Chinese premier Zhu Rongji’s visit to America was not supposed to end this way. Leading up to the summit on April 7-9, administration aides had proudly announced that trade negotiators had agreed to double the air traffic between China and the United States. But in the end, that modest step — along with a couple of one-liners from Zhu about stamping warheads “made in China” to avoid misunderstandings about nuclear espionage — was about all the Clinton administration had to show for its policy of constructive engagement with China.
Premier Zhu left hastily, without the biggest prize: entry for China into the World Trade Organization (WTO). This would have opened Chinese markets to more American goods, but on terms allowing China to minimize competition from American companies.
The WTO deal collapsed because China was unwilling to make enough concessions to satisfy Congress. Administration officials privately estimated that they had secured 95 percent of what they needed to make the deal fly. Some even worried that Zhu had promised more than he could deliver, at a time when unemployment is skyrocketing in China. But the White House realized that after months of news about Chinese espionage in U.S. weapons labs, Beijing’s crackdown on democracy activists, and illegal Chinese contributions to the 1996 Clinton-Gore campaign, even 95 percent of a loaf was not enough. The whole loaf would be needed to get the protectionist big-labor wing of the Democratic party — not to mention the growing chorus of China hawks in the Republican party — to swallow an agreement with Beijing.
Exhausted trade negotiators blamed the Kosovo crisis for distracting the White House during the crucial endgame, when the president should have thrown his prestige behind the effort. For his part, the president, in a belated effort to mobilize public support for the deal, blamed China-bashers for exploiting the various spy, campaign-finance, and other controversies to usher in a new Cold War. No one at the White House apparently thought to blame China for the espionage, campaign meddling, and domestic repression that have provided grist for the “China-bashing” mill.
In any case, the real reason the WTO deal collapsed lies elsewhere. The WTO deal came to nothing because the administration’s China policy as a whole has failed, and failed in such a way that it is almost impossible for the administration to confront the Chinese on any serious matter. Because the administration had been weak on China for the preceding six years, it had to get “tough” on the country’s bid to join the WTO.
As for why constructive engagement has failed, begin with the fact that it is logically incoherent. Even the most atavistic cold warriors in Congress and elsewhere could not have killed it had the policy been sound and beneficial to the country. And even the most attentive president could not have saved a policy so flawed. Indeed, until the administration addresses the internal contradictions of constructive engagement, it is dooming U.S.-Chinese relations for the next century and paving the way for a crisis so grave that the next administration will long for the comparative triviality of the Balkans.
The Clinton administration’s constructive engagement with China rests on a simple claim: If we treat the Chinese as an enemy, we will certainly turn them into an enemy, but if we treat them as a friend, we may possibly make them a friend. The near-term costs — downplaying China’s challenges to our interests and overlooking its irregularities in honoring its commitments — are justified by the potentially high payoff from a friendship.
It sounds good, and sophisticated exponents like Harvard’s Joseph Nye are careful to qualify the idea so as to reinforce its plausibility. But when translated into practice by the bumbling Clinton administration, constructive engagement turns out to be rife with contradictions. With the exception of a few Asia watchers in the Defense Department, where the policy originated and its limits are best understood, the Clinton administration has proved extraordinarily inept in implementing it. Far from acknowledging and compensating for the inherent limitations of their policy, our leaders seem to have been seduced by their own propaganda.
There are at least two fundamental weaknesses in the Clinton administration’s China policy as currently practiced. First, constructive engagement grossly overstates U.S. Influence on Chinese behavior, perceptions, interests, and domestic politics. This is ironic, for the Clinton administration defends its policy as a less ambitious alternative to the hard-line options of containment and confrontation. But the truth is, constructive engagement is much the most ambitious course.
It assumes, to begin with, that Washington can frame the way the Chinese perceive the United States. Constructive engagement promises that if we avoid demands and embrace concessions, the Chinese will see us as reasonable and friendly rather than as weak and hostile. When we overlook a Chinese challenge to preserve engagement, however, the Chinese can draw one of two inferences: that a weak United States is unwilling or unable to defend its interests, or that a strong United States is accommodating and reasonable. Constructive engagement depends on their drawing the latter inference.
To secure that result, the administration must manage Chinese perceptions with extraordinary adroitness, for even if U.S. behavior is consistent, it remains subject to various interpretations; any given act of accommodation can be construed to mean either that we are irresolute or that we are friendly. The policy thus entails one of the most ambitious perception management operations ever attempted. Success depends not so much on whether the United States takes the proper actions but on how Chinese leaders perceive U.S. actions and the new strategic environment they engender.
Consider just a few of the perceptions the administration must manage in order to shape the thinking of Chinese decision makers:
(1) The Chinese must interpret U.S. policy as “reasonable accommodation” rather than as “irresolution” or “submission to Chinese demands.” Specifically, the Chinese must believe that
* U.S. policy reflects confidence in the future rather than apprehension of growing Chinese power, and
* U.S. concessions are generated by a desire for cooperative relations rather than by Chinese ultimatums.
(2) The Chinese must perceive the United States to be a “secure and stable power” rather than a “declining power.” Specifically, they must believe that
* the United States will always be a leading player in Asian-Pacific affairs and will not be markedly less powerful relative to China in a few decades than it is now, and that
* the growth in Chinese power is not inexorable; instead, Chinese missteps, such as a failure to reach accommodation with the United States, could derail the expansion of Chinese military, political, and economic influence.
(3) The Chinese must perceive that if they challenge the United States they will be worse off than if they cooperate. Specifically, they must believe that
* there is a readily identifiable limit to the concessions the United States is willing to grant to China;
* Washington’s failure to contest the last Chinese challenge does not lower the likelihood that the United States will contest the next Chinese challenge; and
* the alternative to the current policy is one less favorable to Chinese interests, not more favorable.
The Clinton policy also assumes that if we make the existing world order look benign, China will realize it has a stake in that order — in short, that Washington can change how China conceives of its interests. The trouble is, the existing world order consists of rules more or less tailored to Western, especially American, interests. If China is determined to rewrite the rules to be more congenial to Chinese interests, then constructive engagement collapses and may even be counterproductive (by hastening China’s accumulation of the power it needs to reshape the world order).
Constructive engagement, then, amounts to a gamble that China’s growing stake in the existing order will trump any interest China has in reshaping the order. If the gamble pays off, it will be unprecedented. Every rising power in history has sought to rewrite the rules in its favor rather than conform its interests to the system as it is.
Furthermore, the ambitions of constructive engagement do not end there. This policy is so bold as to assume that Washington can shape China’s domestic order. Constructive engagement promises that U.S. cooperation will undermine the position of the hard-liners and reinforce that of the soft-liners inside China. In reality, the United States has very little influence over the distribution of power within the Chinese government, which derives chiefly from both the success or failure of economic reform and the ability of the government to contain political reform. Every concession by the Clinton administration can be simultaneously seized upon by both the hard-liners (“See, the United States is weak, so let us press our advantage”) and the soft-liners (“See, the United States is reasonable, so let us be reasonable”).
The administration has smuggled so many grandiose assumptions into its supposedly modest engagement strategy, it is no wonder the policy has failed to deliver any meaningful payoff.
The second fatal weakness in the Clinton administration’s China policy is that it promises a virtuous cycle of cooperation but in fact traps the United States into a vicious cycle of concessions.
Constructive engagement assumes that American concessions will be matched by Chinese concessions, which in turn will facilitate cooperation. As currently practiced, however, the policy enmeshes the administration in a vicious cycle of capitulation. It prompts decision makers to think, in response to every disagreeable Chinese action: If we mollify them on this point, then we leave open the chance that a friendship will emerge; but if we challenge the Chinese on this point, then we accelerate the process whereby enmity develops. When the issue is thus framed, avoiding confrontation always turns out to be preferable. No matter how egregious the Chinese provocation, the United States always has a choice — confront or accommodate — and accommodation prolongs the game, leaving open the chance that the Chinese will moderate their behavior.
Put it another way: If under constructive engagement the Clinton administration views “starting another cold War” as an outcome to be avoided at all costs, then it will never deem the time right to get tough with China. To break this cycle, policy makers must voluntarily abandon constructive engagement — or be faced with some extraneous pressure, such as the need to get Congress to go along with China’s joining the WTO.
The longer the game is played this way, the greater the pressure to avoid confrontation. By now, the long series of concessions to the Chinese is a sunk cost invested in the relationship. After every Chinese challenge, the administration confronts the following calculus: How do the costs of acquiescing to China in this instance compare with the costs of starting another Cold War? Given that the administration was willing to let pass all the previous challenges, surely it shouldn’t jettison the policy just for this latest challenge. The greater the cumulative concessions already made, the bigger a new Chinese challenge must be to justify switching tracks. A player committed above all to avoiding “making an enemy” will be willing to endure ever higher provocations.
The almost pitiable laments from the White House in response to reports of Chinese nuclear espionage are simply the latest case in point. Only when the Chinese started lobbing missiles at Taiwan in 1996 could the Clinton administration bestir itself to deviate, however briefly, from the path of accommodation. All other challenges, great and small, it explained away.
Established powers need not always expend precious resources trying to check the rise of competing states. Given U.S. business interests and a public weary of bearing a superpower’s burdens, the Clinton policy does have the virtue of appealing to the voters’ desire to enjoy peace. But one of the great tragedies of constructive engagement is that even in cases where mutual compromise is called for — China’s admission to the WTO, for instance, might actually be in the U.S. interest — concessions may be impossible because too much has already been conceded.
Before long, then, we would do well to reconsider the logical foundations on which this policy rests. The Clinton administration is selling appeasement (but calling it constructive engagement) on the grounds that it is less costly and less onerous than the alternatives. In fact, the Clinton policy will work only if the United States is able to influence Chinese decision makers in extraordinarily subtle ways.
Perhaps the administration does have it in its power to influence how the Chinese perceive, think, and calculate. If so, Bill Clinton will go down in history as one of the more farsighted statesmen the United States has produced. But if not, his China policy is setting up the United States for a catastrophe.
Peter D. Feaver, associate professor of political science at Duke University, served on the National Security Council staff from 1993 to 1994.
