Five tough truths about US-China relations

The more American and Chinese officials proclaim their innocent intentions toward each other, the deeper the level of mistrust they generate. Official candor on five key truths about US-China relations will likely contribute to a more mature bilateral relationship and could help halt a potential slide to conflict.

2. The United States is trying to contain China’s military rise.

Since Nixon went to China, America and the West have been working to expand China’s economic rise and to integrate it diplomatically and politically into the international system. That part of the engagement policy has worked, to China’s great advantage and the benefit of millions of Chinese.

Even in the security realm, Washington had been willing to give China the benefit of the doubt during its dramatic military buildup. Putting the best face on it, US policymakers acknowledge that economic power usually leads to military power, if for no other reasons than the accrual of international prestige and the defense of expanding economic interests.

But that tolerant view ignores three facts: 1) China faces no external threat requiring its huge military investment, 2) the US Navy has protected China’s commercial interests along with everyone else’s by keeping the world’s sea lanes open, and 3) China hardly needs weapons systems like long-range ballistic missiles just to ward off Somali pirates.

When China decided to accompany its military build-up with threatening rhetoric and actions against the interests of the United States, Japan, South Korea, and Southeast Asian countries, alarm bells finally went off in Washington and the region. Chinese actions are starting to evoke unpleasant memories of Japan’s rise in the 1930s.

The bottom line is that Washington is committed to deterring an aggressive, expansionist China and is expanding its regional security ties for that purpose. When Beijing warns its neighbors to remember, “you are small and we are big,” it practically invites big friends of those small countries to undertake some serious containment.

2 of 5

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.