The Strange Bedfellows: Chinese and American Foreign Policy in East Asia

Balance of power politics in East Asia is a topic of special interest within the context of the rise and fall of great powers like the United States and China. Marc Beeson’s article, “Hegemonic transition in East Asia? The Dynamics of Chinese and American Power”, offers an interesting perspective on Chinese foreign policy, stating that “it is clear that China is not yet – and possibly may never be – in a position to replace the US as the dominant power in the region.”[1] Several paragraphs later, Beeson concludes that “despite the apparent durability of American leadership, its relationship with East Asia generally and China in particular, suggest that this dominance is declining and may be less substantial than it appears.”[2]

Traditional power politics would suggest a tug-of-war relationship between the U.S. and China, with each state seeking to exert its influence in mutually strategic zones. A cursory analysis of chest-pounding in the South China Sea seems to reflect this idea. Yan Xuetong, President of the Carnegie Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, argues that “China and the United States are vying with each other not only in Southeast Asia but also in many other parts of the world. The global framework is shifting from being unipolar to being bipolar, not multipolar. That change derives from an objective shift in power.”[3] These power dynamics have led some to refer to the competition between the United States and China as “the cool war.”

This leads us to a more important question, specifically: what theoretical framework should be used to characterize great power relations within the context of international institutions, global governance structures, non-governmental organizations, and the evolving “global public sphere”?

One such framework is offered by international relations scholar Joseph S. Nye Jr., in his article “The Future of American Power.” Nye argues that:

“Power today is distributed in a pattern that resembles a complex three-dimensional chess game. On the top chessboard, military power is largely unipolar, and the United States is likely to retain primacy for quite some time. On the middle chessboard, economic power has been multipolar for more than a decade, with the United States, Europe, Japan, and China as the major players and others gaining in importance. The bottom chessboard is the realm of transnational relations. It includes nonstate actors as diverse as bankers who electronically transfer funds, terrorists who traffic weapons, hackers who threaten cybersecurity, and challenges such as pandemics and climate change. On this bottom board, power is widely diffused, and it makes no sense to speak of unipolarity, multipolarity, or hegemony.”[4]

The implications of this view are significant and far reaching:

The economic and social connections between the U.S. and China on secondary and tertiary “power chessboards” prevent an armed conflict, because both countries recognize it would have drastic and far reaching negative consequences. Yan Xuetong concurs, noting that “recent talk of a “new type of great power relationship” between the United States and China is based on implementing control to avoid military conflict.”[5]

The increasingly global nature of security, economics, and politics also forces the U.S. and China to work together on key issues. Bonnie S. Glaser, Senior Advisor for Asia, Center for Strategic and International Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, writes that: “The United States has an abiding interest in preserving stability in the U.S.-China relationship so that it can continue to secure Beijing's cooperation on an expanding list of regional and global issues and more tightly integrate China into the prevailing international system.”[6] China holds over one trillion dollars in U.S. debt, and the U.S. is the most significant market for Chinese exports, tying their economic fates in a Gordian knot.[7]

This returns us to the topic of the rise and fall of great powers. Within the context discussed above, one might argue that we have abandoned the model of bipolar relations, and that new power relations with linked interests dominate competition in East Asia.  The “Cool War” describes this paradox between competition and cooperation. Noah Feldman writes in Foreign Policy that “a classic struggle for power between two countries is unfolding at the same time that economic cooperation between them is becoming deeper and more fundamental.”[8] The implications of this relationship are numerous and far reaching, and in many cases, still undefined.

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[1] Beeson, Mark. "Hegemonic transition in East Asia? The dynamics of Chinese and American power." Review of International Studies 35, no. 01 (2009): 95-112.

[2] Ibid., 112

[3] Yan Xuetong and Koichi Furuya, “Conflict Control” is Key to U.S.-China Relations in a Bipolar World”, The Carnegie Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, 14 May 2014 http://carnegietsinghua.org/publications/?fa=55600

[4] Joseph S. Nye, “The Future of American Power”, Foreign Affairs, December 2010

[5] Yan Xuetong and Koichi Furuya, “Conflict Control” is Key to U.S.-China Relations in a Bipolar World”, The Carnegie Tsinghua Center for Global Policy, 14 May 2014 http://carnegietsinghua.org/publications/?fa=55600

[6] Bonnie S. Glaser, “Armed Clash in the South China Sea: Contingency Planning Memorandum No. 14,” The Council on Foreign Relations, April 2012 http://www.cfr.org/world/armed-clash-south-china-sea/p27883

[7] Eswar Prasad, “The U.S.-China Economic Relationship: Shifts and Twists in the Balance of Power,” The Brookings Institute, February 25, 2010 http://www.brookings.edu/research/testimony/2010/02/25-us-china-debt-prasad

[8] Noah Feldman, “The Unstoppable Force vs. the Immovable Object,” Foreign Policy, May 16, 2013