How China Won Over America, and Then Lost It

In the four decades before 2010, the United States maintained a policy of engagement with China, notwithstanding such fluctuations as the reaction to the Tiananmen Square massacre. China won over the U.S. through generally reformist domestic and foreign policies.

In his new book, Breaking the Engagement: How China Won & Lost America, celebrated China scholar David Shambaugh examines the drivers of the ups and downs of the U.S.–China relationship.

Shambaugh identifies four elements in the U.S. engagement strategy: modernise China economically and technologically; liberalise China politically and socially; integrate and socialise China it into the international postwar liberal order; and exchange people in various professions in both government and societies. The desire to change China has always been in the U.S. DNA.

The U.S. engagement strategy made important contributions to China’s rapid development. The 2000s also saw rising social and political freedom in China, with a growing number of non-government organisations, lively open discussions online and in the media, a substantial degree of academic freedom, and relatively unrestricted movement for foreigners.

What brought about the changes? Shambaugh suggests a number of factors. The Chinese Communist Party displayed hubris after the U.S.-generated global financial crisis, seemingly believing that the decline of the West had begun.

At the same time, China was haunted by the colour revolutions in some former Soviet republics and satellite states. China was facing its own domestic unrest in Xinjiang, Tibet and elsewhere. Under the weak leadership of Hu Jintao, the government’s reform faction lost influence.

As U.S.–China engagement deepened, China paradoxically became more suspicious, rather than moving towards liberalism. As Shambaugh writes, one can certainly also understand why the CCP might view U.S. engagement as subversive to its power and control.

According to Shambaugh, China lost America by undermining the premises and goals of the U.S. engagement strategy. An appendix questions the competence of China’s ‘America watchers’ who did not seem to notice the gradual decline in U.S. engagement towards the end of the second Obama administration. This set the foundation for a major deterioration in U.S.–China relations in the last three years of the first Trump presidency, from which there was little substantive change under the Biden administration.

Shambaugh suggests that there are five different U.S. schools of thought regarding the shape of future U.S.–China relations, from attempting to revive engagement to taking a very hard line against China. In Shambaugh’s view, the U.S.–China relationship is now characterised by ‘indefinite comprehensive competitive rivalry’. He believes that the U.S. needs to go on the offensive and compete assertively with China, while managing the competition to establish a relationship of competitive coexistence.

Shambaugh regards the U.S.’s disengagement from China as the most important international development in the 21st century, and one that has profoundly negative implications for the Asian and world orders. The book does not comment on the new Trump administration and its trade war, as the text was finalised before the 2024 U.S. elections. In subsequent commentary, however, Shambaugh has suggested that Chinese nationalism will make it difficult for Trump to secure a trade deal with China.

Shambaugh does note, however, that the U.S.–China relationship has at times fluctuated from amity to enmity and back again. We cannot rule out the relationship swinging back to amity, especially in the event of a change in China’s leadership.

There is ongoing debate about which side is responsible for the deterioration of U.S.–China relations, and about the most sensible way to manage future relations. Shambaugh’s well-written and engaging book has offers relevant evidence concerning the issues at stake, while clearly presenting different sides of the argument.

John West is the author of Asian Century … on a Knife-edge and executive director of the Asian Century Institute. His career has included major stints at the Australian Treasury, the OECD, the Asian Development Bank Institute and Tokyo’s Sophia University.

This article appeared originally at The Strategist (ASPI).