China and America: Neither One Can Order the Other Around

Vice President Joe Biden finished his six day visit to China today. Both China and America have said that it was a very rewarding visit with positive significance. However, some American media outlets hold a different opinion. Due to the U.S. debt crisis, America’s leadership in the world has been somewhat weakened, so during this visit to China, Biden could no longer press China on the issue of the RMB exchange rate as he had done previously; instead, he had to listen to China lecturing America on keeping the U.S. dollar stable. This kind of public opinion in America right now is very unhealthy.

Some Americans think it’s a matter of course that America presses hard against China. This idea itself is quite absurd. RMB is the sovereign currency in China. It would be plain naive if a bunch of laymen in the U.S. Congress and media were able to set its exchange rate. The U.S. government has been trying to push China down all this time, but of course China would not let America order it around. Thought we cannot say that America’s pressure has had absolutely no influence on China, the effect is very limited. China merely asked America to keep its dollar stabilized, which could hardly be called “lecturing.” Don’t the American people themselves also want to see the dollar stabilized? If the dollar keeps depreciating, the American treasury bonds held by China will devalue along with it. The U.S. government will shake off some debt this way, but it could by no means be a long-term plan. China has expressed its concern and has even rung an alarm bell for America. Only small minds would think of this in terms of “the rise and fall of great powers.”

During Biden’s visit, the overall atmosphere of the Sino-American dialog was much better than much of the western media had predicted. Yet the U.S. Executive branch has kept a cooler head when facing China, because they have to be responsible for America’s national interest and have little room for wild speculation. The American media and some congressmen have provided a perfect example of the old saying “easier said than done” — they egged Biden on to show some more toughness to China, and criticized him of fawning on China too much, as if America could only be considered strong and powerful if it was confrontational with China.

The large quantity of trade volume and close financial relationship between China and America have decided that the Sino-American relations have to be fully practical and mutually respectful. Being able to order China around is a dream of some American people, and in turn China being able to boss around America is just different manifestations of the same paranoia.

Has America fallen? This meaningless question is discussed by both Americans and Chinese. It’s just that there appears to be more Americans obsessed with it than Chinese. The American economy weighs less and less in the world, which is a pretty obvious trend. We can call it America’s “relative decline,” or we can give it some other name. But it is also an obvious truth that America still takes the lead in the world in the fields of economics, military, politics, science and technology.

The country that China and other nations have to deal with every day is still America, which occupies the first place in the world in many areas. As for America’s “relative decline,” it only remains an impression, or discussed secretly by some people at most. Such an impression can not amount to much in the international political arena yet.

Some of the American media simplified Biden’s visit to China as “persuading the Chinese people to believe in the credibility of the American treasury bonds,” which sounds like an insult to the Vice President. Great America borrowing from great China is certainly not the only aspect of Sino-American relations. Thus, predicting the overall health of Sino-American relations merely by observing the American treasury bonds is like seeing things in a distorting mirror — what people see will only be funny and twisted.

Even if China cut down its holding of American treasury bonds, people shouldn’t link it to politics immediately. China reducing its holding of American bonds is also America’s strategic wish. The U.S. apparently does not want to be a country which has to live in debt. It is not necessarily a good thing for America if it can borrow money too easily, and it is not necessarily a good thing for China if it can continue its current economic course as long as it is buying American bonds. China and America want to achieve mutual benefit, but a mutual constraint can’t be entirely avoided either. To maintain a basic and strategic goodwill toward one another is the premise of not reading too much into each other, lest some “unfriendly move” occur.

A crisis between China and America could be rising at any moment if neither country pays enough attention to the bilateral relationship. If both countries really care about the influence that Sino-American relations could have on the welfare of the American and Chinese people and the world, then they can use the wide scope and rich content of the Sino-American relationship to dissolve many troubles into trifles. So this is the Sino-American relationship: real, yet subtle, profound and mysterious.