This will likely be remembered as the year Washington and Beijing decided previous efforts to bridge their differences had been a bridge too far.
Their current rash of controversies, however, must be understood for what they really are: These are not fights over issues of principle but propaganda narratives — smokescreens obscuring the magnitude of their leaders’ failure to find a path both civilizations can travel in peace.
President Trump was not among those who contributed to those failures. His laudable early efforts to engage with Xi Jinping in order to redress longstanding disputes, notably a nuclearized Korea and bilateral trade/investment rules, was undercut by factions in the national security apparatus in Washington and Beijing, who want their countries to remain adversaries. It’s been a long way down from Trump’s positive, stillborn initiative to China and the negative sequel that followed, and the current Sino-American controversies cannot be understood intelligibly without it.
Blocking Trump’s China initiatives cleared the way to reopening the old Cold War conflict with Beijing. The National Defense Strategy of 2017, openly hostile to China, was followed in 2018-2019 by a U.S.-China trade war. This, in turn, fizzled out in a mini phase one deal that signaled the end of positive Trump-era China diplomacy.
These events prepared the necessary propaganda groundwork to resume political warfare. Similarly, they provided China’s propaganda industry the means to rekindle nationalistic, anti-American sentiments.
The present disputes arise from and challenge China’s authority to regulate domestic matters with international implications. These include the Securities and Exchange Commission reporting practices of Chinese companies based in the United States; the administration of Hong Kong’s public security measures under the “one country-two systems” formula; policy and administration of China’s large Muslim minority populations; and a humanitarian disaster following the breakdown of China’s COVID-19 containment measures.
Three of these four controversies are longstanding, well-known differences between U.S. and Chinese authorities. As for COVID-19, the scale of the infection in Wuhan meant that the danger of its spread was inherently international in scope. Failure to grasp and act upon this fact led to the death of many tens of thousands outside China; second, the traditional Chinese mindset, dating back centuries before the Communist Party, draws a sharp line separating that which is viewed as “Chinese” from that which is perceived as “foreign.” How or why the virus left China is entirely a “foreign” matter under this mindset. It most likely triggered the narrow-minded Chinese response to controlling the spread of the virus.
The unfolding breach in the Sino-American relationship stems directly from miscalculations by both Washington and Beijing between 1975 and the early 1980s — from the end of the Vietnam War to the beginning of China’s “Open Door” initiative. It was during this period that American policymakers convinced themselves history was moving, not only bringing China into the world economy but also hastening the demise of China’s authoritarian system. China’s leadership drew a parallel but different conclusion, that vast, mutual benefits arising from projected Sino-American economic engagement would bring Washington to accept Beijing’s peaceful rise to preeminence in East Asia.
Both leadership groups have indulged in the arrogance of historical prediction, and both have been proven wrong. Beijing’s “Open Door” strategy enabled China to modernize without westernizing its political system. The U.S. did not concede preeminence in East Asia to a peaceful China in exchange for economic inducements.
A four-character Chinese adage, one alluding to the familiar troubled marriage scenario, sums up the dilemma that has confounded the American-Chinese relationship from its inception: “sleeping in the same bed, dreaming different dreams.” This captures the tragedy of the long-term misunderstanding between Washington and Beijing. The two countries have so much more in common than their leaders’ cultural walls will permit them to see, much less pursue.
David Mozingo is a retired former China military-foreign policy specialist with the RAND Corporation and a former professor of government and chairman of the China Program at Cornell University.
