Living with the undercurrent of hostility in Sino-US cooperation
Junfei Wu considers the pitfalls of a less accommodating working relationship between the US and China
In the recent confrontation over the South China Sea, a Chinese military dispatcher demanded eight times that a US P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft leave the area as it flew over Yongshu Island (also known as Fiery Cross Reef). One could use an analogy of training a lion to explain the current relationship between China and the US: no matter how well you two get on, there's always a chance the lion will bite you.
The US relationship with China is as ambivalent as Americans' perception of Chinese people's character. The Chinese are sometimes perceived as authoritarian, hardline communalists or factory worker bees; Chinese values are alien to Americans. But Americans also see the Chinese as hospitable people.
The love-hate dynamics are muddied by China doves converting to China hawks, as in the case of David Shambaugh, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, who wrote an essay titled "The Coming Chinese Crack-up", which has generated enormous reverberations in the international relations community.
Kevin Rudd, a former prime minister of Australia, was right to disagree and argue for a new framework of constructive realism for a common purpose to re-anchor the bilateral relationship. But the controversy over Shambaugh's essay should be a reminder that there is still a long way to go for American scholars to grasp the gist of Chinese political and economic reforms.
By sending a spy plane to China's doorstep, with CNN journalists on board, the Americans roused the anger of a nation struggling to understand why the US has seemingly shifted its security strategy towards a more negative direction.
The Chinese can also complain about Washington's closest ally in the region, Japan, which has been hostile to China's foreign policy every step of the way; about neighbouring states - backed by the US - that have been rushing to claim China's islands. Well, at least that is the public position taken by the Chinese foreign affairs ministry spokespeople.