘history is on China’s side’.¹¹

Kishore Mahbubani (2020) on China’s rise is unequivocal in his belief expressed in the latest work Has China Won? The Chinese Challenge to American Primacy (2020) that President Biden should press the pause button rather than continue with Trump’s anti-China policies; the US in his opinion should immediately discontinue and reverse Trump’s policies, to stop the US further shooting itself in the foot.¹² He describes the massive geopolitical contest in terms of a series of merging antinomies: America prizes freedom, China values freedom from chaos; America values strategic decisiveness, China values patience; America is becoming society of lasting inequality, China a meritocracy; America has abandoned multilateralism, China welcomes it.¹³

US-China strategic partnership

Following an old Cold War mentality about Communism will prove to be the worst possible strategy in US-China relations with the increased risk of global or regional conflict or the devastation of World War III, with unimaginable number of deaths and environmental consequences for future generations. The Covid-19 pandemic, with a possible five million deaths globally, would look in retrospect as historically insignificant, by comparison.

The US should embrace an American version of multinationalism and globalization, to promote and invest expansively in infrastructure – physical, research and digital – for the Americas, especially Latin American. Only by strengthening and expanding the Americas will the US be able to build an equivalent to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that aims to release unmatched development potential and becomes a potent force for regional economic integration. For the US this would mean a different attitude to South America and a radical departure from covert activity to supporting greater economic integration and a new international partnership. The strategy would mean that the military budget could be redirected into higher education and research and downsized, especially if the number of US bases around the world (currently some 800) could be downscaled without increasing security risks. This would also allow the US to invest in the raft of new generative technologies that now lead science and the global economy, and are actively defining its architecture, and creating its platforms. These technologies – e.g., AI, ML, quantum computing, new biology – are largely independent autonomous and intelligent systems that in future can coordinate global vaccine protection and protection, space exploration, and the prospect of sustainability, especially through the emerging strands of ‘biodigitalism’ (Peters et al., 2021a, 2021b). China has invested billions in these technologies over the last decade. Partnership might also be understood as the opportunity to coordinate parallel world technology systems that are presently dominated by Big Tech in the US and China, with restricted areas of competition. In this context it is essential for the global financial architecture that China’s new sovereign cryptocurrency is seen and developed as an alternative to the US dollar as the basis of the world’s reserve system. Secretary Yellen and Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell are now examining the domestic good a digital dollar could do, along with at least seventy other countries that have digital currency projects.¹⁴

Rather than the ‘containment’ strategy ringing China with military bases around the periphery of the South China Sea, the US should recognize certain civilizational competing claims and work with China to enhance economic, educational and cultural links in Asia and to promote strategic partnerships based on exchanges with these countries, within an increasingly multinational region that contains Islamic, Communist, Buddhist, and Western style democracies in Singapore and for countries in the Asia-Pacific including Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Islands. Perhaps most importantly the strategic US-China partnership would focus on rebuilding successful global institutions based on the reform of the existing design along with the development of new international trading, educational and cultural partnerships.

Strategic partnerships as alliance constructions based on shared ideologies and as venues for bilateral relations create new kind of structures in the international system and will grow to help the transformation of the liberal world order to include greater involvement of BRIC countries, of BRI member countries, of ASEAN countries, and a greater recognition of South-South multilateralism. In this overlay of 150 strategic partnerships American hegemony has less power to disrupt these relationships and it is problematic whether the US under the Biden administration can restore and renew the fading liberal world order to reboot the international system, certainly with the evident failure of democracy at home and democracies on the back foot across Europe and South America. The question is whether President Biden has enough time during the remainder of his presidency to shore up the international system based on Bretton Woods and a series of historic alliances before a Trump-led Republican movement revisits the main articles of faith of far-right policies in the 2024 presidential election.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Notes

1 https://www.aspeninstitute.org/team/aspen-strategy-group/

2 https://www.aspeninstitute.org/what-we-do/

3 https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/aspen-strategy-group/

4 http://www.strategybydesign.org/groupthink

5 https://www.e-ir.info/2012/07/17/groupthink-and-us-foreign-policy/

6 https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/chinas-massive-belt-and-road-initiative and https://www.mfat.govt.nz/en/trade/free-trade-agreements/free-trade-agreements-concluded-but-not-in-force/regional-comprehensive-economic-partnership-rcep/rcep-overview/

7 Technopolitics of the Future University, https://vimeo.com/353485687

8 http://en.ccg.org.cn/archives/70684

9 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FcWsyj8xeTw

10 https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/chinese-students-will-not-go-there-beijing-education-agents-warn-australia-20200610-p55151.html

11 Beijing's Early Reactions to the Biden Administration, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgP2tWZdMd4

12 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBQJc4X9s6M

13 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v1Nrgw37If0

14 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/02/27/op-ed-a-digital-dollar-would-help-the-us-and-its-allies-keep-china-in-check.html