This US-China Policy Will Not Be Affirmed by History

The U.S. Department of State Policy Planning Staff published a research report on Tuesday with the title “The Elements of the China Challenge.” The report is separated into five parts and is over 70 pages. It discusses the 10 tasks the U.S. needs to fulfill to face the China challenge and promotes that these policies need to go beyond bureaucracy, conflicts between government agencies and short-term election cycles. The first American media outlet to disclose this report even compared it to the article by American diplomat George Kennan in the 1940s that heavily influenced U.S. policy to contain the Soviet Union.

There isn’t really anything new in this report; it can almost be regarded as a mere hodgepodge of vicious attacks on China by Mike Pompeo and other senior U.S. officials and legislators. The current American administration has 60 days left of its term, and one State Department official explained that they do not intend to use this report to restrain the next administration. In fact, the current State Department is most afraid that the Joe Biden administration will adjust U.S.-China relations, and the publication of this report is a part of their efforts to consolidate the current extreme policy toward China.

However, most China scholars who have studied this report and call it a “Kennan-style report” have distorted Kennan’s true intentions. At the time, Kennan, the American chargé d’affaires in Moscow, sent an 8,000-word telegram focused on describing the Soviet Union, without any particular political motivation. The publication of this report is obviously intended to establish a monument of this Republican administration’s extreme China policy and glorify Pompeo, and is rooted in ill intentions.

Donald Trump’s capricious and impulsive governing style has given politicians like Pompeo the space to display their own ambitions. The current U.S. State Department has become the government department with the most intense conflict with China, leaving the CIA and Department of Defense behind. Diplomats have always been communicators, but Pompeo and his team have become completely unwilling to work with China. In the direction of China, today’s U.S. Department of State can close its doors.

Having been surrounded by the deep hostility, prejudice and ambitions of the secretary of state himself, what kind of objective report about China would the U.S. Department of State Policy Planning Staff be able to produce? Their ability to discover, their rigorous attitude in conducting research and their sense of responsibility for history have been severely impacted. They are pleasing the elites, following the extreme route of American public opinion, accumulating specious material and pretending to be thoughtful.

This American administration has definitely created some problems in U.S.-China policy. The Cold War against the Soviet Union and today’s U.S.-China relations occurred in a different time and space. Today’s U.S. administration used Cold War tactics to deal with China and has made things awkward within the U.S. and with its allies; how can it withstand the test of history? Pompeo and his team have misunderstood what Chinese people want and what the world wants to get out of U.S.-China relations, and have simplified everything in a hostile manner.

Chinese diplomacy and academic circles look down upon Pompeo and his team. This group lacks professionalism, like a group of gangsters suddenly entering a temple. They are not only fooling around, but also fabricating fallacies and heresy in order to set up a memorial for themselves. Pompeo found opportunists like Miles Yu to act as an adviser, and in particular, has increased Chinese people’s suspicion of the team’s advocacy of “amateurs” and “immorality” in China policy.

China is not the Soviet Union, and the majority of the world understands this — it is only the U.S. government that does not. Among these groups, the State Department led by Pompeo is the least able to understand this, thus American policy on China is almost like “drunk driving” and sailing against the current internationally. When the Soviet Union was contained by the United States, it took the initiative to make a clean break. China, however, has always been the protector of U.S.-China relations. China’s economic strength and resilience in promoting mutual benefit and win-win results make it difficult for the U.S. to fight a new Cold War against China.