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U.S.-China relations will shape the future of the world in every way. Alas, those relationships have been deteriorating for a long time. In fact, the only issue that Republicans and Democrats agree on may be that China poses a huge threat to American interests and values.
Aaron Friedberg of Princeton University agrees. In fact, his main complaint was against people who used to believe anything different. Fred Bergsten agrees it’s an extremely challenging relationship right now – but takes a very different view of the threat.
Bergsten is a veteran of American international economic policy thinkers. The founder of the Peterson Institute for International Economics devoted his life to promoting a liberal international economic order. his book, America to China, From the point of view that maintaining that order should be our core goal. It also focuses on the economic aspects of the bilateral relationship, arguing that “from a U.S. and global perspective, it would be far better to decouple economic issues from inherently contentious issues of security and values.”
Friedberg thinks this is naive. For him, economics cannot be separated from politics.He believes that the Chinese Communist Party is misunderstanding China, a Leninist organization relentlessly committed to its own power. Quite simply, “Beijing believes competition with the West is inevitable and the stakes are life and death.”
Bergsten’s analysis is based on “Thucydides Trap” and”The Kindleberger Trap”. The first concept came from Harvard’s Graham Allison, who started with a pattern first identified by the great historians of the Peloponnesian War, in which a rising power (Athens) and an established Great powers (Sparta) in conflict. The second concept comes from the late Charles Kindleberger, who believed that the economic catastrophe between the two world wars was mainly due to Britain being too weak to serve the needs of the world economy at the time The hegemony of the U.S. is too introverted to do so. Bergsten believes that in their economic relationship, the U.S. and China could now fall into a Thucydides trap. In doing so, they would also open up Kindleberger trap.
The U.S.-China relationship is fundamentally different from the one during the Cold War, which was a conflict of ideology and security. The two sides engaged in an economic competition, and the Soviet Union lost, but they were economically disconnected from each other. Yet China has created an economy that already rivals the United States in many ways. In addition, China and the West are interconnected economically and with the rest of the world.
Bergsten concludes from these realities that the United States must “reject any effort to contain China. As President Trump has demonstrated, even if desirable, containment will not succeed. China is too big and too dynamic. , cannot be suppressed, and almost no other country will join the United States.”
Fortunately, this will be unnecessary as China is “revisionist and not a revolutionary power”. Bergsten’s central proposal is what he calls “conditional competitive cooperation.”
Competition “will characterize much of their daily interactions through trade, investment and financial exchanges”. But cooperation is crucial to “laying the foundations for a stable and successful international economic order”. Additional conditions are also necessary because both parties “will rightly insist that the other side accepts and faithfully enforce the agreed rules of the game to govern their interactions”.
This resulted in 10 policy recommendations. These include that the US should resume its global leadership role, that everyone should continue to defend the current system and prevent it from being eroded, that there should be a new multilateral trade package, and that over time China should even be given full equal quotas and votes with the US right. The United States is in the International Monetary Fund.
Bergsten concluded that the overarching recommendation is for the United States to implement “a comprehensive domestic economic and social reform plan to restore the country’s sustainable political foundations for once again exercising responsible global economic leadership.”
Friedberg’s analysis and recommendations are basically the opposite. “What emerges today,” he asserted, “is an intense, global, economic, technological, military, diplomatic and ideological competition between two superpowers.” Whether we call it a “new cold war” or use Words like “containment” don’t exist.
“Participation is a gamble, not a blunder,” he argues, “but the odds are always great.” A “more accurate assessment” of the Chinese regime could instill a “more realistic sense of the chances of success, and an early High sensitivity to signs of failure”.
So what to do? Friedberg recommends four main directions of effort: “The United States and its partners must mobilize their societies to compete with China in the long term and strengthen their actions against the CCP’s influence; while strengthening ties with each other , disengage parts of their economies from China; strengthen military preparedness and diplomatic measures to deter coercion or aggression; and actively challenge Beijing’s ideological narrative, both in developing countries and, where possible, within China.”
The two books are different in almost every way. They did agree, however, on two things: first, alliances with other liberal democracies are a huge asset for America, especially in economic struggles; second, Donald Trump is a disaster, especially because he cannot Recognize this reality.
The remarkable value of these books is that they articulate their opposing views so clearly. Bergsten focuses on the huge potential benefits of including China as an equal partner in the system. Friedberg saw an increasingly repressive, deceptive and irreconcilable enemy.
Other viewpoints exist. One is that the United States, not China, is the more aggressive power. In recent decades, the United States has fought a series of foreign wars, not China. It insists on strategy first, not China.America has 800 overseas military bases; China has only one. and, Under Donald Trump, the U.S. has broken many international commitments, especially those in the World Trade Organization. The United States may view its actions against China as purely defensive. Unsurprisingly, China (and other countries) see them differently.
Once again, Friedberg was a moralist. He insists that the enemy is the CCP, not China. But international realists would argue that ideology is less important than China’s actual and potential power: friction is inevitable.
I find Bergsten’s ambitions appealing, while Friedberg’s views are frustratingly one-sided. But the latter view seems destined to win. That’s partly because the impetus for economic separation is now driven by deep distrust on both sides.
Equally important is the re-emergence of the Chinese regime’s growing repression and dictatorship.Most importantly, China’s support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Attempt to split Europe from America is unacceptable. Alas, China has chosen to be the enemy of the West. I don’t know if Friedberg’s world is inevitable. It’s hard to get rid of it now. This will prove to be a human tragedy.
United States and China: Seeking Global Economic Leadership by C Fred Bergsten, Government £25, 384 pages
misunderstanding China by Aaron Friedberg, Government £25, 246 pages
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