Post-election US China Policy: How Far Back to the Future?

Much commentariat ink has flowed over the past year reflecting a general unease over uncertainties afflicting US-China relations - already at a nadir of sorts - after the newly-elected POTUS takes office in January 2025. Uncertainty appears to have deepened following Donald Trump's proclamations of threats to further raise tariffs on Chinese-made products, generating wide-consensus that the consequences of a reinforced 'trade war' would be most challenging for the global economy. The European Union's decision to follow Washington's footsteps in slapping down substantial import-duties on Chinese-built EVs, in tandem with overtly muscular military displays by members of NATO, Quad, AUKUS and other bands of states forming an informal but still powerful counter-China coalition in China-proximate domains have raised tensions. But will warfare break out, as many commentators have predicted or conjectured; could the newly-elected President 'do a Nixon' and transform ties in a benign direction?

Not to add to the echo-chamber quality of current conjecture, looking back to experience as a possible source of templates for the future could offer insights into the spectrum of possibilities. While history is unlikely to repeat itself exactly, the aim of this piece is not making prophecies - but to demonstrate that US-China relations have, since the mid-19th century, run the range of possibilities. That contextual landscape could modify our understanding of how perceptions of the national interest, ways and means of its pursuit, and the consequent dialectic-dynamic, have charted variegated trajectories over time, and could do so again.

This is not a historiographical exercise - major events shaping Sino-US relations since the Opium Wars have been examined and analysed at length elsewhere [Books by S. Mahmud Ali on Google Play ] This selection of interactions in the post-Opium War era evolution of relations serves to reveal the range of possibilities.

3 January 1861: US Minister in 'Peking', Anson Burlingame, forwarded a Note from 'Prince Kung, Chief Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs,' on the subject of baseless allegations made against China and the Chinese by Western 'journalists' in commentaries published in Chinese-language journals by Western 'Treaty Power' officials and traders. Burlingame informed Secretary of State William Seward he had sent to Consul General George Seward in Shanghai his note on the subject so 'that our countrymen might take such precautions as would seem to be necessary to give the injured Chinese the benefit of their treaty rights.'

Kung had complained, 'newspapers in the Chinese language circulated at the open ports, which are printed and circulated by foreigners, have repeatedly contained articles defaming the officers of this government. As native traders and others constantly read these newspapers, if the officials are maligned in them, it will seriously injure their reputation and influence, and moreover lead the people whom they rule over to become disaffected and despise their authority.' Kung noted that, 'In China, as elsewhere, good and bad people act differently; and there are many reckless persons who, caring nothing for themselves about being branded as criminals, disseminate unfounded reports, either openly promoting the charges themselves, or secretly engaging others to do it for them, and all to create disturbance. Your fellow-countrymen cannot for themselves inquire into these reports, but they give them wide currency by printing them for distribution.' Kung was 'disposed to think that the laws of the United States also forbid and restrain such offences, and punish those who defame and injure the reputation of officers or people.'

Whatever the actions of the US traders resident in the 'treaty-ports', the US Government of the day was not driven by the desire to cause popular disaffection against China's rulers. Burlingame and his colleagues in the diplomatic corps also may have been motivated by a desire to maintain the reputation of the United States and the fairness and credibility of its government, including in the eye of foreigners. Burlingame wrote to Consul-General Seward, 'the object in view on [Kung's] part is rather to check abuses which might arise from too much license, than to deter persons from publishing papers. If you have knowledge of any American engaged in printing a newspaper in Chinese, I wish you to inquire of him whether it is issued with his impramatur, stating the name of the printer and the place of its publication, and in case they are not given on each separate issue, to request him to do so.' Thus was a sensitive issue calmly resolved. [Burlingame to Seward, US Legation, Peking, 3 January 1861]

In more recent years, US practitioner-level understanding of Chinese affairs recorded clear gains as professional approaches to analyses acquired salience. As the premier advisers to the Executive and Legislative branches of USG, the CIA often led this process. Over the decades since 1947, the Agency's methodological approaches evolved notably.

18 April 1977: A senior China-analyst, recently inducted into the Directorate of Intelligence to identify and ameliorate gaps in the DoI's China-analyses, reported to Sayre Stevens, Deputy Director for Intelligence, 'a good percentage of the analysis on China within the Directorate need not be left to the laisser-faire methods and attitudes of the past.' He recommended three courses of action: 'The first is to emphasize interdisciplinary work so that China analysts in one office will become knowledgeable of the perceptions and contributions of their fellow-analysts in other offices.' He proposed a series of papers on China that would 'not only highlight several of the major analytical questions now facing China analysts but also involves nearly every office in the Directorate without overburdening any single office. Taken as a whole these papers should provide the beginnings of a framework for a Directorate-wide attack on the China problem.'

His second approach was to review, revise and refine the functions of and interactions among the Directorate's component offices. His third recommendation was 'a focused approach to research that would both challenge and channel the Directorate's intellectual resources devoted to the China question.' The author explained what he meant by this, how the DoI Offices and teams would need to revisit their role and processes and how individuals and groups needed to re-specialise their skills. In short, the DoI would address its China-analysis challenges with unprecedented rigour and renewed vigour. [Anonymous to Sayre Stevens, Deputy Director for Intelligence, China Analysis in the DDI. CIA, 18 April 1977]

Of course, the CIA's role has been primarily analytical and advisory, with a relatively unstated measure of execution by the Directorate of Operations. Decisions rested on POTUS, the NSC and/or specialist groups of designated officials appointed by the President, such as the WSAG and the 303 Committee. As the telescope using which the USG looked at China, the CIA shaped much - but not all - China-related policies. Variables such as the Executive Branch's internal power distribution, the interest and vigour brought to bear by the President, the DCI, and key Secretaries, dynamically recast the nature and content of China policy.

1 July 1984: In the early stages of the Reagan presidency, POTUS and his key advisers felt it was more important to engage with the source of the USA gravest security threats, i.e., the Soviet Union, and focus less on China. Reagan directed shifts from the trajectory charted by both the Nixon-Ford and Carter Administrations, which had fashioned a tacit strategic-partnership with China, exchanged intelligence data with Beijing, established a growing network of SIGINT centres and Soviet nuclear-test and ballistic missile telemetry-monitoring stations across Xinjiang with the gear provided by the CIA and Chinese technicians trained to operate the units, coordinating counter-Soviet policies and stances across Indochina, South Asia, the Middle East, the Horn of Africa, Southern Africa and Central America. Reagan balanced the 3rd of the 'Three US-China Joint Communique's' with his Six Assurances to Taiwan issued secretly on 10th July 1982, and his instructions to SoS Shultz and SoD Weinberger that US arms-sales to Taiwan - notwithstanding his pledge formalised in the communique signed on 17 August 1982 - depend on US assessments of China's actions vis-a-vis Taiwan, as a 'permanent feature of US policy.'

Beijing responded predictably - moving to lower the profile of US-PRC collaborative projects, distancing China from US strategic interests, and beginning a tentative move toward 'equidistance' between the two superpowers. This detachment helped neither party and by end-1983, both Beijing and Washington were ready to retrace their diplomatic steps. President Reagan and Premier Zhao Ziyang exchanged visits - although USG would not change its stance on protecting Taiwan.

As the November 1984 elections approached, the CIA reported, 'Beijing will subordinate criticism of US policy toward Taiwan and other bilateral issues at least through the end of 1984 in order to build a more stable, working relationship with the Reagan Administration.; In the CIA's view, Beijing intended, 'to build on the positive atmosphere developed during the visits of Premier Zhao and President Reagan and will probably work to prevent US-China relations from becoming entangled in the US election campaign.' [ DoI, US-China Relations: Short-Term Prospects. EA 84-10135, CIA, July 1984]

Of course, things have dramatically changed over the past four decades. Both candidates in the current US campaign have pursued unilateral advantages vis-a-vis China in the guise of 'great power competition' amidst 'systemic transitional fluidity.' US elite-level 'displacement anxiety' has forged bipartisan consensus on containing China, with each candidate rhetorically threatening Chinese interests in ways suggesting irrespective of who wins the presidency, US hostility toward China will not abate. But the trajectory of dialectic dynamics has been an uneven one at best. Taken to its logical extreme, Washington's animosity toward Beijing would very likely trigger a superpower conflict - including the possibility of an escalatory spiral developing its own momentum and precipitating cataclysmic devastation, and not just on the two shores of the Pacific. There is little evidence - from either government - that either power or both desire such an outcome. However, passive optimism is unlikely to prove effective over the longer term.