By Robert Daly
What’s needed now is long-term messaging at a short summit.
When U.S. President Barack Obama and Chinese President Xi Jinping meet in Washington next week, the dynamics of the bilateral relationship will be more perilous than at any summit in the past thirty-six years.
Their challenge, during and after their meetings, is to steer U.S.-China strategic competition onto a manageable course despite disparate interests and antagonistic attitudes in both countries. Many Americans now see the PRC as an expansionist bully pushing dubious territorial claims, as a nation that has grown strong through theft of intellectual property, and as a pre-modern state run by a brutal, xenophobic regime. Americans worry, moreover, that China intends to weaken U.S. alliances and push the U.S. out of the Western Pacific. Chinese see the United States as a declining hegemon whose true intention is to contain China’s just rise by manipulating an unfair global system.
The list of grievances is long, serious, and growing. Both nations claim the moral high ground and both seem to believe that all fault lies on the opposite side of the Pacific. Worse, each side is increasingly prone to see the other not only as untrustworthy, but as irrational. Americans are repulsed by China’s extreme nationalism and by an ideological crackdown that smacks of Maoism; China sees America’s determination to retain its past primacy in a rapidly changing world as not only doomed, but dangerous. Worsening mutual perceptions belie ongoing engagement between U.S. and Chinese corporations, NGOs, and academic institutions that is deep and rich and which has benefitted both nations for decades.
The problem is not that the U.S. and China don’t understand each other; we understand all too well that our histories, values, fears, and ambitions render some of our core interests incompatible. No one expects a brief summit to alter this dynamic. Even if their meetings bring progress in individual issue areas, Obama and Xi can’t change the fact that the United States and China are now long-term strategic competitors.
Their goal, therefore, should be to set an inevitable competition on a sustainable course.
Read the full story at The Diplomat