The Dual Logic of U.S. Policy Toward China

The Biden administration has demonstrated high emphasis on economic competition among major powers. Although it has stated multiple times that the US does not seek confrontation with China, the Biden administration’s security policy toward China, compared with that of the Trump administration, is more confrontational, which is underscored by its constant pushing of China’s red line in the Taiwan issue. Strategic competition against China is clearly regarded as the pivot of the foreign policy by the Biden administration, which has lowered expectation of China and has changed the mentality of striving for “big deals” to “no deal” in its China policy. The Biden administration believes that the US has a long-term advantage, and has developed a composite strategy comprised of two tactics based on its perception of the strategic positioning and the competitive status of China and the US. The first is a dominant strategy of 渐营取逸(to gain advantages by risk avoiding), namely to cut off China’s access to external technological innovation resources and maintain the long-term advantage of the US while avoiding bilateral interactions of high costs, risks, and uncertainties, in order to ensure a lasting and secure victory as much as possible. The second is a supporting strategy of 止戈以誓(to prevent wars by enhancing commitment), which aims to prevent China from taking high-risk actions or launching military challenges against the US on key issues when perceiving disadvantage. and focus, respectively, on economic and security policies, which together constitute the logic for the US strategic competition against China. To this end, the US has strengthened its strategic deterrence against China by reinforcing its key foreign commitments and mobilizing its allies.

On August 2, 2022, Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, arrived in Taiwan on a special flight despite the repeated stern warnings from China, pushing tensions in the Taiwan Strait to a new high. The Biden administration once implicitly expressed disapproval of Pelosi's visit, but eventually decided to back down after weighing the geopolitical pros and cons (Sanger & Wang, 2022). The U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken even warned, “If…China tries to create some kind of crisis or otherwise escalate tensions, that would be entirely on Beijing” (Shinkman, 2022). The U.S.-China rivalry is a clear manifestation of the Biden administration's China policy, which on the one hand advocates a foreign policy that benefits the American middle class and emphasizes competition rather than confrontation on the economic front, while on the other hand actively strengthens the alliance againstChina and raises security tensions. It advocates that theU.S.-China competition should be healthy and should not slide into conflict, while constantly provokingChina's red lines. So what kind of competition is the Biden administration trying to engage in with China? Is the duality of the China policy a deliberate strategic deception, a failure to implement its China policy plan, or something else? Some studies use different levels of independent variables to attribute the complexity of U.S. policy toward China to the rivalry between Democrats and Republicans, establishment and populists, and that between U.S. foreign policy and domestic politics. This paper argues that by focusing on the U.S. perceptions of the U.S.-China competitive landscape, it is possible to interpret the Biden administration's economic and security policies toward China in a holistic manner and provide insights into interstate interactions in a broader sense.

I. Extant studies on U.S. economic and security policies toward China

Extant research on U.S.-China relations and U.S. policy toward China has paid little attention to the relationship between security and economic policies. Most of the literature, when conducting relevant analysis, either implicitly assumes that the two have the same strategic logic, or examines the two separately, emphasizing that they originate from different mechanisms. Only a small number of studies have gone beyond such simple assumptions and superimposed methods to explore the complex relationship between U.S. economic and security policies toward China.

1. Congruence and separation

In exploring the relationship between economic and security policies, the most common view is that the two are naturally congruent in logic, and that forceful economic policies are always accompanied by assertive security policies, and vice versa. Under this cognitive framework, some studies are optimistic about U.S. policy towards China and some are pessimistic. In the former case, some scholars argue that the current U.S. policy towards China have no property of a Cold War, as the U.S. is not willing to cut off economic ties with China, or to take security responsibility for its allies or risk conflicting with China (Yan, 2021, pp. IV-V). Some scholars have also pointed out that in its strategic competition against China, the U.S. is not able to fully decouple from China economically, and sees avoiding the war as the bottom line (Zhang & Sun, 2021, p. 50). In the latter case, some scholars argue that the U.S. has no strategic patience with China and will not heed China’s calls to improve U.S.-China relations, limiting cooperation and normal competition to a very limited extent (Shi, 2021, p. 2). In analyzing the current U.S. policy towards China, many studies have elaborated on the Biden administration’s pressures on China in the economic and security spheres. For example, some studies think that the strengthening of the Asia-Pacific alliance system is the context for advancing its “middle-class diplomacy”(Wei & Zhang, 2021, p. 108), or that the tightening export controls on China is hollowing out the one-China policy (Da & Huang, 2021, pp. 3-4), implying that the U.S. economic and security policies on China point to the same direction. The studies following this strategic logic assume, explicitly or implicitly, that economic capabilities can be translated into military capabilities, so changes in security relations will inevitably lead to changes in economic policies, which are highly relevant to military capabilities (Lin, 2021, p. 132).

The other view believes that one state’s economic and security policies towards another are not necessarily congruent, and that the two may be completely opposed or even obstructive to each other. The mismatch may stem from the demand side. The most common view is that U.S. economic policies towards China are primarily determined by domestic politics, while the security policies depend mainly on geopolitics, and that the two are logically heterogeneous and incompatible with each other (Wang, 2019, pp. 38-55). Specifically, in terms of the sectors for competition between the great powers, sometimes there is only economic competition, sometimes there is a combination of economic and security competition, and sometimes security competition dominates (Liu, 2021, pp. 85-87). Although all competitions come with policy pressure, the policy response may vary with the nature of the pressure. From the perspective of time, although the competition among major powers may eventually evolve into an all-rounded one, it may focus on one single field at a specific stage. Some scholars argue that currently China does not pose a political security challenge to the U.S., and that the main objective of U.S. policy towards China is to disrupt China’s economic accumulation, so China needs not be overly concerned about the “Thucydides trap” in the security area (Gao, 2019, pp. 67-68). If we combine the time and sector variables, we can make more complex classifications. For example, as a rising power's economic size approaches the hegemonic power's threshold of tolerance, their security relations may mitigate or deepen competitive perceptions, which will lead to different economic and security interactions (Zhou, 2022, pp. 59-100). Mismatches may also arise from the supply side. The making of security and economic policies consumes material resources, political costs and decision-making efforts. In the context of limited total resources, security and economic policies, to a certain extent,are inversely related to each other. The most common view from this perspective holds that considering the Biden administration’s top priority to advance the economic agenda and reshape globalization, it would therefore take a relatively restrained and less ambitious position in the security sphere (Diao, 2021, p. 12).

2. Analysis of the interactions between economic and security policies

In comparison, there is more explanatory power and room for improvement if we view the economic and security policies separately, because this means a greater variety of relationships between potential variables and is more capable of analyzing the complex and often contradictory policy realities. However, the prevailing method usually attributes a phenomenon to various factors, i.e., using multiple independent variables to explain deviations from the dependent variable, which is actually a superimposition of multiple mechanisms. This analytic approach may depict the complex reality to the greatest extent possible, but is of less theoretical value, and the conclusion may be more of a historical description than a social science research. In contrast, a better approach to exploring the relationship between economic and security policies would be to see them as not necessarily congruent but intrinsically related. In analyzing the “hawk-dove” strategies of rising powers in the face of hegemonic powers, one study points out that it is crucial to see whether the economic repression of the hegemonic power could reverse the rising power’s optimistic expectations of their future material power. If it could, the rising power will turn to confront the hegemonic power assertively (Yang, 2020, p. 7). Other studies suggest that when a major power is retrenching due to a lack of resources, it will choose to concede to buy time if the external threat is urgent; otherwise, it would act resolutely (Liu, 2022, p. 12). Both studies show a comprehensive consideration of the relationship between economic and security policies.

This paper attempts to build a framework for strategy analysis that covers both economic and security competition, in order to explain the current status and causes of the Biden administration’s economic and security policies towards China.

II. The Biden Administration raised the status of China policy in U.S. diplomacy

The Biden administration further promoted the position of U.S.-China strategic competition in U.S. diplomacy. After Biden came to office, U.S.-China relations, though no longer plagued by the deep uncertainties like in the time of the Trump administration, have become more competitive. While making its China policy, the Biden administration proceeds from more of a competitive vision, and the influence of the third-party factors tends to be weakened, which makes it more suitable to be studied through a bilateral strategic analysis framework.

1.U.S. positioning of China: from a “competitor” to “the only peer competitor”

In December 2016, the Trump administration released the U.S. National Security Strategy, in which China is referred to as a “competitor” (The White House, 2016). This is a decisive shift in its position toward China in the U.S. foreign policy, indicating that the U.S has seen China as a strategic competitor more than a potential partner (Nathan, 2022). It signals that the U.S. strategy toward China is shifting from a balanced hedging strategy to a more competitive one. However, while the report focused primarily on China, it only listed China as one of two “revisionist powers.” This suggests that while China is considered a prominent challenge for the United States, it has yet to become a yardstick for U.S. foreign policy making. Correspondingly, the Trump administration’s foreign policy had been fragmented (Wang, 2016, p. 6), and the effectiveness of its competitive strategies against China was significantly weakened due to the U.S. trade offenses and diplomatic blackmail against its allies and other countries.

Since the Trump administration, there have been calls from inside and outside the U.S. government to upgrade China’s position in U.S. foreign policy. In March 2019, a group of politicians, including Steve Bannon, revived the Committee on the Present Danger, which was active during the Cold War, advocating that China, like the Soviet Union, poses an "existential threat" to the United States (Wu, 2019). On the other hand, some argue that the position of China and Russia in U.S. foreign policy should be fundamentally different. A report published by the Rand Corporation in 2018 argues that Russia is at most “a well-armed rogue state," while China is a "peer competitor" to the United States, and that China is capable of shaping and dominating the international order.

In response to these calls, in the Interim National Security Strategic Guidance released in March 2021, the Biden administration referred to China as “the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system”, while Russia was downgraded to a “disruptive role” (The White House, 2021). In this document, the threat posed by China was considered to be the only one of its level with no parallel. In April 2021, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence released its Annual Threat Assessment for 2021. In the report, China was the only “near-peer competitor” that is challenging the U.S. in the economic, military, technological and other areas. In the U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy, released in February 2022, China was accused of “pursuing a sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific region and seeking to become the world's most influential power” (The White House, 2022a, p. 5). These reports showed that China had received close attention in the Biden administration's foreign policy.

Despite Russia's special military operation against Ukraine, the Biden administration refused to go all in on the issue and argued that China cannot stay out of the Ukraine crisis. This is because the American policy community believes that "although it was Putin who triggered this shift, it is China whose protagonism will be defining” (Palacio, 2022). Instead of relieving its pressure on China, the Biden administration even tried to involve China in the sanctions coalition against Russia. On March 18, 2022, after a video call between the Chinese and U.S. leaders, the U.S. government released a threatening signal, claiming that Biden had elaborated on “the implications and consequences of China's material support to Russia” (The White House, 2022b). The U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, CIA Director William Burns and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman have also repeatedly emphasized that they are concerned about the obstacles for implementing sanctions against Russia and that they are consulting with their European allies about collateral sanctions against China (Bermingham, 2022).

Biden’s response to the Ukraine Crisis indicates that China’s position as the “peer competitor” to the U.S. has withstood the pressure test from a major third-party factor. As Stephen Walt (2022) noted in Foreign Policy, China is the only “peer competitor” to the U.S. Therefore, despite the importance of Ukraine, the U.S. cannot afford another strategic distraction as it did after 9/11 when it focused on counter-terrorism and neglected great power competitions (Walt, 2022).

2. U.S.Policy toward China: from “big deals” to “Sheng Er Hou Zhan” (win and fight later)

The increased awareness of the importance of China has brought about a change in its China strategy. The Trump administration’s sustained pressuring of China caused a mounting tension to the bilateral relations. However, if we look deeper into the nature of its China policy, it is still largely coercive rather than containing. The difference is that the former seeks to influence the behavioral patterns of the target country, while the latter focuses on weakening its power. Naturally, in the process of coercion, harm or threats are inevitably inflicted on the target, but there is a difference between using harm as an end and as a means. In addition, harming the other party often results in losses to the imposer, so if the purpose of containment is to inflict harm from the beginning, the imposer is more likely to suffer collateral damage; if the purpose is to impose coercion by means of harm, the imposer is likely to expect that the other party will be forced to submit and that the imposer will be free from collateral damages. In comparison, in a containment policy, the imposer is more resolved and persistent than in a coercive policy (Peter & Licklider, 2019, p. 1426).

In terms of Trump’s policy, coercion is for the “big deal,” which is twofold. First, imposing tariffs and other pressuring measures on trade issues is not the end, but rather a way to undermine the target’s internal and external protection mechanism and achieve a higher level of free trade (Song, 2020, pp. 135-155). What Trump, his trade representative Robert Lighthizer and others were aiming for was a more favorable agreement with China on intellectual property rights, exchange rates, financial services, and increasing U.S. exports to China, i.e., to expand U.S.-China economic relations (Swanson & Bradsher, 2019). Second, U.S. intervention in the Taiwan, Hong Kong and Xinjiang issues was for strategic purposes. For example, on the Xinjiang issue, Trump once said that he agreed with China's policy on Xinjiang, but later explicitly indicated the relevance between the Xinjiang issue and U.S.-China trade negotiations (Wong & Edmondson, 2019). Accordingly, when the Trump administration encouraged its allies to be more assertive on China, the latter will naturally fear of falling victim to U.S.-China competition (Nathan, 2022). In short, Trump’s “big deal” policy is based on an underestimation of China, i.e., the assumption that China might make significant concessions to the U.S. due to external pressure. This over-optimism made the U.S. less prepared to fight an enduring war against China, and the potential leeway in its China policy made its allies less willing to follow suit.

After Biden took office, with China’s position being elevated in U.S. foreign policy, its China policy features less and less of a “deal.” On the one hand, the Biden administration put forward a new principle for U.S. trade policy—no new trade agreements would be concluded until the economic status of the American middle class is significantly enhanced(Haass, 2021). On the other hand, it put forward the principle of “position of strength,” arguing that only through improving its gaming capacity can the U.S. ensure that China won’t ignore its needs and that its engagements with China are effective (Blinken, 2021a). One of the core objectives of the “position of strength” principle is to increase the gross domestic product (GDP) of the U.S. and its allies, to account for 40~60 percent of the world’s total (Department of State, 2021). To achieve this goal, the Biden administration stressed that the U.S. would not reach an agreement with China on important issues before with its allies. Unlike the Trump’s “Zhan Er Qiu Sheng”(fight to win) policy on China, the Biden administration has avoided fighting China directly when it’s not prepared and has instead sought to “Sheng Er Hou Zhan”(to win and fight later).  

The approach adopted by the Biden administration is consistent with its positioning of China. It has stopped using fragmented policies to deal with its only key competitor and changed its “deal” approach on sensitive issues. It has also reduced uncertainties in its China policy, which in fact means more certain hostility (Liu, 2022). Unlike Trump, Biden has avoided talking about his personal relations with Chinese leaders. Senior U.S. officials often deliberately take a hedging approach before meetings with Chinese officials by making comments that count against cooperation, which made the interactions between the two countries difficult from the beginning, as in the case of the hardship in the high-level U.S.-China strategic dialogue in Anchorage in March 2021 (Rogen, 2022).

Nevertheless, Biden’s China policy is still criticized for being whimsical and U.S.-China cooperation in addressing climate change made the policy less credible. In response, the Biden administration stressed that the cooperation would not have spillover effects. In a bilateral meeting in Zurich, Jake Sullivan, assistant to the president for security affairs, stated, “we are not in the business of trading cooperation with China on climate change as a favor that Beijing is doing for the United States” (Hudson & Nakashima, 2021). In September 2021, there was a debate on climate change cooperation being an “oasis” in U.S.-China relations. China stressed that the oasis of climate change cooperation would not be sustainable unless the “desertified” U.S.-China relations are improved, while the U.S. argued that climate change cooperation has its own source of impetus and that climate change cooperation should not be attached to other issues(Stanway, 2021). The intransigence is the result of the Biden administration's adjustment to its positioning and approach towards China, reflecting a fundamental shift in its strategic mindset.

III. The Biden administration’s re-assessment of U.S.-China competition

The Biden administration's positioning and approach towards china cannot yet determine the specific policies, because it only outlined the containment towards China but set nopace for the implementation, for example, how resources should be acquired in the short, medium, and long term, and to what areas they will be allocated. The determining factor is their assessment of the situation of the U.S.-China competition. The horizontal dimension of this assessment evaluates whether the challenge is security or economic, global or regional.The vertical dimension assesses whether China is a long-term or short-term challenge, and whether the competition is heading towards elevation or mitigation.

1. Re-assessment of the power shift between the U.S. and China

During the Obama administration, the crisis of being overtaken by China began to emerge in the face of China's growing power. In 2010, in his State of the Union address, Obama claimed, "I do not accept second place for the United States of America.” (The White House, 2010) The Obama administration has since repeatedly stressed the need to prevent China from gaining the upper hand, declaring that the rules of trade in the Asia-Pacific region “must be written by the United States.” (The White House, 2015) The Trump administration, though boasting the U.S. economy as “best it has ever been,” was not optimistic about the prospects of a U.S.-China power comparison.Trump stated repeatedly that China has beaten the U.S. in trade and that his predecessors were incompetent (Cox, 2019). Mike Pompeo, who was the Secretary of State, claimed in a speech at the Nixon Library at the end of his term that China has become a “Frankenstein” of growing power and is difficult for the U.S. to control (Pompeo, 2020). Although they did not say exactly that the power shift is to China's advantage, they did imply that China’s gains are the loss of the U.S.

Many in the U.S. policy community believe that China's power is rapidly approaching that of the U.S. and that China will inevitably overtake the U.S. economically. In 2011, a study concluded that if China maintains its growth rate, its total GDP will surpass that of the U.S. within 10 to 20 years (MacDonald, 2011, p. 40). Around 2020, many argued that China will surpass the U.S. faster than expected as it moves more fully, rapidly, and resolutely toward national rejuvenation (Goldstein, 2020, p. 176). At the beginning of 2021, when Covid-19 was prevailing in the U.S., the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce released a report showing that U.S. GDP growth shrank by 2.3% in 2020, while China achieved a year-on-year growth rate of 2.3%. Therefore, some studies suggest that China's GDP will surpass that of the United States in 2026-2028 (Cheng & Lee, 2021). Prior to the Biden administration, the U.S. policy community had already developed certain thinking patterns toward China. They tend to think increasingly that China is a serious long-term threat, that China constitutes an all-rounded threat, particularly economically, and that China is gaining advantages in the U.S.-China power shift, but China is less likely to initiate military challenges (Schake, 2021).

Members of Biden's team have different views on the above judgment. On the one hand, Biden himself does not believe that the power gap between China and the United States will continue to narrow. In May 2019, during his election campaign in Iowa, he said China is “not competition” for the U.S., that China faced more problems than the U.S. and its economic power is highly overestimated, and that China could not replace the United States as a superpower (Edelman, 2019). On the other hand, Biden's team is more serious about the possibility of China launching a military challenge. Kurt Campbell, Indian Pacific Affairs Coordinator of the National Security Council and Jake Sullivan, wrote in Foreign Affairs in September 2019 that although China and the United States will not compete in the field of global security like in the Cold War, they are still likely to have military conflicts in the Asia Pacific region, especially on the Taiwan issue, on which the three parties will never reach an agreement on future arrangements (Campbell & Sullivan, 2019). In a word, Biden's team is more optimistic about the long-term trend of the U.S.-China competition, but also more alert about a potential crisis.

The Biden team is not alone in its view of the power shift between the United States and China. Over the past several years, there has been a perception in U.S. policy circles that the power gap between the two countries is not narrowing. Michael Beckley (2018, pp. 7-44), for example, emphasized that the U.S. is not in relative decline and that China is hardly a challenge to the U.S. if considering both technological capacities (as measured by per capita GDP) and economic volume (as measured by GDP). Others argue that the increasing complexity of the advanced military technology has significantly weakenedChina's "advantage of backwardness" and that China cannot easily leapfrog in military technology as Germany and Japan did before the two world wars (Gilli & Gilli, 2019, pp. 141-189).

After taking office, the Biden administration maintained its perception of China during the campaign. In its Interim National Security Strategic Guidance, the “enduring advantage” of the U.S. is repeatedly mentioned. It emphasizes that it would be sufficient to deal with China as long as established institutions were properly maintained and the U.S. invested in their people, economy, and democracy (The White House, 2021). The National Intelligence Council's Global Trends 2040 report, released in April 2021, provides a clearer picture of the Biden administration's strategic logic regarding the U.S.-China power shift. The report points out that China has two structural weaknesses that “stifled innovation”, namely its irreversible demographics and institutional environment, and that it cannot sustain its current rate of technological progress and economic growth without access to external innovation resources from the west. This echoes the notion of Andrew J. Nathan (2022), a renowned China expert, that the Biden administration's policy toward China is more serious and in-depth, but less crisis-informed.

2. The strengthening perception of U.S. advantage

Since 2021, the Biden administration has ever more firmly believed that the U.S. is at an advantage in the U.S. China power shift.In general, there are two scenarios that may strengthen this perception:a) the relative strength of China and the United States has changed, with the strength of the U.S.significantly increased or that of China significantly weakened; b) with the relative strength unchanged,there is a change in the environment in favor of the United States or against China. The second cognitive logic is based on the decline in relative strength resulting from an external check, as exemplified by Germany before WWI. In 1990 international dollars, Germany's GDP in 1913 was 237,332 billion, an increase of about 46.2% from 162,338 billion in 1900, registering a much higher rate than that of the UK, which grew from 184,861 billion to 224,618 billion in the same period (an increase of about 21.5%.) However, as Britain succeeded in easing its tensions with France and Russia and reaching the Triple Entente, Germany was no longer optimistic about winning the competition and developed a strong sense of envelopment. After 1909, Germany's relative military advantage was undermined by the French and Russian military reforms (Mei, 2016, pp. 354-361). The external factors that change the power balance can also affect the perceptions of the countries involved (Xu, 2021, pp. 14-21).

The Biden administration's perception of U.S. superiority over China was strengthened by both mechanisms above. On the one hand, the U.S. policy circle has seen signs of a slowdown in China's economic growth. In an article in Foreign Policy in September 2021, Hal Brands and Michael Beckley argued that “China is a declining power.” They cite various economic indicators for the period 2008-2019, suggesting that China's economy will be stuck in a low or even zero growth over a long term, due to an aging population, debt accumulation, a 1.3% annual decline in total factor productivity and tightening economic controls (Brands & Beckley, 2021). In early 2022, the U.S. further lowered its economic expectations for China, given the fact that its growth rate for the fourth quarter of 2020 (4% year-on-year) was lower than the third quarter (4.9% year-on-year), a significant decline from the first two quarters, and that the impact of Covid-19 would continue (Bradsher, 2022). In April 2022, Hal Brands wrote another negative article about China, arguing that Covid-19was actually a turning point for a significant slowdown in China's economic growth, instead of causing a rise in the east and decline in the west in the international power landscape, and that China will soon be in a relative decline vis-à-vis the U.S. (Brands, 2022). Following the announcement that China's growth had fallen to 0.4% year-on-year in the second quarter of 2022, many claimed that the U.S. was on track to outpace China in 2022 for the first time since 1976. Some even claim that “a new era of great power competition may be coming to an end before it has even begun” (Singleton, 2022).

On the other hand, the Biden administration has made its alliance system more cohesive to strengthen its checks and balances on China. Since 2021, the Biden administration has strengthened the U.S.-Japan-India-Australia Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (QUAD) and established the U.S.-UK-Australia trilateral security pact (AUKUS). Its key allies in the Asia-Pacific region, such as Japan, Australia, and South Korea, have either aggressively expanded their armaments, signed new overseas military cost-sharing agreements with the U.S., or did both. In addition, NATO is striding toward the Asia-Pacific region, marked by the presence of the leaders of Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand at the NATO summit in Madrid. Based on this, Brands and Beckley (2021) suggest that China has triggered a chain reaction of other countries to unite and counterbalance, and is facing the most dangerous external environment since 1989, comparable to the strategic encirclement on Germany and Japan in history (Brands & Beckley, 2021). After the Ukraine crisis broke out, the U.S. policy circle commonly believes that the crisis has united the U.S. and its allies in a way that had not been seen in decades. European countries such as Germany are not only determined to rearm, but will be more confident in confronting Russiaon their own. A strengthened alliance system will enhance U.S. military power in general and increase the military investment available in the Asia-Pacific region (Walt, 2022).

IV.The Biden administration’s competition policy toward China

Based on the Biden administration's assessment of the U.S.-China power shift and theoretical studies of great power competition, this paper will establish a link between the U.S. perception of the situation and its China policy, accommodating as much as possible both the economic and security sides, to reveal the interrelationship between the two under the same strategic logic.

1. From the perception of the situation to the strategy of competition

The core of the foreign policy is the strategic interaction strategy it implies. Strategic planning should balance policy preferences and constraining mechanisms. One key point is to establish a winning strategy by balancing resource allocation based on existing conditions; another is to anticipate the response of the rival in order to maintain the winning strategy.

Generally,it is a priority in big power competition to allocate resources to long-term economic investments as much as possible. One reason for this is that economic power can be flexibly redirected to other areas, such as providing foreign aid to boost international political influence, or increasing defense investment to enhance military capabilities, but it is much more difficult to translate strength in other areas into economic power(Waltz, 1993, p. 60). The second reason is the discount rate. The sooner a country develops strength in economic power, the greater the cumulative advantage it can achieve. However, for a variety of reasons, countries often transform long-term economic resources into short-term disposable power, changing from mobilizing to extracting resources, which usually means a consumption of the total resources (Mastanduno et al., 1989, p. 463). Failure to balance resource mobilization and extraction can lead to a mismatch of resources and a competitive failure (Feng et al., 2015, pp. 4-35). Resource mismatch can be caused by excessive consumption in secondary areas, or by overreaction in primary areas.

In addition, the rival’s perception of the competitive situation must be taken into account in policy considerations, which include two factors. One is the rival’s perception of the static situation at the initial stage. For example, when the rival believes that its strength is declining relatively but can be reversed in the short run, it is more likely to adopt a retrenchment strategy to reduce short-term resource consumption (MacDonald & Parent, 2011, p. 13). But once the rival believes that the decline in strength is inevitable, it is more likely to take a pre-emptive move (Gilpin, 1981, pp. 192-196). The other is the rival’s dynamic response to its perception. In particular, a country needs to consider the reactions that its own strategy may provoke when it comes into play. As James Fearon noted, if a country's policy has been to increase its chances of defeating another country, the other country may take the initiative at any time to change its passive situation (Fearon, 1995, p. 405). The logic is that once a country's strategy has worked, it will change the balance of power between the two and cause the adversary to change its strategy, most likely by adopting a more risky strategy (Xu, 2021, p. 10).

Of course, the competitors may not share the same perception of the competitive situation. It is possible that both parties perceive themselves to be on a relative rise or relative decline. There are many reasons behind this, the most important one being that relative power is difficult to measure precisely. As neoclassical realist theory concludes, "the difficulty for leaders to assess shifts in relative power and systematic feedback is an ever-lasting theme in the established literature” (Taliaferro, 2009, p. 29). However, the perception’s influence on decision-making is not affected by its consistency with reality. As Cold War historian John Gaddis  argued, it was because the United States and the Soviet Union both believed that "time is a friend" and that it was in their interest to postpone a strategic showdown that kept the Cold War from developing into a direct war between the two superpowers (Brands & Gaddis, 2021).

2.The Biden administration’s dominant strategy for competing with China: Jian Ying Qu Yi (to gain the advantage by risk avoiding)

In the view of the Biden administration, China is inherently inferior in its economic system and economic policies, and the rate at which the power gap between U.S. and China is narrowing will gradually slow down until it speeds up again. This trend would be accelerated if the United States could unite with its allies to cut off China’s access to external resources more effectively. This means that the U.S. does not need a high-cost and high-risk strategy toward China, but should turn to “Jian Ying Qu Yi.” That is, when a country has a long-term advantage, it should take low-cost and low-risk countermeasures to reduce the uncertainty in the strategic competition, so as to maintain and expand its advantage steadily.

In October 2021, U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai issued a series of speeches on U.S. trade policy with China that highlighted this strategy. In her speech on behalf of the Biden administration, she emphasized that the previous U.S. administrations’ trade policies toward China were ineffective, and that neither the WTO multilateral trade mechanism, the U.S.–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, nor Trump’s unilateral pressure on China has changed China’s position in trade policy, so the Biden administration has chosen not to engage in direct tensions with China and do not expect to change China (Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, 2021). In this regard, the Biden administration has lived up to its words. Unlike the Trump administration that had several high-profile trade negotiations with China, the current administration has few initiatives that deal with China directly in its international economic policy, and has clearly demonstrated its aversion to entanglement. The Biden administration believes that China’s economy has reached its turning point, and that it is difficult to make China concede, nor is it necessary to exert uncertain pressure on China in the short term (Alden, 2021).

Even with its allies that enjoy a wider range of economic policy, the Biden administration has shown a preference for steadiness. In March 2021, in a speech at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Blinken (2021b) declared that U.S. economic policy toward their allies would focus on strengthening economic resilience, so as to ensure that their economies are more integrated with each other than they are with their principal competitors. In practice, however, the U.S. is more interested in weakening the economic ties between its allies and China than in promoting economic integration with its allies, which is more of a sabotaging strategy than a constructive one. After taking office, Biden has been vigorously promoting the U.S.-European Trade and Technology Council (TTC), but the main agenda of this mechanism was not to strengthen the economic ties between the U.S. and Europe, but to discuss “to what extent decoupling from China is possible and desirable” (Ischinger & Nye et al., 2021, p. 6). Since the U.S.-EU TTC was officially launched at the end of 2021, all the working groups under the council have sought to step up inspections on China in export, investment, and supply chain. Regarding the positioning of the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework (IPEF) established in August 2022, the U.S. disagrees strongly with the rest of the founding countries. While most other countries see the framework as a “second-best solution” to promote U.S. re-engagement in Asia-Pacific economic integration, arguing that the United States should return to the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTP), the Biden administration has emphasized that the framework is not committed to economic integration, but only to “better compete with China (Goodman, 2022). Regarding this, Richard Haass(2021) noted that the Biden administration remains isolated from the Asia-Pacific economic order and has no intention of countering China by expanding economic and trade ties.

Following the framework of Trump’sChina policy, the Biden administration launched a more concrete strategic competition against China by suppressing China in trade and investment and coordinating U.S. foreign policy with the core goal of containing China. At the same time, however, the Biden administration has pursued a more prudent approach. It does not seek a breakthrough in the U.S.-China competition or in interaction with its allies and has shown a preference for low-cost and low-risk stable gains. Therefore, some in the U.S. policy circle argued that the Biden administration is “muddling through on China”—they default to the status quo and respond to new events as they arise, conservative about designing or launching major offenses, to ensure a minimal investment of political capital(Rovner, 2022).In general, while firmly viewing China as the only and the most important strategic rival, the Biden administration has adopted a “Jian Ying Qu Yi” approach to reducing risk by accumulating small victories. The Biden administration may have made this choice due to a number of factors, but its perception of the U.S. competitive advantage is undoubtedly the most justifiable one.

While such a strategy focuses primarily on securing its long-term economic advantage, it is by no means limited to economic policy. The Biden administration does not see the need to pursue a high-risk and high-cost security policy toward China that could lead to a military conflict. Instead, they believe that the U.S. should maintain a “steady-state competition,” i.e., to keep its competitive advantage while maintaining dialogue with China to reduce the probability of a more uncertain and high-risk strategy (Kim et al.,2021). Therefore, although the Biden administration seems to never compromise with China, it has been trying to maintain communication between the U.S. and China at all levels, and has repeatedly stated that it does not want the competition to derail. During Sherman’s visit to Tianjin in July 2021, State Department officials stated that the trip was intended to send the message that the United States does not want “that stiff and sustained competition to veer into conflict” and want to “ensure that there are guardrails and parameters in place to responsibly manage the relationship” (Schnel, 2021). In September, during a call with his Chinese counterpart, Biden again suggested that the U.S. and China should build “guardrails” and “boundaries” in this intense competition(Singman, 2021). In November, at the initiative of the U.S., the two leaders had a video meeting, after which Sullivan emphasized that the U.S. was committed to maintaining an “effective and healthy” competition with China and avoiding a misguided move toward conflict (Kimball, 2011). These statements suggest that the Biden administration is not inclined to provoke conflicts between the two countries and does not seek to accelerate the isolation of China in a costly but efficient manner.

3.The Biden administration’s supporting strategy for competing against China: “Zhi Ge Yi Shi” (to prevent wars by enhancing commitment)

While it is desirable to pursue a steady-state competition through “Jian Ying Qu Yi,” the United States cannot expect to prevent the U.S.-China relationship from being “derailed” merely by maintaining communication. On the one hand, the U.S. believes that China will gradually recognize the relative “decline” in its power and will have a stronger incentive to challenge the United States by seizing the “window of opportunity” when the power gap is still narrowing (Brands & Beckley, 2021). On the other hand, the issue of Taiwan, a potential trigger for conflict, is an indivisible issue on which the two countries can hardly compromise. For China, sovereignty and territorial integrity is a red line that cannot be crossed. This principle cannot be changed by any international event, including the U.S. intervention in the Ukraine crisis (Lin, 2022). The “primacy strategy” requires the U.S. to dominate in all key areas, with the belief that concessions in any key area would trigger a chain reaction that would lead to the collapse of the hegemonic order (Porter, 2018). In short, a more credible deterrent is needed to prevent the “Jian Ying Qu Yi” strategy from being interrupted by conflicts.

Compared with the security strategy of increasing military investment, the Biden administration clearly prefers the strategy of “Zhi Ge YiShi,” that is, to exert strategic deterrence by strengthening defensive security commitment. The advantage of such a strategy is that it is less costly before the commitment is fulfilled, and the risk is relatively manageable. On March 3, 2021, in explaining U.S.-China relations, Blinken said that the U.S.-Chinarelations “will be competitive when it should be, collaborative when it can be, and adversarial when it must be” (Kelly, 2021). The rhetoric of being “adversarial when it must be” reflected the U.S. position on key issues, while indicating that it has no intention of conflicting with China. Interms of actions, the Biden administration has “intensified and escalated its wariness, threats, containment, and pushing back against China almost non-stop”since it took office (Shi, 2021, p. 13), which has created notable security tension in the Asia-Pacific region.

To strengthen its security commitment, the Biden administration has chosen Taiwan, the touchstone issue, and tried to upgrade it into a multilateral commitment. It first invited representatives from Taiwan authorities to the presidential inauguration, breaking the convention established since the U.S. and China founded diplomatic relations in 1969. Later, it sent warships across the Taiwan Strait to highlight its rock-solid commitment to Taiwan's security. On March 16, 2021, in the U.S.-Japan diplomatic and defense “2+2” talks, the Biden administration started to embed the Taiwan issue in bilateral and multilateral mechanisms, publicly declaring that the United States and Japan value peace and stability in Taiwan. Since then, the U.S. has included Taiwan-related statements in the joint statements of the QUAD online summit in March, the U.S.-Japan summit in April, the U.S.-South Korea summit in August, and the U.S.-Europe summit, the NATO summit, and the G7 summit in June. In October 2021, Biden expressed in a CNN interview that the U.S. would “defend Taiwan” if it is attacked. Although the U.S. argued afterward that it had not changed its policy toward Taiwan, Biden's statement still indicates that the U.S. has become less ambiguous in its Taiwan strategy (BBC, 2021). After the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. sent a delegation of former senior officials to Taiwan to declare that it would not give up Taiwan (Sevastopulo, 2021). In August 2022, after the U.S.-Japan summit, Biden again said that, unlike the intervention in the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. would "defend Taiwan militarily" if necessary (Da Silva & Alexander, 2022).

Led by the United States, its Asia-Pacific allies have also strengthened their security commitments to Taiwan in varying degrees. Defense of Japan 2021 blatantly claimed, “stabilizing the situation surrounding Taiwan is important for Japan’s security and the stability of the international community.”(Waidelich &Barrett, 2021)In December 2021, Japanese media reported that the U.S. and Japan were working on a joint military plan on Taiwan, and that Japan had pledged support for U.S. intervention in Taiwan (The Guardian, 2021). During his visit to the United Kingdom in August, 2022, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said, “the crisis in Ukraine could be replicated in East Asia” unless the western countries work together, alluding to the Taiwan issue (The Reuters, 2022). In addition, Peter Duton, the Australian defense minister at the time, also said in an interview that Australia would support the United States if it took military action in Taiwan (Savastopulo, 2021). In October 2021, the European Parliament released the “EU-Taiwan Political Relations and Cooperation” report, which referred to Taiwan as a "key EU partner and democratic ally" and advocated that the EU should strengthen economic and political ties with Taiwan (European Parliament, 2021).

In the U.S Indo-Pacific Strategy, the Biden administration mentioned that the U.S. objective of its security policy toward China is to “shape the strategic environment in which it operates, building a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favorable to the United States, our allies and partners, and the interests and values we share” (The White House, 2022a, p. 5). It aims to deter China from launching military challenges on the U.S., maintain steady-state competition, and strengthening its deterrence power through commitments while seeking to gain advantages by avoiding risks.

V. Conclusion: the Biden administration’s China policy from a view of composite strategies

“Jian Ying Qu Yi” and “Zhi Ge Yi Shi” are the two aspects of the Biden administration’s policy toward China, which are strategically interrelated and hierarchical. The latter is guaranteed by the former, and the former provides the basis for the latter. On these grounds, expectations for substantial ease and improvement in U.S.-China relations in the short term are highly likely to fall short. The current illusion of a moderate improvement in U.S.-China relations is due to the Biden administration’s belief that the United States has a long-term advantage in the competition against China and is therefore intent on avoiding a high-cost, high-risk, and high-uncertainty strategy. However, one should not over-interpret U.S. deterrence, which aims to keep China on track for steady-state competition, as a deliberate attempt to provoke conflict and halt China’s rise using force.

To understand U.S. policy toward China, one should proceed from the U.S. perception of the U.S.-China competition, rather than on China’s perception or the reality itself. The Biden administration and the U.S. policy circle might be misguided in believing in the U.S. advantage, and the strategy based on this misperception might be counterproductive to the strategic competition. However, it will still continue to influence Biden’s China policy until it is proved wrong. For China, this could buy it sometime and advantage. In this sense, exploring U.S. policymakers’ perceptions of the U.S.-China competition is fundamental to understanding U.S. policy toward China. On this issue, care should be taken not to assume that the two sides share the same perceptions. To have an accurate and comprehensive understanding of the strategic interaction between the two countries, one should be aware of the differences in their perceptions.

In a broader sense, decomposing the Biden administration’s China policy into “Jian Ying Qu Yi” and “Zhi Ge Yi Shi” is to show that domestic and international politics is not the “deus ex machina” for explaining economic and security asymmetry between major powers. The interrelations between security and economic policies are also worth exploring, which can enrich the typology of great power interaction strategies and reconstruct the basis for identifying and understanding the behavior of great powers and their development. In this regard, the core of the question is not if Biden’s China policy is truly driven by “Jian Ying Qu Yi” and “Zhi Ge Yi Shi”. A better question should be whether such composite strategies are reasonable, whether they exist in the interaction of great powers, and whether there are other composite strategies to be explored.