China's Search for Stability With America

Wang Jisi

From Foreign Affairs, September/October 2005

Summary:  No country can affect China's fortunes more directly than the United States. Many potential flashpoints -- such as Taiwan, Japan, and North Korea -- remain, and true friendship between Washington and Beijing is unlikely. But their interests have grown so intertwined that cooperation is the best way to serve both countries.

WANG JISI is Dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University and Director of the Institute of International Strategic Studies at the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China. This essay is an expanded and revised version of an article originally published in Zhongguo Dangzheng Ganbu Luntan, a journal of the Central Party School.

AFTER 9/11

The United States is currently the only country with the capacity and the ambition to exercise global primacy, and it will remain so for a long time to come. This means that the United States is the country that can exert the greatest strategic pressure on China. Although in recent years Beijing has refrained from identifying Washington as an adversary or criticizing its "hegemonism" -- a pejorative Chinese code word for U.S. dominance -- many Chinese still view the United States as a major threat to their nation's security and domestic stability.

Yet the United States is a global leader in economics, education, culture, technology, and science. China, therefore, must maintain a close relationship with the United States if its modernization efforts are to succeed. Indeed, a cooperative partnership with Washington is of primary importance to Beijing, where economic prosperity and social stability are now top concerns.

Fortunately, greater cooperation with China is also in the United States' interests -- especially since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The United States now needs China's help on issues such as counterterrorism, nonproliferation, the reconstruction of Iraq, and the maintenance of stability in the Middle East. More and more, Washington has also started to seek China's cooperation in fields such as trade and finance, despite increased friction over currency exchange rates, intellectual property rights, and the textile trade.

Although there is room for further improvement in the relationship, the framework of basic stability established since September 11 should be sustainable. At least for the next several years, Washington will not regard Beijing as its main security threat, and China will avoid antagonizing the United States.

THE LONELY SUPERPOWER

To understand the forces that govern U.S.-Chinese relations, it helps first to understand U.S. power and Washington's current global strategy. Here is a Chinese view: in the long term, the decline of U.S. primacy and the subsequent transition to a multipolar world are inevitable; but in the short term, Washington's power is unlikely to decline, and its position in world affairs is unlikely to change.

Consider that the United States continues to lead other developed countries in economic growth, technological innovation, productivity, research and development, and the ability to cultivate human talent. Despite serious problems such as swelling trade and fiscal deficits, illegal immigration, inadequate health care, violent crime, major income disparities, a declining educational system, and a deeply divided electorate, the U.S. economy is healthy: last year, U.S. GDP grew an estimated 4.4 percent, and this year the growth rate is expected to be 3.5 percent, much greater than the corresponding figures for the eurozone (2.0 percent and 1.6 percent). Barring an unexpected sharp economic downturn, the size of the U.S. economy as a proportion of the global economy is likely to increase in the years to come.

Many other indexes of U.S. "hard power" are also on the rise. The U.S. defense budget, for example, has increased considerably in recent years. In 2004, it hit $437 billion, or roughly half of all military spending around the world. Yet as a percentage of U.S. GDP, the figure was lower than it was during the Cold War.