Bonnie S. Glaser is Senior Adviser for Asia and Director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The deterioration in United StatesāChina relations did not begin with the election of Donald Trump, but it has deepened and accelerated during his presidency. Hopes that ties between Washington and Beijing would remain relatively stable after the April 2017 Mar-a-Lago summit were dashed later that year when the Trump administration released its National Security Strategy (NSS), which labelled China, alongside Russia, a ārivalā and ārevisionist powerā seeking to āshape a world antithetical to US values and interestsā.1 Following on its heels, the 2018 National Defense Strategy branded China a āstrategic competitorā and charged that it was āleveraging military modernisation, influence operations, and predatory economics to coerce neighboring countries to reorder the Indo-Pacific region to their advantageā.2 In December 2019, US Secretary of Defense Mark Esper declared that China is the top strategic concern for the Pentagon, ahead of Russia.3
Unlike prior downturns in USāChina relations, which were part of cycles of progress, stalemate and crisis, the current decline is driven by factors that are structural and deeply rooted.4 Strategic competition is now the dominant feature of the bilateral relationship and is likely to remain the primary animating force for years to come. Beijingās goal of national rejuvenation includes realising the unification of Taiwan with mainland China, and making the country into a global leader at least on par with the United States in terms of comprehensive national power, international influence and innovative capacity.5 The US is determined to block Chinese efforts to use market-distorting policies aimed at overtaking the US in many next-generation technologies, and to prevent China from dominating Asia and undermining the rules-based order.
Spiralling tensions between the US and China have led many observers to fear the onset of a new cold war or, even worse, a collision between American and Chinese military assets that escalates out of control. Reactions from Indo-Pacific countries to intensifying USāChina rivalry have been mixed, but most are ambivalent: they quietly applaud the Trump administrationās tougher approach and hope it will succeed in persuading China to modify its assertive and coercive policies, but they do not want to be forced to take sides between Washington and Beijing, and seek to avert a USāChina military confrontation.
TRUMPāS INDO-PACIFIC STRATEGY AND CHINA
The US pushback against perceived Chinese challenges has been manifested in both domestic and foreign policies. At home, the Trump administration has tightened rules on foreign investment in industries like telecommunications to thwart Chinese efforts to gain access to sensitive technology. It has also barred federal agencies and contractors from using telecommunications equipment made by Chinese companies such as Huawei and ZTE. To counter Chinese Communist Party (CCP) influence efforts, the US Department of Defense (DoD) has prohibited funding to US universities that host Confucius Institutes, which teach Chinese language and culture but are widely seen as conduits of Chinese propaganda and are partly backed by Chinese money.
A central element of the Trump administrationās rejoinder to China in foreign policy is the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy. In the first mention of FOIP by a Trump administration official, then-secretary of state Rex Tillerson called out China in October 2017, a month before the NSS was released, in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. He accused Beijing of subverting the sovereignty of neighbouring countries, taking provocative actions in the South China Sea, using āpredatory economicsā in financing Belt and Road projects, and challenging the rules-based order.6
When President Trump formally launched the FOIP strategy at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Da Nang, Vietnam on 10 November 2017, he highlighted Chinaās unfair trade practices but absolved the Chinese of wrongdoing, instead blaming his predecessors for allowing China to take advantage of the United States.7 His administrationās NSS, issued one month later, however, charged that China āseeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favorā.8
At the first Indo-Pacific Business Forum on 30 July 2018, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made only oblique references to China, insisting that the US FOIP vision is inclusive but reaffirming Washingtonās commitment to help regional countries ākeep their people free from coercion or great power dominationā and ācompete fairly in the international marketplaceā.9
In the autumn of 2018, however, the US sharply ramped up criticism of Chinese policies. At the Hudson Institute, US Vice President Mike Pence delivered the harshest speech on China to date, accusing Beijing of seeking to push the United States out of the Western Pacific, control 90% of the worldās most advanced industries, meddle in American politics and use debt diplomacy to expand its influence around the world. In contrast to Chinaās push to dominate the region, Pence pledged that the US vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific would be based on shared values and a āspirit of respect built on partnershipā.10
