CHINA WATCHBookshelf: How China Won Over America, and Then Lost It
In the four decades before 2010, the United States maintained a policy of engagement with China. But since 2010, the US–China relationship has given way to competition and disengagement. China’s formerly positive image among the American public has taken a nosedive.
In the four decades before 2010, the United States maintained a policy of engagement with China, notwithstanding such fluctuations as the reaction to the Tiananmen Square massacre. China won over the US through generally reformist domestic and foreign policies.
But since 2010, and especially since Donald Trump’s first presidency, the US–China relationship has given way to competition and disengagement. China’s formerly positive image among the American public has taken a nosedive.
In his new book, Breaking the Engagement: How China Won & Lost America, celebrated China scholar David Shambaugh examines the drivers of the ups and downs of the US–China relationship.
Shambaugh identifies four elements in the US engagement strategy: modernize China economically and technologically; liberalize China politically and socially; integrate and socialize China it into the international postwar liberal order; and exchange people in various professions in both government and societies. The desire to change China has always been in the US DNA.
The US engagement strategy made important contributions to China’s rapid development. The 2000s also saw rising social and political freedom in China, with a growing number of non-government organizations, lively open discussions online and in the media, a substantial degree of academic freedom, and relatively unrestricted movement for foreigners.
But this period of hopeful openness came to an end in 2010, according to Shambaugh. Around that time, US journalists, companies, foundations, universities and even embassies began to encounter restrictions on their activities. Since Xi Jinping’s ascent to Chinese leadership, the country’s policy has been characterized by growing domestic repression and international assertiveness.
What brought about the changes? Shambaugh suggests a number of factors. The Chinese Communist Party displayed hubris after the US-generated global financial crisis, seemingly believing that the decline of the West had begun.
At the same time, China was haunted by the color revolutions in some former Soviet republics and satellite states. China was facing its own domestic unrest in Xinjiang, Tibet and elsewhere. Under the weak leadership of Hu Jintao, the government’s reform faction lost influence.
As US–China engagement deepened, China paradoxically became more suspicious, rather than moving towards liberalism. As Shambaugh writes, one can certainly also understand why the CCP might view US engagement as subversive to its power and control.
According to Shambaugh, China lost America by undermining the premises and goals of the US engagement strategy. An appendix questions the competence of China’s ‘America watchers’ who did not seem to notice the gradual decline in US engagement towards the end of the second Obama administration. This set the foundation for a major deterioration in US–China relations in the last three years of the first Trump presidency, from which there was little substantive change under the Biden administration.
Shambaugh suggests that there are five different US schools of thought regarding the shape of future US–China relations, from attempting to revive engagement to taking a very hard line against China. In Shambaugh’s view, the US–China relationship is now characterized by ‘indefinite comprehensive competitive rivalry’. He believes that the US needs to go on the offensive and compete assertively with China, while managing the competition to establish a relationship of competitive coexistence.
Shambaugh regards the US’s disengagement from China as the most important international development in the 21st century, and one that has profoundly negative implications for the Asian and world orders. The book does not comment on the new Trump administration and its trade war, as the text was finalized before the 2024 US elections. In subsequent commentary, however, Shambaugh has suggested that Chinese nationalism will make it difficult for Trump to secure a trade deal with China.
Shambaugh does note, however, that the US–China relationship has at times fluctuated from amity to enmity and back again. We cannot rule out the relationship swinging back to amity, especially in the event of a change in China’s leadership.
There is ongoing debate about which side is responsible for the deterioration of US–China relations, and about the most sensible way to manage future relations. Shambaugh’s well-written and engaging book has offers relevant evidence concerning the issues at stake, while clearly presenting different sides of the argument.
John West is the author of Asian Century … on a Knife-edge and executive director of the Asian Century Institute. This article is published courtesy of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).
