Stapleton Roy: U.S. and China Must Halt Drift Toward Strategic Rivalry
HONOLULU (Feb. 20, 2013) -- With China’s leadership in transition and
incoming Secretary of State John Kerry heading a new foreign policy team
in the second Obama administration, leaders in both countries must face
a “frightening array of domestic and foreign policy problems” in
managing their vital relationship, longtime senior U.S. diplomat J.
Stapleton Roy said in a Feb. 13 address at the East-West Center in
Hawai‘i.
(View a
video of Roy’s speech.)
“No task is going to be more important than trying to arrest the current
drift in U.S.-China relations toward strategic rivalry,” he said. “If
leaders in both countries fail to deal with this issue, there is a
strong possibility that tensions will rise and undermine the benign
climate that has been so important in producing the Asian economic
miracle – and to a significant degree, political miracle – over the
past 30 years.”
Roy, who served as U.S. ambassador to China from 1991 to 1995, said the
two nations are “locked in the traditional problem of an established
power facing a rising power, and we know from historical precedent that
competitive factors that emerge in such situations often result in
bloody wars.” The good news, he said, is that “leaders in both countries
are aware of the historical precedents and are determined to not let
history repeat itself.”
While top leaders on both sides have recognized the need to work
together toward a stable balance between cooperation and competition,
Roy said, neither country has been able to implement this, and “it
remains to be seen if it is even possible to establish this new type of
relationship.”
Roy said opinion polls over the last couple of years have shown a
dramatic increase in the percentage of Chinese citizens and officials
who view relations with the U.S. as characterized by hostility rather
than cooperation. During the same period, he said, U.S. polls indicate
that “we don’t think of China in same way.”
“This is something we need to be concerned about,” he said, “because the
tensions and passions on the other side are stronger than they are on
our side, and this requires careful management.”
While incoming Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqian have
already declared their interest in implementing further market reforms
and reining in pervasive corruption, Roy said, “the Communist Party may
lack the legitimacy and will to force through the far-reaching reforms
that are needed against the influence of special interests, especially
large state-owned businesses. One can reasonably doubt if a party
corrupted by wealth at the highest level can carry out the kind of
fundamental systemic reforms that are necessary.”
In addition, he said, China’s new leaders will be faced with a litany of
internal difficulties that “illustrate why it would still be foolish to
postulate that the 21
st century will belong to China.” These
include what even outgoing premier Wen Jiabao has characterized as an
“unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated and unsustainable” economy, Roy
said, along with a rapidly aging population, slowing economic growth,
and what is known as the “middle income trap,” when a rising economy
loses the competitive advantage of low-cost labor as it climbs the
income scale.
“Wages in China have been rising rapidly, especially for skilled labor,”
Roy said. “So they have to substitute something else, such as
innovation or efficiency.” Historically, he said, “over 100 countries
have reached the middle income trap, and 86 percent failed to get out of
it. They grow, then reach a certain level and stall out. China has to
find way to avoid this, and that’s a big challenge.”
Another huge issue, Roy said, is that “rising nationalism is pushing
China toward a more assertive international style and enmeshing it in
difficulties with a lot of its neighbors. This has the potential to
undermine the benign international environment that has underpinned the
dramatic accomplishments China has made.”
China’s more assertive recent behavior is “both typical and predictable
for a rising power,” he said. “But China is finding that when it
expresses this nationalism through more assertive behavior, its
neighbors all show solidarity with the U.S., which is not what China is
trying to accomplish. And this is causing resentment in China, because
they find that they can’t use their growing power effectively as a
result of the negative consequences.”
This could actually prove to be a positive phenomenon for the U.S., he
said, “because if we’re skillful enough to understand this dynamic, we
are in a position to constrain China when it’s behaving irresponsibly
and cooperate with it when it behaves responsibly.”
“China is not the Soviet Union,” he said. “China’s rise has benefitted
all of the countries around it, and as a result they don’t want a
containment policy; they want responsible behavior by China so they can
expand economic and trade relations, which already dwarf their relations
with other countries. But when China behaves badly, then they want the
United States to be present because they can’t deal with China on their
own. It’s a dynamic that skillful diplomacy should be able to take
advantage from.”
With China now “locked in a web of disputes” with its neighbors over
small but potentially resource-rich islands in the region, Roy said,
“the United States finds itself in the awkward situation of trying to
reassure our allies at the same time we try to restrain their behavior,
because we don’t want tiny little islands in the western Pacific to end
up bringing us into a great-power confrontation with China.”
The threat of such hostility is real, he said, and “these disputes are
having direct impact on U.S.-China relations – but it’s an asymmetrical
impact, because Americans basically don’t care about these islands. But
in China it is an issue of great nationalist importance, as it is for
Japan, the Philippines and other claimants.”
Such issues, he said, illustrate the complexity of trying to manage this
vitally important relationship: “A stronger China will undoubtedly see
itself as again becoming a central regional player, but the United
States intends to remain actively engaged in East Asia, where we have
formal alliances and strategic ties throughout the region.”
The question for leaders of both countries, Roy said, is whether they
can find a solution to this conundrum. As of now, he said, “there is a
disconnect between the high-level desire on both sides not to have our
relationship drift toward rivalry and confrontation, and the way we’re
actually behaving, which is driving us in that direction.”
Open military conflict is unlikely and preventable, he said, but just
the threat of it could cause a costly “military capabilities
competition” for decades to come, at a time when the U.S. is already
facing budget cuts.
“Chinese and U.S. declared strategic goals and their actions are not yet
in conformity with each other,” Roy said. “In my mind, this is the
central strategic challenge in the U.S.-China relationship, and if we
don’t address it forthrightly, it will be more difficult to manage in
the future.”
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