Chas Freeman 美國對華政策 自殘案例

美國對華政策：一個自殘案例

U.S. China Policy: A Case of Self-Harm

查斯·弗裏曼 2023-02-07
https://chasfreeman.net/2505-2/

對美國外交學院的講話
Chas W. Freeman, Jr. 大使（USFS，退役）
布朗大學沃森國際與公共事務研究所訪問學者

2023 年 2 月 7 日通過視頻發送至華盛頓特區

234年前，這個國家的人民明智地決定通過新憲法“組建一個更加完善的聯邦”。 該憲法的序言仍然是有史以來最雄辯的清單，列出了人們建立政府的目的。 它宣稱美利堅合眾國的使命應該是：

建立正義，
確保國內安寧，
提供共同防禦，
促進普遍福利，以及
確保我們自己和我們的子孫後代獲得自由的祝福。
對照這一係列基準來衡量，我們當前的對華政策越來越具有破壞性。 中國能夠而且將會照顧好自己。 短期來看，我們可以限製甚至削弱它。 但從長遠來看，我們的政策正在對我們產生什麽影響，以及將會對我們產生什麽影響，我深感擔憂。 讓我按照我們國家憲章規定的順序回顧一下這份清單。

我們在最新的“選擇之戰”中的決定——將中國指定為我們的敵人——非但沒有推進正義事業，反而導致了針對華裔美國人的新的不公正現象。 輪到他們了，並蔓延到那些看起來像他們的人，經曆了其他少數族裔（如德國人、意大利人和日裔美國人）在過去與美國的戰時緊張局勢中所遭受的那種來自民眾和執法機構的仇外迫害。 他們祖先的土地。

就像麥卡錫時代一樣，我們再次讓有才華的中國移民科學家和工程師感到這裏不受歡迎，並激勵他們回國。 朝鮮戰爭期間，我們將加州理工學院控製論工程之父錢學森帶回中國，在那裏他成為了中國人民解放軍核武器和運載係統之父。 我們現在正在讓新一代才華橫溢的華裔美國科學家和工程師中的多名成員害怕監視和迫害。 他們的離開是我們經濟技術的損失，也是中國的收獲。

當然，反亞裔暴力並不新鮮。 現在發生的事情隻是幾個世紀以來擾亂我們國內安寧的種族主義和宗教偏見的最新證據。 馬丁·路德·金充滿希望的樂觀主義已經讓位於喬治·弗洛伊德令人窒息的絕望。 伊斯蘭恐懼症根深蒂固，反猶太主義卷土重來，我們將外國人和他們的想法拒之門外。 美國人因我們對信息環境的忠誠、另類事實以及剝削性的企業和社交媒體強加給我們的盲點而分裂。 辯論，就其發生的程度而言，是充滿敵意的而不是文明的，而且很少有成果。

如果像卡爾·多伊奇（Karl Deutsch）所宣稱的那樣，一個國家是“一群因對過去的錯誤看法和對鄰居的仇恨而團結在一起的人”，那麽除了我們對官方指定和妖魔化的敵人的強烈敵意之外，我們就不再符合這個標準。 中國、伊朗和俄羅斯等國家。 我們對我們的曆史及其意義產生了深刻的分歧。 現在，美國人之間對於是否：

我們的國家是在自由中孕育的，或者說是在非洲奴隸製的基礎上誕生的。
我們是一個“白人”或多種族國家。

我們的國家應該獨立於宗教，或者服從各種版本的基督教。

我們的祖先通過勇敢地突破邊境或使這片大陸的土著居民遭受種族滅絕來建立我們的國家。

選舉的合法性在於其公平性，或者在於狂熱者是否選擇接受選舉結果。

我們正在經曆的不團結和功能失調不僅僅擾亂了我們家庭的安寧。 它削弱了我們與其他國家的關係。 華盛頓的政治僵局阻礙了經濟、種族、意識形態、軍事和其他利益之間的權衡，並阻礙了總體國家利益的綜合。 這使得我們的外交政策成為國內特殊利益競爭的載體。 就中國而言，單一利益集團因怨恨和恐懼而聯合起來，表麵上使它們結成對北京的共同敵意。 但每個團體的議程都會削弱其他團體的議程，從而損害所有人的利益。

1991年，蘇聯不再與我們爭奪全球霸權並解體，我們沒有了明顯的敵人。 中國現在已經成為我們治療“敵害剝奪綜合症”的良藥。 在這種情況下，我們放棄了作為國防和對外關係工具的外交。 我們之間的交戰理由是台灣與中國其他地區的分離，這是我們軍事幹預分裂中國內戰各方的無意結果。 瓦

我們甚至不再假裝遵守我們後來與北京達成的基本協議，以使其能夠將台灣問題放在一邊以供未來和平解決。 現在，所有的討論都是如何通過戰爭來確定台灣的地位。 雙方都必須知道，這樣的戰爭對台灣來說將是災難性的，對美國和中國來說都是災難性的，對任何加入我們或中國參與戰鬥的國家都會造成嚴重損害。 但華盛頓沒有人像尼克鬆政府五十年前所做的那樣，試圖尋找解決方案或臨時的權宜之計來處理中美在台灣問題上的分歧。

美國人不喜歡大政府，除非它穿著製服。 現在，對與中國發生戰爭的預期是大幅增加對我們的軍工國會和情報綜合體補貼的主要理由。 軍事凱恩斯主義找到了冷戰後可靠的動力。

但是，將我們遏製、如果可能的話扭轉中國崛起的努力描述為“冷戰2.0”是一種逃避。 這意味著我們與蘇聯的經驗在某種程度上為我們在不引發熱戰的情況下與中國抗衡並擊敗它做好了準備。 因此，這是一種否認行為，是幻想外交政策的借口，也是對國際事務采取適得其反的完全軍事手段的理由。

中國對我們的地區主導地位和全球霸權的挑戰雖然真實存在，但與已故的、無人哀歎的蘇聯所發起的挑戰幾乎沒有任何共同之處。 遵循冷戰劇本是無法實現這一目標的。 與自我孤立、自給自足、高度軍事化的蘇聯不同：

中國已完全融入1945年後的政治經濟秩序。 它是世界上大多數國家的最大貿易夥伴。 它可以被對抗，但不能被“遏製”。

中美經濟相互依存。 不存在我方勝、中國方敗的零和博弈。 脫鉤會讓雙方都付出經濟增長、就業和技術進步的代價。

中國對美國全球霸主地位的挑戰並非源於意識形態侵略或海外帝國建設。 中國尋求將其體係與美國意識形態的彌賽亞主義隔離開來，而不是輸出其自身定義不明確、內向且沒有吸引力的威權意識形態。 與蘇聯不同，中華人民共和國既沒有試圖也沒有威脅征服其鄰國。 中國的政治經濟影響力開始讓我們黯然失色。 我們把這個問題偽裝成一個軍事問題。
中國的財富和實力的回歸正在通過逐漸取代我們在二戰後的地區和全球政治經濟霸權而降低美國的國際地位和影響力。 但北京不會對美國的領土或獨立構成威脅。 東亞經濟秩序已經以中國為中心。 中國已成為非洲最重要的外部力量。 阿拉伯和拉丁美洲歡迎中國，以此抵消歐洲和美國持續的主導地位。 中美之爭是關於美國地區和全球影響力的衰退，而不是關於中國征服鄰國的願望。

美國的軍事姿態與我們麵臨的經濟和技術挑戰無關。 它無助於恢複我們日益下降的威望，也無助於平衡中國日益增長的經濟實力。

1950年，美國派第七艦隊介入中國內戰 — 與我們 1918-1920 年幹預俄羅斯內戰不同 — — 成功地阻止了共產黨的徹底勝利。 它將中國領土一部分的台灣與其他地區分離。七十多年後，我們繼續在軍事上爭奪中國的邊界。 我們越這樣做，中國就越覺得有義務挑戰我們。

中國與印度、日本、馬來西亞、菲律賓和越南存在輕微領土爭端，但沒有占領或威脅占領鄰國。 我們選擇在軍事上支持其他針對中國的聲索國，而不是幫助解決他們與中國的爭端。

美國與中國的“競爭”不是效仿中國決心自強不息，而是試圖阻礙其發展並將其排除在外國市場之外。 首先尋求“脫鉤”的是我們，而不是中國人。 中國對美國的關稅進行了報複，並尋求減少對美國進口產品的依賴，但直到最近，中國還以補貼和支持本國企業作為回應，而不是效仿美國的經濟戰。

從一開始，我們“遏製”蘇聯的冷戰戰略就有一個明確的目標——最終讓蘇聯體係因其自身的弱點而崩潰。 我們與中國開始的準戰爭既沒有勝利的定義，也沒有終止戰爭的戰略。 很少有人看到中國會崩潰的前景。

與冷戰時期不同，其他國家現在認為沒有令人信服的理由在我們和我們指定的對手之間做出選擇

。 歐盟和日本以及南半球國家希望與中國接觸，而不是孤立它。

中國的工業經濟規模已經是我們的兩倍。 現在，世界上四分之一或更多的科學家、技術人員、工程師和數學家是中國人，而且這一比例還在不斷增長。 技術平衡正在向對我們不利的方向轉變。 諷刺的是，我們與中國競爭的最有效方式就是引進更多的中國人才。 但我們卻反其道而行之。 禁止美國技術向中國出口或在兩國交叉投資不會扭轉中國的前進方向。 它甚至可以加速它。 中國已開始在越來越多的領域引領國際技術創新。

在與中國就邊界和領土主張發生的任何戰爭中，中國將擁有工業激增能力和承受消耗能力的優勢。 它還將擁有更短的通訊線路。 民族主義熱情的天平將站在北京一邊，而不是華盛頓一邊，就像河內努力統一越南一樣。 但與北越不同的是，中國是一個擁有核武器的超級大國。

在國際事務中，就像在物理學中一樣，每一個行動都會產生大小相等、方向相反的反應。 我們的行動刺激中國反映、滿足和匹配我們對它的軍事敵意。 我們現在正在與中國進行軍備競賽，而且我們是否能堅持住還遠不清楚。 我們明顯決心將台灣作為美國在東亞勢力範圍的一部分，並派出海軍和空軍在中國邊境積極巡邏，這為北京方麵提供了快速重組解放軍和全麵現代化的理由。

中國人民解放軍海軍（PLAN）目前是世界上最大的海軍。 據報道，一些解放軍海軍艦艇配備了軌道炮，但我們一直無法開發和部署這項技術。 解放軍陸基火箭軍部署的彈道導彈能夠攻擊距中國 1000 英裏外移動的航空母艦。 中國部署了我們無法防禦的高超音速導彈。 解放軍空軍現在擁有世界上最大的轟炸機部隊以及裝備射程超過我們的空空導彈的戰鬥機。 北京正在加強其核能力，以阻止美國再次幹預其與蔣介石政治繼承人的未結束的內戰。蔣介石在大陸與中國共產黨的戰爭中失敗，但在美國的支持下，在台北重建了政權。 。

盡管中國的軍力建設令人矚目，但迄今為止，北京的國防開支仍遠低於GDP的2%。 與此同時，五角大樓仍然無法控製成本。 國防部從未通過過審計，並且因依賴美國類似以利潤為導向的國有企業的成本加成采購而造成浪費、欺詐和管理不善，這些企業是軍工企業官僚機構，其收入（和利潤） ）完全來自政府。 就我們的支付能力而言，美國國防預算已經失控。

四十年前，美國迫使蘇聯將更多的經濟投入國防而忽視其公民的福祉，從而使蘇聯破產。 現在，我們美國人正在將越來越多的借來的錢和納稅人的錢轉移到我們的軍隊，盡管我們的人力和物質基礎設施正在老化。 在某些方麵，就中國而言，我們現在處於冷戰時期蘇聯的地位。 我們的財政軌跡損害了美國人的總體福利。 然而，這與我們的自由一樣，是我們武裝部隊要捍衛的。

美國試圖壓製中國的國家技術龍頭企業、阻礙其電子工業並剝奪其外國市場，表麵上的目的是減少我們對全球供應鏈的依賴，恢複美國的就業和經濟領導地位。 但直接影響是：

促使中國做出對等決定，減少對美國進口產品的依賴，並加大力度促進科技自力更生。 中國現已承諾投入 2650 億美元來減少對進口半導體的依賴。

擾亂供應鏈，導致零部件短缺，從而降低美國的經濟效率，同時引發通貨膨脹。

促使外國和企業尋求美國技術和美元融資的替代方案，以避免未來出現長臂製裁和供應鏈中斷的風險，就像我們單方麵對中國、伊朗和俄羅斯實施的那樣。

引導中國和韓國等技術競爭對手加大對半導體和其他高科技產業的補貼，提供比我們新頒布的產業政策分配的額外資金相形見絀。

導致中國開始效仿我們的軍國主義新重商主義對其擁有全球領先地位的技術出口的限製，正如其最近的禁令決定所表明的那樣

出口太陽能電池板矽片生產技術。

美國半導體工具和設計公司失去了其主要市場，損害了他們自籌資金研發或進行新投資的能力。

加速世界分裂為不同的技術生態係統，其中一些生態係統由美國技術壟斷，一些由美國和中國共享，還有許多由中國主導。

加速中國在南半球工業和技術市場的主導地位。

將美國投資從中國轉移到墨西哥、越南和印度等第三國，而不是將工業和就業崗位“回流”到美國。

迫使台積電和其他亞洲企業在美國投資政治上有利但缺乏競爭力的半導體代工廠。他們計劃在美國生產的半導體成本將比他們在國內生產的半導體高出至少50%，而且先進程度較低。

減少中國對美國經濟的投資，而不是像我們那樣創造就業機會並減少對外國供應鏈的依賴，例如歡迎德國、日本和韓國汽車製造商在這裏設立生產。 [1]

成功的外交體現了政治經濟誘惑，而不是強奸。 然而，我們目前的經濟治國手段完全是強製性的。 如果貿易和投資夥伴不遵守我們的強製性授權，出口管製和製裁就會帶來痛苦。 這種方法是疏遠而不是入口。 它對美元主權的依賴現在威脅著美元的地位和賦予我們的特權。

更重要的是，我們正在做的事情並沒有停止，也不會阻止美國公司通過將生產轉移到國外來應對競爭——如果不是轉移到中國，那就轉移到墨西哥、越南或其他擁有可靠、廉價、勤奮勞動力的地方。 企業對外包的吸引力並不是中國陰謀竊取美國就業機會的結果。 這是我們選擇構建公司財務、勞資關係、稅收政策、醫療保險製度以及環境和其他國內政策和做法的結果。 中國極具競爭力的經濟可能使其成為外包的首選目的地，但其他國家現在也加入了這個遊戲。 如果我們目前沒有興趣進行國內政策改革，美國就不可能實現再工業化，也不可能恢複飽受打擊的中產階級。

最後，美國人的顯著特征是我們對個人自由的堅持以及我們增強個人自由並將其傳遞給我們的子孫的願望。 但長達四個十年的冷戰、所謂的“全球反恐戰爭”、政權更迭的“永遠的戰爭”，以及我們對中國和俄羅斯的偏執妖魔化，催生了一個癡迷於國家安全的監視和戰爭國家。 嚴重侵蝕了我們共和國的傳統和公民自由。 當然，即使是偏執狂也有敵人。 但我們在國內為我們的以外國為中心的精神病付出了巨大的代價，包括最近我們對中國的民族反感。

戰略的目的是將目標與資源聯係起來，並以盡可能低的成本規劃實現願景的路徑。 我們的對華政策缺乏遠見，也缺乏對節儉效率的關注。 這不是一種戰略，而是一種旨在通過強製而非鼓舞手段維護美國主導地位的姿態。 它不包括國內改革的願景或以身作則恢複領導地位的努力。 不起作用。 正如我們目前對中國的態度開始表明的那樣，這將不必要地加速我們的衰落。

最後，我感謝一位瑞士外交官最近提請我注意喬治·凱南的一些非常相關的言論。 凱南關於蘇聯和莫斯科的言論也適用於我們目前對中國的態度。 那麽，請耐心聽我用“中國”代替“蘇聯”或“俄羅斯”，用“北京”代替“莫斯科”來回憶凱南的話。

“我相信，今天在我們許多政府和新聞機構中盛行的（中國）觀點是如此極端、如此主觀，與任何對外部現實的清醒審視所揭示的內容相去甚遠，以至於它不僅無效，而且 作為政治行動的指南是危險的。”

凱南繼續說道：

“這一係列無休止的扭曲和過度簡化； 對另一個偉大國家領導人的係統性非人化； 這種對[北京]軍事能力和所謂的[中國]意圖不公平的例行誇大； 這種對另一個偉大民族的本性和態度的單調歪曲，……這種在判斷[中國人]和[我們自己]的行為時輕率地運用雙重標準，最終無法認識到他們的許多問題和我們的許多問題的共性 ，當我們無情地進入現代技術時代時。 這些都是知識分子原始主義的標誌

在一個偉大的政府中，憤世嫉俗和懷疑的天真是不可原諒的。”

當我們接近 21 世紀第一個 25 世紀末時，我自豪地回憶起，我們的國家誕生了世界曆史上最偉大的政府之一。 我願意相信，我們美國人還有更多值得期待的事情，而不是沉思和爭論。 樂觀對於外交官來說就像勇氣對於士兵一樣。 我相信，如果我們認識到這樣做的必要性，我們的共和國就能找到一條民族複興和增強競爭力的道路。 但如果沒有明智的治國方略和外交來創造一個和平的國際環境，使我們能夠自由地實現這一目標，我們就無法實現這一目標。 與中國建立更少對抗、更多合作的關係將在某種程度上使我們能夠恢複先輩們建立美利堅合眾國的宗旨，並用一句話來說就是“讓美國再次偉大”。

[1] 最近的一個例子是，揚金州長以所謂的“國家安全”原因，決定阻止中國在弗吉尼亞州進行電動汽車電池生產綠地投資。 這種對當前反華情緒的政治屈服的影響是，使美國目前對中國電池進口的依賴永久化，並使弗吉尼亞州失去了投資本應創造的就業機會。 人們不禁要問，弗吉尼亞製造的電池如何以及為何比中國製造的電池對我們的國家安全構成更大的威脅。

U.S. China Policy: A Case of Self-Harm

Chas Freeman 2023-02-07 

https://chasfreeman.net/2505-2/

 

Remarks to the American Academy of Diplomacy

Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
Visiting Scholar, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown University

By video to Washington, DC, 7 February 2023

Two hundred thirty-four years ago, the people of this country wisely decided “to form a more perfect Union” by adopting a new constitution. The preamble of that constitution remains the most eloquent list ever written of the purposes for which people establish governments. It declares that the mission of the United States of America should be to:

• establish Justice,
• ensure domestic Tranquility,
• provide for the common defense,
• promote the general Welfare, and
• secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.

Measured against this list of benchmarks, our current policies toward China are increasingly ruinous. China can and will take care of itself. In the short term, we can constrain and even weaken it. But I am deeply concerned about what our policies toward it are doing and will do to us in the long run. Let me review the list in the order set forth in our national charter.

Rather than advancing the cause of justice, our decision in our latest “war of choice” – to designate China as our enemy – is leading to renewed injustices against Chinese Americans. It is their turn, with spillover to those who look like them, to experience the sort of xenophobic persecution by both the populace and law enforcement agencies that other minorities (like German, Italian, and Japanese Americans) have suffered during past wartime tensions with the lands of their ancestors.

As in the McCarthy era, we are once again making talented Chinese immigrant scientists and engineers feel unwelcome here and incentivizing them to repatriate themselves. During the Korean War, we drove Qian Xuesen [錢學森;], the brilliant father of cybernetic engineering at Caltech, back to China, where he became the father of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) nuclear weapons and delivery systems. We are now making multiple members of yet another generation of talented Chinese American scientists and engineers fearful of surveillance and persecution. Their departure is our economic and technological loss and China’s gain.

Of course, anti-Asian violence is not new. What is happening now is merely the latest evidence of the racism and religious prejudice that have disturbed our domestic tranquility for centuries. The hopeful optimism of Martin Luther King has yielded to the suffocating despair of George Floyd. Islamophobia is entrenched, antisemitism is back, and we are walling out foreigners and their ideas. Americans are divided by our allegiances to the information environments, alternative facts, and blind spots imposed on us by exploitative corporate and social media. Debate, to the extent it occurs at all, is rancorous rather than civil and seldom productive.

If, as Karl Deutsch declared, a nation is “a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbors,” we no longer fit the bill except in terms of our passionate animosity toward officially designated and demonized enemy states like China, Iran, and Russia. We have become deeply divided about our history and its significance. There are now profound disagreements among Americans about whether:

• Our nation was conceived in liberty, or in reliance on African slavery.
• We are a “White,” or multiracial country.
• Our state should be independent of religion, or subservient to various versions of Christianity.
• Our forebears built our nation by bravely breaching a frontier, or by subjecting this continent’s indigenous inhabitants to genocide.
• Elections are legitimated by their fairness, or by whether zealots choose to accept their outcomes.

The disunity and dysfunction we are experiencing does more than disturb our domestic tranquility. It weakens us in relation to other countries. Political gridlock in Washington inhibits tradeoffs between economic, ethnic, ideological, military, and other interests and prevents the synthesis of overarching national interests. This makes our foreign policies a vector of competing domestic special interests. In the case of China, single-interest groups have coalesced around resentments and fears that superficially align them in a common hostility to Beijing. But each group’s agenda undercuts the agendas of others to the detriment of all.

In 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to contend with us for global hegemony and collapsed, leaving us without an obvious enemy. China has now become our cure for enemy-deprivation syndrome. In its case, we have abandoned diplomacy as an instrument of national defense and foreign relations. The casus belli between us is Taiwan’s separation from the rest of China, which was the unintended result of our military intervention to separate the parties to the Chinese civil war. We no longer even pretend to comply with the basic agreements that we later worked out with Beijing to enable it to set the Taiwan issue aside for future peaceful resolution. Now, all the talk is about how to fight a war to determine Taiwan’s status. Both sides must know that such a war would be catastrophic for Taiwan, disastrous for both the United States and China, and severely damaging to any country that joined either us or the Chinese in the fight. But no one in Washington is attempting to find either solutions or a temporizing modus vivendi for managing Sino-American differences over Taiwan, as the Nixon administration did fifty years ago.

Americans dislike big government except when it is in uniform. Anticipation of war with China is now the major justification for massive increases in subsidies to our military-industrial-congressional and intelligence complex. Military Keynesianism has found a reliable post-Cold War motivator.

But describing our effort to retard and, if possible, reverse the rise of China as “Cold War 2.0” is a cop-out. It implies that our experience with the Soviet Union has somehow prepared us to contend with China and defeat it without triggering a hot war. As such, it is an exercise in denial, an excuse for fantasy foreign policy, and a justification for a counterproductive, entirely military approach to international affairs.

The challenge of China to our regional primacy and global hegemony, real as it is, has almost nothing in common with that mounted by the late, unlamented USSR. It cannot be met by following the Cold War playbook. Unlike the self-isolated, autarkic, and heavily militarized Soviet Union:

• China is fully integrated into the post-1945 political and economic order. It is the largest trading partner of most of the world’s nations. It can be confronted, but it cannot be “contained.”
• The Chinese and American economies are interdependent. There is no zero-sum game in which our side wins while China loses. Decoupling costs both sides economic growth, jobs, and technological progress.
• The Chinese challenge to U.S. global primacy does not arise from either ideological aggression or empire-building abroad. China seeks to fence off its system from American ideological messianism, not to export its own ill-defined, inward-looking, and unattractive authoritarian ideology. Unlike the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China has neither attempted nor threatened to conquer its neighbors. China’s political-economic influence is beginning to eclipse our own. We have dressed this up as a military problem.
• China’s return to wealth and power is reducing U.S. international status and influence through the gradual displacement of our post-World War II regional and global politico-economic supremacy. But Beijing poses no threat to the territory or independence of the United States. The East Asian economic order is already Sinocentric. China has become the preeminent external power in Africa. Arabs and Latin Americans welcome China as an offset to continued European and U.S. dominance. Sino-American contention is about the ebb of U.S. regional and global influence, not about a Chinese aspiration to subjugate its neighbors.
• American military posturing is irrelevant to economic and technological challenges we face. It does nothing to restore our declining prestige or to balance rising Chinese economic power.
• The U.S. intervention in China’s civil war in 1950 with the 7th Fleet – unlike our 1918-1920 intervention in the Russian civil war – succeeded in preventing a complete Communist victory. It detached Taiwan, part of Chinese territory, from the rest. More than seventy years later, we continue militarily to contest the borders of China. The more we do so, the more China feels obliged to challenge us.
• China has minor territorial disputes with India, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, but it does not occupy neighboring nations or threaten to do so. We have chosen to back other claimants against China militarily rather than to facilitate the resolution of their disputes with it.
• The U.S. is “competing” with China not by emulating China’s determined focus on self-improvement, but by attempting to hamstring its development and to exclude it from foreign markets. We, not the Chinese, first sought “decoupling.” China has retaliated against U.S. tariffs and sought to reduce its dependence on imports from the United States, but until recently it has responded with subsidies and support for its own companies rather than emulating U.S. economic warfare.
• From the outset, our Cold War strategy of “containment” of the USSR had a clear objective – the eventual collapse of the Soviet system from its own infirmities. The quasi-war we have begun with China includes neither a definition of victory nor a war-termination strategy. Few see any prospect that China will collapse.
• Unlike the Cold War, other countries now see no compelling reason to choose between us and our designated rival. The EU and Japan as well as the countries of the global South want to engage with China, not isolate it.
• China’s industrial economy is already twice the size of ours. One-fourth or more of the world’s scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians are now Chinese, and the proportion is growing. The technological balance is shifting against us. Ironically, the most effective way for us to compete with China would be to import more Chinese talent. But we are doing the opposite. Banning the export of U.S. technology to China or cross-investment in the two countries will not reverse China’s advance. It could even accelerate it. Chinese have begun to lead international technological innovation in an increasing number of arenas.
• In any war with China over its borders and territorial claims, China would have the advantage of industrial surge capacity and the ability to survive attrition. It would also have far shorter lines of communication. The balance of nationalist fervor would be on Beijing’s side rather than Washington’s, as it was with Hanoi in its effort to unite Vietnam. But unlike north Vietnam, China is a nuclear-armed superpower.

In international affairs, as in physics, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Our actions have stimulated China to mirror, meet, and match our military hostility to it. We are now in an arms race with China, and it is far from clear that we are holding our own. Our apparent determination to hang onto Taiwan as part of an American sphere of influence in East Asia and our aggressive patrolling of China’s borders with naval and air forces have provided Beijing with the justification for its rapid reconfiguration and comprehensive modernization of the PLA.

The PLA Navy (PLAN) is now the world’s largest. Some PLAN ships are reportedly equipped with railguns, a technology we have been unable to develop and deploy. The land-based PLA Rocket Force fields ballistic missiles capable of striking moving aircraft carriers 1,000 miles from China. China fields hypersonic missiles against which we have no defense. The PLA Air Force now possesses the world’s largest bomber force as well as fighters equipped with air-to-air missiles that outrange ours. Beijing is beefing up its nuclear capabilities to deter renewed U.S. intervention in its unfinished civil war with the political heirs of Chiang Kai-shek, who lost his war with the Chinese Communist Party on the mainland but, with U.S. backing, reestablished his regime in Taipei.

Despite China’s remarkable military buildup, Beijing has so far kept defense spending well below two percent of GDP. Meanwhile, cost control continues to elude the Pentagon.  DoD has never passed an audit and is infamous for the waste, fraud, and mismanagement that result from its reliance on cost-plus procurement from the U.S. equivalent of profit-driven state-owned enterprises – military-industrial corporate bureaucracies whose revenues (and profits) come entirely from the government. The U.S. defense budget is out of control in terms of our ability to pay for it.

Four decades ago, the United States bankrupted the Soviet Union by forcing it to devote ever more of its economy to defense while neglecting the welfare of its citizens. Now we Americans are diverting ever more borrowed and taxpayer dollars to our military even as our human and physical infrastructure  decays. In some ways, in relation to China, we are now in the position of the USSR in the Cold War. Our fiscal trajectory is injurious to the general welfare of Americans. That, along with our liberties, is, however, what our armed forces are meant to defend.

The ostensible aims of the U.S. effort to crush China’s national technology champions, hobble its electronic industries, and deny it foreign markets are to reduce our dependence on global supply chains and restore American jobs and economic leadership. But the immediate effects have been to:

• Provoke a reciprocal decision by China to reduce reliance on imports from the U.S. and to step up efforts to boost its scientific and technological self-reliance. China has now committed $265 billion to reducing its dependence on imported semiconductors.
• Disrupt supply chains, causing component shortages that diminish economic efficiency in the U.S. while generating inflation.
• Cause foreign countries and companies to seek alternatives to U.S. technology and dollar financing to avoid the risk of future long-arm sanctions and supply chain disruptions like those we have unilaterally imposed on China, Iran, and Russia.
• Lead technological competitors like China and the Republic of Korea to boost subsidies to their semiconductor and other high-tech industries with additional funding that dwarfs what we have allocated to our newly enacted industrial policies.
• Cause China to begin to emulate our militaristic neomercantilist restrictions on the export of technology in which it has the global lead, as illustrated in its recent decision to ban the export of silicon wafer production technology for solar panels.
• Cost U.S. semiconductor tool and design companies their major market, damaging their ability to self-fund research and development or make new investments.
• Accelerate the division of the world into separate technological ecosystems, a few monopolized by American technology, some shared between the U.S. and China, and many others dominated by China.
• Accelerate Chinese domination of industrial and technology markets in the global South.
• Divert American investment from China to third countries like Mexico, Vietnam, and India rather than “reshoring” industry and jobs to the United States.
• Compel TSMC and other Asian corporations to invest in politically expedient but uncompetitive semiconductor foundries in the U.S. The semiconductors they plan to make here will cost at least 50 percent more and be less advanced than those they make at home.
• Curtail Chinese investment in the American economy rather than creating jobs and reducing dependence on foreign supply chains as we did, for example, by welcoming German, Japanese, and Korean automobile manufacturers to set up production here.[1]

Successful diplomacy exemplifies political-economic seduction, not rape. Yet our current economic statecraft is entirely coercive. Export controls and sanctions promise pain if a trade and investment partner fails to comply with a peremptory mandate from us. This approach alienates rather than entrances. Its reliance on dollar sovereignty now threatens the status of the dollar and the privileges that has conferred on us.

More to the point, what we are doing has not stopped and will not prevent U.S. companies from responding to competition by moving their production abroad – if not to China, then to Mexico, Vietnam, or somewhere else with reliable, cheap, hardworking labor. Corporate attraction to outsourcing is not the result of a Chinese conspiracy to steal American jobs. It is the result of the way we have chosen to structure our corporate finance, labor-management relations, tax policies, health insurance system, and environmental and other domestic policies and practices. China’s amazingly competitive economy may have made it the preferred destination for outsourcing, but others are now entering the game. There will be no reindustrialization of America or restoration of our battered middle class without domestic policy reforms we show no current interest in making.

In the end, the defining characteristic of Americans is our insistence on individual liberties and our desire to enhance them and pass them on to our children and grandchildren. But the four-decade-long Cold War, the so-called “global war on terror,” “forever wars” for regime change, and our paranoid demonization of China and Russia have birthed a national security-obsessed surveillance and warfare state that has severely eroded the traditions and civil liberties of our republic. Of course, even the paranoid have enemies. But we are paying a huge price domestically for our foreign-focused psychoses, including, most recently, our national antipathy to China.

The purpose of strategy is to link objectives to resources and to lay out a path to the realization of a vision at the least possible cost. Our China policy lacks both vision and a concern for frugal efficiency. It is not a strategy, but a posture aimed at the preservation of American primacy by coercive rather than inspirational means. It includes no vision of domestic reform or effort to restore leadership by example. It will not work. As our current approach to China is beginning to demonstrate, it will needlessly hasten our decline.

As I conclude, I am grateful to a Swiss diplomat who recently brought to my attention some very relevant remarks by George Kennan. What Kennan said about the Soviet Union and Moscow applies to our current approach to China. Bear with me, then, as I substitute “China” for the “Soviet Union” or “Russia” and “Beijing” for “Moscow” in recalling what Kennan said.

“I believe that the view of [China] … that prevails today in much of our governmental and journalistic establishment is so extreme, so subjective, so far removed from what any sober examination of external reality would reveal, that it is not only ineffective but dangerous as a guide to political action.”

Kennan continued:

“This endless series of distortions and oversimplifications; this systematic dehumanization of the leaders of another great country; this routine exaggeration of [Beijing’s] military capabilities and of the alleged unfairness of [Chinese] intentions; this monotonous misrepresentation of the nature and attitudes of another great people, … this thoughtless application of double standards in judging the behavior of the [Chinese] and [ourselves], this inability, finally, to recognize the commonality of many of their problems and ours, as we move inexorably into the modern technological age. These are signs of an intellectual primitivism and a naivety of cynicism and suspicion unforgivable in a great government.”

As we approach the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, I recall with pride that our country was born with one of the greatest governments in world history. I would like to believe that we Americans still have more to look forward to than to brood and argue over. Optimism is to diplomats what courage is to soldiers. I am confident that, if we recognize the need to do so, our republic can find a path to national rejuvenation and strengthened competitiveness. But we will achieve neither without intelligent statecraft and diplomacy to create a peaceful international environment that frees us do so. A less confrontational, more cooperative relationship with China would go some way toward enabling us to reinstate the purposes for which forebears established the United States of America and – to coin a phrase – “make America great again.”

[1] A recent example was the decision of Governor Youngkin to block a Chinese greenfield investment to produce batteries for electric vehicles in Virginia for alleged “national security” reasons. The effect of this political kowtow to the current anti-China mood is to perpetuate the current U.S. dependence on battery imports from China and cost Virginia the jobs the investment would have created. One is left to wonder how and why batteries made in Virginia would be more of a threat to our national security than batteries made in China.