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TOC | Summary | Foreword | Two | Three | Four | Five | Notes | About the Author Conclusion: Living Peacefully with China in the Twenty-First Century Toward the end of the twentieth century, both China’s development and the development of Sino-American relations have reached a crossroads. Opportunities for the two countries to establish a relationship of positive cooperation in the twenty-first century are tremendous, yet the danger for them to fall into unnecessary confrontation cannot be excluded completely (especially if the “China threat” notion dominates U.S. strategic thinking). This is the time that the United States should reexamine its basic perceptions of China, reconsider the underlying meanings of its policies and strategies toward Beijing, and reemphasize its determination to live with China in peace and cooperation in the twenty-first century. It is essential for the United States to understand that China is not an enemy and is not destined to become one on its own. The period of total confrontation between the United States and China was a special episode of the Cold War that ended long before the end of the Cold War itself. Even during Mao’s era, when China was a revolutionary country openly challenging “U.S. imperialism,” Beijing did not make the pursuit of its own regional, let alone global, dominance a fundamental foreign policy goal. In an overall sense, the reform-and-opening process in China during the post-Mao age has further incorporated China into the international community. There exist no historical grounds to claim that China, with the growth of its economic power, will necessarily develop into a force bent on regional and global hegemony and thus clash with the United States. Indeed, history tells us quite the opposite: China was not an expansionist power in the past and is even less likely to become one in the future. China is experiencing the greatest transformation—political, economic, social, and cultural—in its history, which imposes tremendous challenges for the Chinese people and causes profound frustrations for China’s intellectuals. The triumph of this transformation process may open the way for China to emerge as a nation of prosperity, modernity, and democracy, necessary conditions for the age-old Central Kingdom to become an equal member and genuine “insider” of the international community. The failure of the process, by contrast, may lead to a disintegrated China, creating all kinds of security, environmental, and other serious problems for the Asia-Pacific region and the world as a whole. Indeed, nothing else will constitute a more valuable contribution to international peace and stability than the wholehearted embrace of those goals by the nation with the largest population and one of the oldest civilizations in the world. The United States has no reason to fear China’s rise as a strong and prosperous country. Rather, Washington should make the support of China’s modernization efforts a long-range, high-priority goal in its post–Cold War global strategy, and should demonstrate patience and goodwill when China seems to fall short of, or be different from, American expectations. The United States certainly is in a position to influence China’s development; this is particularly true because China needs U.S. support and cooperation in promoting its modernization programs, and because Beijing has thus made maintaining a good relationship with Washington a cornerstone of its foreign policy during the post–Cold War era.23 But in the final analysis, the orientation of China’s development will be determined by domestic forces, and the United States needs to remember that there are limits in its ability to influence the course and consequences of development in another nation—especially one that once called itself the Central Kingdom. In dealing with China, the United States should be extremely sensitive to China’s lingering victim mentality and should avoid doing things that may be interpreted as ongoing “American arrogance.” Only when the Chinese feel that they are treated as equals will they be more willing to accept advice from the outside world. In a deeper sense, China’s integration into the international system will not succeed if China is treated as a passive actor. During such an integration process, transformation will occur not only in China, but in the international system as well (by incorporating China’s values). With its long history and rich civilization, China certainly is capable of contributing substantially to making the world a safer and better place for the human race to live. It is here, probably, that Americans and Chinese, both motivated by high moral expectations in their innermost worlds, will find a fundamental foundation on which to establish mutual trust and respect. With any hope, such motivation will become one of the best guarantors for them, as well as the rest of the world, to live in peace and cooperation in the twenty-first century.
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