Despite US complaints that engagement with Beijing failed to lead to political liberalization in the country, the increasing confrontational approach from the United States when dealing with China came as a response to growing Chinese expansion globally, experts told Sputnik
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 05th July, 2019) Despite US complaints that engagement with Beijing failed to lead to political liberalization in the country, the increasing confrontational approach from the United States when dealing with China came as a response to growing Chinese expansion globally, experts told Sputnik.A group of about 100 top US academics, foreign policy experts and business leaders released an open letter through The Washington Post on Wednesday, calling on the Trump administration to continue engagement with China and end its current hostile stance against Beijing.
"Ultimately, the United States' interests are best served by restoring its ability to compete effectively in a changing world and by working alongside other nations and international organizations rather than by promoting a counterproductive effort to undermine and contain China's engagement with the world," the letter said, as cited by the newspaper.
The letter also rebuked a common belief that US President Donald Trump's adverse approach against China was a consensus supported by politicians from both the Republican Party and the Democratic Party in Washington.
"We believe that the large number of signers of this open letter clearly indicates that there is no single Washington consensus endorsing an overall adversarial stance toward China, as some believe exists," the letter stated.
When the Trump administration launched a series of hawkish policies against Beijing, including the steep tariffs on Chinese goods and export bans on Chinese tech giant Huawei, the efforts have generally been viewed as a bipartisan consensus on how to handle an increasingly assertive China. Despite disagreements on whether specific methods such as the punitive tariffs were the best option, US politicians seemed to have agreed to move away from the policy focusing on engagement with China since the establishment of bilateral diplomatic relations in 1979.
Although the engagement policy from the Unite States helped facilitate economic growth in China in the past few decades, Beijing failed to move toward political liberalization or democratization as Washington hoped for. The authoritarian nature of China's political system has always been cited by US officials as the reason behind aggressive Chinese behaviors globally and Beijing's refusal to adhere to US-dominated international norms.
However, Chinese political analysts argued that Beijing's increasingly assertive presence globally was the key reason behind growing hostility from the United States, as US politicians have little interests in safeguarding the civil liberties and political freedom of ordinary people in China.
"Based on our observations over the years, Beijing's actions overseas or on the global stage were the most important reason that could trigger those US officials calling for more aggressive policies against China. They view such actions as a challenge or a threat from China. The human rights conditions or Beijing's policies on ethnic minorities are just something they have to mention. I think China's external actions were the key reason [for US hostility], not domestic Chinese policies," Ding Xueliang, director of the Institute for China's Overseas Interests, Shenzhen University, told Sputnik.
Professor Ding suggested the open letter released on Wednesday was not enough to challenge Trump's hostile stance against China, as this group of US experts failed to present new tactics on how to deal with Beijing.
"The engagement with Beijing did not meet the target the United States had hoped for. This narrative was widely accepted not only in the United States, but also in Europe, in Japan or other Asian countries. This letter showed us that such consensus only represented views of the majority. But the letter basically repeated the previous argument that engagement could help boost political openness in China. That's why we had hoped they could present a new point of view. Repeating the old arguments is not enough to challenge Trump's current policies, not to mention trying to change them," he said.
In the open letter, US scholars continued to express hopes for more open-minded Chinese officials.
"Although its rapid economic and military growth has led Beijing toward a more assertive international role, many Chinese officials and other elites know that a moderate, pragmatic and genuinely cooperative approach with the West serves China's interests," they said.
To the disappointment of US policy makers, integration into the global economy and a booming middle class failed to promote democratic reforms in China. If the US engagement policy successfully turned China into a modern democracy, would Washington still be on a collision course with Beijing, which could still challenge US dominance globally because of its growing economic strength?
If China became a modern democracy, the United States would adapt a completely different approach in resolving the conflicts with Beijing, Professor Ding argued.
"Since the end of World War II, countries with similar political systems have not engaged in a hot war [military conflicts] or a cold war. For a country with a similar political system as the United States, no matter how hard they fight, they would still sit down to negotiate under a procedure or a value system both sides agree upon. That's also why the United States began to understand in recent years that it is impossible for it to resolve similar issues through a common value system with the People's Republic of China," he said.
The expert pointed out that a potential future rivalry between a rising India, which is modern democracy, and the United States would probably look completely different from the clashes between Beijing and Washington today.
Other political analysts pointed out that the United States had never been involved in a war against another country that had a similar modern democratic political system.
"This can be explained by the democratic peace theory popular among scholars focusing on international relations. The theory believes democracies would not engage in wars with one another. The United States did involve in many wars in recent years. But those wars were mostly against non-democratic countries. No matter it was against Germany or Japan during World War II, or against North Korea, Vietnam or Iraq. Those countries were all non-democratic countries," Yen Chenshen, a researcher at the Institute of International relations, National Chengchi University in Taiwan, told Sputnik.
After more than 40 years of economic reforms, China has become the second largest economy in the world and living standards for ordinary Chinese improved significantly during the same period. However, the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) grip on power also appeared to be stronger than ever, especially after Chinese President Xi Jinping took office in early 2013. To strengthen the CCP's rule in the country, Xi has introduced a series of measures such as heavy handed crackdown on dissent, arrests of civil rights lawyers and tightening censorship online.
Instead of becoming more like a modern democracy as many US policy makers had hoped, China's rapid economic growth failed to stimulate political liberalization in the country.
Professor Yen explained that the CCP had been trying to defend its legitimacy by stressing on the efficiency of its development model.
"China's rapid economic growth offered the CCP a chance to present a narrative:' I'm efficient. That's why we can develop so fast.' People are still enjoying the rapid economic growth. But once the economic growth slows and China becomes a post-industrialized country, people would start to pay more attention to the quality of life and certain values. The CCP has to try to address more social issues. So far, Beijing is still relying on its efficiency in handling resolving such issues," he said.
Nevertheless, the expert believes it is impossible for Beijing to control the Internet completely, as different social grievances continued to be exposed on the heavily censored social media in China.
