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| 特朗普、习近平 |
编者按：今年2月份，美国前国务院亚太事务助理国务卿坎贝尔与前副总统拜登的副国家安全顾问雷特纳，在美国《外交事务》发表了一篇名为《中国重估算：北京是怎样让美国期望落空的》的文章。文章虽然不似特朗普政府的《国安战略报告》般"咄咄逼人"，但其行文，同样以美国视角审视中国的发展道路，并对此表达出"失望"。阅读此文，也能看出目前美国对华战略的深层逻辑。
以下是原文：
美国一直对自己决定中国路线的能力有着超乎寻常的自信。它的野心一次又一次地落空。二战后，美国驻中国特使乔治·马歇尔(George Marshall)希望在中国内战中促成民族主义者与共产党之间的和平。在朝鲜战争期间，杜鲁门政府认为它可以阻止中国的军队越过鸭绿江。约翰逊政府认为，中国政府最终将限制其在越南的参与。在每一个例子中，中国的现实都颠覆了美国的期望。
随着美国总统理查德·尼克松(Richard Nixon)对中国的开放，华盛顿方面做出了迄今为止最大、最乐观的决定。尼克松和他的国家安全顾问亨利•基辛格(Henry Kissinger)都认为，中美和解将会在北京和莫斯科之间造成不和，而且随着时间的推移，会改变中国对美国的看法。1967年秋天，尼克松在这本杂志上写道:"在中国改变之前，世界是不可能安全的。"因此，我们的目标，即我们能够影响事件的程度，应该是引起变化。从那以后，不断深化商业、外交和文化联系的设想，将改变中国的内部发展和外部行为，这一直是美国战略的基石。即使是那些对中国的意图持怀疑态度的美国政策圈子里的人，也仍然相信，美国的实力和霸权能够轻而易举地把中国塑造成美国喜欢的样子。
近半个世纪以来，尼克松迈出了走向和解的第一步，这一记录越来越清晰地表明，美国政府再次对其塑造中国发展轨迹的力量抱有太多信心。政策辩论的各个方面都出现了错误：自由贸易者和金融家们预见到了中国不可避免的、日益开放的开放，他们认为北京的雄心将被国际社会的更大互动所征服，而鹰派认为中国的力量将被永久的美国主导地位所削弱。
胡萝卜和大棒都没有像预测的那样影响中国。外交和商业接触并没有带来政治和经济上的开放。美国的军事力量和地区平衡都没有阻止北京方面寻求取代美国的核心部分。主导系统。自由主义的国际秩序未能像预期的那样有力地吸引或束缚中国。相反，中国一直在坚持自己的路线，在这一过程中表现出了一系列美国人的期望。
这一现实让美国对中国的态度有了清醒的反思。这种重新评估有很多风险;当前框架的捍卫者将警告，不要破坏双边关系的稳定，或引发一场新的冷战。但是，要建立一个更强大、更可持续的方法，与北京方面的关系，中国政府需要诚实地认识到，有多少基本的假设是错误的。在整个意识形态领域，我们美国外交政策界一直对中国的经济、国内政治、安全、乃至全球秩序抱有很大的期望，尽管他们已经积累了证据。建立在这种期望上的政策未能以我们的意图或希望改变中国。
市场的力量
与中国进行更大的商业互动，应该是中国经济逐步而稳定的自由化。美国总统乔治·h·w·布什(George H. W. Bush)在1990年制定的《国家安全战略》(National Security Strategy)称，加强与世界的关系"对中国恢复经济改革道路的前景至关重要"。这一观点在几十年前就占主导地位。它促使美国决定在上世纪90年代给予中国最惠国贸易地位，以支持其在2001年加入世界贸易组织(World Trade Organization)，在2006年建立高级别经济对话，并在美国总统奥巴马(Barack Obama)的领导下谈判达成一项双边投资协定。
美国和中国之间的商品贸易从1986年的不到80亿美元激增到2016年的5780亿美元，超过了30倍的增长，这是通货膨胀的调整。然而，自本世纪初以来，中国的经济自由化进程陷入停滞。与西方国家的预期相反，中国政府已经在其国家资本主义模式下加倍努力，尽管它已经变得更加富有。与其成为更开放的力量，持续的增长已经使中国共产党及其国家主导的经济模式合法化。
美国官员认为，债务、低效率和更先进的经济的要求将需要进一步的改革。中国官员意识到他们的做法存在问题;2007年，温家宝总理称中国经济"不稳定、不平衡、不协调、不可持续"。",但中国更激烈的竞争,而不是开放的中国共产党,要保持对经济的控制,而是巩固国有企业,追求产业政策(特别是2025年"中国制造"计划),旨在促进国家科技龙头企业在关键领域,包括航空航天、生物医药、和机器人。尽管一再做出承诺，但北京方面顶住了来自华盛顿和其他地方的压力，要求为外国公司提供公平竞争的环境。它限制了市场准入，迫使非中国企业在合资和共享技术上签字，同时向政府支持的国内企业提供投资和补贴。
直到最近，美国的决策者和高管们大多默许这种歧视;潜在的商业利益是如此之大，以至于他们认为用保护主义或制裁来颠覆这种关系是不明智的。相反，他们竭尽全力争取小的、增加的让步。但现在，曾经被视为仅仅是与中国做生意的短期挫折，似乎变得更加有害和持久。美国商会(American Chamber of Commerce)去年报告说，10家美国公司中有8家在中国的受欢迎程度低于前几年，超过60%的公司对中国在未来3年将进一步开放市场的信心几乎没有或没有信心。中国经济开放的合作和自愿性机制总体上是失败的，包括特朗普政府刚刚启动的全面经济对话。
主导地位的威慑
美国的外交政策和美国的军事力量——胡萝卜加大棒——应该能让北京相信，挑战美国是不可能的，也不是必要的。美国领导的亚洲安全秩序。正如克林顿政府1995年的国家安全战略所指出的那样，华盛顿"强烈敦促中国参与地区安全机制，以安抚邻国，减轻自身的安全关切"，这是由军方与军方的关系以及其他建立信任措施所支持的。这些接触模式与美国在该地区的"对冲"增强军事力量相结合，得到了有能力的盟友和合作伙伴的支持。这种想法的结果，将是缓和亚洲的军事竞争，并进一步限制中国改变地区秩序的愿望。北京将满足于军事上的自给自足，为狭隘的地区突发事件建立武装力量，同时将其大部分资源用于国内需求。
这一逻辑并非简单地说，中国将专注于其自我描述的国内发展的"战略机遇"，在中国高层领导人的关注下，有大量的经济和社会挑战。美国的政策制定者和学者们也认为，中国从苏联身上得到了宝贵的教训，那就是与美国展开一场军备竞赛的巨大代价。因此，华盛顿不仅可以阻止中国的侵略，而且还可以利用五角大楼的艺术术语——"劝阻"中国不要试图竞争。里根和布什政府的官员Zalmay Khalilzad认为，美国的主导地位可以"让中国领导层相信，挑战是很难准备的，而且要进行下去是非常危险的。"此外，还不清楚中国是否会挑战美国的主导地位，即使它想这样做。上世纪90年代末，中国人民解放军(PLA)被认为落后于美国军队及其盟友的几十年。
在这种背景下，美国官员非常小心地避免与中国发生冲突。政治学家约瑟夫·奈(Joseph Nye)在克林顿政府期间领导五角大楼亚洲办事处时解释了这种想法:"如果我们把中国当作敌人，我们就会在未来为敌人提供保障。"如果我们把中国当作朋友，我们就不能保证友谊，但至少可以保持开放的可能性。即将成为国务卿的鲍威尔在2001年1月的听证会上告诉国会，"中国不是敌人，我们的挑战是保持这种状态。"
尽管中国政府开始加大对军事力量的投入，但中国政府试图让华盛顿放心，这表明中国继续坚持邓小平提出的谨慎、温和的外交政策路线。2005年，中国共产党高级官员郑必坚在这本杂志上写道，中国永远不会谋求地区霸权，永远致力于"和平崛起"。2011年，在中国领导人就是否应该换班展开激烈辩论后，国务委员戴秉国向世界保证:"和平发展是中国的战略选择。"从2002年开始，美国国防部一直在制定国会授权的关于中国军力的年度报告，但美国高级官员的共识是，中国仍然是一个遥远且可控的挑战。
然而，这一观点低估了中国领导人的缺乏安全感和雄心壮志。对北京来说，美国在亚洲的同盟和军事存在对中国在台湾、朝鲜半岛以及中国东海和南海的利益构成了不可接受的威胁。用北京大学教授王缉思的话来说，"中国坚信……"华盛顿将试图阻止新兴大国，特别是中国，实现他们的目标和提高他们的地位。因此，中国开始蚕食美国。美国领导的亚洲安全秩序，发展了拒绝美军进入该地区的能力，并在华盛顿及其盟友之间制造隔阂。
最终，美国的军事力量和美国的外交接触都没有阻止中国试图建立自己的世界级军事力量。美国在伊拉克和其他地方的高科技展示，只是加速了中国人民解放军的现代化进程。中国国家主席习近平发起了军事改革，将使中国军队更具杀伤力，更有能力将军事力量投射到中国以外的地方。据报道，第三艘航母正在建设中，在南中国海拥有先进的新军事设施，以及在吉布提的首个海外军事基地，中国正走上成为军事伙伴的道路，美国自苏联解体以来从未见过这种情况。中国领导人不再重复邓小平的格言:要繁荣，中国将"韬光养晦"。中国领导人在2017年10月宣布，"中华民族已经从站起来，走向富裕，走向强大。"
规范的限制
在第二次世界大战结束时，美国建立了一些制度和规则，帮助构建了全球政治和亚洲地区的动态。广泛接受的规范，如商业和航海自由、和平解决争端以及国际合作应对全球性挑战，取代了19世纪的势力范围。作为这一自由主义国际秩序的主要受益者，中国政府将在该秩序的保护方面拥有相当大的利益，并将其继续视为中国自身发展的关键。美国的政策旨在鼓励中国参与进来，欢迎中国进入领导机构，并在全球治理和地区安全方面与中国合作。
随着中国加入多边机构，美国政策制定者希望它能学会遵守规则，并很快开始为它们的维护做出贡献。在乔治•w•布什(George W. Bush)政府中，美国副国务卿罗伯特•佐利克(Robert Zoellick)呼吁中国政府在国际体系中成为"负责任的利益相关者"。从华盛顿的角度来看，更大的权力带来了更大的责任，特别是因为中国从体制中获得了如此丰厚的利益。正如奥巴马所强调的，"我们期待中国帮助维护那些使他们成功的规则。"
在某些场合，中国似乎是在稳步、如果不平衡地承担这一责任。在1991年加入亚太经济合作组织,在1992年加入《不扩散核武器条约》,在2001年加入世界贸易组织,参与重大外交努力,包括六方会谈和P5 + 1谈判处理北韩和伊朗的核武器项目,分别。它也成为联合国反海盗和维和行动的主要贡献者。
然而，北京仍然受到美国其他中心因素的威胁。美国主导的秩序——并日益寻求取代它们。这一点尤其适用于美国及其合作伙伴未被邀请的侵犯国家主权的行为，无论是以经济制裁或军事行动的形式。例如，关于国际社会的权利或责任的自由规范，以保护人们免受侵犯人权的行为，已经轻率地进入中国的首要任务，保护其威权体制不受外国干涉。除了少数几个明显的例外，中国一直在忙于淡化多边制裁，保护西方国家免受西方的指责，并与俄罗斯达成共同目标，阻止联合国安理会授权干预行动。在苏丹、叙利亚、委内瑞拉、津巴布韦以及其他地方，一些非民主国家的政府已经从这种阻碍中获益。
中国也开始建立自己的区域和国际机构，与美国一起在外部观察，而不是深化对现有国家的承诺。它启动了亚洲基础设施投资银行(Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank，简称:亚投行)、新开发银行(以及巴西、俄罗斯、印度和南非)，最引人注目的是"一带一路"(Belt and Road Initiative)，这是习近平宏大的建设陆地和海上路线，将中国与世界大部分地区联系起来的宏伟愿景。这些机构和项目赋予了中国议程设置和自身的权力，同时经常偏离现有国际机构所支持的标准和价值观。北京明确指出，与美国和欧洲国家不同，中国不要求国家接受治理改革作为接受援助的条件。
与此同时，在自己的地区，北京已着手改变安全平衡，逐步改变现状，采取的措施规模小到足以避免引发美国的军事反应。在世界上最重要的水道之一的南海，中国巧妙地利用海岸警卫队的船只、合法的战争和经济胁迫来推进其主权主张。在某些情况下，它只是占领了有争议的领土或军事化的人工岛。尽管北京偶尔表现出克制和战术上的谨慎，但总体上的做法表明，中国希望建立一个现代的海洋势力范围。
2016年夏天，中国无视《联合国海洋法公约》(UN Convention on the Law of the Sea)的一项具有里程碑意义的裁决，认为中国在南中国海(South China Sea，中国称南海)的主权主张是非法的。美国官员错误地认为，压力、羞耻和对基于规则的海洋秩序的渴望的某种结合，会导致北京在一段时间内接受这种判断。相反，中国断然拒绝了。2017年7月，美国中央情报局(CIA)的一名高级分析师在美国科罗拉多州阿斯彭(Aspen)的一个安全论坛上发表讲话，他总结说，这次经历让中国领导人认识到，他们可以无视国际法，逃脱惩罚。在经济上对中国的依赖和对美国对亚洲承诺的日益担忧的影响下，该地区的国家没有像美国政策制定者预期的那样，对中国的魄力做出反击。
谈资论金
随着美国对华政策的假设开始变得越来越脆弱，美国的期望与中国现实之间的差距越来越大，华盛顿的注意力主要集中在其他地方。自2001年以来，打击圣战恐怖主义的斗争已经消耗了美国国家安全机构的注意力，使人们对中国在军事、外交和商业上取得巨大进步的时间发生的变化转移了注意力。美国总统布什最初将中国称为"战略竞争者";然而，在911恐怖袭击事件之后，他2002年的国家安全战略宣称:"世界大国发现自己与恐怖主义暴力和混乱的共同危险处于同一阵营。"在奥巴马执政期间，美国曾努力"转向"或"再平衡"，将战略注意力转向亚洲。但是，在奥巴马任期结束时，预算和人员仍然集中在其他地区——例如，在中东和东南亚地区工作的国家安全委员会工作人员的数量是中东的三倍。
这种战略上的干扰让中国有机会发挥其优势，这进一步受到了中国日益突出的观点的推动，即美国(与西方更广泛地)处于不可阻挡的迅速衰落之中。中国官员认为，美国多年来一直受到全球金融危机、阿富汗和伊拉克战争代价高昂以及华盛顿功能失调的困扰。中国领导人呼吁中国在本世纪中叶成为"综合国力和国际影响力的全球领军者"。他认为中国的发展模式是"其他国家的新选择"。
华盛顿现在正面临着现代史上最具活力和最强大的竞争对手。要想获得这一挑战，就需要放弃长期以来美国对中国的态度。特朗普政府的第一个国家安全战略通过询问美国战略的过去假设，迈出了正确的一步。但唐纳德•特朗普(Donald Trump)的许多政策——狭隘地关注双边贸易赤字、放弃多边贸易协议、质疑盟友的价值，以及对人权和外交政策的贬低——使华盛顿面临着采取一种不具竞争性的对抗手段的风险;与此同时，北京在不采取对抗措施的情况下，已经设法变得越来越有竞争力。
一个更好的方法的出发点是对美国改变中国的能力的一种新的谦卑态度。既不寻求孤立和削弱它，也不试图将其转化为更好的东西，这应该是美国在亚洲战略的目标。相反，华盛顿应该更多地关注自己的权力和行为，以及盟友和合作伙伴的权力和行为。基于对中国更现实的假设的政策，将更好地促进美国的利益，使双边关系更加可持续。实现这一目标需要付出努力，但第一步是相对简单的:承认我们的政策没有达到我们的期望。
——金科预虑 
The China Reckoning
How Beijing Defied American Expectations
The United States has always had an outsize sense of its ability to determine China's course. Again and again, its ambitions have come up short. After World War II, George Marshall, the U.S. special envoy to China, hoped to broker a peace between the Nationalists and Communists in the Chinese Civil War. During the Korean War, the Truman administration thought it could dissuade Mao Zedong's troops from crossing the Yalu River. The Johnson administration believed Beijing would ultimately circumscribe its involvement in Vietnam. In each instance, Chinese realities upset American expectations.
With U.S. President Richard Nixon's opening to China, Washington made its biggest and most optimistic bet yet. Both Nixon and Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser, assumed that rapprochement would drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow and, in time, alter China's conception of its own interests as it drew closer to the United States. In the fall of 1967, Nixon wrote in this magazine, "The world cannot be safe until China changes. Thus our aim, to the extent that we can influence events, should be to induce change." Ever since, the assumption that deepening commercial, diplomatic, and cultural ties would transform China's internal development and external behavior has been a bedrock of U.S. strategy. Even those in U.S. policy circles who were skeptical of China's intentions still shared the underlying belief that U.S. power and hegemony could readily mold China to the United States' liking.
Nearly half a century since Nixon's first steps toward rapprochement, the record is increasingly clear that Washington once again put too much faith in its power to shape China's trajectory. All sides of the policy debate erred: free traders and financiers who foresaw inevitable and increasing openness in China, integrationists who argued that Beijing's ambitions would be tamed by greater interaction with the international community, and hawks who believed that China's power would be abated by perpetual American primacy.
Neither carrots nor sticks have swayed China as predicted. Diplomatic and commercial engagement have not brought political and economic openness. Neither U.S. military power nor regional balancing has stopped Beijing from seeking to displace core components of the U.S.-led system. And the liberal international order has failed to lure or bind China as powerfully as expected. China has instead pursued its own course, belying a range of American expectations in the process.
That reality warrants a clear-eyed rethinking of the United States' approach to China. There are plenty of risks that come with such a reassessment; defenders of the current framework will warn against destabilizing the bilateral relationship or inviting a new Cold War. But building a stronger and more sustainable approach to, and relationship with, Beijing requires honesty about how many fundamental assumptions have turned out wrong. Across the ideological spectrum, we in the U.S. foreign policy community have remained deeply invested in expectations about China—about its approach to economics, domestic politics, security, and global order—even as evidence against them has accumulated. The policies built on such expectations have failed to change China in the ways we intended or hoped.
THE POWER OF THE MARKET
Greater commercial interaction with China was supposed to bring gradual but steady liberalization of the Chinese economy. U.S. President George H. W. Bush's 1990 National Security Strategy described enhanced ties with the world as "crucial to China's prospects for regaining the path of economic reform." This argument predominated for decades. It drove U.S. decisions to grant China most-favored-nation trading status in the 1990s, to support its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, to establish a high-level economic dialogue in 2006, and to negotiate a bilateral investment treaty under U.S. President Barack Obama.
Trade in goods between the United States and China exploded from less than $8 billion in 1986 to over $578 billion in 2016: more than a 30-fold increase, adjusting for inflation. Since the early years of this century, however, China's economic liberalization has stalled. Contrary to Western expectations, Beijing has doubled down on its state capitalist model even as it has gotten richer. Rather than becoming a force for greater openness, consistent growth has served to legitimize the Chinese Communist Party and its state-led economic model.
U.S. officials believed that debt, inefficiency, and the demands of a more advanced economy would necessitate further reforms. And Chinese officials recognized the problems with their approach; in 2007, Premier Wen Jiabao called the Chinese economy "unstable, unbalanced, uncoordinated, and unsustainable." But rather than opening the country up to greater competition, the Chinese Communist Party, intent on maintaining control of the economy, is instead consolidating state-owned enterprises and pursuing industrial policies (notably its "Made in China 2025" plan) that aim to promote national technology champions in critical sectors, including aerospace, biomedicine, and robotics. And despite repeated promises, Beijing has resisted pressure from Washington and elsewhere to level the playing field for foreign companies. It has restricted market access and forced non-Chinese firms to sign on to joint ventures and share technology, while funneling investment and subsidies to state-backed domestic players.
Until recently, U.S. policymakers and executives mostly acquiesced to such discrimination; the potential commercial benefits were so large that they considered it unwise to upend the relationship with protectionism or sanctions. Instead, they fought tooth and nail for small, incremental concessions. But now, what were once seen as merely the short-term frustrations of doing business with China have come to seem more harmful and permanent. The American Chamber of Commerce reported last year that eight in ten U.S. companies felt less welcome in China than in years prior, and more than 60 percent had little or no confidence that China would open its markets further over the next three years. Cooperative and voluntary mechanisms to pry open China's economy have by and large failed, including the Trump administration's newly launched Comprehensive Economic Dialogue.
THE DETERRENT OF PRIMACY
A combination of U.S. diplomacy and U.S. military power—carrots and sticks—was supposed to persuade Beijing that it was neither possible nor necessary to challenge the U.S.-led security order in Asia. Washington "strongly promot[ed] China's participation in regional security mechanisms to reassure its neighbors and assuage its own security concerns," as the Clinton administration's 1995 National Security Strategy put it, buttressed by military-to-military relations and other confidence-building measures. These modes of engagement were coupled with a "hedge"—enhanced U.S. military power in the region, supported by capable allies and partners. The effect, the thinking went, would be to allay military competition in Asia and further limit China's desire to alter the regional order. Beijing would settle for military sufficiency, building armed forces for narrow regional contingencies while devoting most of its resources to domestic needs.
The logic was not simply that China would be focused on its self-described "strategic window of opportunity" for development at home, with plenty of economic and social challenges occupying the attention of China's senior leaders. American policymakers and academics also assumed that China had learned a valuable lesson from the Soviet Union about the crippling costs of getting into an arms race with the United States. Washington could thus not only deter Chinese aggression but also—to use the Pentagon's term of art—"dissuade" China from even trying to compete. Zalmay Khalilzad, an official in the Reagan and both Bush administrations, argued that a dominant United States could "convince the Chinese leadership that a challenge would be difficult to prepare and extremely risky to pursue." Moreover, it was unclear whether China could challenge U.S. primacy even if it wanted to. Into the late 1990s, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) was considered decades behind the United States' military and those of its allies.
Against this backdrop, U.S. officials took considerable care not to stumble into a confrontation with China. The political scientist Joseph Nye explained the thinking when he led the Pentagon's Asia office during the Clinton administration: "If we treated China as an enemy, we were guaranteeing an enemy in the future. If we treated China as a friend, we could not guarantee friendship, but we could at least keep open the possibility of more benign outcomes." Soon-to-be Secretary of State Colin Powell told Congress at his confirmation hearing in January 2001, "China is not an enemy, and our challenge is to keep it that way."
Even as it began investing more of its newfound wealth in military power, the Chinese government sought to put Washington at ease, signaling continued adherence to the cautious, moderate foreign policy path set out by Deng. In 2005, the senior Communist Party official Zheng Bijian wrote in this magazine that China would never seek regional hegemony and remained committed to "a peaceful rise." In 2011, after a lively debate among China's leaders about whether it was time to shift gears, State Councilor Dai Bingguo assured the world that "peaceful development is a strategic choice China has made." Starting in 2002, the U.S. Defense Department had been producing a congressionally mandated annual report on China's military, but the consensus among senior U.S. officials was that China remained a distant and manageable challenge.
That view, however, underestimated just how simultaneously insecure and ambitious China's leadership really was. For Beijing, the United States' alliances and military presence in Asia posed unacceptable threats to China's interests in Taiwan, on the Korean Peninsula, and in the East China and South China Seas. In the words of the Peking University professor Wang Jisi, "It is strongly believed in China that . . . Washington will attempt to prevent the emerging powers, in particular China, from achieving their goals and enhancing their stature." So China started to chip away at the U.S.-led security order in Asia, developing the capabilities to deny the U.S. military access to the region and driving wedges between Washington and its allies.
Ultimately, neither U.S. military power nor American diplomatic engagement has dissuaded China from trying to build a world-class military of its own. High-tech displays of American power in Iraq and elsewhere only accelerated efforts to modernize the PLA. Chinese President Xi Jinping has launched military reforms that will make Chinese forces more lethal and more capable of projecting military power well beyond China's shores. With its third aircraft carrier reportedly under construction, advanced new military installations in the South China Sea, and its first overseas military base in Djibouti, China is on the path to becoming a military peer the likes of which the United States has not seen since the Soviet Union. China's leaders no longer repeat Deng's dictum that, to thrive, China will "hide [its] capabilities and bide [its] time." Xi declared in October 2017 that "the Chinese nation has gone from standing up, to becoming rich, to becoming strong."
THE CONSTRAINTS OF ORDER
At the end of World War II, the United States built institutions and rules that helped structure global politics and the regional dynamics in Asia. Widely accepted norms, such as the freedom of commerce and navigation, the peaceful resolution of disputes, and international cooperation on global challenges, superseded nineteenth-century spheres of influence. As a leading beneficiary of this liberal international order, the thinking went, Beijing would have a considerable stake in the order's preservation and come to see its continuation as essential to China's own progress. U.S. policy aimed to encourage Beijing's involvement by welcoming China into leading institutions and working with it on global governance and regional security.
As China joined multilateral institutions, U.S. policymakers hoped that it would learn to play by the rules and soon begin to contribute to their upkeep. In the George W. Bush administration, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick memorably called on Beijing to become "a responsible stakeholder" in the international system. From Washington's perspective, with greater power came greater obligation, especially since China had profited so handsomely from the system. As Obama emphasized, "We expect China to help uphold the very rules that have made them successful."
In certain venues, China appeared to be steadily, if unevenly, taking on this responsibility. It joined the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization in 1991, acceded to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1992, joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and took part in major diplomatic efforts, including the six-party talks and the P5+1 negotiations to deal with nuclear weapons programs in North Korea and Iran, respectively. It also became a major contributor to UN counterpiracy and peacekeeping operations.
Yet Beijing remained threatened by other central elements of the U.S.-led order—and has increasingly sought to displace them. That has been especially true of what it sees as uninvited violations of national sovereignty by the United States and its partners, whether in the form of economic sanctions or military action. Liberal norms regarding the international community's right or responsibility to intervene to protect people from human rights violations, for example, have run headlong into China's paramount priority of defending its authoritarian system from foreign interference. With a few notable exceptions, China has been busy watering down multilateral sanctions, shielding regimes from Western opprobrium, and making common cause with Russia to block the UN Security Council from authorizing interventionist actions. A number of nondemocratic governments—in Sudan, Syria, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere—have benefited from such obstruction.
China has also set out to build its own set of regional and international institutions—with the United States on the outside looking in—rather than deepening its commitment to the existing ones. It has launched the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank (along with Brazil, Russia, India, and South Africa), and, most notably, the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi's grandiose vision for building land and maritime routes to connect China to much of the world. These institutions and programs have given China agenda-setting and convening power of its own, while often departing from the standards and values upheld by existing international institutions. Beijing explicitly differentiates its approach to development by noting that, unlike the United States and European powers, it does not demand that countries accept governance reforms as a condition of receiving aid.
In its own region, meanwhile, Beijing has set out to change the security balance, incrementally altering the status quo with steps just small enough to avoid provoking a military response from the United States. In the South China Sea, one of the world's most important waterways, China has deftly used coast guard vessels, legal warfare, and economic coercion to advance its sovereignty claims. In some cases, it has simply seized contested territory or militarized artificial islands. While Beijing has occasionally shown restraint and tactical caution, the overall approach indicates its desire to create a modern maritime sphere of influence.
In the summer of 2016, China ignored a landmark ruling by a tribunal under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, which held that China's expansive claims in the South China Sea were illegal under international law. U.S. officials wrongly assumed that some combination of pressure, shame, and its own desire for a rules-based maritime order would cause Beijing, over time, to accept the judgment. Instead, China has rejected it outright. Speaking to a security forum in Aspen, Colorado, a year after the ruling, in July 2017, a senior analyst from the CIA concluded that the experience had taught China's leaders "that they can defy international law and get away with it." Countries in the region, swayed by both their economic dependence on China and growing concerns about the United States' commitment to Asia, have failed to push back against Chinese assertiveness as much as U.S. policymakers expected they would.
TAKING STOCK
As the assumptions driving U.S. China policy have started to look increasingly tenuous, and the gap between American expectations and Chinese realities has grown, Washington has been largely focused elsewhere. Since 2001, the fight against jihadist terrorism has consumed the U.S. national security apparatus, diverting attention from the changes in Asia at exactly the time China was making enormous military, diplomatic, and commercial strides. U.S. President George W. Bush initially referred to China as a "strategic competitor"; in the wake of the September 11 attacks, however, his 2002 National Security Strategy declared, "The world's great powers find ourselves on the same side—united by common dangers of terrorist violence and chaos." During the Obama administration, there was an effort to "pivot," or "rebalance," strategic attention to Asia. But at the end of Obama's time in office, budgets and personnel remained focused on other regions—there were, for example, three times as many National Security Council staffers working on the Middle East as on all of East and Southeast Asia
This strategic distraction has given China the opportunity to press its advantages, further motivated by the increasingly prominent view in China that the United States (along with the West more broadly) is in inexorable and rapid decline. Chinese officials see a United States that has been hobbled for years by the global financial crisis, its costly war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and deepening dysfunction in Washington. Xi has called on China to become "a global leader in terms of comprehensive national strength and international influence" by midcentury. He touts China's development model as a "new option for other countries."
Washington now faces its most dynamic and formidable competitor in modern history. Getting this challenge right will require doing away with the hopeful thinking that has long characterized the United States' approach to China. The Trump administration's first National Security Strategy took a step in the right direction by interrogating past assumptions in U.S. strategy. But many of Donald Trump's policies—a narrow focus on bilateral trade deficits, the abandonment of multilateral trade deals, the questioning of the value of alliances, and the downgrading of human rights and diplomacy—have put Washington at risk of adopting an approach that is confrontational without being competitive; Beijing, meanwhile, has managed to be increasingly competitive without being confrontational.
The starting point for a better approach is a new degree of humility about the United States' ability to change China. Neither seeking to isolate and weaken it nor trying to transform it for the better should be the lodestar of U.S. strategy in Asia. Washington should instead focus more on its own power and behavior, and the power and behavior of its allies and partners. Basing policy on a more realistic set of assumptions about China would better advance U.S. interests and put the bilateral relationship on a more sustainable footing. Getting there will take work, but the first step is relatively straightforward: acknowledging just how much our policy has fallen short of our aspirations.
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