A House United

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BEIJING'S VIEW OF WASHINGTON

Policymakers in Washington have long split between those who believe China will inevitably threaten vital U.S. interests -- and thus needs to be isolated or contained -- and those who think a nonadversarial relationship is still possible if pursued through greater engagement. People on both sides of the debate, however, share a seriously flawed understanding of how Chinese leaders view the United States. According to conventional wisdom, Beijing's behavior toward Washington is driven by factional politics within the Chinese leadership. This assumption, however, is misguided and even dangerous. It misrepresents the Chinese political spectrum, overlooks the more fundamental sources of Beijing's foreign policies, and greatly exaggerates Washington's ability to exploit imagined differences within the Chinese leadership. Worse, this skewed framework obscures the fact that Beijing is currently reassessing its view of the world and China's place in it -- a process that will have profound implications for the United States.

The politicians and pundits who frame the U.S. debate on China invariably focus on the struggle in Beijing between hard-line ideologues and moderate reformers. According to this view -- which originated in the Hong Kong press but has since been adopted by the Western media -- hard-liners, who mistrust U.S. intentions, routinely obstruct efforts by mainstream moderates to pursue an accommodating and flexible approach toward the United States. This camp was thought to be behind Beijing's handling of the World Trade Organization (WTO) negotiations, its reaction to the accidental NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and its persistently harsh proclamations on Taiwan. In each of these episodes, President Jiang Zemin and Premier Zhu Rongji -- who are portrayed as leaders of the moderate faction -- were said to have been constrained in their dealings with Washington and forced to mouth harsh anti-U.S. rhetoric by pressure from the hard-line camp.