The U.S. and China Remain on an Irretrievable Collision Course

Dr Ivanovitch - MSI Global
Dr. Michael Ivanovitch

For the United States, incendiary encounters of American and Chinese naval assets in the South China Sea are “freedom of navigation operations” in international waters, but for Beijing they are unacceptable violations of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Diplomacy has failed to resolve the issue of China’s contested maritime borders, forcing Washington to seek crisis management channels to prevent “errors and miscalculations” in what Beijing considers hostile military actions.

Each of those cases are taken by Beijing as acts of war that end up, according to China, by “expelling” American Navy intrusions.

That is the actual state of U.S.-China affairs – a deeply rooted mistrust and hostility going back to the times when Mao Zedong negotiated with Nixon the Shanghai Communiqué of February 27, 1972, and Deng Xiaoping’s fuming that America was an insincere partner coming up with Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) of April 10, 1979 -- after he agreed with Carter to establish diplomatic ties on January 1, 1979.

A weird U.S.-China dialog

Today, that hostility and an apparently total lack of confidence seem like a surreal misunderstanding, or, to put it more simply, like talking past each other.

A good example of that is the Biden-Xi meeting during the G20 summit in Indonesia last November.

China’s president told Biden that he wanted a respectful and peaceful “win-win cooperation,” not a winner-take-all competition. And, for him, Taiwan was a “bedrock” of U.S-China relations, an internal matter for China, and a red line not to be crossed.

Biden responded that the U.S. would “compete vigorously” with China by building strength at home and relying on allies and partners abroad. He offered to work with China on climate, economy, health and food security. He accepted One-China policy, but objected to unilateral changes of Taiwan’s status quo, and to coercive actions against Taiwan. Biden was concerned about Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong, and China’s human rights in general.

Those are worlds apart. There is no scope for “win-win cooperation,” productive working groups and diplomacy. It’s all about things China considers its red lines and domestic issues. That’s particularly the case of Taiwan, where there is a fundamental divergence between Washington’s “One-China policy” and Beijing’s “One-China principle.”  

China, therefore, would do well to re-read carefully America’s Taiwan Relations Act. Beijing might also wish to look again at the “three joint communiqués” it constantly takes as a reference to Washington’s alleged violations.

The first thing to note is that the TRA established the American Institute in Taiwan (AIT) as a nonprofit corporation in the District of Columbia. AIT is a de facto embassy that will be treated by the U.S. as a quasi-sovereign entity of a foreign government. Indeed, from Washington’s point of view the lack of diplomatic relations has no effect.

Second, the U.S. has never recognized China’s sovereignty over Taiwan. Washington has acknowledged, but not accepted or recognized, Beijing’s sovereignty over Taiwan.

West will have to compete with China

Third, the TRA does not offer a U.S. military defense to Taiwan. But it does not rule it out either, because the TRA says that the U.S. will make available defensive weapons to Taiwan, and "shall maintain the capacity to resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan."

Fourth, China can dismiss the TRA is an unacceptable interference into its domestic affairs, but the TRA has been upheld by several U.S. legislative and executive decisions since 1982 as a cornerstone of the U.S.-Taiwan relations.

Those considerations put a broader and a more complete perspective on the key issue in U.S.-China relations. And they also reflect different stages of China’s post-WWII history.

The Deng’s period since late 1970s was dominated by development diplomacy that put off contentious territorial issues for the sake of foreign investments and modernization of China’s smokestack industries. That policy was pursued until early 2000s.

Today’s China is a different country – the world’s second-largest economy, with an IT-driven manufacturing, modern infrastructure, a middle class of 800 million, eradicated poverty and accelerating urbanization.  

That China will not compromise on core national interests, which include its nine-dash line maritime borders in the South China Sea, unification with Taiwan, and the global projection of its economic and financial power.

The U.S., E.U. and Japan will have to compete. The wild idea of smashing Russia to serve as a dress rehearsal for assaulting China is a tragic and desperate lunacy.  

The West should have no illusions. China has learned from errors of Russia’s delayed action, and it has also had the time to take a good look at its adversaries.