President Trump is risking “a repetition” of the great military and economic catastrophes of the 20th century, a top Chinese diplomat warned Tuesday.
“The lessons of history are still there,” Cui Tiankai, the Chinese ambassador to the United States, told Reuters. “In the last century, we had two world wars, and, in between them, the Great Depression. I don’t think anybody should really try to have a repetition of history. These things should never happen again, so people have to act in a responsible way.”
Cui issued that warning in the lead-up to the G-20 summit in Argentina this week, where Trump is expected to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The Chinese envoy’s remonstrance may double as a warning shot and a sign of willingness for some kind of agreement to mitigate a trade war that has escalated over the last year and raised the specter of a “decoupling” of the world’s two largest economies.
“I don’t know if people really realize the possible consequences — the impact, the negative impact — if there is such a decoupling,” he said during the interview.
Such rebukes do little to quell U.S. frustration with China and doubts about Beijing’s willingness to negotiate in good faith.
“When Xi assumed China’s presidency in 2013, U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration was willing to test the proposition that Xi was both a reformer and someone the United States could work with,” Ely Ratner, the deputy national security adviser under Vice President Joe Biden from 2015-2017, wrote Tuesday in Foreign Affairs. “Yet, at nearly every turn, Xi rejected Obama’s overtures in areas of significant dispute. Instead of seeking to narrow differences, Xi accelerated China’s efforts to develop an illiberal sphere of influence in ways that increasingly undermined vital U.S. interests. While Washington negotiated in good faith, Beijing dragged its feet for years on a bilateral investment treaty that would have addressed many issues at the root of today’s trade war.”
The trade war is taking place in the context of a wider competition with China, which U.S. officials regard as undertaking a long-term effort to diminish American power throughout the world.
“At the end of the day, the Chinese fundamentally seek to replace the United States as the leading power in the world,” Michael Collins, the CIA’s deputy assistant director for the East Asia Mission Center, said during the Aspen Security Forum in July. “What they’re waging against us is fundamentally a cold war.”
Chinese officials denied that charge during a high-level meeting at the State Department in early November. “China is firm in pursuing socialism with Chinese characteristics,” Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi told reporters through a translator. “Everything that we do is to deliver better lives for the Chinese people, to realize rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. It is not intended to challenge or displace anyone.”
But discussions with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis have been marred by the persistence of disputes over China’s claim to sovereignty over the South China Sea, the theft of American intellectual property, and U.S. support for Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a breakaway province.
“We cannot accept that one side would put forward a number of demands and the other side just has to satisfy all these things,” Cui said in Tuesday’s interview.
