Fair analysis on US-China ties

By Tom Plate

An important new report out of the world-famous policy sweatshop known as the RAND Corporation (a major U.S. bicoastal think tank) at least tries for a fair and sensible analysis. For this analysis alone, given the almost rancid mood in the United States about China these days (and to some extent, because of the COVID-19 pandemic, lots of things Chinese), the government of Xi Jinping is not going to get a fairer shake from America's political-military establishment than RAND'S “China's Quest for Global Supremacy.”

The background is this situation: during the Group of Seven (G7) talkathon (the core members of which are the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and host the United Kingdom), President Joseph Biden went on and on about China as a global threat, a human rights violator, etc. ― the familiar anti-China litany that the prior Trump administration hyped and now Biden foreign policy is seeking to carry forward.

There's absolutely no reason to believe that the oft-grumpy leader of today's China will be any more receptive to Western sermonizing ― sincere or not. But Biden's gambit to look as tough as Trump might well backfire and so bring a small smile to Xi's face. The fact is that not all members of the G7 are gung-ho over the moralism.

Even Japan, for all its long enmity with Beijing, has reservations over the tactic ― and perhaps even a smidgen of sympathy for any Asian country, even “barbarian” China, that is patronized by the West. Backing itself into a policy corner with its own stale thinking, Washington at some point will need to reel out a more cosmopolitan line if it wants to keep the “good guys” together. But if Biden's grandstanding manages to divide the G7 over China, the advantage will be with China's Xi.

As an alternative, this is where the aforementioned RAND report (subtitled, “An Analysis of Chinese International and Defense Strategies to Outcompete the United States”) helps. It takes a holistic view of the China question and offers a subtle lifeline that might help us with our China obsession.

With a sure team grip, the report's authors, Timothy R. Heath, Derek Grossman and Asha Clark, avoid any notion of China as the second coming of Confucius (disguised as an aircraft carrier) but insist on the crucial distinction between what the Chinese truly desire, versus what the U.S. imagines that they want.

In its final pages, they remind the reader of “the importance of the China Dream as an end point for all strategy and policy,” adding that “any posited strategy for U.S. competition … should be nested within the broader strategy to achieve national rejuvenation.” In other words, before anything else, China is out for itself, not out to get the U.S.

Beijing knows it still has a long way to go and has little time for World War III in the Pacific. The U.S., the superpower leader of global capitalism, is anything but dead yet. According to the RAND report, “China's ability to overtake the U.S. by a decisive margin is doubtful. Despite enjoying faster growth than the U.S. in past decades, China is well into an economic deceleration.”

Even if the Chinese economy rebounds brilliantly (and who knows?), the RAND analysts posit the view that taking on the U.S. directly here and there will prove tough to sustain: “A principal risk is that a Beijing desperate to gain an edge by weakening the U.S. in some manner may drive relations into open hostility, dramatically increasing the prospect of conflict.” Even the most cunning wolf-warrior would be biting off more than it can realistically chew by trying to eat Uncle Sam's lunch.

Better for both competing sides to “be like water” (recycling Bruce Lee's famous words) and work around the potential war issues: “To control risks, both sides may find it imperative to seek out ways of stabilizing the competition, perhaps in part through senior-level engagements and other cooperative endeavors.”

Today's modern RAND, although often Pentagon-funded, as with this report, is serious about its social science methodology and institutionally abhors purely magical (or PR) thinking. That trait you can admire even if you're no big fan of its funders.

None of what the RAND Three propose will come cheap, as they admit: “DoD [Dept. of Defense] may need to invest in maintaining a significant presence in the Middle East and Africa to complement the competition in the Indo-Pacific.” But what about America's battered infrastructures, shameful schools and low-income housing crisis and growing homeless populations? “The derivation of a Chinese strategy can, hopefully, provide a useful tool for that important task,” the authors write.

That's a quaint way of saying, let's keep the China challenge in proportion and not go off the deep expenditure end because, after all, “Which side can build the more technologically innovative and prosperous economy, flourishing and well-governed society ― and durable and responsive politics ― will likely be the side to gain a decisive advantage in competition.”

To be sure, no RAND report would ever be the first to conclude that pursuing both ― having an innovative, flourishing economy and a well-governed, democratic society ― might well prove beyond the national pocketbook. Nor would Xi's think-tankers either, we presume. My view is that indeed, regardless, there will emerge another way to achieve both.

Professor Tom Plate (platecolumn@gmail.com) is Loyola Marymount University's distinguished scholar of Asian and Pacific Affairs and the Pacific Century Institute's vice-president. The original version of this column appeared in the South China Morning Post, where Plate is a regular contributor. The views expressed in the article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.