The director of the GW China Policy Program examined the evolution relations between the United States and China in a discussion of his new book at the Elliott School of International Affairs on Tuesday.

David Shambaugh, the director of the Elliott school’s China Policy Program since its founding in 1998 and professor of Asian studies, political science and international affairs, discussed the rising tensions and shift in U.S. policy toward China in recent years, and explained how past engagement strategies gave way to today’s “fluctuant” relationship between the two countries. The Elliott School Research Team and Sigur Center for Asian Studies hosted the event.

Shambaugh’s book, set to release June 12 is titled “Breaking the Engagement: How China Won & Lost America,” and tracks the history of the U.S. strategy of engaging with China diplomatically, economically and socially. He said the U.S.-China relationship has shifted to become a “comprehensive competition” after four decades of cooperation between the two governments through diplomatic relations, academic exchanges and technological cooperation.

“From amity to enmity, back to amity, to enmity, and the cycle repeats seemingly endlessly,” Shambaugh said. “That’s the historical puzzle.”

He said the historically tense U.S.-China relationship began to relax in the 1970s, following decades of “containment” policy aimed at curbing China’s communist influence following World War II and through the Cold War. He said he categorized U.S. relations with China beginning in 1970 into four strategies, all aimed at bringing the country closer with Western democracies like the United States.

“Modernize China, liberalize China, socialize China and engage with China,” Shambaugh said. “These are the four elements that constituted the strategy and goals of the engagement strategy.”

Shambaugh said the first tactic of U.S.-China engagement involved establishing more direct diplomatic ties and communication, aiming to transform Cold War-era adversarial dynamics into cooperative ones. He said additional tactics were to invest in trade, improve China’s domestic governance and build a “rule of law” based on Western legal practices, by supporting American universities and programs in China that promoted and taught Western-style law.

Shambaugh said the U.S. engagement strategy with China was effective because it benefited a wide range of American constituencies through trade and efforts to liberalize China. He said the U.S. strategy created an informal “engagement coalition” of businesses, government actors and citizens who became “stakeholders” in the relationship because of its economic and social benefits to the U.S., like access to cheaper consumer goods and a larger international market for trade.

“For any American foreign policy of the United States to be sustainable it must have domestic buy-in and broad range congressional support,” Shambaugh said. “Fundamentally, every constituency bought into the premise that direct contact between Americans and Chinese counterparts was a good thing.”

Shambaugh said although the U.S. practiced this engagement strategy with China for several decades, relations between the two countries began to negatively shift in 2010 when China expanded its intelligence, media and influence activities within the United States, through increased surveillance efforts, media campaigns and state-funded attempts to influence public opinion, causing the relationship to deteriorate. 

“In retrospect, the year 2010 was a turning point,” Shambaugh said. “And I have my theories about why, but after which, China really tightened up, and a variety of foreign actors, not just American, began to experience increased impediments, controls and obstacles to their work.”

Shambaugh said since 2012, when current Chinese President Xi Jinping came into power, negative relations with the U.S. only intensified because he pursued a strategy of “wolf war diplomacy,” marked by aggressive rhetoric, nationalistic posturing and threats of economic retaliation, undermining the previous U.S. strategy of cooperation. He said the downturn in relations caused both governments to “securitize” their relationship, a process when governments view each other as a threat and work to militarily secure themselves as a result.

“Both sides have responsibility here,” Shambaugh said. “And as a result over the past decade, China has, I argue, progressively lost America.”

Shambaugh said there is an “ongoing debate” in the U.S. among scholars and government officials on how to move forward with a new U.S.-China strategy to overcome worsening relations over the last decade. 

He said other scholars have different “schools of thought,” with some suggesting the U.S. should “take a deep breath” and attempt to re-engage with the Chinese government to return to its old relationship. He said others believe the U.S. should work to understand China’s economic, social and political “insecurities” more and be “strategically empathetic” instead of pursuing an adversarial relationship in the international community.

Shambaugh said he views the current situation as a “comprehensive competition” between the two countries, with the U.S. engaged in a zero-sum rivalry with China across multiple areas, including security, diplomacy, commerce, technology, education, politics and global influence.

“My own main preference is that the United States needs to go on the offense and assertively compete with China in various spheres, but to manage the competition so as to establish a relationship of competitive coexistence,” Shambaugh said.

Shambaugh concluded the event by discussing the book’s appendix, which explores whether a “Who lost America?” debate has emerged in China, similar to the debate among U.S. scholars about which country is responsible for the declining relationship with China. He said the answer is a resounding “no” and that China accepts “zero blame” for the deterioration of its relationship with the U.S. over the last decade.

“As far as China’s so-called ‘America specialists’ and government are concerned, the deterioration of U.S.-China relations over the past eight to 10 years is 100 percent the fault of the Americans,” Shambaugh said.