{"id":62211,"date":"2021-02-03T11:15:17","date_gmt":"2021-02-03T00:15:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=62211"},"modified":"2021-02-03T11:11:31","modified_gmt":"2021-02-03T00:11:31","slug":"biden-xi-and-the-evolution-of-cooperation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/biden-xi-and-the-evolution-of-cooperation\/","title":{"rendered":"Biden, Xi and the evolution of cooperation"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

I don\u2019t know whether US President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping and their foreign policy advisers have read Robert Axelrod\u2019s classic book on international relations, The evolution of cooperation<\/a><\/em>. But they should heed Axelrod\u2019s central insight about how countries can benefit from cooperation and punish cheating.<\/p>\n

Through countless simulations, Axelrod\u2014now a professor emeritus at the University of Michigan\u2014found that the most beneficial long-term strategy for an actor such as a nation-state is to cooperate first and then play the tit-for-tat game. In other words, a country will gain in the long run if it offers a goodwill gesture and then responds in kind to its opponent\u2019s subsequent moves.<\/p>\n

This insight is especially applicable to today\u2019s US\u2013China stalemate. Although both Biden and Xi know that their countries are in an open-ended geopolitical rivalry, they also want to put guardrails around it in order to avert potential catastrophes, such as a runaway arms race or a direct military conflict.<\/p>\n

True, in the short term, both leaders have far more urgent priorities than de-escalating bilateral tensions. Biden needs to repair the damage<\/a> to American democracy and society caused by Donald Trump\u2019s one-term presidency, while Xi plans to reorient<\/a> the Chinese economy to make it less vulnerable to the effects of \u2018decoupling\u2019 from the United States.<\/p>\n

But Biden and Xi appear to face the same dilemma: whether to be the first to extend an olive branch with the aim of stabilising bilateral relations in the short term and gaining an enduring strategic edge in the bilateral rivalry.<\/p>\n

Biden faces strong bipartisan opposition in Washington to undoing Trump\u2019s policies towards China, such as tariffs and sanctions against Chinese technology firms. And although Xi may be more eager<\/a> to end the freefall in Sino-American relations, he has been reluctant to make any substantive moves to demonstrate goodwill. Instead, Beijing has intensified<\/a> its crackdown in Hong Kong and the Chinese military is continuing<\/a> its campaign of intimidation and harassment against Taiwan.<\/p>\n

If neither Biden nor Xi wants to risk any political capital to make the first move, the US\u2013China relationship is highly likely to worsen further. On the national security front, the two countries\u2019 militaries are busy preparing for a face-off, creating a dangerous dynamic of deterrence and counter-deterrence.<\/p>\n

Diplomatically, Biden will soon seek to rally<\/a> America\u2019s democratic allies to confront China, a move Xi implicitly denounced<\/a> in his recent address to this year\u2019s World Economic Forum annual meeting. Economic tensions also could escalate, because China seems unlikely to be able to meet the target<\/a> for additional purchases of US products set in the \u2018phase one\u2019 trade deal that Xi\u2019s government concluded with the Trump administration a year ago. In the meantime, continuing human rights abuses in Hong Kong and against the predominantly Muslim Uyghur minority in Xinjiang will fuel demands in Washington for additional sanctions against China\u2019s political leaders and economic entities.<\/p>\n

The only way to prevent a new round of deterioration in US\u2013China relations is for either Biden or Xi to take the first concrete step signalling willingness to cooperate, and then adhere strictly to the reciprocity rule thereafter. The costs of making the first move are likely modest, but the potential long-term payoff could be disproportionately large.<\/p>\n

Although the two countries would remain strategic competitors, their rivalry would be based on more stable expectations and mutually accepted rules. Cooperation in areas of shared interest, in particular climate change, would be possible. Most important, the de-escalation of tensions would reduce the risk of a catastrophic military conflict.<\/p>\n

If US and Chinese leaders find Axelrod\u2019s insight compelling enough to translate into actual policy, their next challenge is to figure out what their respective first moves should be, given uncertainty about the other side\u2019s response.<\/p>\n

Since the long-entrenched Xi seems to have more room to manoeuvre than Biden, he\u2019s better positioned to take the initiative. Moreover, he has a rich menu of options to demonstrate goodwill\u2014and likely elicit a positive US reaction\u2014without risking too much political capital.<\/p>\n

For example, China should immediately allow the return of the American journalists it expelled last year in response to US restrictions on reporters working for state-run Chinese media outlets in the US. Another possibility would be to dismiss the charges against the 53 pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong arrested in early January.<\/p>\n

Releasing a non-trivial number of arbitrarily detained Uyghurs on grounds of poor health\u2014or, to use China\u2019s official rationale for holding them, completion of \u2018vocational training\u2019\u2014would signal Xi\u2019s pragmatism in dealing with arguably the most difficult bilateral issue. Likewise, suspending provocative incursions by Chinese warplanes into Taiwan\u2019s air defence identification zone would help both sides to mitigate the risk of an accidental conflict and defuse tensions with the US.<\/p>\n

Whether Biden would respond to any of these gestures positively is unknown. But Xi should try. China has little to lose, and potentially a lot to gain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don\u2019t know whether US President Joe Biden, Chinese President Xi Jinping and their foreign policy advisers have read Robert Axelrod\u2019s classic book on international relations, The evolution of cooperation. 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