Chapter 4: Trump and the U.S.-China Military Relations
4.4 Impacts of U.S.-China Contentions
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address the specific issues of foreign interference. China’s international strategy is prompting closer coordination and a real expansion of intelligence sharing.
To discuss China’s foreign activities in the past years, talks have been held between diplomats, intelligence officials and heads of government. For example, on October 4, 2018, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence at the Hudson Institute in Washington accused Beijing of meddling in the domestic arena by “rewarding or coercing American businesses, movie studios, universities, think tanks, scholars, journalists and local, state and federal officials.”60
Although U.S. President Trump signaled that he is prepared to fight against China alone, his government members are working behind the scenes to bring the coalition together to counter Beijing.61 The strengthening of the five-eye network will be another blow to China’s hopes of convincing European countries to distance themselves from Washington and move closer to Beijing.
4.4 Impacts of U.S.-China Contentions U.S. public opinion about China
As mentioned above, it is believed that there was a misunderstanding buried in the theorizing that globalization was spreading Western values.62 In fact, the assumption that
“economic growth would inevitably—and fairly swiftly—lead to democratization” is not working; on the contrary, China has tightened its grip on the government, party, and society.
60 Deb Riechmann and Zeke Miller, “Vice President Pence accuses China of meddling in US,” October 5, 2018, https://www.apnews.com/8460ecc6a3c74765b65107d26ca62ea2.
61 Noah Barkin, “Exclusive: Five Eyes intelligence alliance builds coalition to counter China,” October 12, 2018,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-fiveeyes/exclusive-five-eyes-intelligence-alliance-builds-coalition-to -counter-china-idUSKCN1MM0GH.
62 James M. McCormick, The Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy: Insights and Evidence, (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2018), 51.
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Reflecting on the failure of the assumption, favorable American public opinion toward China begins to descend. Unfavorable public opinion toward China began to climb from President Obama’s second term. According to a survey on U.S. public opinion towards the PRC by the Pew Research Center published on August 28, 2018, Trump administration’s rhetoric and policy on public opinion toward China reveals the negative impact.63
Figure 94.1. American Attitude Toward China. Pew Research Center, accessed March 25, 2019,
https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2018/08/28/as-trade-tensions-rise-fewer-americans-see-china-favorably/.
As the survey revealed, most Americans are far more worried about China’s economic growth than its military prowess. Compared to only 29 percent who believe “China’s military strength” is more of a concern, the Pew Center finds, “Nearly six-in-ten Americans (58%) believe China’s economic power is the greater threat.”
63 Shannon Tiezzi, “Is the Trade War Impacting US Views of China?” The Diplomat, August 29, 2018, accessed September 26, 2018,
https://thediplomat.com/2018/08/is-the-trade-war-impacting-us-views-of-china/.
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At least three specific issues in the U.S.-China relationship derived from the public concern on the Chinese economic threat. The two issues most commonly rated as a “very serious” threat are Chinese holdings of U.S. debt and cyber-attacks from China – at 62 percent and 58 percent, respectively. The third issue is “The loss of U.S. jobs to China.” 51 percent of respondents says it is “very serious” problems.
On March 22, 2019, a most distinctive movement was borne out of the concern about the rule of China’s Communist Party. “A distinguished team of China experts, national security practitioners, business leaders, human rights and religious freedom activities, and others will launch next week the “Committee on the Present Danger: China” (CPDC) to reprise a critically important role played by an earlier incarnation of such a group during the darkest days of the Cold War.”64 “The CPDC exists on the premise that China currently poses a variety of threats to the rest of the world, which are described by the advisory as
“existential” and “ideological” in nature.”65 The organization of the CPDC manifests the belief of American elite in the approaching threats of Chinese hegemony.
Chinese Public Opinion About the U.S.
In mainland China, elite Chinese generally believe that China significantly differs from the United States in term of historic experiences, cultural traditions, and ideologies, which make China impossible to embrace the U.S.-dominated international system without any disagreement. In their minds, they all are longing for China to continue being successful and look forward to the sooner coming of the date when no country could ever neglect Chinese
64 Evelyn Cheng, “China’s Xi is Delivering a Speech that Could Have Major Consequences for the Trade War,” CNBC, December 17, 2018,
2018http://bbs.creaders.net/life/bbsviewer.php?trd_id=1393329&blog_id=344288.
65 “Group Revives Cold War-era Committee to Address Chinese Threat,
https://www.chinaaid.org/2019/03/group-revives-cold-war-era-committee-to.html.
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experiences, thought and ideologies. As Niu Xinchun, the Director of Institute of Middle East Studies, China Institute of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), said, “China should engage in theory building based on its successful experiences, making contributions to the construction of a new international ideological system.”66 His words can be simply translated into the plain English as, “The Chinese have the final say!” The connotation of the words implies that China will not bow to any hegemony and will secure its own hegemonic position sooner or later.
As for ordinary Chinese people’s thinking about the U.S. can be considered from two perspectives. Most people are closely following the propaganda launched by the Chinese government against President Trump. They usually show confidence of Chinese Communist Party’s negotiation strategies, are optimistic with the developments, and take pride of Chinese national glory.
Some people, especially those who have some international contacts, tend to think that China may not have more advantages in a trade war and will suffer bigger losses than the U.S. because they have knowledge of the fact that there is a significant quantitative difference between products imported by China from the United States and the products imported by the U.S. from China. Some have proposed some counterattack strategies against America in a trade war, for instance, selling a large number of U.S. Treasury securities. But some of them believe that China wouldn’t benefit much from doing so. There are even some people thinking that it might not be a bad thing if the United States could
66 Niu Xinchun, “Sino-American Relations: Ideological Clashes and Competitions,” in The World in 2020 According to China: Chinese Foreign Policy Elites Discuss Emerging Trends in International Politics, ed.
Shao Binhong (Boston: Brill, 2014), 292-307.
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give China economic pressure stronger enough to make Chinese market more open and more convenient for Chinese people to buy imported goods in cheaper price.67
Chinese-Americans Feeling the Heat
With the tensions of the trade war between Washington and Beijing is flaring up, Americans of Chinese descent in the United States fear they might suffer collateral damage if they are considered a threat to the national security by the U.S. authority.
Chinese-Americans have often faced the repeated question of “where are you really from”
and have endured the “perpetual foreigner” syndrome in the U.S.68 Even many prominent Chinese-Americans have complained that they are subjected to tighter scrutiny because of mounting allegations about Beijing’s overseas influence activities that have called their loyalty into question. As a result of the tit-for-tat trade confrontation, Chinese-Americans are unfairly caught in the middle. Some said it was sad to see their “Chineseness” make them less American and less trustworthy.
A “Deteriorating Relationship”
Lawmakers in the U.S. accused the Chinese government of conducting aggressive campaigns to influence Western political elites, academia, think tanks and media. A congressional report detailed the Chinese Communist Party’s covert influence operations in
67 Mu Chunshan, “How Chinese People View the US-China Trade War,” The Diplomat, April 16, 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/04/how-chinese-people-view-the-us-china-trade-war/.
68 Shi Jiangtao, “Caught in the Crossfire: Chinese-Americans Feel the Heat as Tensions Flare,” South China Morning Post, September 25, 2018, accessed September 26, 2018,
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/2165704/caught-crossfire-chinese-americans-feel-heat-t ensions-flare.
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the U.S., including the efforts to squelch dissents abroad and the infiltration of top American think tanks by financing research projects.
In U.S. Congress, two bills were introduced to combat foreign propaganda and other influence activities, which would require organizations, including Confucius Institutes, to register under FARA. The Department of Justice of U.S. ordered the leading Chinese state-owned media outlets in the territory of the U.S.—the Xinhua News Agency and China Global Television Network (CGTN), the English-language arm of state broadcaster CCTV—to register as foreign agents under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA).
“The deteriorating relationship is a cause for concern for everyone. The trade war has made the livelihoods of Chinese-Americans more difficult,” Fear stokes official and academic exchanges between the two countries, and a dark and dubious shadow is cast over hundreds of thousands of Chinese students who are studying in the U.S.
Neither the U.S. nor China has shown signs of yielding in their trade war so far. While U.S. President Donald Trump continues to double down on his tough talk and raise punitive tariffs, Beijing lambasts Trump’s adversarial approach as part of a long-term Washington attempt to thwart China’s rise and calls on ethnic Chinese to support Beijing’s “greater national interests” and President Xi Jinping’s “Chinese dream” of national rejuvenation.
A new level of China-bashing is on the rise in Washington. In the anarchic world, great powers strive for state survival, power, and hegemony. Can the U.S. and China escape the Thucydides’s Trap? According to offensive realism, the answer surely is “No, they cannot.”
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4.5 Chapter Summary
The greatest concern for offensive realists in their study of international politics have always been the possibility and outcomes of great power war. Today, as President Xi Jinping actively translates its economic capabilities into military power, China is on track to challenge the U.S. on the regional and even the global scale. According to offensive realism, this trajectory will ultimately lead the U.S. and China on to a great power war.69
This chapter is intended to find answers to the military aspect of the research question:
“What are the impacts of President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy on the U.S.-China military relations and can the two great powers avoid the Thucydides’s Trap?”
When Trump has gain insights into America’s current problems and has the chance to do something to correct the tilted evolution of the Sino-U.S. relations, the wax and wane of the relative military strength between the two great powers during the past decades should come under as much, if not more, scrutiny as the rise and fall of their relative economic capability that went into building their military strength. Just as Trump has recognized China as America’s principal long-term competitor and that Beijing would not stop its predatory trade practices if the U.S. asked nicely, neither would Beijing refrain from military adventures in the Asian-Pacific and on the global scale. The author applied key ideas drawn from offensive realism to assess the prospects for the future trajectory of relations between these two great powers. As Rosa Brooks, a law professor at Georgetown University, pointed out, “The wars of the future will be fought with very different kinds of weapons, on very different kinds of battlefields. And we should be wary of them.”70
69 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton & Company), 55.
70 Rosa Brooks, “Can There Be War Without Soldiers?” Foreign Policy, March 15, 2016, accessed May 12, 2018, https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/15/can-there-be-war-without-soldiers-weapons-cyberwarfare/.
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