Obama win sets challenge to
China By Benjamin A Shobert
We now know the results of the United
States presidential election: President Barack
Obama will continue his term for another four
years. At election parties hosted by American
ex-pats in China, cheers were reported when
Obama's re-election was announced by US media.
This admittedly diverse group of Americans knew
first-hand how difficult relations between the two
countries was likely to become with a Mitt Romney
presidency.
To most long-time China
watchers, Obama's re-election suggests the path
forward on US-China relations will be one of
stability and sameness, not necessarily bad things
given the enormous tensions that lie unresolved in
Chinese society and politics that
the forthcoming Obama
administration will have to navigate through.
Had GOP candidate Romney won, even if his
original vitriol towards China proved useful as
rhetorical devices, his campaign statements and
general go-it-alone view of diplomacy indicate
that he would have got relations towards China off
on a bad foot. In normal times, such a rocky start
would have been something the US and China could
hope to navigate through; given the enormous
unresolved economic and political reforms China
must still complete, a rocky start with a new
American president would have had the potential to
intensify the poisonous atmosphere that has grown
around US-Sino relations.
But this
American election was different in many ways that
are relevant to how China and the US are going to
engage one another down the road. China's amazing
economic growth has clearly reached a point where
even if the country does not implode in some
Gordon Chang-style fatalistic fantasy, the rate of
growth enjoyed over the past 30 years in China is
unlikely to continue.
The decisions
China's leaders face today are in many ways as
complex as those faced in the late 70s when China
initially opened up, and again post-Tiananmen. At
both moments, China's insecurities were projected
against a confident America, a global superpower
able to gently guide China towards greater
openness, even if at times these decisions created
short-term pain in America.
The situation
today is very different, as the 2012 US
presidential election made obvious. Today, America
is itself the insecure global player, deeply
divided over the most basic questions related to
the role of its government in the nation's
economy, let alone questions about how America
should engage other parts of the world.
China's insecurity today is familiar
ground; America's insecurity is not. Some of what
propelled China out of its past moments of
insecurity was a general confidence that the other
major world powers, most notably America, had no
interest in seeing China encounter difficulties
that might lead to instability and, in the worst
case, collapse.
The same statement could
not be made today with any conviction. Politicians
in Washington DC openly question China's role in
the world, asserting that the country's emphasis
on expanding its military can only mean China
harbors ill intentions for the world and its
region.
When GOP candidate Romney, the
most experienced, globally savvy business
candidate the Republican Party has put forward in
recent memory, feels it appropriate to so directly
allege America's economic pain has been caused by
China's actions, such a change is important.
Among other insights, Romney's emphasis on
China illustrates the coalescing public opinion
around the idea that China somehow has been an
integral part of America's economic problems. This
is dangerous ground to cover because if the US
economy proves difficult to restart due to
domestic political problems, one of the few areas
for American anxiety to be directed is outside,
where China stands as one of the most obvious
potential targets.
China experts in the US
were quick to naysay such alarmist predictions,
pointing out that Romney's assertion that he would
declare China a currency manipulator on "day one
of his presidency" was unlikely to be something he
could do, given that the Treasury Department, not
the president, controls such a formal declaration.
But policy experts reside in a world where reason,
analysis and history guide decisions they make and
advice they provide. Politics is bound by no such
obligations. At its best, politics may find the
strength to choose for similar reasons; at its
worst, politics pursues whatever is momentarily
expedient, which blaming China for America's
frustrations has become.
The lack of a
clear vision on how to reshape America's economy
by either party remains one of the aspects to
American political culture that could harm
President Obama's ability to maintain US-Sino
relations on a stable course. Absent some sort of
prevailing consensus on what America needs to
pursue either as a government led industrial
policy or as further deregulation and incentive
schemes designed to spark free market actors,
nothing meaningful is likely to happen.
The resulting stagnation will not go
un-noticed; it will become an additional cause for
American political recrimination and in fighting.
Who loses in such a scenario? China. Both
President Obama and candidate Romney were
comfortable in casting China in a negative light
when it suited their purposes. If America's
economy continues to move sideways, placing
additional strain on an unhappy middle class,
China will become even more of a political
whipping boy for both parties.
Advocates
of Romney's anticipated re-assertion of a muscular
America, one that would be willing to lock horns
more aggressively with China, likely anticipated
that such a re-calibration might actually provoke
China to make structural changes to both its
economy and political systems. Against all that
American policy makers have learned in the
aftermath of the twin calamities in Afghanistan
and Iraq, it is striking that few of Romney's
advisers grasped the limited means by which
America, though still a powerful country, can
simply make another nation bend to its will,
especially when the changes American wants to see
another country pursue are ones that run counter
to that country's most powerful stakeholders.
At one time, this strong sense of limited
power over another country's internal decisions
would have been strongly grounded in conservative
thinking. No more. Today's Republicans believe
they can act in ways that change the behavior and
policies of other countries in enormous ways, both
a betrayal to classic conservative philosophy and
a marked inability to internalize the vicious
lessons post 9/11 regarding where American power
has its limits.
If there is one
over-arching take away beyond four more years of
relative stability in US-China relations that
China's leaders are likely to have given the
anticipated outcome of Tuesday's American election
it is this: the Obama Presidency understands the
limits of American power in ways a Romney
administration never would have.
This is
not to suggest that Obama's next four years will
offer an overly conciliatory America. In all
likelihood, President Obama will find it necessary
to act against Iran, a decision that will anger
China. The president's ongoing use of drones will
continue to be a sore point around the world,
including China. But these frustrations aside, an
Obama administration will still be significantly
more sensitive to China's concerns than a
Romney-led one would have been.
As
American politics appear headed towards additional
gridlock while Chinese politics appear frozen
between greater versus retrenched reforms, the
question remains what key choices remain for
President Obama that are likely to effect US-China
relations. With no future election to run for,
Obama can maintain the status quo providing China
does not present him with the need to speak out.
In this way, the onus is on China to act
in ways that reinforce the Western expectation
that it will continue to slowly but inevitably
inch its way towards greater openness and reforms.
A moment when the Obama administration might find
it necessary to speak out against China could well
align with additional American economic and
political frustrations towards China. If this were
to happen, China might have squandered one of the
last moments in contemporary American politics
when it had the best opportunity to stabilize
itself and world opinion about its intentions.
Benjamin A. Shobert is the
Managing Director of Rubicon Strategy Group, a
consulting firm specialized in strategy analysis
for companies looking to enter emerging economies.
He is the author of the upcoming book Blame
China and can be followed at
www.CrossTheRubiconBlog.com.
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