U.S-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue Held for Four Rounds, but They Are Not Enough

Unwittingly, the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue has been held for four rounds since President Obama took office. A question arises at this point: Did the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which both China and the U.S. placed high hopes on, bring any change in the past few years?

Positively, the answer is yes. During 2009-2011, China and the U.S. have engaged in an in-depth exchange of views on such topics as macroeconomic policy, international financial reform and communication between each other’s economic departments, etc. In this strategic respect, the two parties have cooperated effectively in solving such issues as global climate change, the development of clean energy and multiple regional problems.

However, if evaluated by the fundamental goal and standard of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue — enhancing mutual trust between China and the U.S. — the Strategic and Economic Dialogue is disappointing to a large extent. Though it has been held for four rounds and senior officials from China and the U.S. have met a couple of times, mutual trust between the two parties has hardly made any substantial improvement. For instance, whenever bilateral tensions arise, the two parties still suspect each other’s motive: For the U.S., the question is whether China is posing a challenge; for China, the question becomes whether the U.S. is seeking to contain China.

For example, at the Strategic and Economic Dialogue last year, China and the U.S. reached a consensus on Asia-Pacific issues. However, right after the meeting, the Obama administration formally advanced the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Though officially the Obama administration continued to emphasize its economic considerations and claimed that it merely wanted to facilitate exportation in the Asia-Pacific region through the Trans-Pacific Partnership, China still suspected that the U.S. was trying to limit China’s strategic position in the region through the Trans-Pacific Partnership. According to China, the reason why the U.S. promoted the Trans-Pacific Partnership negotiations so much was that the U.S. was afraid that China’s stronger economic influence in the region would threaten America’s profits and even impair the U.S.–East Asian alliance.

Even some of the topics at this year’s Strategic and Economic Dialogue showed the deep mistrust between the U.S. and China. Though the U.S. has promised many times to give China market economy status and to loosen its export restrictions on high-tech production, at present these two major issues still remain unresolved. Meanwhile, the U.S. also doubts that China would let the market determine the Yuan exchange rate or protect intellectual properties effectively.

The mistrust and apprehension between China and the U.S. is understandable to some degree. After all, the two great nations with distinctive histories, cultures and political structures indeed need time to adapt to each other. But the problem is why does the development of strategically mutual trust between these two countries always fail to achieve a breakthrough?

To answer this question, we have to take a look at the structural tension between China and the United States. Undeniably, China is rising while the U.S. is comparatively declining. The rise of China as the second most influential country inevitably affects the U.S., the most powerful country in the world. Believe it or not, this situation will be the major structural pattern of China–U.S. relations at present as well as in the long-term future. Such structure is by nature conflicting and inflammatory. Whatever problems, especially those controversially strategic ones, are at issue, China and the U.S. will weight them first by the aforementioned structural tension, which will result in predictable mistrust.

Besides, the basic logic of promoting mutual trust through the Strategic and Economic Dialogue is to help both countries develop long-term, stable judgment and anticipation of each other’s behavior and patterns of thinking. Theoretically, this plan is feasible. But there are two major factors that interfere with this. First, if the two parties cannot reach a consensus on the existing problems for a long time, the originally frail mutual trust would not be promoted, but rather it would be weakened. Second, as issues regarding China-U.S. relations cover broader geographic regions and increase in number, the China-U.S. relationship goes beyond the bilateral level: More and more countries are becoming involved in the relationship. Facing uncontrollable third parties, it becomes ever more difficult for both China and the U.S. to give clear and satisfactory answers to each other, even if they wanted to do so. These interfering factors can harm the mutual trust between China and the United States.

Dialogue is indeed better than confrontation, but it is not enough. The efforts made by China and the U.S. to minimize and even eliminate mistrust through the Strategic and Economic Dialogue should be encouraged. However, given the structural tension between the two parties, as well as the limitations of dialogues, both China and the U.S. should not have too much confidence in the actual effects of the dialogue mechanism; otherwise the greater the expectations, the greater the disappointment.

The Strategic and Economic Dialogue is quintessentially an interaction at the official and elite level. Compared with that interaction, the more important ones that assure substantial development of China-U.S. relations are stable social interaction, close economic links and their interdependent interests, which will consequently form an inescapable, unchangeable and irreversible basic relationship network that would prevent administrations of both parties from misjudging and acting on impulse. Though the aforementioned liberalistic but somewhat idealistic dialogue path would easily get teased, in a new era of globalization and democratization, it can effectively contain and prevent undesirable consequences resulting from competition between powerful countries. In this sense, even if strategic mistrust between China and the U.S. becomes normal and inevitable, it does not mean that confrontation, or military conflict, between the two parties is inevitable.

“The efforts made by China and the U.S. to minimize and even eliminate mistrust through the Strategic and Economic Dialogue should be encouraged. However, given the structural tension between the two parties, as well as the limitations of the dialogues, both China and the U.S. should not have too much confidence in the actual effects of the dialogue mechanism; otherwise, the greater the expectations, the greater the disappointment.”

The author is an associate professor at the American Studies Center of Fudan University.