A war with a nuclear armed China is an option no sane person would even contemplate.

America’s current policy of “strategic and systemic competition” with China is potentially equally dangerous. It’s an adversarial relationship marred with inevitable security errors and miscalculations that could instantly lead to an irretrievably MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) outcome.

The alternative to that could be peaceful and strictly business relations while exploring the possibilities of an acceptable modus vivendi. All essential U.S.-China points of contention, directly impinging on national security, should be on the table, while applying the rules of the condominium we share.

The rules in question are set out in the Charter “we the peoples of the United Nations” signed in San Francisco, CA, on June 26, 1945.

Most people will be surprised to see that the U.S. has moved quite a bit along that road in its relations with China.

U.S. has set the stage for constructive China ties

One can see that from recent statements of the U.S. President Joe Biden. Those statements are extensively quoted by a Chinese newspaper from a stenogram of the U.S.-China summit in Bali, Indonesia, during the G20 meeting on November 14, 2022.

While congratulating China’s President Xi Jinping on his re-election for another term of office, Biden emphasized that “the United States and China have a responsibility to keep a constructive relationship,” and that “a stable and prosperous China is good for the United States and the world.” He went on to say that “the United States respects China’s system, and does not seek to change it.”

On the issue of Taiwan, Biden said that the United States “does not support Taiwan independence,” “two Chinas or one China, one Taiwan.”

Talking about bilateral trade and broader issues, Biden told Xi that he does not want a “decoupling from China to halt China's economic development, or to contain China.”

Biden also said that the U.S. is not seeking “a new Cold War,” nor is it trying “to revitalize alliances against China.”

And in an apparent attempt to sum it all up, Biden told Xi that they had a “a shared responsibility to show the world that they can manage their differences,” and that they can “avoid and prevent misunderstandings and misperceptions” in order to keep “fierce competition from veering into confrontation or conflict.”

There is nothing there that China should not like. And neither is there any hint in Biden’s statements to justify China’s recurring complaints of Washington’s “self-serving rules being thrust on the rest of the world.”

Beijing’s response is that Washington cannot be trusted because it “says one thing and then does the contrary.”

Business is a backbone of U.S. China relations

Taiwan, according to Beijing, is a case in point. That province of China is part of one-China policy Washington pledged to follow. In spite of that, U.S. continues to deal with Taiwan, including in matters of arms sales, as an independent state. That, for China, is an unacceptable breach of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Beijing also takes issue with U.S. anti-Chinese alliances such as AUKUS (a trilateral security pact of Australia, United Kingdom and United States) and QUAD (Quadrilateral Dialogue of Australia, India, Japan and United States) committed to support an open Indo-Pacific region.

China was comforted in that view when Biden dispatched to Tokyo las week his national security adviser to strengthen an anti-Chinese alliance with Japan and South Korea, while the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken was in Beijing to mend U.S.-China relations.

On trade issues, the new buzzword is “de-risking” business transactions with China. That apparently sounds better than “decoupling” that would be unacceptable to U.S. business communities. Beijing sees that as an effort to divert trade and investments away from China.   

The U.S. is playing a losing game. America’s corporate world does not want to abandon its hard-won market shares and lucrative deals in a stable and rapidly developing Chinese economy. Last year, American direct investments in China rose at an annual rate of 12% to $190 billion, and the bilateral trade came in at $690.6 billion, a 5.2% increase from 2021.

Washington cannot stop that. What it can, and should, do is urgently correct an excessively unbalanced U.S.-China trade. The U.S. trade deficit with China rose last year 8.3% to $382.9 billion on stagnant American merchandise sales to China of $153.8 billion.

So, forget distractions from bread-and-butter issues. The U.S. cannot go to war with China. And the U.S. needs no alliances to defend itself if its nuclear triad is second to none.

Remember, the economic competition with China is the battle we cannot afford to lose. But that’s what we are losing -- big time. Our exports to China are less than a third of what the Chinese are selling on U.S. markets, and our structurally unbalanced economy is recession bound while China steadily advances along a 5%-6% growth path.