The U.S.-China Relationship --- A Dangerous Downward Spiral: For six years, neither the U.S. nor China has shown a serious interest in resolving differences through diplomacy

"How bad is the relationship between China and the U.S.? There is no need to mince words: China and the U.S. are caught in a competitive downward spiral that if not reversed could drastically damage the two countries and the rest of the world.

Even if Beijing and Washington can "put a floor" under their competition (as the Biden administration likes to put it) so that it doesn't go military, the hostile interactions between these two superpowers -- which constitute 40% of the world's economy -- will take a toll on innovation and growth. Even before the onset of the Covid pandemic, global growth in 2019 was the lowest in a decade.

That's because technology has become the focal point of strategic competition. Fear and mutual suspicion are leading both countries to weaponize their interdependence -- once considered a solid foundation for peace -- and use it against each other. The risk that either country could suddenly block the other's exports or imports of crucial technologies or materials -- as both have already begun to do -- is driving them to erect walls between them and pursue nationalist self-reliance after decades of fruitful collaboration. They are pressing other countries to join their bloc, forcing an either-or choice that most nations wish to avoid.

Nothing about this deterioration of relations was inevitable. It is a truism that rising powers and reigning ones end up fighting as the gap between their capabilities narrows -- the so-called Thucydides Trap. Yet for decades foreign-policy makers in China and the U.S. proved this theory wrong; the two countries got along remarkably well despite China's growing might and their very different political systems.

But for the past six years -- four under President Trump and two under President Biden -- neither side has invested any serious effort in resolving their differences through diplomacy. There has been no progress at the international level -- no joint efforts on common threats like climate change, public health or the North Korean nuclear threat -- to build confidence between the two societies. Their mutual alienation has been exacerbated by the Covid pandemic, which cut off travel between Beijing and Washington and kept President Xi Jinping isolated in Beijing. As a result, there was nothing to prevent Sino-U. S. relations from being dragged down by domestic politics in both countries.

To start with China, after decades of collective leadership, President Xi took a U-turn back to personalistic dictatorship. Deng Xiaoping had blamed the costly tragedies of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution on the "overconcentration of authority" and "arbitrary decisions" of Mao Zedong's strongman rule from 1949 to 1976. After Mao died, Deng replaced Mao's dictatorship with a system in which power was more diffused and competition more rule-bound.

But Mr. Xi shattered intraparty rules and ignored precedents after becoming top leader in 2012. He claimed a third term in power and surrounded himself with sycophants. He purged rivals, real and imagined, through a massive anticorruption campaign that continues to this day.

In this context, the pressure on officials to salvage their careers by demonstrating loyalty to the leader is intense. It drives them to jump on the bandwagon behind Mr. Xi's preferences as early as possible and implement them to a more extreme degree than he may have intended.

Inside China no one dares tell Mr. Xi about the negative fallout of his policies. He lives in an echo chamber of head-nodding and praise.

Mr. Xi abolished term limits that had provided a predictable succession of top leadership; cracked down on internet companies and other private firms; refused to condemn Russia's military operation in Ukraine; and prolonged an extreme zero-Covid approach to managing the pandemic that he claimed demonstrated the superiority of China's system even as it broke the finances of local governments and generated growing public resistance. It took the first nationwide protests against the central government since Tiananmen for Xi's administration to finally get the message and abruptly pivot toward a more flexible approach.

The costs of Mr. Xi's "overreach" are piling up domestically as well as internationally, pummeling its economy and damaging the country's reputation for competent economic management. Unemployment of college graduates is approaching 20%, many private entrepreneurs are rushing for the exits, and even the usually bullish international investors are diversifying their portfolios away from China.

As for the U.S., domestic political priorities have pushed policy makers to overreact to the China threat. Many observers anticipated that the Biden administration would revive diplomatic engagement of Beijing after the Trump administration's confrontational approach had failed to produce any improvement in Chinese behavior. But with Beijing continuing to act provocatively, the new president opted to put his ambitious domestic agenda first.

Despite the Democrats' thin margin in Congress, President Biden believed he could win bipartisan support for his legislative agenda for national self-strengthening if he made competition with China the foil. Such an approach may have been useful for winning close votes in Congress, but it made it harder to make the compromises necessary to stabilize what was becoming a dangerously adversarial relationship. For example, the Trump administration's tariffs against imports from China remain in effect even though they contribute to inflation.

The bipartisan consensus on the China threat left little space for sensible thinking about the trade-offs between the costs and benefits of specific policies toward China. The visa restrictions on certain categories of Chinese students and scholars have undercut America's own great advantage in attracting talent to its research universities.

The face-to-face meeting of Mr. Xi and Mr. Biden at the margins of the G-20 meeting in Bali in November hinted that the two leaders may now have incentives to make greater investments in diplomacy. Mr. Xi won a third term at the party congress, and Mr. Biden's Democrats defied expectations to hold on to their majority in the Senate. If the two governments can build on the Bali meeting to start a process of negotiated give-and-take that generates momentum toward detente, it could restore a modicum of good will between the two societies and counteract the domestic drag toward the bottom in U.S.-China relations.

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Dr. Shirk is research professor and chair of the 21st Century China Center at the University of California, San Diego, and the author of "Overreach: How China Derailed its Peaceful Rise." Email reports@wsj.com." [1]

 

Oh, and Lithuanian Minister Landsbergis took off his pants and is swinging things, annoying the Chinese. With this, he helps Biden to solve the problems of Biden's domestic politics in America. From this activity, Lithuania gains trade with China through expensive intermediaries, but Lithuania's problems have not interested the Landsbergis' clan for a long time. It is not clear how Biden will personally thank Landsbergis for such a circus.

 

1. Year in Review (A Special Report): The U.S.-China Relationship --- A Dangerous Downward Spiral: For six years, neither the U.S. nor China has shown a serious interest in resolving differences through diplomacy
Shirk, Susan L.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y. [New York, N.Y]. 15 Dec 2022: R.12.