Since the end of the cold war, the United States - both policymakers and the public - has engaged in a seemingly endless debate over China. Is China America's friend or foe?
After Tiananmen and the collapse of the Soviet Union, Americans wondered if it was worth bothering with a regime that was so obviously disintegrating. Following China's extraordinary economic boom in the early 1990s, we began to hear about the coming 'China threat'. Americans began to perceive China as an adversary looming ominously on the horizon. The late 1990s and early part of the new century witnessed a sequence of rising tension, first in 1996 with the dispatch of two US naval battle groups to the South China sea during the Taiwan Strait crisis, then in 1999 with the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by Nato forces, led by the US, and finally in 2001, with the midair collision between a Chinese fighter and a US spy plane.
Consistent with the public's unsettled mood, a succession of US administrations has had great difficulty placing China within the overall framework of its post-cold war foreign policy. No sooner had the Clinton administration elevated China to the status of 'strategic partner', Republican presidential candidate George W. Bush characterised China as a 'strategic competitor'. The pattern is one in which US policymakers have redefined the relationship every few years. Whenever the relationship appears to stabilise around a new consensus, some new crisis arises, triggering another round of debate. It is as if nobody learned anything the last time round, and all the old stereotypes would re-emerge.
The Bush administration started out with a clear cut portrait of China as a long-term threat until the events of September 11, 2001. A bevy of classified and unclassified reviews and reports insisted that China would always be a menace to the US, no matter how it evolved in the future. To deal with this erratic giant, strategists recommended that the US shift its strategic priority from Europe to East Asia, abandon the long-time strategy of fighting major regional conflicts on more than one front simultaneously and modernise its long-range navy and air capabilities in the region. The Pentagon's 2001 Quadrennial Defence Review, prepared in large part before September 11, implicitly identified China as 'a military competitor with a formidable resource base' that was likely to come into conflict with the US in the future. The report marked a watershed. Perhaps for the first time since the second world war, US geopolitical strategy at the highest level became centred on China.
US grand policy changed radically after September 11 however, as the geopolitical landscape against which the two countries interact literally collapsed. September 11 provided tragic proof that the US obsession with China was misplaced. Rather than China, the greatest threat to US national security was from stateless international terrorist organisations and their patrons. Paradoxically, the attacks provided an unexpected window of opportunity for the two countries to reverse the course of their relationship. The turnaround has gone beyond all expectations. China's 'unhesitant' (in Mr Bush's words) support for the US war on terror, its low key diplomacy on Iraq, its softened postures towards Taiwan, and its painstaking efforts to bring North Korea to the negotiating table have gradually convinced the US of Chinese goodwill, and it has shown its appreciation by re-evaluating China and its role in US global strategy.
The most noticeable change in perceptions of China is on the part of Mr Bush himself. After September 11, he dropped the phrase 'strategic competitor' in all his references to China. Instead, he has introduced the so-called 'Three Cs' to describe Sino-American relations - constructive, co-operative and candid. He has even begun calling China an ally. He has treated Chinese leaders with more respect and warmth. The friendly body language and atmospherics between Mr Bush and President Hu Jintao at their summit meeting at Evian is just the most recent example.