Chapter 76 China-U.S. relationship is one of "engagement and prevention"

Americans call Chu Shulong a "hardliner", but many people in China regard him as a "pro-American". Regarding whether Chu Shulong is pro-American, let me tell you a few short stories, readers can make a judgment. There is an unofficial meeting in Northeast Asia—"Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue", which was convened by the US State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Asia and the Pacific Affairs in 1993, and the foreign ministries of China, the United States, Japan, Russia, North Korea and South Korea attended the meeting , Ministry of Defense officials and some scholars.Chu Shulong chaired the human rights panel of the conference.Once, an authoritative old American professor Skradino attacked China's human rights at a meeting, and Chinese officials fought back.Skradino said angrily: You China always come to point out and teach others.Chu Shulong immediately fought back: This is the root of your ideology, the root of your use of human rights to criticize other countries and interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.From then on, Skradino never used human rights to attack China.

In 1996, when the "China Threat Theory" was on the rise, Chu Shulong went to New York to attend a seminar. An American official said that China was an uncertain factor, which made many countries feel threatened by China. Uncertainty in China is also felt.Chu Shulong immediately asked to speak.He said: Gentlemen, what can we do now?what can i do nowWhat we can do now is to look at the 18 years of China's reform and opening up. The fact is that the 18 years of China's reform and opening up and economic enhancement have brought about the improvement of China's relations with neighboring countries and Asian countries, rather than worsening them. The country's desire to improve relations rather than hostility.I don't know what China will look like in the future, but judging from the facts of China's past 18 years in the next 18 years, at least it cannot be said with certainty that the continued growth of China's national power will pose a threat to the world.This is not in line with the fact that China has risen and developed in the past 18 years.

... On many occasions, Chu Shulong consciously confronted the United States for the benefit and dignity of the country, and did not expect that he would have any relationship with the "pro-American faction".However, some people in China call him a "pro-American faction" for at least a few reasons: First, Chu Shulong is a "returnee" who has lived in the United States for five years, and he received funding from the United States to study for a doctorate. It is reasonable for such a person to be friendly to the United States. Second, Chu Shulong frequently receives invitations from the United States, and travels between the two sides of the ocean at least seven or eight times a year; Americans only invite scholars they like. It is conceivable how popular Chu Shulong is in the United States.

Third, Chu Shulong can enter the White House and the Pentagon in the United States, and have direct dialogues with high-level personnel of the US government and the Department of Defense.It underscores his influence at the top of the US. Fourth, in Chu Shulong's academic research in recent years, he did not face up to the US's "containment" aspect of China, but overemphasized the "engagement" aspect.And this is the most worrying point, because as a strategist with influence on China's foreign policy, Chu Shulong's inclination will inevitably lead to the bias of China's foreign policy.

Later, Chu Shulong himself understood that when domestic people were arguing endlessly about whether the U.S. policy toward China should be "engagement" or "containment", he was the first and only one who put forward the judgment of "engagement and prevention".People did not understand this judgment at the time. The "engagement" strategy is a policy toward China that the Bush administration verbally put forward after the end of the Cold War.At that time, Bush Sr. put forward this policy, on the one hand, it was affected by the end of the Cold War and the "89 Incident", and on the other hand, it was using China to deal with the threat of the Soviet Union.After Clinton came to power, he still verbally pursued the "engagement" policy, but confronted China on issues such as human rights, nuclear proliferation, the Yinhe incident, and Beijing's bid to host the 2000 Olympic Games, which brought Sino-US relations to a trough. In 1996, when Clinton won the general election, the heads of state of China and the United States held talks in Manila and reached an agreement on mutual visits between the two heads of state, which brought a momentum of improvement in Sino-US relations. On October 29, 1997, on the occasion of President Jiang Zemin's visit to the United States, China and the United States issued the "Sino-US Joint Statement". Enhance cooperation, respond to international challenges, promote world peace and development, and work together to establish a constructive strategic partnership between China and the United States."Since then, Chinese and American leaders and major government officials have repeatedly stated on different occasions that they will push forward Sino-US relations.

In such an atmosphere, the vast majority of people in China accept the judgment that "the US policy toward China is engagement."American politicians and public opinion circles also agree with such a judgment.When explaining the "strategic partnership", Assistant Secretary of State Roth in charge of Asia-Pacific affairs said that China and the United States should seek a framework on which China and the United States can maximize the areas where they can cooperate together.This strategic framework highlights areas of cooperation and resolves differences over time. However, a year later, the United States and Japan strengthened their alliance and decided to conduct joint research on the theater missile defense system. The U.S. Congress also passed a bill containing anti-China clauses, requiring Taiwan to be included in the theater missile defense system. In the spring of 1999, the United States released a "Cox Report" that slandered China for stealing American nuclear technology, followed by the US bombing of the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia. shadow.Chinese people have doubts about the "strategic partnership" between China and the United States, and they have also lost confidence.Many scholars wrote that the "strategic partnership" between China and the United States ceased to exist due to the lack of a solid foundation, and was replaced by the United States' containment of China.Even U.S. Senator Shelby said that he never believed that the U.S. and China had a strategic partnership.The US should see China as a strategic competitor, not a US partner, and never will.

Is the U.S. policy towards China "engagement" or "containment" or "engagement plus containment"?The academic circles were divided on it. When all circles of society were arguing about this issue, Chu Shulong put forward a brand new judgment.He believes that the US policy toward China is neither "containment" nor "engagement", but "engagement and prevention". Chu Shulong believes that although the Clinton administration clearly proposed an "engagement strategy" with China, it implemented an ambiguous strategy during his first term of office. .The situation did not improve until the end of his first term as president. At the beginning of 1997, when the United States set off another anti-China wave, Clinton insisted on promoting high-level exchanges between the two countries as planned, and insisted on continuing to extend the most-favored-nation treatment to China unconditionally.This is a sign that the US "engagement strategy" has reached a certain degree of firmness and maturity.However, the United States is obviously not adopting an "engagement" strategy in terms of the US-Japan alliance, arms sales to Taiwan, official relations with Taiwan, obstruction of Russia and Israel's arms sales to China, and restrictions on technology exports to China in terms of trade.

In his view, the confrontation between the United States and China cannot be summed up by "containment". "Containment" has a specific meaning. During the Cold War, the United States was the most obvious containment of the Soviet Union and China. It does not communicate with each other, does not trade, and isolates you in the world.However, after the Cold War, Sino-US exchanges in economy, politics, and culture have increased day by day, and the policy toward China is obviously no longer containment.The purpose of the above non-cooperative measures taken by the United States is to prevent China from posing a threat to the United States.

In addition, he also pointed out on some occasions that the fundamental goal of the US policy toward China is not to engage with China or to contain China, but to change China. He realized that Bush Sr.'s "engagement strategy" with China had two sides. On the one hand, he began to highlight the contradictions with China's social system and ideology, and confronted China on issues such as "democracy" and "human rights." Lose strategic cooperation with China on international issues.However, in the first three years after Clinton took office, the content of the "engagement strategy" changed. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the United States no longer needed to cooperate with China on the Soviet issue. At this time, China was the largest socialist country in the world, so The main goal of their "engagement strategy" is to "promote change through pressure" to change China and integrate it into the international political, economic, and security system led by the United States and dominated by the West, so that China can become a country within the system that "obeys international rules, is responsible, and members of the international community".This is the fundamental goal of the US strategy toward China.

Chu Shulong's judgment of "contact and prevention" seems really lonely when the voice of "containment" is everywhere.But when he made these analyzes into an internal report and reported them to relevant central departments, his basic views were affirmed.An official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said: "Chu Shulong is not a pro-American faction, but he is definitely a faction who knows the United States."