The end of the old regime in the Sino-American relationship

In their speeches to the Republican National Convention, President Trump and Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) marked the end of the line for the old regime in the U.S. relationship with the People’s Republic of China. Momentum had been building over the past year, marked by significant speeches on U.S.-China relations by Vice President Mike Pence, national security advisor Robert O’Brien, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Attorney General William Barr and FBI Director Christopher Wray, among others.

After decades of neglect, insouciance and willful ignorance, senior U.S. leadership now understands the threat that China poses to U.S. interests. The coronavirus pandemic may have accomplished the same for many Americans, who realize now that what happens in China does not stay in China. The fact that personal protective equipment, many medicines and medical ingredients are made in China shockingly revealed that a dependence on China is too costly for Americans — those impacted by the virus, but also those hurt by the damaged U.S. economy.

With the Trump administration and shifting popular opinion toward the Chinese government, we appear to have reached an inflection point. It is about time. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has seen the U.S. as its principal enemy since the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991. For decades, China’s leaders concealed this while China’s power grew. The CCP’s attacks on American global interests, including its allies, have increased steadily since the 2008 financial crisis.

America’s elite simply do not want to recognize or accept that the old regime is gone. A Biden administration might resist the CCP in its rhetoric but, on a substantive level, it likely would be tepid and would hope to return to the period before Trump’s election, in which access by Western businesses to China’s market, and thus lucre, was traded for the transfer of industries, wealth and knowledge to China. American CEOs and financiers profited from this sordid exchange. Through their actions, they exposed the U.S. to enormous vulnerabilities that were present even before the pandemic landed a body blow against America. Until 2016, few said anything to stop China from looting the intellectual capital and property of the West with the help of these elites.

From Beijing’s perspective, China’s leaders must be secretly amazed that they got away with it for so long. At the same time, they must be rather pleased that their strategy to promote threat deflation in the West worked for three decades. And now they must be concerned that their rapid economic growth and expansion of diplomatic, military and technological power has been noticed by the one power that may be able to stop them.

There can be no returning to the world that defined international politics from 1989 to 2016. What the new period will bring is clear only in broad strokes, but it means greater security competition between the United States and its allies, and greater friction between China and its neighbors. This is for three reasons concerning the nature of international politics.

First, like most rising great powers in history, for China more power and wealth correlates to greater coercive diplomacy, aggression and demands. China is a great power perhaps on its way to becoming a superpower — and it is emboldened. Beijing wants change, right now. Every day, China is causing alterations to the landscape of global politics. That is a recipe for trouble for its neighbors and all who do not share its vision for the future.

Second, under party chairman Xi Jinping’s rule, the CCP’s aggressive behavior will continue. Xi inherited from his predecessor, Hu Jintao, a wealthier, more powerful and more assertive China, but he has taken China’s aggression to new levels, equaling or even surpassing Mao Zedong’s conception. Like Mao and Deng Xiaoping, Xi will remain in power until he dies, is incapacitated or is overthrown.

Third, engagement with the West has reached diminishing returns for China. The CCP has stolen, extorted or enticed knowledge and intellectual property from the U.S., but China’s own economy and technology now can, or soon will, sustain it and, more importantly, may allow China to lead in technology and artificial intelligence. When China no longer needs the West for its economy and technology, CCP attitude and policies toward the West likely will become more ruthless. Even if Washington wants to return to the old regime, Beijing does not.

So, the old regime is gone, and we now live in the world of its consequences. These consequences are challenging for the United States, and it compels the question of how the U.S. could let this happen.

Bradley A. Thayer is a professor of political science at the University of Texas, San Antonio, and the co-author of “How China Sees the World: Han-Centrism and the Balance of Power in International Politics.”