中文
By Pu Jingxin
The United States has wielded its power as a superpower, but it now faces an unprecedented range of global challenges – climate change, pandemics, nuclear proliferation, massive economic inequality, terrorism and corruption. These global problems cannot be solved by any one country alone and require enhanced international cooperation, including with China, the world's most populous country.
However, the U.S. is slow to act on these key issues, which concern the peace and development of mankind. Instead, it turns its sights on China under the pretext of responding to the threat of "authoritarian states," and forms the so-called "dangerous" consensus on China among its political circles. The formation and promotion of this view is bound to create a new political environment in which much needed cooperation around the world will be increasingly difficult to achieve.
It's amazing how quickly conventional thinking in the U.S. has changed on this issue. Just over 20 years ago, in September 2000, the U.S. business community and the leadership of both parties strongly supported granting China the status of permanent normal trade relations (PNTR).
At the time, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, the corporate media, and just about every leading foreign policy expert in Washington insisted that PNTR was necessary for American companies to remain competitive because it gave them access to China's growing market.
But as China has grown rapidly, the conventional wisdom in Washington has swung from optimistic moderation about the opportunities that free trade with China can bring, to pessimistic hardening about the threat of a richer and more powerful China emerging as a result of trade growth.
In February 2020, Bruce Jones, an analyst at the Brookings Institution in the U.S., wrote that "China's rise as the world's second-largest economy, largest energy consumer, and its second-largest defense spender has shaken global affairs" and argued that, "confronting the new reality of great power competition is the challenge of American statecraft for some time to come."
Moreover, in an echo of the opinions that led Washington to reorganize America's national security architecture after World War II to prepare for conflict with Russia, the Deputy Assistant to the President and Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell said that "the period that was broadly described as engagement [with China] has come to an end," and that going forward "the U.S. is entering a period of intense competition with China."
More importantly, instead of preaching the benefits of free trade and openness with China, the U.S. establishment is beating the drum of a new cold war, portraying China as an existential threat to the U.S. We have heard some politicians and representatives of the military-industrial complex using this to justify an increase in the defense budget.
It is obvious that the traditional thinking of American politicians has changed. It seems to be centered on the national interests of the U.S., but it is full of irrational thinking. Organizing U.S. foreign policy around a zero-sum global confrontation with China is not only politically dangerous, it is strategically counterproductive.
As a matter of fact, after some failed foreign interventions in the past few years, there are some serious psychological problems in the U.S. political circle. Among these, the war on terrorism, especially the war in Afghanistan, which lasted nearly 20 years and incurred a heavy cost of $6 trillion, has come to nothing.
And, most importantly, American national unity has been used to wage an endless series of wars that have not only been costly in human, economic, and strategic terms, but have also contributed to xenophobia and bigotry in American politics.
In the U.S., the handing of hundreds of trillions of dollars of taxpayer money to the military-industrial complex and the Pentagon, and the constant inciting of bigotry have led to a policy of confrontation with China increasingly promoted by both Democrats and Republicans.
In my opinion, this approach to China is not only unwise, but also irrational. For it is based on the mistaken notion that the global economy must be a situation of winners versus losers and the U.S. versus China, rather than one of mutual gains through trade and technological progress. That means the game is brutal, a contest between life and death, and therefore fraught with danger.
Former U.S. President Donald Trump blamed China's exports to the U.S. for the plight of unemployed U.S. workers, but he clearly failed to understand or acknowledge the many benefits the U.S. has gained from trade with China, including high profits and incomes for U.S. exporters to China, and American consumers enjoying the high quality and low prices of Chinese exports.
If he really wanted to help American workers, Trump should have called for a tax on the income of the rich and redistribution of America's soaring company profits, and not start a trade war with China because, obviously, a trade war doesn't make the U.S. a real winner.
In order to strengthen the so-called China threat or "dangerous" China, the U.S. chooses to ignore China's peaceful development, the concept of building "a community with a shared future for mankind," "win-win cooperation," peace proposals and concrete practice, in addition to making exaggerated or false charges against China.
But actions speak louder than words, and it is clear who the bigger threat is. Currently, the U.S. has military bases in about 70 countries. The U.S. spends more than twice as much as China on its military. While the U.S. has been engaged in nonstop overseas wars and political power change operations for decades, China has never gotten involved in overseas conflicts. In short, China is not an expansionist or aggressive power, whereas the U.S. has always sought unrivaled global hegemony.
The two kinds of strategic thinking and strategic will determine that a strong China can fully coexist with the diversified international community including the West, while the U.S. is still unable to jump out of its narrow historical empiricism trap due to its persistent cold war mentality.
All in all, while it will not be easy for politicians in Washington to change their minds and realize that a mutually beneficial relationship with China is good for the U.S., they do need to rethink rationally. Not only does the quality of China-U.S. relations have a huge impact on the world, but even the well-being of the U.S. depends to a large extent on making a mature judgment about cooperation with China.
What China has said and done has proved time and again that China can be a major country that takes its share of responsibility in promoting global peace and sustainable development, and it will not become a hegemonic power that threatens the world.
Therefore, China and the U.S., as the two most important major countries in the world, should work together and with other countries under the international system led by the UN to resolve the global issues facing mankind and contribute to world peace and development.
American politicians should recognize this path, particularly if they want to seek more benefits for the U.S. Traditional peace will not arise out of thin air. The U.S. should pursue the common prosperity of mankind without hegemonic ambitions and without regarding China as a "threat" or "dangerous." After all, in war between great powers under modern conditions, there can be no real winners.
Pu Jingxin is an associate professor of the School of Foreign languages at Nanjing University of Finance and Economics, a research fellow of the Shanghai Center for RimPac Strategic and International Studies and a non-resident research fellow of the Global Engagement Academy, Shandong University (Weihai), China.
