China-U.S. Negotiations on Asia-Pacific Affairs Clearly Show China's Weakness

The China-U.S. Strategic and Economic Dialogue held in Washington on May 10 — which has received a lot of attention — has an all-new agenda, holding a China-U.S. Strategic Security Dialogue for the first time. The two countries agreed to start Asia-Pacific affairs negotiations.

The assistant minister for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhang Zhijun, revealed that relevant officials from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the U.S. Department of State, respectively, would lead the talks. As for details such as the frequency of the negotiations, the decision will wait until after the first round of negotiations begins. It is predicted that the first round of negotiations will take place very soon.

China’s established mechanism for Asia-Pacific negotiations can be viewed from different angles. It can be considered positive or negative; it can be looked upon as a reflection of China’s rising power or as proof of the gap that still exists between China and the United States. It can be viewed as a sign that China has already become an influential power, or it can still be viewed as a sign that China is a regional power, but not a world power. It can be seen as a mechanism for deepening China-U.S. cooperation, or it can be seen as the United States surrounding and containing China just as before.

China-U.S. Negotiations Still Lacking Equilibrium

From a positive point of view, China-U.S. negotiations on Asia-Pacific affairs explain that the United States is conscious of Asia-Pacific affairs, especially security affairs. Without Chinese cooperation and coordination, there is no way for it to smoothly put things into effect. From a historical perspective, there is no doubt that this is the rise of China’s status. Temporarily ignoring the events before 1949, looking at post-1949 during the Korean War, the United States began to surround China. At that time, its approach toward socialist China was to swiftly eradicate it. Then China and the United States established diplomatic relations and China was merely America’s chess piece in its strategy against the Soviet Union. The crisis in the Taiwan Strait, the Yinhe Incident and the bombing of China’s embassy in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in the 1990s showed that the gap in power between China and the United States was large; the United States did not value China. Whereas today, there is no denying that the China-U.S. Asia-Pacific negotiations are a sign that China’s status has risen.

However, China cannot just be complacent in this; negotiations on Asia-Pacific affairs are inseparable from the issues of North Korea, the Taiwan Strait, the Diaoyu (Senkaku) Island issue between China and Japan, issues in the South China Sea and other topics which could trigger war in China’s surroundings. All of these issues show that the United States is still in attack mode and that China is on the defensive; the United States. can calmly cause trouble for China, while China is just arguing strongly in order to safeguard its basic interests. Even if negotiations appear to be equal on the surface, in reality, negotiations between the two parties are uneven.

Judging from the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the Strategic Security Dialogue, Asia-Pacific affairs negotiations and the “G2” of which Americans speak, China is a major power and has been treated as such by the United States. However, one important point reflected in the Asia-Pacific affairs negotiations is that China is still a genuine regional power, but it is not a global power; the gap in status between it and the global power of the United States is large, especially in the area of military security. Even though it is a regional power, it also faces pressure from the neighboring allies of the United States and China. Imagine if China really were a power on par with the might of global powers; then, at the same time China and the United States start negotiations on Asia-Pacific affairs, China-U.S. and North American affairs would also have to be discussed.

China’s Strategic Status is Not as Good as it Was Last Century

From the Strategic and Economic Dialogue to the Strategic Security Dialogue, there is no doubt that the mechanism for China-U.S. cooperation has made progress, and it will have an important effect on mutual China-U.S. cooperation in the Asia-Pacific and on reducing misunderstandings in the region. The assistant minister of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Zhang Zhijun, said, “If China and the United States cannot cooperate on Asia-Pacific regional affairs, then cooperation at the global level is out of the question. We believe that the establishment of this mechanism will aid in pushing both parties forward towards forming a pattern of positive interaction in the Asia-Pacific region, so as to be better about making an active effort for peace, stability and development of the Asia-Pacific region.”

However, looking at the subjects for the China-U.S. negotiations, one will realize that, from land to sea, and from various Central Asian countries to Japan and South Korea, in reality the United States has a military presence and has quietly succeeded in surrounding China; China’s strategic status is not even as good as it was in the previous century.

On May 6, in an article on America’s Foreign Policy magazine website, John Lee, a visiting scholar at America’s Hudson Institute, claimed that, “China remains a strategic loner in Asia, with Myanmar and North Korea as its only true friends.” Right now China understands its weak points very clearly. The United States does not need to lament that the good old days are irretrievably gone, but instead it ought to master how to take advantage of its own strengths. In other words, with its military force as a deterrent and the coordination of its allies, the United States occupies a superior status in Asia-Pacific affairs negotiations.

In brief, the establishment of a mechanism for China-U.S. Asia-Pacific affairs negotiations is not something that merits joy, nor is it a bad thing. The wise man said, “Why climb the mountain? Because the mountain is there.” Applying this saying, one could say, “Why negotiate? Because the problems are there.”

The author is a commentator on Chinese current events and is a special columnist.