How Will Obama Tackle Sino-American Relations?

Obama’s inauguration on January 20th will start a new age of China-U.S. relations, which has witnessed rainbows and storms in the last 30 years. How will China and the U.S. get along with each other? This question is raising intense concern.

There is a rule of thumb to decide whether the relations between two countries are good or bad–the more common interests there are, the more pleasant the relations will be. Since the 1990s, China and America have had a relationship of conflict cum cooperation, which hasn’t ended in a condition of pure competition. This relationship has been established both by inevitability and by chance. If the last 30 years can be used as a guide for the future, then one needs to be aware that there is no common strategic need on par with the past common need against the Soviet threat, regardless as if it is an economic or temporary anti-terrorism interest. Future China-U.S. relations will be uncertain if no new or solid common interest can be found.

However, a fresh and important bedrock for cooperation between China and America is coming from this century’s aggravated world order. The decentralization trend of world politics, which came from economic growth in emerging countries and the renaissance of Europe, started in the second half of 20th century and is accelerating in this century. In the mean time, the damage to America’s national strength, which was caused by the U.S.’s rapid outward expansion, has shown a continuous fall of American hegemony in the 21st century. The U.S. is still currently the superpower with the most global influence and will be in the future, but the freedom of action beyond its home soil is impaired and restricted due to the abovementioned. These will force the U.S. retreat from some regions, just as Nixon’s policies of strategic withdrawal did after the Vietnam War in the 1970s.

America’s thrust in other regions has caused friction and chaos, and its retreat might set off new problems. It is the friction and chaos people felt well during the last 8 years while Bush was president, and possibly, it will be the new problems people experience after Obama’s governance of America. America’s retreat from various regions will also increase world complexity and uncertainty and it will be the biggest security challenge ever faced by the world, not just by China and the U.S.

Political bodies like Europe, Japan and Russia have no capability to shape a new world order because they, as major political powers, are becoming more conservative and introversive due to their aggravated aging population, slow economic growth and domestic overburden, and do not have the national capability and will necessary for a country to dominate a new global order. In the foreseeable future, the U.S., which will have a relatively stable demographic, will have the leading economy in the world, and will have the strongest scientific and technological capabilities, will still have the urge to lead a new order, but will be focused locally, not globally.

To avoid the geopolitical turbulence and conflict caused by America’s withdrawal from some regions during its fall, China will have to bear an increasing security pressure in a certain period when the U.S. will lose in its national interests. So, the rooms for Chinese-American cooperation in supplying and creating public goods for the world will actually grow larger. Both the U.S. and China need help from each other. Cooperation with competition to a degree between China and the U.S. is key to help these two countries maintain good relations with other geopolitical powers and shape a stable system of world politics and economy.

Whether it is possible or not the growing common strategic interests shared by China and America will shape a closer cooperation between these two countries, is relying on a correct identification of the elements for cooperation by politicians in the two countries. It will be a misfortune for China and the U.S., even for the world, if these two countries, particularly the U.S., fail to grasp the chance to deal with the new and big security challenge they, also the world face now, but define utterly the role of the Sino-American relation as a “Challenge—Response” relation between an emerging country and a conservative one.

Cheng Yawen is a scholar based on Beijing