Chapter 30: From Feeding the Dragon to a Comprehensive Rival (Part I)

In 2020, Hollywood producer Chris Fenton published a new book titled Feeding the Dragon. The book criticizes Hollywood for pandering to the Chinese government in pursuit of market access, and it stands out as a rare and sobering warning.

In the book, the author reflects on how capitalism’s profit-seeking instinct has fueled China’s economic growth, especially the development of its financial sector. After the United States completed a smooth presidential transition, the book brought back into focus a central question of how America should deal with China: should the China policy formulated by the Trump administration be continued, and would the Biden administration maintain a tough diplomatic stance toward China? How the United States should coexist with China in the future—whether to keep playing the “bad cop” to the end, or to retain some degree of the “good cop”—became an unavoidable question.

Chris Fenton says, “I don’t think we will have aligned views with China on politics, national security, or human rights, at least not in the foreseeable future. Let’s set those aside and focus on cultural and commercial exchanges, and find a fair way forward.” Clearly, this view continues the core logic of U.S. China policy over the past several decades—separating economics from politics, and separating the profits of American companies in China from China’s human rights record. The position taken in his book differs markedly from the China policy of the new U.S. administration.

The China strategy of the new U.S. administration has already begun to take shape. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said that the “greatest geopolitical test” facing the United States in the twenty-first century is its relationship with China—competing with it when it should, cooperating with it when it can, and confronting it when it must. Blinken emphasized that cooperation, competition, and confrontation with China will coexist. The strategy toward China is a three-dimensional, comprehensive approach.

As Yang Jiechi stated at the U.S.–China Anchorage summit, any attempt to change the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and China’s political system is futile. The CCP’s closed-loop political system is no different from the dynastic systems of China’s imperial past—a closed system that moves inexorably down a single path. As its power grows, outward expansion becomes an inescapable destiny of such a system.

The United States has now seen a clear warning: “China will replace the United States; China is striving to surpass the United States economically, militarily, and geopolitically.” The Interim National Security Strategic Guidance released in March 2021 mentioned China no fewer than twenty-one times, identifying it as the only country capable of challenging the United States across economic, diplomatic, military, and technological domains, and as the greatest geopolitical challenge of the twenty-first century. The core of U.S.–China relations is this: cooperate where cooperation is possible, compete where competition is necessary, and confront where confrontation is unavoidable. Areas for cooperation include climate change, global health security, arms control, and nuclear nonproliferation. Areas of competition include military power and cutting-edge technologies. The United States will remain militarily prepared to ensure that its armed forces remain the best trained and best equipped in the world, while the most effective way to prevail in long-term competition with China is to invest in America’s people, economy, and democracy. Areas of confrontation include trade, national security, and the shaping of international rules. The United States must counter unfair and illegal trade practices, cyber theft, and coercive economic behavior; ensure that American companies operating in China do not sacrifice American values; and defend democracy, human rights, and human dignity, including in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet. On all these issues, the United States will work together with like-minded countries.

At the “Copenhagen Democracy Summit 2021,” China was regarded as the “greatest threat” to global democracy. Former NATO Secretary General and former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen said at the summit: “We need American global leadership. We need strong American global leadership, because history shows that when Americans retreat, they leave a vacuum, and bad actors fill that vacuum. That is why we have seen authoritarian rulers and dictators advancing step by step in recent years. We need American global leadership to build this alliance of global democracies.”