When, in an effort to stabilize relations with China, US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken visited Beijing recently, many of the issues he discussed with Chinese President Xi Jinping were highly contentious. Blinken, for example, warned China against providing material and technology to aid Russia in its war against Ukraine, and opposed China's territorial claims in the South China Sea and harassment of the Philippines (a US ally). Other disputes concerned the interpretation of the US "one China" policy towards Taiwan and US trade and export controls on the flow of technology to China.
Around the same time, I was visiting Beijing as the chairman of the China-US "two-track dialogue," where citizens in communication with their governments can meet and speak for themselves. Since such conversations are informal, they can sometimes be more honest. That was certainly the case this time as well, when a delegation of the Aspen Strategic Group met with a group assembled by the influential Central Party School in Beijing. It is the sixth such meeting between the two institutions in the past decade.
As expected, the Americans supported Blinken's statements on controversial issues, while the Chinese echoed their government's views. As one retired Chinese general warned, "Taiwan is at the heart of our core issues."
The situation, however, became more interesting when the participants began to discuss areas of possible cooperation. The change in American policy - the transition from interaction with China to a strategy of competing with the great powers - does not exclude the possibility of cooperation in some areas. As part of the discussion, we used the analogy of a football game: two teams fight against each other, but they shoot the ball, not the opponent, and everyone plays according to the rules inside the white lines.
Speaking in metaphors, some Chinese have expressed concern that the US emphasis on creating "security barriers" in relations between the two countries has become akin to putting on seat belts in a car to increase speed. However, most participants agreed that avoiding collisions was the primary goal. In this regard, we have identified seven potential areas of cooperation.
The first and most obvious is climate change, which threatens both countries. Although it continues to build coal-fired power plants, China is also rapidly increasing its share of renewable energy sources and plans to reach peak carbon dioxide emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. We called for those deadlines to be accelerated and to that end expand scientific exchange.
Another direction is global healthcare. When talking about a new pandemic, scientists say that the question should not be asked "if" but "when". Both governments have mishandled the covid-19 pandemic, resulting in millions of deaths. But instead of arguing and pointing fingers at each other, we proposed to analyze how our scientific collaboration helped to slow the spread of SARS in 2003 and Ebola in 2014 and how these results could be used in the future.
As for nuclear weapons, the Chinese have defended their rapid build-up of their arsenal by arguing that ICBMs are more accurate and that the vulnerability of submarines could make them unable to respond if struck first. The Chinese have repeated the usual arguments against arms control restrictions until their arsenals match those of the US and Russia. They expressed, however, a willingness to discuss nuclear doctrines, concepts and strategic stability, as well as non-proliferation and difficult issues such as North Korea and Iran. These are two areas in which America and China have previously cooperated.
The fourth issue was artificial intelligence. Last fall, Xi and US President Joe Biden agreed in San Francisco to start talks on the security of artificial intelligence, but the two governments have not yet made significant progress on this issue. Our group agreed that this issue also requires discussions behind closed doors, especially when it comes to military applications of the technology. A retired Chinese general said arms control was unlikely, but there was a good chance work could be done to reach a mutual understanding of concepts and doctrines, as well as to define exactly what it means to maintain human control.
On the economy, both sides agree that bilateral trade is mutually beneficial, but the Chinese side has complained about US export controls on advanced types of semiconductors. America justifies these measures on security grounds, but the Chinese believe that such steps are designed to curb their country's economic growth. As National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan defined the US approach as building a "high fence around a small yard", we pointed out that these measures affect only a small part of our total semiconductor trade.
The issue of China's surplus in industrial production, fueled by government subsidies, proved more difficult. The country's economic growth has slowed, but instead of measures to stimulate domestic consumption, China is trying to deal with current problems by increasing exports (as it has done before). We pointed out that the world has changed since the "China shock" at the beginning of the century.
But we still did not support the idea of severing ties, which would be bad for both sides, but we agreed that economic issues should be divided into three groups. At one end are the security issues on which we have agreed to disagree. At the other end is normal trade in goods and services, in which we are willing to respect the rules of international trade. And in the middle, where questions about subsidies and overcapacity arise, we would be willing to negotiate on a case-by-case basis.
Our last topic was about people-to-people contacts, which were severely damaged by the three-year restrictions due to covid-19 and the deterioration of political relations. Today, fewer than a thousand American students study in China, while about 289.000 Chinese study at American universities (although this figure is almost a quarter less than the previous peak). Journalists are facing tightening visa restrictions in China, and academics and scholars on both sides are reporting on increased scrutiny by immigration officials. None of this helps restore a sense of mutual understanding.
At this moment, in the period of competition between the great powers of the USA and China, we should not expect a return to the strategy of interaction that marked the beginning of this century. But it is in the interests of both the US and China to avoid conflict and identify areas of cooperation where possible.
The author is a professor emeritus at Harvard University
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2024. (translation: NR)
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