The Growing Risk of Inadvertent Escalation Between Washington and Beijing

Editor’s Note: China is becoming more aggressive in Asia, and the potential for a confrontation with the United States is growing. Kurt Campbell of the Asia Group and Ali Wyne of the Atlantic Council explain the possible logics behind China’s behavior and lay out the risk of unwanted escalation.

Daniel Byman

***

The U.S.-China relationship has reached its lowest point since the normalization of diplomatic ties in 1979. A growing number of observers in Washington and Beijing have assessed that the two countries are on the precipice of “a new Cold War.”

There are important differences, of course, between U.S.-China tensions today and U.S.-Soviet tensions after the Second World War. Middle powers have more freedom of maneuver than they did during the Cold War. Whereas Moscow largely opted to pursue a course of autarkic development, Washington and Beijing are bound together by complex supply chains in a range of high-tech industries. The transnational challenges that are increasingly defining this century—maintaining macroeconomic stability, managing fast-moving pandemics and mitigating climate change, for example—leave the two countries with little choice but to cooperate, however begrudgingly, if they hope to assure their own vital national interests. And while the Cold War ended with the dissolution of one of the contenders, it is highly unlikely that intensifying competition between the United States and China will culminate with one or the other’s collapse; more probable is a tense, fluid cohabitation.

It is clear, though, that Washington and Beijing have entered into a fundamentally new phase of their relationship, and that strategic distrust between them is likely to intensify regardless of who wins this November’s presidential election. Though they have long maintained a delicate balance of competitive and cooperative dynamics, undergirded by trade and technological interdependence, they now exhibit mutual antagonism that, if the geopolitical fallout from the coronavirus pandemic is at all indicative, may intensify rather than abate when global crises emerge. As Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong recently warned, “it cannot be taken for granted that the United States and China will manage their bilateral relations based on rational calculations of their national interests or even share a desire for win-win outcomes.”

Because China is experiencing a nascent economic recovery from the pandemic, unlike much of the rest of the world, it is better positioned than most other countries to retrain its sights outward. Vis-a-vis Hong Kong, Taiwan, India and fellow claimants in the South China Sea, it has taken a number of actions in recent months that suggest an increasingly assertive regional diplomacy. While observers debate how systematic this push is and what its ultimate motivations are, it is making the United States increasingly uneasy, in part because the pandemic has diminished Washington’s capacity to ascertain Beijing’s strategic intentions and formulate a tempered response. Preoccupied by COVID-19’s health and economic toll—and now, in addition, by civil unrest—the United States may be more sensitive than usual to perceptions of growing Chinese strategic advantage in the Asia-Pacific, and consequently more inclined to try and demonstrate its regional resolve and resilience. For its part, China may be more likely to underestimate the security risks of pressing ahead. Poor and deteriorating bilateral ties make these dynamics even more conducive to inadvertent escalation. Unlike the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Washington and Beijing have few crisis-management mechanisms in place today.

China’s Recent Moves in the Asia-Pacific

Perhaps the most concerning of China’s actions in recent months involve Hong Kong. In late May, the National People’s Congress (NPC) gave China a sweeping mandate to undermine the “one country, two systems” arrangement that, at least in theory, guarantees Hong Kong’s semiautonomous status through 2047. Then, in late June, the People’s Congress Standing Committee unanimously approved legislation that, as the New York Times describes it, outlines “[a]mbiguously worded offenses of separatism, subversion, terrorism, and collusion with foreign countries [that] carry maximum penalties of life imprisonment” and stands up a Committee for Safeguarding National Security that will be “authorized to operate in total secrecy and be shielded from legal challenges.” Hong Kong police are already using their expanded authority to crack down more widely and aggressively on democratic expression. On July 14, President Donald Trump signed two documents—an executive order and a piece of legislation, the Hong Kong Autonomy Act—that collectively strip Hong Kong of its preferential trading status with the United States and authorize Washington to sanction individuals and companies that it deems to have contributed to undercutting the territory’s semi-autonomous status. China has threatened to retaliate by imposing sanctions of its own “against related U.S. institutions and individuals.”

China is simultaneously increasing its pressure on Taiwan. On March 16, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force conducted its first night-time mission in the vicinity of the island, involving J-11 fighters and KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft. Taipei was also on edge the weekend of April 11 and 12, when the PLA’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, and five accompanying warships transited the Miyako Strait, just over 200 miles east of Taiwan’s northernmost tip. In her second-term inaugural address, delivered on May 20, President Tsai Ing-wen stated that Taiwan “will not accept the Beijing authorities’ use of ‘one country, two systems’ to downgrade Taiwan and undermine the cross-strait status quo.” That same day, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo congratulated Tsai on her reelection, becoming the first holder of his position to send an official message of congratulations to a leader of Taiwan. Two days later, while summarizing China’s yearly government work report, Premier Li Keqiang omitted the word “peaceful” in describing Beijing’s desire to reunify with Taipei, departing from an almost three-decadelong precedent. While one senior official in Taiwan suggested that Li was “still talking about the concept of peaceful unification, just in an indirect linguistic expression,” others are less sanguine, especially in light of China’s intensifying crackdown on Hong Kong. In addition to now buzzing Taiwan’s territorial airspace on an almost regular basis, Beijing is warning Taipei not to offer sanctuary to pro-democracy activists from Hong Kong.

China’s relationship with India has also taken a distressing turn. Separate skirmishes on May 5 and May 9 in contested areas around Pangong Lake and North Sikkim left over 100 Chinese and Indian soldiers injured. Later that month, evidently fearing that Delhi’s construction of roads and airstrips near the Line of Actual Control would improve its ability to project power across that boundary, Beijing reportedly deployed three PLA brigades along the eastern Ladakh border, prompting India to send some 3,000 reinforcements. Military commanders from the two countries met on June 6 and appeared to reach an agreement that would provide for a gradual de-escalation of the standoff, but the calm proved to be ephemeral. On June 15, a detachment of Indian soldiers challenged Chinese forces to dismantle an outpost in the Galwan Valley that Delhi held to be in violation of the understanding, resulting in brutal fighting that left 20 Indian soldiers and an unknown number of Chinese soldiers dead—the bloodiest encounter along the disputed Sino-Indian border since 1967. While Beijing and Delhi reached a new accord the week after the incident, suggesting that each is intent on avoiding escalation, this nascent confrontation is still cause for concern. The Brookings Institution’s Bruce Riedel notes in his book JFK’s Forgotten Crisis that the Sino-Indian war of 1962 brought the United States and China to the precipice of conflict; today, unlike then, both Beijing and Delhi are nuclear-armed powers.

Finally, China has been pressing its maritime claims in the South China Sea. On April 2, a Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) vessel allegedly rammed and sunk a Vietnamese fishing boat that was operating near the Paracel Islands (the Chinese Coast Guard claims that the latter initiated contact). On April 16, a Chinese government survey vessel and a Chinese Coast Guard vessel entered Malaysia’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and tailed an oil exploration vessel operated by the Malaysian state oil company Petronas. Two days later, the Chinese State Council declared two new administrative districts: Nansha District, which is to oversee the disputed Spratly Islands, and Xisha District, which is to oversee the also-disputed Paracels. The following day, April 19, China’s Ministry of Civil Affairs and Ministry of Natural Resources announced formal names for 80 features in the South China Sea, comprising 25 reefs, shoals, and islands and 55 underwater features, marking the first time Beijing has undertaken such a nomenclatural exercise since 1983. On April 28, the PLA’s Southern Theater Command claimed that it had expelled a U.S. guided-missile destroyer, the USS Barry, that was sailing through waters near the Paracels; its statement marks the first time that China has accused the United States of “illegal trespass” into what it claims to be its territorial waters. On July 13, Secretary Pompeo declared that China’s “claims to offshore resources across most of the South China Sea are completely unlawful, as is its campaign of bullying to control them,” potentially setting the stage for the United States to respond more forcefully, economically and even militarily, when Beijing next challenges its neighbors in their exclusive economic zones.

China’s recent moves in the Asia-Pacific have taken place against the backdrop of increasingly aggressive “wolf warrior” diplomacy, with high-ranking government spokespersons

[…]

Read the original article: The Growing Risk of Inadvertent Escalation Between Washington and Beijing