There are at least two ways to view Sino-American tensions. The United States and China are two great powers competing for pre-eminent strategic influence over the same geographic region. But they are also the leaders of two contending ideological blocs pitting liberal democracies against authoritarians.
The latter view suggests that regime type is the root problem. Some US observers have argued that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cannot peacefully co-exist with governments based on liberal political values. They conclude the free world must work to overthrow the CCP – not just to bring relief to the oppressed Chinese people but as a matter of self-defense.
A famous recent example was the July 2020 speech by then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change,” he said. “And if we don’t act now, ultimately the CCP will erode our freedoms.” In that case, “our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party.”
In the May/June edition of the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs, Matt Pottinger, like Pompeo a former senior official in the Trump administration, and former Congressman Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin who was chairman of a China-focused committee, reprised the argument that the US government should make defeat of the CCP a primary goal of US policy toward China.
Beijing under the CCP cannot tolerate a world that holds to liberal values, they wrote. Seeking détente is “doomed to backfire on the United States.” Therefore, the US should strive to “win” rather than “manage” the competition with China.
Their definition of winning would fulfill two metrics. First, Beijing would no longer have hope that it could best the US or a US ally “in a hot or cold conflict.” Second, the Chinese government would no longer be “repressive” but, rather, would be “free from communist dictatorship.”
That endeavor would be a significant departure from official US policy. As Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a major 2022 speech about China, “We do not seek to transform China’s political system.”
Americans generally despise authoritarian governments and would welcome China democratizing the way Taiwan and South Korea did late last century. But it would be unwise for Washington to make this a major objective of US policy.
Protecting the current system, with the CCP’s monopoly on political power unquestioned, is the PRC government’s highest-ranked interest. Declaring intent to attack that interest would position the US as an outright enemy of the PRC, with counterproductive results.
Just as Pottinger and Gallagher argue that seeking a constructive partnership with the PRC is futile, declaring a cold war against the CCP would cause Beijing to conclude the same about the US.
The PRC government presently believes Washington dabbles in subversion, such as in the case of US officials allegedly instigating anti-government protests in Hong Kong in 2019. But Beijing still evidently aims to stave off a stronger US commitment to overthrow the CCP.
Chinese media have repeatedly highlighted the claim that Joe Biden told Xi Jinping during their meetings in Bali in 2022 and in California in 2023 that “the United States respects China’s system, and does not seek to change it.”
At the ceremonial level, at least, the Xi government’s Global Security Initiative doesn’t envision America as a permanent enemy but sees it rather as part of a peacefully coexisting world (once the US and other countries have accepted the new Sino-centric world order).
Beijing currently resists describing the US-China relationship as “competitive.” PRC officials continue to call on the US to “advance cooperation while responsibly managing differences,” which indicates a willingness in principle to stovepipe contentious issues so they don’t prevent collaboration on other issues.
All that will change, however, if Beijing sees Washington prioritizing regime change in China. But from the US standpoint, the overall results of US-China cooperation have been poor.
That’s because Beijing often seems to act in bad faith. The results would be worse, however, in a full-blown cold war. A working bilateral relationship is still largely viable, and more necessary than ever.
The two countries must manage the huge trade and investment flows between them. Progress in addressing transnational issues such as climate change, health, environmental protection and crime requires coordination between the world’s two most influential countries. American and Chinese officials must communicate to prevent unintended military conflicts as US and PRC ships and aircraft operate in some of the same areas.
Cooperation on these and other problems would become harder and perhaps impossible if supplanting China’s political system became a driving objective of US policy.
Even without the US government committing itself to changing out China’s government, America already indirectly subverts the CCP by simply existing. Despite all of its problems, the US wields immense soft power, prompting a jealous PRC government to argue that China is more “democratic” than the US.
Xi’s government has placed extraordinary emphasis on the threat that “Western constitutional democracy” and the idea of “universal values” pose to the party’s maintenance of its leadership position. China’s diplomacy evinces an obsession with undermining US global prestige and influence.
The queues of visa applicants outside the US embassy and consulates in China are long. Despite the arduous journey, the number of Chinese migrants entering the US through its southern border increased nearly tenfold from 2022 to 2023.
The US could probably exert a positive influence on China’s political system more effectively by striving to be its best self than by the US government setting the liberalization of the PRC as a policy objective.
The argument for targeting authoritarian governance in China assumes that a politically liberalized China would no longer pose a serious threat to US interests. That assumption, however, is questionable.
Like Xi, his predecessors Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao were CCP authoritarians. But under their regimes, China was less threatening to the US because China was relatively much farther behind America in wealth, technological capability, economic strength and military power.
Even after a debate within the Chinese government resulting from the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by US aircraft in 1999, Jiang decided China was not yet strong enough to shift to a more adversarial posture toward the US.
By contrast, when Xi took the top PRC leadership posts in 2012—2013, China had achieved global economic centrality, was closing the military gap with the US, had recently hosted the Olympic Games and believed that the 2007-08 financial crisis signaled an acceleration in America’s decline.
Xi’s China is aggressively expansionist not just because it is authoritarian but also because Xi calculates this is the best way to achieve the CCP’s aims, based on the belief that China now enjoys superior relative power and leverage.
Relatedly, regime change alone would not necessarily cause all tensions between China and US friends in the region to disappear.
Historically, democratic countries such as Britain, France, the Netherlands and the US have engaged in expansionism by seizing colonies without the consent of their native peoples. A non-authoritarian Chinese government would no longer have a reason to fear liberal values taking hold worldwide.
However, the ideas that China is the natural leader of its region and deserves the privileges of a big country are not merely CCP propaganda; they are beliefs deeply held among the Chinese people.
A politically liberal China would still hate Japan and believe that China owns Taiwan and the South China Sea. Although it is a democracy, the Republic of China on Taiwan continues to make the same claims over the Senkaku Islands and the South China Sea as does Beijing and similarly rejected the 2016 Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling that went in favor of the Philippines against the PRC.
Finally, there is the question of how the US government would go about overthrowing the CCP. Pompeo’s only policy recommendation was that all governments should “insist on reciprocity” as well as “transparency and accountability from the Chinese Communist Party.”
Pottinger and Gallagher reveal no specific strategies for causing regime change except to “try harder to disseminate truthful information within China itself and … make it possible for Chinese citizens to communicate securely with one another.” That is a very modest approach for such a dramatic goal, with no explanation of whether it is technically feasible.
Intensifying a cold war with China would have significant costs for the US. Enduring these costs while failing to achieve the purpose of the escalation would be the worst of all worlds. It’s far better for Washington to focus on deterring and defeating adversarial PRC behavior than on ousting the CCP.
Denny Roy is a senior fellow at the East-West Center, Honolulu
China should also refrain from seeking regime change in America.
Test
It is considered the “right” of the US to interfere in the internal affairs of any state. It has refined color revolutions to a fine art.
Regime change has been tried before, and it failed. US has been trying to overthrow the PRC from the very beginning, first, with the laughable Phoenix Program, and later, using Taiwan as a launch pad for intelligence activities–low level intelligence flights into China, which cost the lives of pilots and crews, and . later,U2 flights. US had outposts in close-in islands like Jinmen and Matsu.
Generally speaking, Mr Pottinger et al are ideologues, and like so many before them, wanting to change China. It hasn’t worked yet. Because they aren’t Chinese.
Correct. America has more chance of its own collapse than a regime change in China.