China-us relations at a turning point
BEIJING – Four decades after the U.S. established diplomatic ties with China, the relationship between the two may have reached a turning point.
Tensions have reached new heights, as the ambitions of a rising superpower increasingly clash with those of the established one. China ordered the closing of the U.S. Consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu on Friday, in rapid retaliation for the closing of its consulate in Houston.
Two weeks ago, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi asked aloud if relations could stay on track. On Thursday, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered an answer: The time has come to change course.
“The old paradigm of blind engagement with China simply won’t get it done,” he said in a speech at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Southern California. “We must not continue it. We must not return to it.”
Relations between Washington and the communist government in Beijing began to thaw in the 1970s, as China’s ties with the Soviet Union deteriorated and leader Mao Zedong sought a counterweight to its more powerful neighbor.
A new leader, Deng Xiaoping, visited the U.S. in 1979 after the establishment of diplomatic ties, smiling in photos as he tried on a cowboy hat in Texas. The Houston consulate that is being shut opened later the same year. It was China’s first in the United States.
Setting aside political differences, the U.S. and China promoted economic, social and cultural ties that were briefly interrupted a decade later by China’s military crackdown on the 1989 pro-democracy demonstrations in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square.
Economic links grew in the following years, with heavy investment by U.S. businesses in China and an accompanying Chinese trade surplus that has reached $350 billion annually.
As China has grown into the world’s second-largest economy, behind only the U.S., it is increasingly viewed as a competitor, both economically and militarily, and a potential challenger to the Western-led democratic model.
Election-year politics in the U.S. are fanning the flames, as President Donald Trump appears to be using friction with China to drum up support among his base. Whether or not he is reelected in November, underlying differences will remain.
“We are looking at a structural change in the relationship, which will continue even if Trump does not get a second term,” said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.
Pompeo’s speech was the latest in a series of sharp criticisms aimed at China by Cabinet-level U.S. officials.
Although Trump earlier played up what he called a warm relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, communication has fallen to new lows.
“The kind of engagement we have been pursuing has not brought the kind of change in China that President Nixon hoped to induce,” Pompeo said. “The truth is that our policies – and those of other free nations – resurrected China’s failing economy, only to see Beijing bite the international hands that fed it.”