China-US relations: ‘let’s fix our own national messes before competing with Beijing’, says former diplomat

Chas Freeman, interpreter for Richard Nixon during his trip to China in 1972, says domestic renewal is key if the US is to successfully compete

Freeman’s view echoes national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who said the US must address inequality and dysfunction within its borders

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Former US diplomat Chas Freeman: “Without serious repairs to restore a sound American political economy, our future is in jeopardy.” Photo: AP

Published: 11:30pm, 25 Feb 2021Updated: 2:21am, 26 Feb 2021

Former US diplomat Chas Freeman urged Washington to focus on making “serious repairs” at home to effectively compete with China, as US President Joe Biden’s administration reviews US policy towards China amid increasingly strained relations.

Freeman is a well-known China hand who was the principal interpreter for Richard Nixon during the 1972 China trip that paved the way for normalised diplomatic relations.

In an online address to the Washington Institute of Foreign Affairs this month he argued that the US needed to avoid defining its China policy as a fight against authoritarianism and to focus instead on renewing its competitive capacity given its “unprecedented state of domestic disarray and demoralisation”.

“The US focus has been on tripping up China rather than improving our own international competitiveness,” he said. “Without serious repairs to restore a sound American political economy, our future is in jeopardy, and we will be in no condition to compete with the world’s rising and resurgent great powers, especially China.”

Freeman, who also served as a former US assistant secretary of defence and a diplomat in Beijing, said the US would alienate partner nations if it continued to define its relationship with China in confrontational terms and did not first “fix our domestic embarrassments”, noting the US response to the coronavirus pandemic.