Trump can’t start a Cold War with China
Policy towards Beijing can have a strong impact on global politics, but doesn’t indicate a looming military conflict
n his State of the Union speech, United States President Donald Trump defined China as the primary rival challenging America. This is consistent with the tone of the new US National Defence Strategy, which declares: “Inter-state strategic competition, not terrorism, is now the primary concern in US national security.”
Along with Russia, China was named as the chief strategic rival challenging America’s security, prosperity and values. This rhetoric, backed up by formal doctrine, understandably brings about fears that Sino-US competition may drive the world into a new Cold War. Yet, while America’s new policy towards China will inevitably have a strong impact on international politics, it does not necessarily mean a coming Cold War. There are three fundamental differences between the Sino-US competition today and the US-Soviet rivalry during the Cold War.
Unlike the US-Soviet competition for global leadership during the Cold War, both China and the US today avoid undertaking excessive international responsibility.
The Trump administration’s “America First” posture regards global leadership as a burden rather than the most important strategic interest of the US. It seeks to unload that burden onto its military allies by asking them to pay for more for their own defence. Meanwhile, the current Chinese government worries that the huge cost of global leadership would undermine its economic growth.
Instead, Chinese President Xi Jinping has inherited and embraced the concept of a “community of common destiny”, coined by former president Hu Jintao’s administration. China wants every member of the global community to share the responsibility of global governance. To avoid excessive international responsibility, the Chinese government avoids stationing troops in Afghanistan, for example, even though instability there presents a direct threat to the security of neighbouring Xinjiang, a frontier
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region in China where separatist sentiment has erupted in the past.
As long as both China and the US are reluctant to undertake global leadership, a Cold War of the all-encompassing kind we saw between the US and the Soviet Union in the 20th century is unlikely to occur — even with the possibility that some secondary powers may compete for regional leadership through military confrontation.
Both China and the US have so far purposely constrained their competition from spilling over into the ideological domain — the precise opposite of what the US and the Soviets did during the Cold War.
Trump has shown no interest in an ideological contest with China. This was reflected in the National Defence Strategy, which contains the statement, “We will not seek to impose our way of life by force.”
The Chinese government is similarly alert to the danger of igniting an ideological confrontation with the West and the US in particular. Soon after the international media reported that the recent 19th Communist Party Congress revealed China’s intention to export a governance model that rivals western democracy, the Chinese government promptly sought to correct this misimpression by announcing that China “will not ask other countries to copy the Chinese practice”. As long as China and the US don’t prioritise advancing their ideologies abroad above all else, their competition will not escalate to the level of the US-Soviet rivalry.
China’s present strategic preference for peaceful competition with the US differs greatly from that of the Soviet Union or Russia today.
Although China is dismayed and disappointed at being viewed as the primary rival to the US after giving Trump emperor-like treatment during his visit to Beijing, it still adheres to the principle of peaceful competition rather than the proxy-war strategy the Soviet Union adopted during the Cold War.
Economics remains the most powerful element of China’s national strength, and
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its military might lags far behind America’s. Thus, China will try its best to avoid any form of military clash with the US. China also insists it is not formally allied with Russia, America’s other rival, which has been confronting the US order in Europe mainly through proxy wars since the end of the Cold War. It should not go unrecognised that wars in the Middle East and former Soviet zones have not escalated to the global level, in no small part because China did not join Russia. China’s behaviour in these situations shows that China will not join league with Russia against the US.
The uncertainty of Trump’s leadership is also a minor, but favourable factor in preventing a new Cold War. The inconsistency of policy in the first year of his presidency has made US allies cautious in supporting America’s confrontation with China.
To be sure, China-US competition will inevitably grow more severe in 2018. At the moment, China appears to have more confidence than the US in this competition because it believes that the Trump administration suffers from a crippling lack of credibility both at home and abroad. The most crucial factor in international competition between superpowers is strategic credibility.
At Davos late last month, Trump delivered a standard and sober political speech that departed from the tone of his previous talks or tweets. Yet, it did little, if anything, to improve America’s reputation. This implies that the Trump administration has already — perhaps terminally — undermined its capacity to shape international opinions and regain strategic credibility. If that is the case, how can it initiate a new Cold War even if it wants to?
Yan Xuetong is considered one of China’s top strategic thinkers. He is dean of the Institute of International Relations at Tsinghua University and author of Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power.