4.1 The United States ‘pivot’ to Asia

Wang Yizhou - a clash of exceptionalism. It sounds like a rather gruesome essay title but is it real? Would you say that is a way of thinking about this relationship?

I think two things are very crucial for future Sino-US relations. One is whether two leaders can successfully manage some potential crisis. The second challenge is that whether United States majority really believe that China's prosperous and peaceful rising are opportunity for US, or think that China’s rising is finally will be big obstacle for US leadership, whether in Pacific area or global arenas. And to challenge that I think right now not only consider our narrow national interests but also decrease American’s concern will decrease other neighbouring countries’ concern. They will say ‘Okay, China is rising after all it is also our opportunities’.

Paul Haenle, how much is this about US attitudes as much as anything else? We heard Kenneth Lieberthal talk about the ‘chronic ignorance’, I think is the phrase that he used, that there is in the United States of China. Is this relationship made much worse by that lack of understanding?

I think it’s on both sides. I don’t think it’s just the US. I mean I think here in China it’s also misunderstood. And frankly, you know, going back to the pivot, I think the pivot was rolled out very badly. You know we've had presence in Asia for a hundred years, especially since the aftermath of World War Two, but we never, that I can remember, in history felt the need to roll it out in such a high-handed sort of loud way to the region. And I think there was domestic political factors to that. I think there was also an element of reassuring our South East Asia friends and other friends in Asia that we’re not going away. But I think what the Chinese should – if you read the language closely and having worked in the White House for five years as China Director for two Presidents, I believe that the aspect that is missed is the fact that in order for the rebalancing strategy to work it requires constructive and stable relations with China, that’s a key aspect of it. Now you would not have – you would not have concluded that from listening to the pivot or from reading Hillary Clinton’s article in Foreign Policy magazine, which said as we draw down our forces in Afghanistan and Iraq we’re going to pivot to Asia. And I think what was left out of that was the diplomatic element of the rebalancing the economic element of the rebalancing and frankly the element that we need a constructive and stable relationship with China.

Jin Canrong?

I think the financial crisis is a big issue for the recent US–China relations. Many change can trace back to that event. And this financial crisis hurt US economy and hurt the confidence of the society. And China also changed – China actually benefits from this event. The rise in China accelerated by – by financial crisis. Then comes the new issue of the pivot strategy. Most of the public here believe the pivot strategy is mainly targeted at China. And they are relying on military power and the goal is to have encirclement – encirclement against China. But according to my observation within the decision-making circle, the observation is much more balanced. I think the leaders know there are multi-motivations behind the pivot and not only targeted at China. And the approach is rather complicated not just relying on military and the goal is not to encircle against China but rather to put some norms on China’s future behaviour. So that’s why although the pivot leads to some mistrust but Chinese leaders, especially the new leader, Xi Jinping, rates that this new concept so called ‘new type of a major power relations’.

Ian Bremmer we have heard a little bit about the mistrust just there. If there is to be this kind of new power relationship, do China and the United States need to focus on things where they can have a common interest and North Korea comes to mind.

They do, but we also need to understand that there are fewer things that we have common interest than we used to and that is part of the problem. It’s not just mutual exceptionalism though that certainly exists. It’s also that historically the Chinese have followed America’s lead on all these norms and values because they were small and didn’t have a choice. Now they're bigger, they have a choice and they'd rather do less of it. We need to recognise how radically different these countries actually are. The United States is a rich industrial country.  China’s poor. Not just Greece poor or Portugal poor. It’s six thousand dollars per capita. The average American has no conception of what that actually means but it means that the Chinese have completely different perspectives on what they need to do and not do in terms of industrialisation; in terms of climate, in terms of trade. They have a state capitalist system. That’s a system that’s diametrically opposed to the US in many ways but it’s the way that the Chinese have become world beaters economically and they need to continue it. The Americans don’t accept that. So there are true mutual lack of interests and zero sameness in this relationship that will frankly become more problematic. They need to be well managed but they will become more problematic.

But if you were about to take charge of China, then in a sense does that leadership now have to catch up with the fact that yes, the per capita income of the people may be very low, but this is economically an enormously powerful country and therefore has no choice but to take its place on the world stage?

I think the answer is no. I would resist that strongly. If I were – if I were a Chinese leader I would say I want no part of a G2. I want no part of responsible stakeholdership. You're asking me to act like a rich country when I'm not. You're asking me to follow rules that you created to benefit you. That’s what the US wants. And I'm an American. We want that. But the Chinese government doesn’t want it. They’re saying increasingly loudly that they don’t want it. The fact that they're going to become the world’s largest economy should give us no illusions as Americans that they're going to act like the United States. They will not. And the responsible stakeholder concept is one that strikes most Chinese as arrogant and ill-minded.