Rise and fall not cause and effect

Talk of Sino-US economic decoupling has emerged in the international arena.

Decoupling the two economies would by no means be good news for bilateral relations, as it would lead to further alienation between the two countries and even intensify confrontation between them.

But looking to the future of Sino-US relations, a certain kind of "decoupling "is necessary: decoupling China's rise from the decline of the United States. This is crucially important for the US. Believing in a correlation between China's rise and the US' decline will lead to a deadlock, and most likely, Sino-US relations being pulled into the so-called Thucydides trap.

The US has never been more anxious than it is today, even though the debate about China's rise started over a quarter of a century ago. Back then, people in the US, especially those in the business community, were able to see tons of opportunities in China's rise, and hence embraced it willingly, enabling closer bilateral relations. That's why when they begin to take notice of China's rise in 1993, most of US media applauded it.

Admittedly, there were some people who were wary of China's rise. Nicholas D. Kristof, then Beijing Bureau chief for The New York Times, in his article The Rise of China published in Foreign Affairs at the end of 1993, stated that if "China is able to sustain its economic miracle, then this readjustment of the scales will be one of the most important－and perhaps dangerous－tasks in international relations in the coming decades". But on the whole, people in the US generally held a positive view of China's rise, considering China to be a "peaceful, stable, prosperous and responsible player in global affairs". This lasted until the second term of the Barack Obama administration when the previous positive attitude toward China was replaced by an alarmed and suspicious one. The change resulted from four factors.

First, the so-called liberal international order encountered a crisis. At the end of the Cold War, some strategists in the US hailed the "end of history", believing that the liberal international order－the US had created－would rule the world. But not only has the "end of history" proved to be a fantasy, but some US strategists have also become deeply pessimistic about the liberal international order. In this context, China's rise and its impact on the international system emerged as a focal point.

Second, it seems to many in the US that the trend of its decline is out of question. After the end of the Cold War, the US became the world's hegemon, enjoying the glory of a unipolar world. But since the global financial crisis in 2008, the signs of US decline have been increasingly apparent. Although the US still takes the lead in many fields, its relative decline is an indisputable fact. The unipolar era is now over.

Third, China's GDP was only one-sixteenth that of the US when president Bill Clinton came to power in 1993. Today, it has reached two-thirds of that of the US and it is the world's second-largest economy. Also, China has made great progress in terms of its military modernization and science and technology, and it is rapidly catching up with the US. Since all of these achievements have been made under the strong leadership of the Communist Party of China, the US feels challenged both by China's power and by the "Chinese model".

Finally, those in business, who were the first to embrace China's rise received huge commercial gains through deep engagement with China. The interdependent economic and trade relations the two countries have established over the past four decades were the ballast for bilateral relations. But today, the overall attitude toward China has changed significantly, with many in the US business community complaining that economic and trade relations are "unfair and unequal". The role of trade as the ballast in Sino-US relations has been weakened.

It is worth noting that China's rise and the decline of the US are discussed together, as if we were trapped in a zero-sum game. This only complicates the situation. In fact, the right-wing in the US is mostly willing to associate the fall of the US with China's rise, claiming that there is "less and less time left for the US", and soon it will be "too late to confront China". As Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the US House of Representatives stated in his book Trump vs China, "China is the greatest competitor the US has had to deal with in its 243-year-long history". He also claims US-China competition is "a matter of life and death".

The truth is often lost by simplifying problems. In fact, China's rise follows its own path, and the same is true of the decline of the US. Committed to the nation's great rejuvenation under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, China is not interested in weakening the US. On the contrary, China has continued to signal that it hopes to work with the US.

The decline of the US, which is rooted in it abusing its power overseas and its political decay, is not because of China.

When it comes to the future of Sino-US relations, decoupling China's rise and the decline of the US will help the US to get rid of a zerosum mindset and look at Sino-US relations objectively.

The changing relations between the two countries are based on profound transformations occurring in the economic, social, cultural, and science and technology sectors. In such a complex setting, China and the US should prioritize their domestic issues and focus on development at home, and thus make a new era of co-evolution.

The author is associate professor at and deputy director of the Institute of American Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations.

The author contributed this article to China Watch exclusively. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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