Verbatim Mac
Download 357.18 Kb.
|
High Speed Rail Affirmative Politics Elections Link Turns UTNIF 2012
- Navigate this page:
- Link flux
Helps Relations – TPPExcluding China from TPP kills relations—anti-China rhetoric decks cooperation and the economyZhou 15 (Steven regular contributor to The American Conservative, Muftah and Ricochet media, among others, 11-6-2015, "OPINION: The TPP risks making US-China relations worse," Aljazeera America, http://america.aljazeera.com/opinions/2015/11/the-tpp-risks-making-us-china-relations-worse.html) NV The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), finalized last month by 12 Pacific Rim nations, including the United States, will be the largest trade pact in modern history. It will rewrite the rules that affect how about 40 percent of the global economy does business, with the intent of increasing trade and investment. The White House released the agreement’s text to the public yesterday. Much discussion regarding the TPP has focused on the absence from the pact of China, the largest economy in the Asia-Pacific region. President Barack Obama has portrayed the exclusion as an attempt by the U.S. and its allies to “write the rules” in the region before China does. But this kind of antagonism does nothing to push U.S.-China relations — perhaps the most important bilateral relationship in the world — toward anything productive. The increasing anti-China rhetoric that has accompanied the Obama administration’s Asian pivot will result in fewer opportunities to partner on major global initiatives and hurt both nations economically. Link fluxRelations = CyclicalUS/China relations prone to fluctuations but mutual dependence checks significant deterioration—no chance of triggering impactAlexandroff 11 (Alan, research director of the Program on Conflict Management and Negotiation (PCMN) at the University of Toronto, “Grasping fully the realities and challenges in US-China relations,” China US Focus,, 2/25/2011, http://www.chinausfocus.com/foreign-policy/grasping-fully-the-realities-and-challenges-in-us%E2%80%93china-relations-the-key-bilateral-relationship-in-international-relationsthe-key-bilateral-relationship-in-international-relationsthe-key-bila/) KC In contemporary geo-politics/economics many experts have observed that the key power relationship today – and seemingly for the next decades – is the United States-China relationship. The United States has exercised a near-hegemonic role in global affairs for the past several decades. US leadership was only accentuated with the demise of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. This ‘unitary moment’ saw the US dominant militarily accompanied by assertions that it would maintain dominance militarily against other powers. The appearance of China as a large emerging market country was powered by the extraordinary economic growth unleashed in the late 1970s with Deng Xiaoping’s ‘Reform and Opening.’ After several decades of such high growth China today challenges Japan for the second largest economy. China’s ‘peaceful rise’ was analyzed and commented on by most international relations experts. The growing redistribution of economic power, most notably China, but also other emerging powers – Indian and Brazil – raised concerns among many. International relations experts had traced the difficult transition of powers and pointed to the many historical instances where these ‘power transitions’ had led to competition and even conflict among the great powers of the time. With the rise of the ‘China threat’ perspective in Washington – a view of the rising challenge of China to the United States regionally but even globally – observers and experts focused closely on the course of relations between the two powers. And the course of China-US relationship has not disappointed observers. This great power relationship exhibits a highly cyclical – even unstable pattern of behavior. The relationship has been able to shift from a ‘near friendship hug’to an almost Cold War stance. The ‘hug’ came most evidently the 1970s with the reestablishment of relations between the two countries and the Nixon trip to China to meet with Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai. On the cold war-like behavior instances are numerous. There is the 1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade and the impact on relations; then there was the emergency landing of the EP-3 surveillance plane on Hainan Island in April 2001 after collision with a Chinese navy fighter jet and the relations thereafter. These changes can come quickly and unexpectedly. How then are we to describe US-China relations? Fei Di Fei You (非敌非友) Neither Friend nor Foe. In the early 1990s, American scholar and long time China expert Harry Harding now the dean of the University of Virginia's Frank Batten Sr. School of Leadership and Public Policy,described the US-China relations as being:‘fei di fei you’ (非敌 非友) － neither friend nor foe. As he said at the time: “The most likely future is for a difficult relationship, featuring a China that is neither friend nor foe in the international arena.” More recently the well-known Chinese scholar and international relations expert Yan Xuetong, the director of The Institute of International Studies, Tsinghua University, described the US-China relationship in much the same way and captured the relationship in exactly the same terms.. But Yan Xuetong extended the analysis by concluding that there are four kinds of interests in this critical bilateral relationship: common interests, complementary ones, confrontational interests and conflicting ones. For Yan Xuetong the difficulty in the current relationship between these two critical powers arises because policy makers insist on characterizing the US-China relationship as being more cooperative that in fact is the case.China and the US fail in their efforts to build a more collaborative and stable relationship because they fail to see that in fact they have more mutually unfavorable interests than mutually favorable ones. Officials in both countries find it difficult to create stable relations because of the unrealistic expectations of mutual support each presumes of the other. In fact, according to this scholar, this instability is of sort greater than one might find in a conflictual relationship. For Yan Xuetong ‘superficial enmity’ is more stable and it “… also provides more chances for improvements in bilateral because the nations have more mutually favorable interests than they realize.”. So in this analysis, “enmity” is better than “friendship” – at least for now – a rather strange conclusion but perhaps a logical outcome of a difficult relationship and differing national interests. Yan Xuetong urges both to lower expectations and to reduce unexpected conflict by accepting that the two great powers regard the other as a political competitor. Further he suggests that that the two should enlarge their mutually favorable interests before they even consider developing durable cooperation. There is no doubt that there are many experts who are willing – even eager – to accept the competitive perhaps rivalrous nature of the relationship. In a variety of views and opinions, the ‘China Threat’ school in the United States, as noted above, urges strong defense against a rising China power and the threat it poses to American dominance. On the Chinese side, the ‘China Can Say No’ school urges greater national assertiveness and firmness against both regional neighbors and the United States particularly as it regards China core interests, most particularly Taiwan. Yi Di, Yi You’ (亦敌亦友)－Both Friend and Foe But is ceding the field to these realist and realist-like schools of thought the appropriate characterization of the relationship and the difficulties that periodically engage the United States and China? I start from a slightly altered perspective from either of these two scholars. Rather than framing the US-China relationship as – “fei di, fei you,” let me alter the expression slightly characterizing the US-China relationship as ‘yi di, yi you’ (亦敌 亦友)－ both friend and foe. This slightly altered characterization I believe better captures the relationship in a number of ways. First the expression recognizes that are aspects where the US-China are, and need to, collaborate. The US and China are embedded in a global economy where globalization and mutual interdependence – even dependence- hold sway and are far more developed than was the case between the US and the former Soviet Union, and also far greater than earlier periods of great power relations. China has welcomed foreign direct investment unlike some other “Asian tigers” including notably Japan. Further its prosperity is a product, in part, of the enormous export platform that Chinese and foreign multinational corporations have built generating enormous trade surpluses for China in the last few years. The mutual interdependence was made quite visible with the global financial crisis that emerged in 2008. While analysts had been suggesting that the large emerging market countries were likely decoupled from the structure and behavior of the traditional powers, the crisis made it clear that all the major countries, traditional, large emerging market and developing countries were staring into the same economic and financial abyss. Collective action was called for and the G20 countries including the United States and China met repeatedly to ensure that the global economy would not slip into a new great depression. The mutual grasp of the two was only underscored when analysts, and even some officials talked of possible Chinese efforts to liquidate the ‘heavy’ US Treasury position China had accumulated in its foreign exchange account. But it became clear that such a strategic change would of course hurt the United States and the US dollar reserve position. But right next to the US would come China and the sale of a depreciating asset would be a blow to China’s public finances. It would be painful for both. So, the degree of mutual dependence generated by the high and growing degree of globalization well beyond other power relationships historically sets a parameter for the relationship. There is an aspect of “friend” that is structurally built into their relationship like it or not. Furthermore, national interests are, I would argue, more similar that officials and publics are prepared to recognize at times. So China experts will suggest, for instance, that Iran and the question of nuclear proliferation represents a core or major interest for the United States but represent a much less central concern for China. Indeed China sees Iran as an important source of oil for China. Yet it is evident that a conflict between the US and Iran would explode the situation in the Middle East, threaten oil supplies and at raise the cost of oil to close to unimaginable price levels. Such an outcome is no less a crisis for China than for the United States. That kind of conflict and international instability is equally a dilemma for China as it is for the United States. There is no decoupling here just as there wasn’t in the face of the global financial crisis. If it is the case that both are ‘friends’ if only because of structural realities and national objectives, there are aspects where the two are positioned as ‘foes’ as well. Both countries are the most ‘sovereign-oriented’ and most domestically politically driven of any of the great powers. As my colleague Chen Dongxiao of SIIS has pointed out China favors the creation of the G20 and sees it as “legitimate and has the potential to be the primary institution for global economic issues [but] it is also concerned about protecting its own independence over domestic economic policies.”. Thus Chinese leadership has accepted that a framework must be constructed for the G20 to deal with global imbalances but at the same time has sought retain control over its domestic economic policy by urging that the framework be only consultative and instructive. National political assertions, even populist politics, color the positions of both countries and lead leaders to raise objections and even objectionable policies for the other. A pure “strategic policy” calculation – driven only by geopolitical policy concerns – is unlikely to dominate the relationship any time soon. There is then small likelihood that the ‘foe’ aspect of the US-China relationship is likely to disappear any time soon. Thus it seems to me we are destined for now to live through the ‘foe’ circumstances and behaviors as well as those where the two act as ‘friends.’ What analysts need to do is to refrain from concluding that the ‘foe’ aspects have somehow redefined the relationship – that US-China relations have simply become one dimensionally – rivals. There is and will continue to be nothing simple about this critical relationship – United States and China. They are destined for now to be both friend and foe. Download 357.18 Kb. Share with your friends:
|