As the Biden administration settles in, China is repeating its wish to have a positive, plus-sum, cooperative relationship with the new team in Washington. Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian lamented this week that ¡°the Trump administration went in a very wrong direction¡± and warned that ¡°cooperation is the only right choice.¡± That¡¯s not quite right. Cooperation is preferred but cooperation is only possible when there is mutual respect among parties and a shared understanding of the rules of engagement. Beijing shows neither.
Biden¡¯s return to the White House has prompted Chinese officials to dig out their old playbook. Zhao explained, ¡°As two major countries, China and the United States have broad common interests and shoulder special, major responsibilities in safeguarding world peace and stability and in promoting global development and prosperity.¡± That sounds a lot like the ¡°new type of major country relations¡± that Chinese leader Xi Jinping proposed to President Obama in 2013.
That model, which seemed to endorse a condominium in which Washington and Beijing would make decisions for the region, rested on three pillars: no conflict or confrontation, mutual respect and mutually beneficial cooperation. In the abstract, it is hard to argue with those concepts. Problems arise when those principles become concrete; when, for example, ¡°mutual respect¡± is applied to specific problems. In practice, this has meant that China is not to be criticized. Ever. And when Beijing expresses an interest in a dispute, that stake is to be considered paramount and accorded due deference.
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