QUESTIONING WASHINGTON’S HAWKISH CHINA POLICY

By Zhiqun Zhu

Excerpted from The Hill, March 24, 2023 

[Zhiqun Zhu is a Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Bucknell University and a Steering Committee Member of the Committee for a Sane U.S.-China Policy]

Democrats and Republicans disagree on many internal and external affairs, yet they have reached a rare consensus on how to deal with China. In recent years, Congress has passed a number of anti-China bills and the White House has launched a series of confrontational policies towards China. However, some Americans are questioning the soundness of this hawkish approach. In fact, it’s grown into a full chorus. 

However, the voice of questioning America’s China policy has also increased recently. For example, Jessica Chen Weiss, a political science professor at Cornell University, published an article in the September/October 2022 issue of the Foreign Affairs magazine, exposing the perilous logic of zero-sum competition between the United States and China.  

In February 2023, Weiss wrote an opinion piece in the Washington Post, arguing that the United States should deter, not provoke, a potential Beijing attack on Taiwan. Weiss served as a senior advisor to the Department of State’s Policy Planning Staff from August 2021 to July 2022. Since returning to Cornell, she has spoken out on various occasions and encouraged a more rational policy towards China. 

Fareed Zakaria, a well-known Indian-American journalist who also hosts CNN’s current affairs program “Fareed Zakaria GPS,” published an article in the Washington Post on March 2, 2023, criticizing the dangerous “groupthink” of Washington elites on China, as displayed during the first hearing of the House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party in February 2023. 

Max Boot, a columnist for The Washington Post and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out in a recent Washington Post commentary that even if the two parties have a consensus on the same issue, it does not necessarily mean they are correct. He called the congressional hearing on China “disturbingly one-sided.” 

Additionally, moderate scholars such as Michael Swaine of the Quincy Institute and Stephen Roach, the former chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia who is now teaching at Yale, have warned that the United States may sleepwalk into a war with China. 

The current wave of questioning U.S. policy towards China may not be able to form a strong wave of opposition, but it is clear and loud enough to remind our government and politicians that their knee-jerk confrontational policy toward China has not received widespread support, and a more constructive and balanced approach is needed to manage U.S.-China tensions and to serve Americans’ interest.