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The next stage of the China-US relationship won’t be “easy sailing” but there are incentives on both sides to keep it manageable, according to foreign policy specialist Wang Jisi. Photo: Reuters

China, US tensions unlikely to ease but they could maintain ‘a hot peace’, foreign policy adviser says

  • Domestic agendas ‘may or may not work to lessen the strain’ this year, according to Wang Jisi from Peking University
  • But he says Chinese and American businesses remain deeply integrated and most ‘are not embracing the idea of decoupling’
Domestic politics is likely to push Beijing and Washington towards more confrontation this year and it will be difficult to ease tensions, according to a senior Chinese foreign policy adviser.

But Wang Jisi, who is also president of the Institute of International and Strategic Studies at Peking University, said the two nations could still maintain “a hot peace” – meaning that there may be heated exchanges and rivalry but they would not escalate the situation.

“The domestic agendas of the United States and China in 2022 may or may not work to lessen the strain,” Wang wrote in an article titled “The hot peace paradigm”, published on the China-US Focus website last week.

He said US President Joe Biden would be under fire at home if his administration moved away from confrontation with China before the 2022 midterm elections. And he also expected Beijing to show stronger resolve to resist US challenges to its legitimacy and authority in the run-up to the Communist Party national congress in autumn.

“Therefore, the next stage of the China-US relationship is not going to be easy sailing. Yet there are enough incentives on both sides to remain sober-minded and keep the relationship manageable, since both are faced with imperatives at home,” he said.

Resuming economic cooperation could help ease tensions between China and the US. Photo: Bloomberg

Wang noted that Beijing was grappling with an economic slowdown and trying to contain the spread of Covid-19, while the pandemic and financial stability were also key issues for Washington.

But he said gradually resuming economic cooperation could help ease frictions in the relationship.

“Despite escalating political difficulties, Chinese and American businesses remain deeply integrated in terms of financial, intellectual and production networks,” Wang wrote. “The vast majority of Chinese and American companies are not embracing the idea of decoupling.”

Relations between the world’s two biggest economies have been on a downward spiral since the Donald Trump era. The former US president’s trade and technology wars have continued under Biden, and the two nations remain at loggerheads over a wide range of issues – from China’s alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Hong Kong to its military build-up in the disputed South China Sea.
Senior Chinese diplomats in July laid out Beijing’s “red lines” that should not be crossed when they met US deputy secretary of state Wendy Sherman in Tianjin – including not interfering on Taiwan, the self-ruled island which Beijing claims as part of its territory.
In November, President Xi Jinping urged Biden to get US policy on China back to a “rational and pragmatic track” during a virtual summit. Biden said it was the two leaders’ responsibility to ensure that the competition “does not veer into conflict, whether intended or unintended”.
Foreign policy specialist Wang noted that he had said back in 2001 that US-China relations would be best described as a hot peace rather than a new Cold War. Two decades on, he said “the danger of confrontation looms larger”.

That was because of the nations’ “soaring” negative perceptions towards each other, economic issues being politicised and affected by national security scrutiny, and both sides seeking support from allies “in a sustained geostrategic competition”, he said.

There was a growing risk of conflict over Taiwan, Wang said, with many observers in China taking the view that “time does not seem to be working for peaceful reunification” while Washington had not given Beijing sufficient reassurance that it did not support Taiwanese independence.

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Beijing has ramped up military and diplomatic pressure on Taiwan in recent years – a record number of Chinese warplanes entered Taiwan’s air defence zone in 2021. Meanwhile Washington, which does not have official ties with Taipei, has moved closer to the island and is a key arms supplier.

“The PRC and US should engage each other in quiet discussions leading to a reduction of mutual mistrust, rather than sabre-rattling and military exercises over the Taiwan issues,” Wang said.

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