Fault Lines in America’s China Policy

Mr Sullivan met with Wang Yi, a senior Chinese foreign-policy official, for more than eight hours in Vienna last week, suggesting a mutual desire to stop it. world’s most important bilateral relations from getting worse. That meeting was followed by speeches by Mr. Sullivan and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen outlining the administration’s views on China. Both speak for the same boss. But look closely at the comments, and differences within the administration are clear.

While Mr Sullivan is already sketching out his curvaceous “New Washington Consensus”, Ms Yellen says the US is only seeking “the same international order that helped make China’s economic transformation possible”. Mr Sullivan strongly criticized the “China shock” of the 1990s trade liberalization and subsequent job creation. No such criticism can be found in Ms. Yellen’s thinking, which aims for “a healthy economic engagement that benefits both countries”.

The two are at opposite ends of the administration’s approach to China – with Ms. Yellen (the lone) the dove and Mr. Sullivan the (dominant) the hawk. Still, both are trying to strike a tone of reconciliation in their own way. The Biden administration, perhaps out of fear that it has damaged relations with China too quickly, is publicly trying to backtrack.

The low point came in late January, after a chinese balloon It was seen in US airspace, circling around sensitive nuclear-weapons bases before Mr Biden ordered it shot down off the coast. US military leaders were unable to reach their Chinese counterparts through hotline channels regularly used during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The incident ended a trip to China that Foreign Minister Antony Blinken was planning, which would include a meeting with President Xi Jinping. The decline in tensions after Mr. Biden’s meeting with Mr. Xi in Bali in November 2022 proved brief.

Now there is a desire to return to something like “the spirit of Bali”. But members of the administration have complex objectives: preventing China from invading Taiwan, preserving trade but with more carves for national security, and leading the world in managing climate change and the debt crisis in emerging markets. He believes that the US and China can work together on Ukraine. To explain this in a non-threatening way, they resort to soothing slogans: “competition not conflict”; “De-risking not decoupling”; Leaving business open except for “small yards and high fences”.

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What do these phrases really mean? Export controls on high-end semiconductors that could be used in Chinese weapons systems are one thing. But Administration is considering restrictions Aiming to keep the edge on AI, quantum computing, clean-energy production and biotechnology is a sign that the small yard may be bigger than advertised. Military dogma and protectionist impulses are strong in America. Even if Mr. Biden seeks a middle ground, he may find himself pushed back by these forces, especially as the 2024 presidential election approaches.

Another difficulty for the White House in setting national China policy is that US politics is decentralized and fractious. The state legislators can single-handedly run it, sharpen their credibility. On May 8, Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida and potential presidential candidate, called for an end to the “malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party” by limiting the ability of Chinese citizens to buy land in the state and preventing state universities from admitting foreigners. signed a law for Money from countries “of concern”.

Nor does the executive branch have any control over the legislative. Last August, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan over Mr. Biden’s objections. Her Republican successor, Kevin McCarthy, proceeded with more caution, meeting Taiwan’s president, Tsai Ing-wen, during a visit to California rather than stoking tensions by repeating Ms. Pelosi’s stunt. “Understanding the true nature of US policy toward China, I think, has been difficult for Beijing,” says Christopher Johnson of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think-tank. What do they see coming out of the hill?”

In January a group of 19 House Republicans introduced a resolution to end the formal “One China” policy that the US adheres to and recognize Taiwan as an independent country. A bipartisan group of senators has proposed legislation that could allow the Commerce Secretary to ban TikTok. , a wildly popular Chinese-owned social-media platform.

House Republicans have formed a Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party that is gathering evidence on sensitive matters such as forced labor for Uighurs and the Communist Party’s efforts to set up police stations overseas. So far there has been an unusual agreement between the committee’s Republican chair, Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin, and Raja Krishnamurthy, the senior Democratic member of Illinois.

One member of the committee who is expected to start some serious debate is Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California. He says, “I would argue right now that the Democratic response to the committee has been merciless … It is dominated by a vision that anticipates a Cold War one.” “I think you can be in three places,” he said. “One is Donald Trump: Let’s just have a complete embargo and decoupling. The other is … Janet Yellen, which is: No decoupling, we just need to maintain almost the status quo economically. And then the premise I’m trying to explain trying is: we need a rebalancing…the status quo is not working.”

Mr Khanna, who recently gave a speech on China at Stanford, wants to reduce the bilateral trade deficit to almost zero over the next decade, and renew China’s most-favoured-nation trade status permanently rather than allowing it annually. Want to Free marketers argue that this would backfire. Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, argues, “The common mistake of Khanna and some of those advising the Trump and Biden administrations is the idea that America alone determines the world.”

reducing the risk of miscarriage and reassure allies, She may visit China soon, as may Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo. Yet the White House is trying to balance conflicting impulses. To stretch Mr. Sullivan’s architectural parallelism to breaking point, the result might resemble Mr. Gehry’s strange but harmonious concert hall in Los Angeles. Or it may be so impractical that, like Mr. Gehry’s computer-science school at MIT, the building leaks and its architect is sued.

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Updated: May 31, 2023, 03:03 PM IST