Beware of US Competition in Word but Containment in Deed

“Competition” is increasingly becoming a high-frequency buzzword in Washington’s China policy. At a think-tank event on Jan. 30, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan admitted that the United States’ “efforts … to shape or change the PRC over several decades [had not succeeded],” while calling on the U.S. and China, “even as we compete,” to “find ways to live alongside one another.” Earlier this month, former National Security Council Indo-Pacific Affairs Coordinator Kurt Campbell was sworn in as U.S. deputy secretary of state, thus becoming American diplomacy’s second-in-command. As one of the few China experts in the White House, Campbell has always maintained that competition, rather than conflict and confrontation, lies at the heart of U.S.-China relations. His appointment means that the importance of the Indo-Pacific region and China in the Biden administration’s foreign policy has once again moved to the forefront.

Ever since China and the U.S. resumed high-level contact last year, there have been clear signs that relations between the two superpowers are warming, as on various occasions U.S. political heavyweights have stated that China and the U.S. should replace confrontation with competition and work together to manage the differences between the two countries. Washington’s position undoubtedly has a positive role to play in preventing the tensions between China and the U.S. from escalating, but we must also pay attention to “iron fist in a velvet glove” rhetoric from the U.S., as defining China as a competitor will not change the United States’ deliberate strategy to suppress and contain China’s development.

The United States’ recognition of its failed efforts to “change China” does not merely expose its own shortcomings; it also carries the political overtones of a United States that is declaring a policy shift on China. The U.S. has maintained a strategy of “engagement” with China since Richard Nixon’s visit in the 1970s, the main purpose of which strategy has been to indirectly bring about social and political change in China by strengthening economic and trade relations and integrating China into the U.S.-led international economic system. However, history has shown that this is nothing but wishful thinking on the part of the U.S., as in the more than 40 years of development since its economic reform, China has not only grown to become the world’s second-largest economy, but unlike the West, it has also adhered all along to Chinese-style socialism as a path of political development, shattering the myth of the Western model.

The more China’s comprehensive national power and self-confidence increase, the more restive and thwarted Washington feels. This is why several U.S. politicians in recent years have advocated rethinking — or even abandoning — the engagement strategy and defining China as the United States’ only competitor with the intent and the power to reshape the international order. Examples of this approach include former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who declared in remarks at the Nixon Library in 2020 that the policy of engagement with China had failed, and Campbell, who reiterated in a 2023 interview that the goals of the engagement policy went beyond what the U.S. was actually capable of achieving.

The U.S. may have stated that it has given up on trying to “change China,” but this does not mean it is willing to engage in dialogue and cooperation with China on an equal footing. With the Biden administration, “competition” has gradually replaced “engagement” in the mainstream discourse on U.S. policy on China; “competition theory” emphasizes how the U.S. must ensure its own competitive advantage in order to prevent China from challenging America’s global hegemony. As a result, from trade to science and technology and even in the military domain, the U.S. has successively and comprehensively blockaded and suppressed China, with a notable trend toward decoupling.

But ultimately, we are the country with the most complete industrial system in the world, so the U.S. may find that pigs will fly before it can completely break away from “Made in China.” This is why it is focusing its decoupling efforts on the high-tech field. The U.S. has had murderous intentions regarding Huawei since the Trump administration; once Joe Biden took office, he simply adopted the sins of the father, continuing to implement 360-degree containment and suppression of China’s semiconductor industry. And, at a time when artificial intelligence technology is booming, the U.S. Department of Commerce has explicitly banned American companies from exporting advanced AI chips to China. The U.S. is using all the means at its disposal to hinder our technological progress. As Campbell wrote in Foreign Affairs, the U.S. needs to blockade China in the high-tech field to maintain its competitive advantage.

What the U.S. refers to as “competition theory” is therefore no game of benign one-upmanship in which we all end up making progress together; rather, it is a vicious competition in which the opponent is being tripped and trapped at every turn. However, in this era of economic globalization, the development of semiconductors and artificial intelligence technologies is inseparable from China’s push forward. China is the largest semiconductor market in the world, and it has a huge data advantage in the field of artificial intelligence, so a China-U.S. decoupling in the high-tech field will only result in a lose-lose situation. For leading AI company Nvidia, for example, the Chinese market accounted for 47% of its global revenue in 2023, and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone on record to say that, even in the next 10 to 20 years, U.S. semiconductor companies will be hard-pressed to divest themselves from their dependence on the Chinese supply chain.

Last November at the China-U.S. summit, Presidents Xi Jinping and Biden reached consensus on mutual respect, peaceful coexistence, maintaining communication, preventing conflict and upholding the U.N. Charter, in what has come to be known as the “San Francisco Vision.” Against the backdrop of increasing uncertainty and risk in the world today and the resurgence of Cold War thinking, and to prevent the situation from spiraling out of control, the need for China and the U.S. to enhance their communication and manage their differences together is more pressing than ever. But first, the U.S. needs to act sincerely and in good faith. It must put the “San Francisco Vision” into practice, rather than merely putting surface-level work into the wording and rhetoric of its China policy, using “competition” in word but containing China in deed.