Like many people, the majority of Chinese today don’t care much for the United States. Even though most Chinese continue to admire American culture and to like Americans, 57 percent of Chinese in a recent Pew poll said they viewed the country “unfavorably,” for three main reasons: its arrogance, unilateralism and war in Iraq.
China’s government, however, does not share this antipathy. Many Chinese leaders are quite happy with the United States these days, though not necessarily for reasons that would please Washington. Bush may want to be another Ronald Reagan. But many Chinese policymakers see him as another Richard Nixon—terrible for his own country but great for China. Washington’s preoccupation with the War on Terror and its costly adventure in Iraq have given Beijing valuable strategic space. Early on, the Bush administration dubbed China a “strategic competitor” and seemed to signal that it would try to balance China’s rise. But since fighting terrorism and remaking the Middle East have become the organizing principles of U.S. foreign policy, U.S.-Chinese ties have improved. In the same period, the Chinese economy has doubled in size and Beijing’s global influence has grown beyond recognition.
Beneath the top level of government, Chinese thinking on the United States tends to be more ambivalent, falling into three camps. First, there are the most seasoned Chinese America watchers, all sophisticated realists. This group argues that despite its costly mistakes, the United States remains overwhelmingly superior in hard power. Tsinghua University’s Chu Shulong, a highly regarded specialist on the United States who has just spent a year at the Brookings Institution in Washington, puts it best: “The U.S. is not in decline,” he wrote in a recent op-ed in a Chinese newspaper. “Its basic conditions are healthy and dynamic.” Yet Chu adds an important caveat: that the “U.S. has lost its prestige—or soft power.” Shi Yinhong, a prominent scholar at Renmin University, shares this sentiment, and early in 2007 argued in a leading Chinese foreign-policy journal that because of Bush’s mishandling of Iraq, the United States had suffered in terms of reputation, moral superiority and overall capacity to shape the global political agenda.
The second group of Chinese thinkers—the conservative nationalists—tends to over-look these caveats and focus on the fact that the United States retains unchallenged military and economic supremacy. This strength makes such thinkers nervous, even paranoid. In October, Col. Dai Xu of the Chinese Air Force wrote in Global Times (China’s most-read newspaper on international affairs) that “America today relies on its absolute superiority in space and information technology, and grabs critical geographic points and resources in the world”—an apparent reference to Central Asia and Iraq—“under the name of the War on Terror … to maintain its strategic position.” Fang Ning of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (a government-run think tank) sees U.S. policy in an even more sinister light. “Confronted with China’s rise,” writes Fang, “the U.S. has been containing and keeping down China in many areas, such as trade, intellectual-property rights and Taiwan. At the same time, the U.S. is also marketing American values to China … [which] are not the panaceas to China’s problems but a cause for us to raise our vigilance.”
For such nationalists, the Dalai Lama’s recent visit to the White House was a sign that Washington still seeks to undermine China’s power. They view Washington’s attempts to get Beijing to revalue its currency in a similar light—as an effort to create financial chaos in China and derail its booming economy.
Only the third group, made up of the most cosmopolitan elites, recognizes that the recent decline in U.S. prestige and leadership could actually hurt China. Top scholars such as Wang Jisi, dean of the School of International Studies at Peking University, believe that Washington’s self-inflicted wounds could have dangerous international repercussions. “The U.S. … capability to influence the world has weakened. This has brought both hope and trouble. The hope is that the world’s sole superpower can no longer act recklessly. But the trouble is the U.S. nevertheless keeps some sort of stable order.” Although few senior Chinese officials openly acknowledge the value of the public goods the United States provides—such as free trade, safe sea lanes, technological innovation and regional stability—many are aware of just how much China benefits from them and know it could not have grown so fast without them. In this camp’s view, Washington may push Beijing around on currency, deter its behavior toward Taiwan and lecture it on human rights. But these are the costs of doing business with the world’s only superpower. The United States may be annoying, in other words, but it’s a price worth paying.
Of the three camps, the first (the realists) is the most dominant, both within and outside government. Paranoid nationalists may have bigger mouths, but they have no influence on policy. If pressed, moreover, even this camp would find it hard to deny that Bush’s failed policies have been a boon for China. That makes it easy to understand why even an America led by a man who’s been called the worst president in history still has plenty of fans in Beijing.
