{"id":7527,"date":"2013-07-11T14:50:02","date_gmt":"2013-07-11T04:50:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=7527"},"modified":"2013-07-12T08:54:12","modified_gmt":"2013-07-11T22:54:12","slug":"beijing-and-washington-share-first-trust-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/beijing-and-washington-share-first-trust-later\/","title":{"rendered":"Beijing and Washington: share first, trust later"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"U.S.<\/a>The gathering\u2019s theme was \u2018Security and Cooperation in the Asia Pacific Region,\u2019 yet the US\u2013China relationship dominated. The symposium run by the China Institute for International Strategic Studies was free of academic mumbo-jumbo.\u00a0The sessions, at which Bob Hawke and I were the two Australian participants, seemed under a spell cast by Presidents Barack Obama and Xi Jinping. Even the Southeast Asian voices adopted the Eagle\u2013Dragon focus, though not willingly. Said a Malaysian scholar: \u2018Why do you Chinese engage with the US all the time and never with us, especially at the military level? The result is we don\u2019t really know where China is headed.\u2019<\/p>\n

The Chinese were frustrated that their goals came across as unclear. But \u2018peace and development\u2019 is a vague definition of a rising superpower\u2019s aims. The real goal was implied by a smart Chinese military officer: \u2018Security mechanisms in the region have the mark of the Cold War and are exclusive and not conducive to trust\u2019. The message is clear: China wants US security pacts in the Pacific ended or weakened. Kevin Rudd will find Beijing tougher on this matter now than during 2007\u20132010.<\/p>\n

The Chinese play a game of the pot calling the kettle black over criticisms by the US. When Defense Secretary Hagel expressed \u2018disappointment\u2019 with China\u2019s role in Edward Snowden\u2019s departure from Hong Kong, the Chinese said they were equally \u2018disappointed at NSA aggression\u2019 against China revealed in Snowden\u2019s disclosures. Over the riots in Xinjiang last month, the Chinese also turned criticism back at the US; Washington should not fret at Chinese police response in China\u2019s far west, they say, because the rioting Muslims are trying to \u2018overthrow the Beijing government\u2019 and Americans ought to condemn these \u2018terrorists\u2019 as they do terrorists in Boston or New York.<\/p>\n

Yet there\u2019s an element of shadow boxing to this game of pot and kettle. The Beijing government is certainly argumentative, but its actual policy towards the US is more cautious than the rhetoric on these two issues may suggest.<\/p>\n

Interestingly, a Chinese historian said that fascist powers\u2019 overreaching in the 1940s taught China a lesson, as did the Soviet Union\u2019s in various places and the US\u2019s in Iraq and Afghanistan. \u2018We will never go that route of overreaching,\u2019 he vowed. \u2018The territorial dispute [in the Senkakus] occurs because the outcome of WWII is being disputed,\u2019 said a senior Chinese analyst. Actually, what’s being disputed is the lesser place for China implied in the post-WWII alignment of the US and Japan in the Western Pacific. Beijing is challenging this 65-year-old status quo. It\u2019s a delicate dance. A Chinese participant reasoned: \u2018The Asia Pacific is big enough to accommodate US, China, Russia and other countries.\u2019 Like other Chinese at the symposium he seemed reluctant to utter the word \u2018Japan\u2019.<\/p>\n

The South China Sea disputes weren’t probed in detail (no Philippines delegate was present) but a Vietnamese purred: \u2018Major powers have a special responsibility to handle the suspicions of smaller countries\u2019. The Indonesian military speaker took an indirect approach, rich with a hint to Beijing, pointing out Jakarta\u2019s success in establishing good relations with East Timor despite the difficult origins of the mini-state and Jakarta’s patience in calming the situation in Aceh Province.<\/p>\n

India only came up\u00a0when I mentioned that \u2018Indo-Pacific\u2019 is Canberra\u2019s favoured regional label, and in a direct assault by the female Pakistani who\u00a0warned: \u2018Please be aware the rise of India to real power would bring to the fore manifold territorial disputes in South Asia between India and its neighbours.\u2019 She may be correct\u2014China\u2019s rise has certainly produced heightened disputes in the Chinese seas.<\/p>\n

According to several Chinese, two models of leadership exist in the region,\u00a0‘two ways of leading: hegemony and conciliation\u2019. Former Prime Minister Bob\u00a0Hawke expressed a view many Australians would accept: \u2018We want America to stay in Asia on a basis that China is willing to accept, and we want China to accept that America should remain as a major power in the region\u2019.<\/p>\n

The idea of America and China \u2018sharing\u2019 leadership in the Asia Pacific is fine, but sharing comes in many forms. The US and the USSR shared a fear (\u2018mutual assured destruction\u2019) that in the end kept the peace. Shared American and Chinese values would make shared leadership easy, but a values gap exists and partial overlap of interests is all we can expect. Washington and Beijing could find overlap on Korea, by replacing the futile disarmament talks with a fresh agenda for Korean reunification, orchestrated and guaranteed by China and the US. Perhaps the TPP offers another chance. It is not<\/i> exclusive (despite claims to the contrary), it could be conducive to trust, and Chinese membership in TPP would be a boon for China\u2019s internal reformers\u2014as happened when Beijing joined the WTO.<\/p>\n

There’s a precedent\u2014Mao and Nixon found an overlap of interests in 1972, despite no pre-existing trust, no trade, and no diplomatic relations between the two when Nixon landed in Beijing. The mantra of trust is overdone. Trust comes when results accrue, not through smiles and banquets. Beijing and Washington began to trust each other in the 1970s after seeing the electric impact of the Mao\u2013Nixon handshake on Moscow.<\/p>\n

Today the Chinese and American view of each other is ambivalent. This could imply prudence on both sides, not ruling out real future cooperation. Less hopefully, it could mean the trajectory of China\u2019s rise is so stark that neither Washington nor Beijing is quite sure of the next plateau for the relationship.<\/p>\n

Chinese ambivalence exists not because the leadership is split toward the US, but due to a conscious\u00a0yin-yang\u00a0<\/i>stance with a long pedigree. It\u2019s worth nothing that Mao said in public in 1970, as he and Nixon were rubbing their hands ready for their startling rapprochement that the US\u00a0‘which looks like a huge monster, is in essence a paper tiger, now in the throes of its death-bed struggle\u2019. Today Beijing pushes against Japan, India, Vietnam, Philippines and other US friends, yet it knows cooperation with Washington is in its best interests. Nibbling away, it seeks to lower the price it will pay for that inevitable cooperation. This might be a rational strategy at a time when the US is led by a diffident president.<\/p>\n

At a meeting\u00a0Hawke and\u00a0a few of us from the symposium had with Yang Jiechi in Zhongnanhai, the top foreign policy figure in the government told us\u00a0‘China is going to be more active in the Middle East. America has failed in this region. China will try’. But\u00a0equally prominent in Chinese statements is alarm that this same \u2018failed\u2019 US flexes its muscles to China\u2019s disadvantage in its own backyard. The contradiction is revealing. Beijing is aware of US latent strength but uncertain about US will. Isn\u2019t nearly everyone?<\/p>\n

Ross Terrill is an Associate of Harvard\u2019s Fairbank Centre for Chinese Studies, and author of the recent ASPI paper\u00a0<\/em>Facing the dragon: China policy in a new era<\/a>. Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The gathering\u2019s theme was \u2018Security and Cooperation in the Asia Pacific Region,\u2019 yet the US\u2013China relationship dominated. The symposium run by the China Institute for International Strategic Studies was free of academic mumbo-jumbo.\u00a0The sessions, at …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":98,"featured_media":7528,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,41,17,52,27,31],"class_list":["post-7527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-asia-pacific","tag-asian-century","tag-australia","tag-china","tag-northeast-asia","tag-united-states"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nBeijing and Washington: share first, trust later | 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\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/beijing-and-washington-share-first-trust-later\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Beijing and Washington: share first, trust later | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The gathering\u2019s theme was \u2018Security and Cooperation in the Asia Pacific Region,\u2019 yet the US\u2013China relationship dominated. 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