President Hu Jintao’s state visit here has afforded a vantage point from which to view the changing relationship between China and the United States. Although neither government has been willing to acknowledge it publicly, the Western financial crisis marked a major shift in the balance of power between the two countries. The Chinese, true to their style, have remained silent on the issue, while the United States has found it extremely difficult to admit that China is now, in effect, its equal in many respects. Publicly both have been in denial, but behind closed doors, at least in China, it is rather different.
A major debate is underway about what this shift means for Chinese foreign policy. Ever since the reform period began over three decades ago, Deng Xiaoping’s dictum of concentrating on economic growth and poverty reduction, and ensuring that China’s international environment – including its relations with the United States – was as favorable as possible for achieving those objectives, has been faithfully pursued. That era is now drawing to a close, and there is already a noticeable change in Chinese foreign policy. Avoiding conflict with the United States no longer enjoys quite the same priority, while China is now faced with the challenge of how best to articulate and promote its global role and interests.
The United States faces a much harder task. It has to confront the fact that its power is in decline, a task it is patently ill-prepared for. It was only ten years ago, after all, that the Bush administration was talking about remaking the world in the United States’ image amid hyperbole about a new American century. Although U.S. decline is now widely aired and accepted by a minority, the discussion about what it might mean has barely started. It is much easier, and certainly more uplifting, to be a rising than a declining nation. China can see its power expanding, such that in 20 years’ time it will be far wealthier and exercise far greater global influence than it does now. In contrast, the United States faces the opposite scenario, a major diminution over time in its global role. How does the U.S. think about and plan for this process ? Like all imperial nations in decline, it will find the very thought unpalatable — it would be understandable if it chooses the rather easier option of denial. And so far this is essentially what it has done.
These are uncomfortable and unsettling days for Washington. This has been evident in the exchanges within the capital and also in media commentary. For many, the relationship with China is still seen in more or less the same terms as before, with China cast in a subordinate role, to be lectured and hectored as if little or nothing has really changed. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, on the surface at least, appears closer to this view. President Obama seems rather more equivocal, drawn to past ways but also aware of the global shift that is underway. Not surprisingly, the administration reflects the difficulty that the country as a whole is having in coming to terms with a newly empowered China and a rapidly changing world.
It is in the interests of both China and the United States – not to mention the rest of the world – to find a modus vivendi that respects the interests and sensibilities of each. Anything else would be a disaster. The two countries have many interests in common, but there are also many issues that divide them. The United States is the declining power and China the rising power ; if they have mutual interests they are also rivals. And their rivalry will be a new and fundamental aspect of their relationship over the next few decades, and it is destined to get more difficult rather than any easier. As Chinese interests grow around the world, the potential for differences will steadily expand, as we have seen over the past year. Somehow, the two countries will have to find a way to manage these conflicts. There is no obvious template to draw on — the Cold War relationship with the Soviet Union was entirely different, defined by military rivalry and virtually devoid of any mutual economic interest. The United States and China are therefore obliged to forge a new kind of relationship, which will be an enormous challenge to the leaders of both nations. But it will not and must not be impossible. The stakes are too high for it to be otherwise.
