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Open Questions | ‘Structural’ problem: top China scholar says US tensions will be ‘with us for a long time’

  • Political scientist Li Cheng talks geopolitics, Trump, Taiwan and Hong Kong in wide-ranging interview
  • He also looks at President Xi Jinping’s ‘decisive’ move to fire the foreign and defence ministers last year

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Illustration: Victor Sanjinez
Open Questions is a new series of interviews with global opinion leaders. We begin with Li Cheng, a political scientist and founding director of the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World. Li was previously at the Washington-based Brookings Institution for 17 years, including heading up the think tank’s John L. Thornton China Centre.
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Professor, you spent decades in the US watching its ties with China develop and I want to start by asking about US-China relations, a very consequential relationship that has a huge impact on the world. What is your assessment of US-China relations at this point, particularly after the two leaders met last year?

China-US relations deteriorated around late 2017. Around that time, there were two major reports in Washington – one was in December by the State Department, in December 2017, the other was by the [Department of Defence] in the following months, in January 2018.

These two documents argued that the previous engagement policy with China failed and did not yield the results as the US had planned or expected.

The second document specifically mentioned that the number one threat to the US since 9/11 was terrorist groups; number two was so-called rogue states like North Korea, Iran and Iraq.

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The third, called revisionist countries, only referred to two – China and Russia.

But the report claims that after 20 years, terrorist attacks on the US mainland have been significantly controlled and prevented. The risk from rogue states, with the US missile defence system, will also not be that imminent.

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