{"id":44023,"date":"2018-12-03T10:54:28","date_gmt":"2018-12-02T23:54:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=44023"},"modified":"2018-12-03T12:34:52","modified_gmt":"2018-12-03T01:34:52","slug":"one-dinner-wont-fix-the-us-china-relationship","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/one-dinner-wont-fix-the-us-china-relationship\/","title":{"rendered":"One dinner won\u2019t fix the US\u2013China relationship"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Too much expectation is being loaded on the prospect that one dinner in Buenos Aires between US President Donald Trump and China\u2019s President Xi Jinping will solve the many differences in trade and global outlook between the two nations.<\/p>\n

There is at least the promise of good progress, which is the most sober way to interpret Trump\u2019s hyperbolic statement that the dinner \u2018was an amazing and productive meeting with unlimited possibilities for both the United States and China\u2019.<\/p>\n

The leaders agreed there would be a temporary halt in plans to increase tariffs on Chinese exports to the US on 1\u00a0January. That is significant\u2014the prospect was for a further US$250 billion worth of tariffs placed on Chinese exports.<\/p>\n

But the halt of tariff increases depends on further talks and will surely require real progress to reduce China\u2019s massive trade imbalance with the US, stop forced technology transfers and end Beijing\u2019s cyber-enabled theft of US intellectual property. These are much harder tests to satisfy.<\/p>\n

The onus will be on China to demonstrate that it\u2019s willing, for example, to cease its industrial-scale cyber hacking of US businesses, universities and government systems. And it will need to put flesh on the bones of promises to buy a \u2018very substantial<\/a> \u2026 amount of agricultural, energy, industrial, and other product from the United States\u2019.<\/p>\n

In September 2015, then president Barack Obama extracted from Xi a commitment<\/a> that China would not \u2018conduct or knowingly support cyber-enabled theft of intellectual property\u2019 and a promise<\/a> that \u2018China does not intend to pursue militarisation\u2019 of the South China Sea. Of course, neither undertaking lasted.<\/p>\n

Obama\u2019s China policy failed because the US never applied believable red lines to stop Beijing\u2019s bad behaviour or apply costs to punish cyber spying and illegal \u00adisland building.<\/p>\n

By contrast, Trump\u2019s China policy has been more successful. Even before Trump was sworn in, he was rattling Beijing by musing about US support for the \u2018one-China policy\u2019 and taking an unprecedented phone call from Taiwan\u2019s President Tsai Ing-wen.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s imposition of tariffs on Chinese exports offends trade purists, but the fact is the US economy is in a stronger position to withstand a trade war with China. The risks for Beijing are greater: China\u2019s economy is more vulnerable, and that plays on the deep-seated fears of the Communist Party that its iron control over its people will be challenged if it can\u2019t meet expectations for growth and relative prosperity.<\/p>\n

Broader than trade, a bipartisan US consensus has emerged that China is now its biggest strategic competitor and that Beijing\u2019s challenges to the international rules-based order in the South China Sea, and in the Pacific and globally via the Belt and Road strategy, need to be resisted.<\/p>\n

For once, Trump\u2019s gut instincts are helping. He holds out to Xi the possibility of better relations\u2014\u2018We\u2019re going to end up doing something which is great for China and great for the United States\u2019\u2014at the same time as the US makes clear it is unafraid of open competition with China on the economic, strategic, military and cyber fronts.<\/p>\n

Trump at best is an awkward champion of the rules-based order. But the most striking feature of the G20 summit is just how broad the challenge is to the stability of the international system that the US, Australia and Europe all promote. Look at the roll call of G20 leaders: Vladimir Putin attends at the same time as Russia fires on and illegally holds Ukrainian sailors and ships; Saudi Arabia\u2019s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman rubs shoulders with global leaders, just weeks after Riyadh\u2019s flagrant assassination in Turkey of regime critic Jamal Khashoggi; Xi signs the G20 declaration supporting \u2018the free flow of information, ideas and knowledge, while respecting \u2026 intellectual property rights protection\u2019 at the same time as China controls all information domestically and is the biggest international cyber spy.<\/p>\n

The delivery of a G20 communiqu\u00e9 where leaders could find common ground in the face of such basic differences on the international rules of the road is a minor miracle. Trump should take some credit for putting more pressure on the bad behaviour of Russia and China.<\/p>\n

The best outcome from the dinner was Xi\u2019s promise to place harsher legal penalties on Chinese illegal shipments of the opioid \u00adfentanyl to the US. The test will be if Xi\u2019s commitment is any more believable than the broken undertakings he gave Obama in 2015 on cyber spying and militarising the South China Sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Too much expectation is being loaded on the prospect that one dinner in Buenos Aires between US President Donald Trump and China\u2019s President Xi Jinping will solve the many differences in trade and global outlook …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":44025,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,1428,2228,31,204],"class_list":["post-44023","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-china","tag-donald-trump","tag-trade-war","tag-united-states","tag-xi-jinping"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOne dinner won\u2019t fix the US\u2013China relationship | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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