Opinion | Echoes of the past in the uncertain future of China-US ties

The insight of American sinologist Michel Oksenberg is just as relevant today as it was 30 years ago

Beijing is facing anti-Chinese sentiment in the West and leaders feel under siege in ways similar to the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown

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China’s situation in the aftermath of the Tiananmen crackdown is eerily similar to how things stand at the moment. Photo: Reuters

Published: 7:00pm, 11 Jan 2022

For the community of China watchers, making predictions about where Chinese foreign policy is headed is a favourite way to start the year. But reading Chinese political tea leaves is notoriously challenging, even for Communist Party insiders.

With China again entering a protracted period of uncertainty comparable to the aftermath of the bloody Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, some of the advice offered by American sinologist Michel Oksenberg 30 years ago is still relevant today.

In an article in Foreign Affairs magazine in 1991 called “The China Problem”, Oksenberg closely examined China’s domestic and international conditions and dissected the thinking of Chinese leaders. More importantly, he raised a set of salient questions that can still be asked today to understand what the future holds for US-China ties.

Among the biggest questions was whether the leaders of the United States and China are locked in a Greek tragedy, unable to act on the vision that brought the countries together in the 1970s.

Many others, including realist strategist John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago and Harvard professor Graham Allison, have asked similar questions, with Allison warning in 2017 of the risk of the two countries falling into the Thucydides trap of confrontation between a rising power and a ruling one.

Oksenberg, who played a key role in bringing about the normalisation of the US-China ties in 1979, was not only an American authority on China, but before his death in 2001, he was also a mentor to many leading China experts including Elizabeth Economy and David Shambaugh. In 2002, former US president Jimmy Carter credited Oksenberg as the person who “changed my life – and changed the life of this country, and to some degree changed the life of every citizen of China”.