Sino–U.S. Relations: In Terms of Common Interests

The Sino-U.S. relationship has long been the focal point of Chinese people’s attention; and it has become ever more interesting since America’s arms sale to Taiwan earlier this year, Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, and issues regarding the South China Sea and Yellow Sea. At present, the Diaoyu Island is drawing intense attention and has triggered battles of dispute between China and Japan, behind which we can also see America’s influence.

In fact, America has never left China’s diplomacy alone since the day New China was founded. Sino-U.S. ties kept growing stronger and stronger since China opened up, entering the international community and forging an increasingly close relationship with the rest of the world, especially in terms of the economy. After the Cold War, the relationship with America, without any doubt, became the foundation of China’s diplomatic relations: A stable Sino-U.S. relationship ensures the stability of China’s diplomacy; a troublesome Sino-U.S. relationship adds to the unpredictable. With China’s rise and the increasingly common interests between the two nations, the Sino-U.S. relationship is taking on a whole new look. Although there have been troubles from time to time, the Sino-U.S. relationship will develop toward a bright future with China’s growing national strength and, in particular, the increasingly common interests between the two countries, despite the diminishing yet never distinguishable troubles and conflicts.

Common Interests and Relations between Nations

No one could imagine how two nations would develop their relations without any common interests, let alone cooperate with each other, either during the Cold War then or during the post-Cold War now. (Some scholars argue that now is the post-post-Cold war period. Consensus as for what is the mark of the end of the post-Cold War period, however, has yet to be reached.) The most striking feature of the Cold War period is that the contention and rivalry over ideology was its outpost and battlefield. In fact, ideological interests are also part of international interests, only not the core of it in most cases. During the Cold War, however, ideological interest overrode economic and security interests. At that time, cooperation between nations was usually based on a shared ideology, which became the precondition of developing international relations. This means the first thing that came into the minds of those policymakers was ideology instead of the economy or security. As a result, countries that share the same ideology generally keep far better relations with each other than with those who differ, which was a universal phenomenon during the Cold War.

After the Cold War, economic and security interests again replaced ideology to become the decisive factors in international relations. Generally, how good the relationship between two countries is is proportional to how many common interests they share (how many fields in which they cooperate) and how important those interests are (for example, how much weight China’s rise holds for Japan and America in terms of security interests).

To develop international relations with another country, the number of common interests matters, and the importance of them matters even more. Take as an example the common interests between the U.S. and Israel, which are low in number and cannot compare to those between America and China. But as everyone knows, as one of the closest allies of the U.S., Israel regards its common interests with America with a great deal of importance.

Present Situation of Common Interests between America and China

China and America have common interests in a wide range of fields, as the leaders of both countries have said. What are those fields, then? We can make a list without even thinking: finance and trade, non-proliferation (regarding North Korea and Iran nuclear issues), counter-terrorism, global warming, cultural exchange, etc. The two nations have especially wide and strong ties in the economy and trade.

With so many common interests, why does the Sino-U.S. relationship suffer from fluctuations like that of the law of value? Is it because there really is a huge gap of misunderstanding between the two nations? Or is it because the Sino-U.S. relationship is still immature? Neither. The root cause is that the importance of those common interests is not all that satisfying.

One of the most obvious examples concerns China’s sovereignty over her territory. America and China not only have no common interests in this regard, but they run in starkly opposite directions. At the beginning of this article I mentioned the arms sale to Taiwan, Obama’s meeting with the Dalai Lama, America’s interference in affairs regarding the South China Sea and the sham battle in the Yellow Sea, and America’s secret support of Japan concerning the Diaoyu Island dispute. All of the above concern China’s core interests, despite the consensus of giving consideration to each other’s core interests reached between the two nations last year when Obama was paying a visit to China.

But the reality is that on the one hand, China poses no threat to America’s national security in terms of territory and sovereignty, which are regarded to be America’s core interests. On the other hand, although China holds large amounts of U.S. dollars, to dump them in order to retaliate or punish America would inflict damage to China herself as well, and the result would be “killing 3,000 enemies at the price of the death of 800 soldiers on our side.” In other words, America doesn’t think its common interests with China matter much. Moreover, in the 60 years after World War II, America has been the boss all along, long accustomed to ignoring the interests of small and weak countries. The U.S. is in the habit of neglecting China’s core interests when developing international relations.

Future of Common Interests between China and America

Two big powers can hardly keep any practical cooperation in the field of security without a common enemy. Looking around America’s allies, we can easily see that they are more or less suffering threats from their neighboring areas, near or far, pressing or easing. Of course, only a few of these so-called threats really exist, while most of them remain objective conjectures.

After the collapse of the USSR, China and America have no common enemy in the foreseeable future. China still hasn’t come up with any idea as to how to deal with the energy issue, which is one of America’s core interests. Contrarily, with China’s rise, her neighboring countries have persisting worries, and most of them chimed in easily with America in being on guard against China.

The non-traditional security issues such as terrorism, financial crises and global warming are taking an ever more important place on most countries’ agendas. The traditional security issues, however, remain those countries’ top priorities without any doubt. Therefore, although the common interests regarding the non-traditional security issues between China and America are increasing in depth and breadth, America’s core interests haven’t changed much since the collapse of the USSR. China’s rise, however, undermined the mutual trust in military between China and the U.S., and provoked America’s lookout and alert against China.

Summary

As long as America and China take hold of the seats as the top two powers in the world, we can say that no matter how many common interests there are between the two countries, they will still remain unimportant. At present, Chinese officials often say that we should increase the number of common interests between China and America and broaden cooperation. Yet, without any breakthrough in the importance of those common interests, we have no reason to be optimistic about the future of Sino-U.S. relations.

Neither watchwords nor good wishes could alter reality even one little bit. To solve problems, the preconditions and foundations are to first face up to reality.