The epochal handshake between the founder of the People’s Republic of China and the sworn anti-communist leader of the world’s leading capitalist nation was splashed on the People’s Daily on 22 February 1972.
United States (US) President Richard Nixon hailed the moment as “the week that changed the world” when he shook hands with CPC Chairman Mao Zedong during the first visit by an American leader to China.
It was the ‘scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ moment– the need was mutual based on reciprocation. Mao’s Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution had hobbled to a disaster, China was on the brink of war with the Soviet Union and looking to leverage American backing to counter Leonid Brezhnev, and wanted to reopen to the world.
Nixon wanted to exit Vietnam and wanted China’s help in pressuring North Vietnam to end the conflict.
Joe Biden’s dilemma over China
US-China ties have fallen precipitously, especially in the last year, with Moscow’s increasing intimacy with Beijing in the background of the protracted Ukraine war.
The war could drag on beyond 2023 as Russia is adamant despite being reduced to defending the occupied Ukrainian territories, Kyiv’s counteroffensive stutters with extremely limited gains and the US continues to funnel military aid worth billions into the abyss.
With the ceaseless Ukraine conflict and the 2024 US presidential election, US President Joe Biden cannot afford to antagonise both China and Russia, which want a multipolar world without Washington’s hegemony.
Rattling Beijing further means maintaining the two-front stalemate–battling Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific, the South China Sea and the Middle East, and Russia in Ukraine.
As former President Donald Trump leads his Republican rivals by double digits and the White House race gradually winds down to a slugfest between him and Biden, Democrats have realised the futility of complicating China ties with the involvement in the Ukrainian imbroglio.
Trump will certainly corner Biden on China and Ukraine after boasting of ending the war in 24 hours if re-elected. Republican hawks and Trumpsters, especially in the House, are against further military aid to Ukraine and consider China, not Russia, as America’s b?te noire.
Biden faces a conundrum: if he appears too soft on China, the GOP, especially Trump, will hammer him before the election and he might also lose voter support. If he targets China–like calling President Xi Jinping a “dictator“–he risks alienating Beijing further and widening the chasm.
Waning American influence
The image of the US as the world leader and the global police was severely dented after Trump’s ‘America First’ policy alienated Uncle Sam in Europe and the Mid-East.
After German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s exit, French President Emmanuel Macron has been trying frenetically in his De Gaullean illusion to be Europe’s next leader independent of the US policy–though he has failed abysmally. In the Mid-East, America’s once-staunchest ally Saudi Arabia is exceedingly taking decisions without American influence.
China has dashed to take advantage.
“… We are just America’s followers. The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No,” said Macron, triggering a storm after meeting Xi in Beijing in April.
Macron clearly stated that the China-Taiwan problem isn’t Europe’s headache and indirectly hinted at the uselessness of the Ukraine intervention.
“Europeans cannot resolve the crisis in Ukraine. How can we credibly say on Taiwan? If the tensions between the two superpowers heat up, we won’t have the time nor the resources to finance our strategic autonomy and we will become vassals,” he said, indicating that Europe should have an independent foreign policy not intertwined with that of the US.
Similarly, China continued exerting its influence in the Middle East by brokering a Saudi-Iran deal in March ending a seven-year-old freeze in relations between the arch-rivals.
Besides, the China-European Union (EU) economic ties have substantially expanded. From 4.6 per cent in 2020, the China-EU trade galloped to more than 20 per cent in 2021 and 2022. The value of Chinese exports and imports was EUR856.3 billion in 2022–15.3 per cent of the EU’s total trade–only second to the US.
Rapprochement 2.0, China has upper hand
More than five decades after the Nixon-Mao meeting, when both countries were eager for a diplomatic embrace, a desperate American attempt at a rapprochement 2.0 has become a formidable task with China gaining the upper hand.
As China continues to assert its global presence and the US influence wanes, Washington has no option but to extend the olive branch to Beijing.
Three top American officials landed in China in the last few weeks–secretary of state Antony Blinken, treasury secretary Janet Yellen and climate envoy John Kerry to meet Xi, Premier Li Qiang and top diplomat Wang Yi.
On the other hand, no high-ranking Chinese official has visited the US since Biden took charge.
The last publicly-known phone conversation between Biden and Xi following the Chinese President’s Russia visit in March wasn’t pleasant. Please refer.
Biden warned Xi to “be careful”. “Since Russia entered Ukraine, 600 American corporations have pulled out of Russia. And you have told me that your economy depends on investment from Europe and the United States. Be careful,” he told Xi.
Their last personal meeting, on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali last November, wasn’t fruitful either with Biden objecting to China’s “coercive and increasingly aggressive actions towards Taiwan” and Xi explicitly stating that Washington must not cross the “first red line” and abide by the one-China policy.
Deep mistrust, irritants plague ties
The rapid flurry of American diplomatic visits failed to loosen the Gordian knot as there were no substantial achievements despite pledges to enhance bilateral cooperation.
The deep mistrust, the increasing gulf between the two nations and their different perceptions cloud cooperation. While China believes that the US wants to curb its global ambitions, Washington worries that Beijing’s expansionist policies threaten its national security and clout.
The relationship remains fragile and brittle over several issues–trade, technology, Taiwan, the South China Sea, the Indo-Pacific and China’s firmer ties with Russia.
Xi told Blinken that both countries should respect each other’s interests and China … “will not challenge or replace” the US, which “must not harm China’s legitimate rights and interests”.
After meeting Chinese officials, Blinken acknowledged to the media that significant unresolved issues remain and there’s “instability” in the relationship.
Blinken realised that the facade of exploring areas where both countries “might work together on our interests” and “align on shared transnational challenges” he presented to the media was cracked.
Blinken’s biggest failure was not moving an inch towards unfreezing the military-to-military communication halt. China severed the communication in retaliation to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s Taiwan visit in August 2022 with its Eastern Theatre Command conducting the largest live-fire drills in the Taiwan Strait involving 68 military aircraft and 13 naval ships.
The freeze could result in a misunderstanding that might trigger a military confrontation. Two dangerous incidents showed the possibility of that calamity.
In a deadly manoeuvre in May, a Chinese J-16 intercepted a US RC-135 Rivet Joint reconnaissance aircraft over the South China Sea causing massive turbulence.
In December, a Chinese Navy J-11 intercepted another RC-135 over the South China Sea by coming within 20 feet of its nose.
The May incident had prompted Blinken to say, “The most dangerous thing is not to communicate … to have a misunderstanding, a miscommunication.”
Beijing had rejected a US request for a meeting between defence secretary Lloyd Austin and Chinese defence minister Li Shangfu, who was sanctioned by the US in 2018 under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act after China purchased 10 Su-35s in 2017 and S-400 missile equipment in 2018.
Beijing also blamed Washington for the worsening ties and its “wrong perception” of China as the reason with then-foreign minister Qin Gang saying that “a choice needs to be made between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict”.
Qin was unequivocal and firm on Taiwan: “No room for compromise or backdown.”
China believes that the US overemphasises national security while seeking collaboration in specific areas. When Kerry emphasised climate cooperation, Yi, the current foreign minister, said that it is connected with “the overall environment of Sino-US relations”.
Li made the same point when Yellen said that the US “doesn’t seek economic advantage over China” and its actions are linked with national security. Both economies will be hurt if America continues to “overstretch” security, he said.
What’s the way out?
Honestly, it will be a long, agonising process for the US and China to reach a common ground considering their different perceptions, the various areas of disagreement and Russia’s strong relations with the Asian giant.
First, the US should lift sanctions on Li Shangfu to resume military-to-military communication. Beijing has shot down the possibility of any meeting unless the sanctions are removed.
Both for the sake of optics and practicality, it would be odd for Austin meeting a sanctioned Chinese counterpart. If Blinken feels that the sanctions “don’t prevent” Li “from engaging or us engaging with him”, he is wrong.
It is extremely important that both top American and Chinese brass should be a phone call away to stop an unintended or intended military misadventure from becoming a full-blown confrontation in regions where their navies and air forces operate.
Second, the US should recognise the reality of a multipolar world with powerful countries like China refusing to finetune their policies according to America. If Washington wants to deepen ties with Australia or New Zealand, China has the right to collaborate with Pakistan or Sri Lanka–the Indo-Pacific doesn’t belong to either the US or China.
Third, a multipolar world doesn’t mean China should claim a massive portion of the South China Sea, which have angered Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia and Brunei, which too claim the islands and various zones. China can’t expect a muted response or no reaction from the competing claimants, who will eventually ask for American assistance to counter Chinese dominance.
Fourth, Taiwan. The US has always accepted the one-China policy but never endorsed it. Xi has instructed his military to be ready by 2027 to take Taiwan by force.
“The first and foremost thing we should bear in mind is that Taiwan is China’s Taiwan,” Xie Feng, the Chinese ambassador to the US, said at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado, last week.
Any US military intervention in a China-Taiwan war would be disastrous. Considering the staggering military aid to Ukraine, which has failed to deter Russia, the US can’t afford another military misadventure–and China knows it.
Several wargames have shown that the US would decisively lose in Taiwan. A wargame planned by the RAND Corporation in the early 2000s revealed that Beijing would use what the Pentagon refers to as A2/AD (anti-access, area denial) to prevent an Iraq-like American military build-up.
A 2018 war game revealed that the US military will lose fast if it doesn’t change course considering the Chinese advancement in military technology and missiles.
In 2020, a Pentagon war game based on 2030 showed that the US would fail to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion and suffer “capital losses” with Beijing targeting Guam.
“There’s a Chinese saying that we will not make provocations, but we will not flinch from provocations,” Xie said in Aspen.
Fifth, dialogues and more discussions are the only way to move further and avoid a calamitous situation.
Profound differences remain but both countries also want to stop further rivalry, confrontation and worsening of ties. China has the upper hand but it doesn’t want a military conflict either.
A middle path has to be discovered where either nation doesn’t provide big concessions and prevents competition from snowballing into an unavoidable showdown.
As Xi too said during a discussion with former national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger–who had organised the Mao-Nixon meeting–in Beijing earlier this month that China and the US “need to make new decisions” as they are “once again at the crossroads of where to go”.
The writer is a freelance journalist with two decades of experience and comments primarily on foreign affairs. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost‘s views.
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