The adversarial thrust of US policy on China makes it hard for Beijing to develop trust

The US seeks cooperation while also reserving the right to compete and confront. But for China, every confrontation diminishes its willingness to collaborate and trust

Yanyang Chu

Published: 1:00am, 10 Mar 2023

Why you can trust SCMP

When a US F-22 Raptor shot down a Chinese balloon over America, it possibly blew up the already fragile mutual trust across the Pacific Ocean. In the aftermath, as US Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed his long-awaited visit to Beijing, presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping would do well to remember the day more than 11 years ago when, as vice-heads of state, they agreed to strengthen “strategic mutual trust” between their countries.

Since 1949, trust has been a central topic of US-China relations, having never been fully achieved. Standing in the way is a difference in mindset.

While the Biden administration’s strategy vis-à-vis China is threefold – competition, cooperation and confrontation – Beijing sees all foreign affairs as integral to the diplomatic relationship. A confrontation in one aspect causes collaboration to deteriorate in others.

At the core is sovereignty and territorial integrity. Last September, China’s top diplomat Wang Yi spoke about the “principles of respect” for sovereignty and territorial integrity at the Asia Society, stressing that “without respect, no trust can be built”. For Beijing, any threat to China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity incurs the biggest trust deficit.

Last August, then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, prompting Beijing to accuse Washington of interfering in China’s sovereign affairs. In retaliation, Beijing suspended certain cooperative activities with Washington, including their dialogues on climate change and between their top military officials.

A cancellation of communication happened again at the height of the balloon crisis. On the day the balloon was shot down, China refused America’s request for a secure call between Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin and his Chinese counterpart. China’s defence ministry said the US had failed to “create a proper atmosphere” for the conversation.

To Beijing, the shooting down of the balloon was an adversarial move, so any further cooperation was blocked. This reflects an important perspective – China requires a certain atmosphere before it can build trust.

Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau with China’s President Xi Jinping at the G20 Leaders’ Summit in Bali, Indonesia, on November 16. Photo: Handout via Reuters

Observers may recall with some déjà vu President Xi’s conversation with Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau at the G20 summit last year. Xi was caught on video chiding Trudeau for leaking details of their meeting to the press – and told him to “create the conditions first”, before any further communication or cooperation.

In both incidents, China has demanded that countries show it kindness and earn its trust before collaboration can occur. This requires an all-encompassing attitude of goodwill without resorting to competition or confrontation.

An exemplar was the China-Russia relationship in the 1990s. Zhou Li, former Chinese envoy to Russia, recalled that the bilateral relationship warmed up rapidly after Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin agreed that China and Russia should be good neighbours and good friends in 1992. Cooperation and the resolution of border disputes followed only after the two countries had expressed kindness to each other and pacifism.

That trajectory might not be applicable to the US-China relationship. Where the Biden administration sees a “three Cs” strategy of competition, cooperation, confrontation, China perceives a euphemism for confrontation. Wang has said the three Cs should be replaced, and most Chinese scholars don’t believe a productive cooperation with the US is possible when confrontation exists.

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Alarmingly, many Chinese people doubt the political will of the US to really “manage differences”, though Biden offered to do so at his meeting with Xi in November last year. Many believe an anti-China stance is the only area of political consensus in US domestic politics and that, faced with party politics, Biden will always choose confrontation instead of management.

The balloon incident is seen as further proof of this – the Biden administration could have handled it quietly, as China has done with US balloons before, instead of hyping it up, said Chinese ambassador to France Lu Shaye.

It is doubtful whether the US is willing to relinquish confrontation in its foreign policy towards China and work to earn its trust. Besides the hawkish consensus in Washington, the effectiveness of such a move is uncertain. Even if Biden announced a full cooperation with Beijing, backing off on Taiwan support, the Chinese masses would still be unlikely to buy it.

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When Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Chinese individuals anticipated a swift improvement in US-China relations, but this did not materialise. Now, there are those who believe the US wants China to roll back decades of progress to return to being a poor country capable only of providing cheap labour to the West. The economic containment embodied by the Chips and Science Act reinforces that belief.

For the average Chinese person, it is also hard to believe the US will stand idly when the day of reunification comes. There is a long history of US-China distrust, and that momentum is hard to reverse.

But there are still areas of mutual interest for the two powers, such as climate change and global macroeconomic stability. Global security is also increasingly an important issue, as China showed in its efforts towards Ukraine peace talks. The critical question is whether the US and China are willing to prioritise these potential areas of cooperation over issues such as Taiwan, Xinjiang and hi-tech.

Building trust and developing new areas of cooperation is a gradual process. Where circumstances escalate beyond control, things could still get volatile. But progress is possible if both countries remain committed to finding common ground.

Yanyang Chu is a research assistant at the University of Southern California Center for Active Learning in International Studies