America’s Goal Should Be a Democratic China

Ever since then-U.S. President Richard Nixon went to China in 1972, U.S. policymakers have sought above all to talk with their counterparts in Beijing, believing dialogue would lead to substantive cooperation on issues ranging from nuclear weapons to trade to climate policy. Yet today, as Chinese leaders stonewall their U.S. counterparts and the two countries’ militaries dance around each other in Asia, it might seem quixotic to ask: What future relationship does the United States even want with China?

This question will become even more important as the United States heads into its 2024 presidential election. As the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy has made clear, the 2020s are the decisive decade for setting the terms of U.S.-Chinese geopolitical competition.

A China strategy that combines a long-term vision with candor about the current rivalry can put the United States and its allies on a firmer footing. Ultimately, Washington’s desired end state is a constructive relationship with a democratic China, however long that may take. Until then, U.S. strategy should be two-pronged: It should protect U.S. interests from the harmful activities of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while maintaining ties to the Chinese people wherever possible. These efforts to maintain ties to the Chinese people are an investment in the possibility that political conditions in China could someday shift, opening a window to the desired U.S. end state of a post-CCP China. Balancing these two objectives will not be easy, requiring careful calibration and a tolerance for risk.

More than five years into Washington’s shift from engagement to strategic competition with China, it is now widely acknowledged that engagement failed to create an enduring, stable, cooperative bilateral relationship. Pursued with the best intentions during and after the Cold War, engagement was the United States’ bet that bringing China into the global community—by giving Beijing a seat at the United Nations in 1971, normalizing relations in 1979, and ultimately agreeing to admit China into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001—would turn it into a more responsible supporter of the international order. What’s more, engagement would “induce change” within China, as president-to-be Nixon wrote in a seminal 1967 essay.

We are now confronted with the flaws in this strategy. Most notably, it failed to account for the Leninist nature of the CCP, which seeks not to conform to the existing liberal international system but to transform that system and make it compatible with the CCP’s interests. In other words, Washington mirror-imaged its own desires for maintaining post-World War II political, economic, and security arrangements onto the CCP, which had a different vision for the global order all along. More frustrating for Washington, perhaps, is how little influence it ever had over Beijing. China’s entry into the WTO was seen as an especially critical milestone on the road to a more open and responsible China. Yet if U.S. policymakers overestimated their ability to induce fundamental economic and political change in 2001, when the U.S. economy was about eight times the size of China’s, how can they have any such hopes now, when China is almost an economic peer in terms of nominal GDP?

U.S. policymakers need to learn to pursue U.S. interests while maintaining an optimistic vision of a more democratic future for the Chinese people.

Envisioning the future U.S.-Chinese relationship requires first answering the question of what the United States is actually striving for. That goal can only be to continue to defend and strengthen the liberal values that have structured the postwar international system, notwithstanding Beijing’s opposition. The United States must no longer let itself be trapped into undercutting its own interests, which include maintaining technology leadership and promoting universal human rights, in the hopes of keeping on China’s good side. U.S. policymakers need to learn to pursue U.S. interests while maintaining a clear-eyed assessment of China’s current behavior and an optimistic vision of a more democratic future for the Chinese people.

China hawks and doves are both grappling with how to define an end state for the U.S.-China relationship. Supporters of tough U.S. policies know that only a long-term vision can help the United States sustain focus, measure success, and garner support from like-minded countries. Advocates of a softer approach argue that the absence of a long-term vision for how to live with a rising China increases the risk of a reactive policy spiral that could backfire and even lead to catastrophe. Both camps recognize the risks of declining people-to-people exchanges and scant official communication and cooperation on global problems such as climate change. Such exchanges are critical, but Beijing’s habit of freezing communication channels and its poor track record fulfilling international agreements—such as treaty commitments to maintaining Hong Kong’s autonomy and obligations to cooperate on dangerous viruses—pose formidable barriers.

In the face of Beijing’s cold shoulder, a U.S. effort to define a vision for its relations with China is more important than ever. Building such a consensus requires reconciling two competing imperatives. First, the United States must articulate a positive vision for ties with China distinct from the CCP leadership, drawing on the history of American optimism and China’s own rich liberal tradition that envisions a more democratic future, even if the path is too murky to discern right now. At the same time, U.S. policymakers must deal with the threat the CCP poses today, while being candid about the fact that Americans do not want an adversarial relationship with the Chinese people.

Here is what U.S. policy with the end goal of a democratic China could look like.

First, U.S. policy should distinguish between the Chinese people and civilization, on one hand, and the CCP regime, on the other. The United States and other democracies can laud the achievements of the first while contesting the actions of the second. The West should counter CCP narratives that usurp credit that rightfully belongs to Chinese people, who have suffered not only some of the worst humanitarian atrocities in history, but also the daily indignities of life under an authoritarian system that stifles their humanity. At the same time, Washington must acknowledge that younger Chinese are often even more nationalistic than their elders, many Chinese still support the party, and almost all want to see their country play a prominent and powerful role in the world. Creating a positive relationship with a Chinese population whose aspirations may well run counter to U.S. interests will be a complex challenge for U.S. policymakers, rendered all the more difficult by CCP political control and repression.

Second, U.S. policy should tirelessly call out CCP leaders’ choices to double down on autocracy, nationalism, and brute force economics. These choices are deeply rooted in the CCP’s ideology and worldview, and they long predate the U.S. shift from engagement to strategic competition. As long as the party remains in power, it is hard to see the Chinese state making a genuine shift toward upholding liberal norms. The country’s tangible economic successes have grown the regime’s reputational power in the developing world and increased the resources available to pursue domination of the region and beyond. It is naive to cling to the notion that Beijing’s long-term intentions can be shaped by engagement and accommodation. Doing so is, at best, dismissive of CCP leaders’ own statements about their goals and long-held suspicions of U.S. intentions; at worst, it is reckless in the face of a serious rival that has, over decades, demonstrated commitment to achieving its illiberal goals.

In 2000, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton issued a call of hope for “a future of greater openness and freedom for the people of China.” Unfortunately, more than two decades later, this outcome has not materialized, despite persistent efforts by the United States and the aspirations of many ordinary Chinese. Instead of continuing to blindly pursue an approach that might be appealing in theory but has failed in practice, Washington should work toward a second-best outcome instead. The United States and other democracies should hedge their bets, managing near-term risks while holding out hope that a better future is possible.

This two-pronged approach is the only way to speak and act in line with U.S. interests and values. It means hoping for the best, planning for the worst, and keeping the door open to communication without offering concessions in exchange for mere meetings and statements. It means clinging to optimism without pulling punches in the day-to-day struggle of systemic rivalry. It means affirming that universal values apply to all people everywhere, including in China, while pursuing a clear-eyed and hard-knuckled strategy that protects U.S. interests and reduces vulnerabilities. It means developing a tolerance for the ambiguity this dual strategy will inevitably entail. It recognizes that Leninist dictators defer to strength, not concessions, and rejects complicity in Beijing’s debasement of human dignity.

In practice, this means supporting universal values—including by reminding Beijing that the world is watching when Chinese people stand up for freedom, such as in the White Paper movement—while restricting imports of products made with forced labor. It means creating safe havens for Hong Kong residents and Chinese asylum seekers fleeing political persecution and showing up at the U.S.-Mexican border, in tandem with tighter export controls that prevent Hong Kong from channeling sensitive technologies to the mainland. It means supporting, both openly and clandestinely, those brave people in China who are attempting to preserve civil society and offer alternatives to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s vision of communist supremacy. It means leveraging U.S. technological ingenuity to inject pockets of digital freedom into China, even while protecting Americans’ data from CCP exploitation by restricting apps such as TikTok and WeChat, as well as genomic surveillance giant BGI.

As human rights advocate Wei Jingsheng wrote: “Democracy in China can only be established by the people in China. … The more the people in China know, the smoother the process of establishing democracy will be.” For now, the choice of path China will take has been co-opted by the CCP. Washington’s China policy must account for this reality, while at the same time contesting its legitimacy and affirming that the choice between democracy and dictatorship ultimately belongs to the Chinese people.