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Chapter 2 lays out three sets of rationales for engagement offered by US policy-makers during the crucial decade of the 1990s. An examination of the historical record confirms that, despite some recent revisionism, a broad assortment of experts, officials, and political leaders did, in fact, argue that engagement would likely lead to China’s economic and political liberalization and its willing incorporation into the existing, US-dominated international order.
Three subsequent chapters will address the central question of why these expectations have not been met. Chapter 3 analyzes the Party’s persistent anxieties about penetration and subversion, describes its unwavering determination to maintain its domestic political monopoly, and traces the evolving mix of coercion, cooptation, and ideological indoctrination through which it has been able thus far to do so.
As explained in Chapter 4, the CCP’s preoccupation with power and its obsession with control are also essential to understanding the evolution of its economic policies. From the start of the process of “reform and opening up” under Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s, CCP strategists have regarded the market as a tool of the party-state or, as one of Deng’s colleagues put it, a “bird in a cage.” While they have been willing at times to afford greater scope to market forces, contrary to the expectations of most Western observers, the Party’s top leaders have never had any intention of proceeding down the path towards full economic liberalization. It should therefore come as no surprise that, in responding to the challenge of markedly slower growth, in recent years the regime has ignored the advice of most Western (and many Chinese) economists that it relax its grip, opting instead for policies that further enhance the role of the state at the expense of the market.
Chapter 5 will make the case that, as is true of its domestic political and economic policies, the outward-directed elements of China’s grand strategy are also strongly shaped by the character of the CCP regime and its distinctive ideological worldview. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Beijing faced an international system that it saw as profoundly threatening, not only to its physical security but also to its very legitimacy. While for a time China lacked the power to challenge the status quo, the notion that it would want nothing more than to be accepted as a member in good standing of the existing regional and global orders was always fanciful. As their capabilities have grown, China’s leaders have gone over to the offensive, pushing back at the meddlesome presence of US and allied military forces in their own backyard, challenging America’s position as the preeminent global power, and seeking to neutralize the threat posed by the pervasiveness and continuing appeal of the liberal democratic ideals it espouses.
What comes through plainly in each of these three domains – political, economic, and strategic – is the consistency of the CCP’s goals and the relentless determination with which they have been sought by successive generations of leaders. Since taking power in late 2012, Xi Jinping has felt emboldened to express those ends more openly and to pursue them more forcefully than his predecessors. Contrary to the way in which he is sometimes portrayed in the West, however, Xi does not represent a break from the past. To the contrary, he is following in the footsteps of his forebears and attempting to attain the same objectives.
For their part, the United States and its allies are presently suspended between a set of old policies that have not achieved the aims set for them and a new, not yet fully defined alternative strategy to guide their future actions. Before looking forward, Chapter 6 will look back one last time, examining the question of whether engagement’s failure was inevitable and explaining why it has taken so long for Western policy-makers to acknowledge that it has, in fact, failed.
The democracies now find themselves confronted, not by a cooperative partner, but by a powerful and hostile state, deeply enmeshed in their societies and economies, and ruled by a technologically sophisticated, dictatorial regime that seeks to reshape the world in ways that are threatening to their interests and inimical to their values. This reality is unpleasant but it is also undeniable and must be faced. Continuing to engage with China on the same terms as in the past will help it grow even stronger and, instead of inducing positive change, such an approach will only strengthen the hand and encourage the ambitions of the CCP regime.
The book will close by laying out the main elements of a new strategy for meeting the challenge that Beijing now poses. Although there will be costs, the United States and its allies need to constrict engagement with China and invest more in the capabilities necessary to balance against its growing power. Abandoning the illusory post-Cold War goal of transforming the country by incorporating it into an all-inclusive international order operating on liberal principles, the democracies must focus instead on strengthening the sinews of a partial liberal system: an assembly of states that, whatever their differences, share a commitment to upholding and defending the rights and freedoms on which their societies are based.
Notes
1 1. I will use the terms “West” and “liberal democracies” interchangeably. Once confined to the trans-Atlantic zone, liberal democracies can now be found in every region of the world. These are countries with popularly elected governments whose powers are restrained by the rule of law and which are committed to protecting the civil rights of all their citizens.
2 2. Joint Communication to the European Parliament, the European Council, and the Council, “EU–China – A Strategic Outlook,” March 12, 2019, p. 1.
1 The Origins of Engagement
During the climactic closing decades of the Cold War, US policy-makers viewed engagement with Beijing primarily through the lens of their ongoing competition against the Soviet Union. As the United States pulled back from its bruising defeat in Vietnam, the Soviets appeared to be moving boldly in the opposite direction. During the 1970s and into the 1980s, Moscow continued an ambitious, broad-based military buildup and launched a series of interventionist adventures of its own in Afghanistan, southern Africa, and Central America. Faced with these troubling trends, American strategists began to look for ways to enhance China’s military, economic, and technological capabilities in order to build it into a more effective counterweight to Soviet power.
Working with Beijing required a revolution in American diplomacy. For two decades after the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), Washington had refused even to recognize its existence, clinging instead to the fiction that the Nationalist regime that fled to Taiwan after being defeated by the Communists in 1949 was the legitimate government of all of China. Following the first tentative, secret contacts in 1969, successive American administrations took a series of steps that moved Washington and Beijing away from intense mutual animosity and towards a close, albeit wary, strategic alignment against a common foe.
Starting with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger’s first visit to China in 1971, American officials provided their counterparts in Beijing with satellite photographs and other intelligence information about the capabilities and disposition of Soviet forces, and began to discuss possible contingencies involving a military confrontation with the USSR.1 Together with these sensitive exchanges, Presidents Nixon and Ford also authorized the sale or transfer of limited numbers of so-called “dual-use” systems with both commercial and potential military applications, including satellite ground stations, civilian jet aircraft, and high-speed computers. In the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979, Jimmy Carter added “non-lethal” military equipment such as transport aircraft, helicopters, communications hardware, and over-the-horizon radar systems to the list of items for sale. Seeking to strike a balance between countering Soviet power and upholding the continuing US commitment to Taiwan’s security, four years later Ronald Reagan took a significant further step, approving