Why the US can’t afford to overhype the China threat

A new report that takes a holistic view of the China challenge acknowledges the Chinese dream as a driving force behind Beijing’s strategic decisions

Biden and his team should take note, and temper their China obsession to direct attention – and limited resources – to the goal of rebuilding America

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US President Joe Biden arrives at Melsbroek military airport, near Brussels, on June 13, for two days of summits with Nato leaders and the European Union. The Biden foreign policy team is now seeking to carry forward the anti-China stance that the Trump administration adopted. Photo: AFP

Published: 1:30am, 15 Jun 2021Updated: 2:27am, 15 Jun 2021

A new report from a respected US think tank at least tries for a fair and sensible analysis of the China challenge. For this alone, given the almost rancid mood in the US about China these days, President Xi Jinping and his government are not going to get a fairer shake from America’s political-military establishment than the RAND Corporation’s China’s Quest for Global Supremacy.

This is the background: last week, at the G7 talkathon (core members: the US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the host, Britain), US President Joe Biden went on and on about China as a global threat, human-rights violator, etc – the familiar anti-China litany that the Trump administration hyped and now Biden’s foreign policy team is seeking to carry forward.

Alas, this unctuous display of rectitude takes me back to 1994 when first-term US president Bill Clinton put Warren Christopher on a jet to Beijing to offer a finger-wagging lecture but the Chinese would have none of it – they pointed the hapless secretary of state towards the airport, sending him home embarrassingly ahead of schedule.

There’s no reason to believe that Xi will be any more receptive to Western sermonising, sincere or not. But Biden’s gambit to look as tough as Trump might well backfire. The fact is that not all G7 members are gung-ho over the moralism.

Backing itself into a policy corner with its own stale thinking, Washington at some point will need to reel out a more cosmopolitan line if it wants to keep the “good guys” together.

This is where the RAND report helps. It takes a holistic view of the China question and offers a subtle lifeline that might help the US with its China obsession.

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