U.S. President Joe Biden was reportedly rebuffed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in September when Biden offered to hold a summit meeting with the Chinese leader. While the administration has been relatively successful at engaging regional allies and partners—the landmark deal to equip treaty ally Australia with nuclear-powered submarines being a good example—it has had far less success with Beijing.
This trend should not be regarded lightly. Intense security competition without clearly defined red lines carries a host of risks that make constructive diplomacy between the world’s premier great powers a necessity.
For Beijing, intransigence and rhetorical belligerence serve a purpose. At every high-level meeting between U.S. and Chinese officials, the latter have repeatedly asserted that cooperation on select issues of mutual interest “cannot be divorced from the overall situation of China-U.S. relations.” In other words, China is adhering to the logic of linkage. Improvements in one area of U.S.-China relations will depend on how much progress is made in other areas.
The Biden administration has taken the opposite approach, with U.S. officials framing relations with China as “collaborative where it can be, competitive where it should be, and adversarial where it must be.” Back in July, Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman was reprimanded by Chinese officials during a visit meant to promote “open lines of communication” and setting “terms for responsible management” of U.S.-China relations. John Kerry received similarly humiliating treatment when he visited China earlier this month to discuss climate change.
If this is the strategy for the next three years of the Biden presidency, China will have no incentive to change its behavior and relations between Washington and Beijing will continue to deteriorate
The danger in the Biden administration’s de-linkage approach is two-fold. One, dialogue loses all value when neither side has an incentive to change their position on high-priority issues. Diplomacy then effectively enters a state of paralysis that, in the event of a crisis, makes resolution much more difficult. Second, and stemming from this, when power becomes untethered from diplomacy, every confrontation turns into a test of raw will. With the incentives for restraint eroded, the rationally perceived necessity of using military force to defend national interests sets the stage for conflict.
What is needed now is a clear statement of the boundaries within which U.S.-China relations must evolve. As Henry Kissinger has warned, U.S. and Chinese “leaders have to discuss the limits beyond which they will not push threats” to prevent a fatal slide into crisis. To do so, the Biden administration needs to regain the initiative and embrace linkage as a strategy for great power diplomacy if it wants to stabilize bilateral relations.
But what would an improvement in U.S.-China relations look like? Admittedly there are not many diplomatic initiatives presently ripe for cooperation. Although Washington’s position on the status of Taiwan remains unchanged, China’s strategic patience has worn thin and Taipei’s desire for independence has grown. Any move away from the principle of strategic ambiguity—either in the form of an explicit defense guarantee or pre-emptive unilateral abandonment—would not bode well for the tense but peaceful status quo.
However, while the White House frequently emphasizes climate change as an issue of mutual concern, Chinese officials have made it clear that resolving trade disputes is a much higher priority for them. Nearly 57% of China’s energy consumption in 2020 stemmed from the use of coal alone. For a middle-income country focused on higher economic growth, voluntarily restricting carbon emissions in the name of environmentalism is hardly an attractive proposition.
Beijing has instead shown more interest in adhering to the stipulations of the Phase One trade deal negotiated during the Trump administration. Last month, the Chinese commerce ministry confirmed that “normal communication” was occurring over implementation of the deal. Linking progress in future bilateral trade talks with better behavior towards U.S. regional allies, such as ending the economic sanctions campaign against Australia, would help lower the overall geopolitical temperature and relieve pressure on non-aligned countries being pushed to “choose sides” by Washington and Beijing. Additionally, this would be a good opportunity for the Biden administration to build on their predecessors’ progress in promoting a more balanced economic relationship with China that prioritizes the welfare of U.S. workers and firms while addressing market distorting practices such as dumping, subsidies, and forced technology transfers.
Geopolitical competition with China should be responsible and prudent. While the Biden administration rightly understands the need for guardrails, it cannot expect Beijing to acquiesce on lower-priority issues of mutual concern when high-priority disputes remain deadlocked. Nor can it simply de-link competition and cooperation as if they are mutually exclusive. Competition without red lines will erode any potential or desire for cooperation.
The rise of China does present serious economic, political, and security challenges for the U.S. However, the choice facing policymakers is not select oscillation between competition and cooperation. It is about whether the U.S. and China each have the foresight to stabilize the global equilibrium through hard-nosed negotiation and compromise. A comprehensive détente may not be in the offing anytime soon, but the alternative is unrestrained security competition that risks devolution into crisis and conflict. To stabilize U.S.-China relations, dialogue sustained by linkage is essential.
Matthew Mai is an intern at Defense Priorities. Previously, he was a fall 2020 Marcellus policy fellow with the John Quincy Adams Society. The views expressed are the author's own.