Edited by: Chad Higgenbottom, Percy Yixuanchen Yu, Jeremy Smith, and Rui Cheng

Wherever there are walls, we SAISers and scholars of our generation should write freely upon them, making more visible their frailties.

In today’s news on international affairs, we hear ceaselessly of ‘misunderstandings’ and ‘trust’. As technology advances and the pace of geopolitical change quickens,  crises of misunderstanding and trust seem to deepen. There was a period, lasting well into the 21st century, when confidence abounded in a more peaceful, fair, and consolidated world order, but this past decade’s shift towards a multipolar distribution of power has coincided with weakened faith in the international order to stifle antagonism between countries with differing political systems.

To do our part in crumbling walls of mistrust, the SAIS Observer has decided to begin publishing a series of bidirectional interviews, focusing on some of the most contentious international issues of our day. We will interview two top experts from countries involved in the chosen topic, presenting each expert with the same set of questions. Neither expert will have seen their counterpart’s response before providing their own.

Our questions will be balanced and open, without any special accommodation made given the political temperaments of the interviewees’ home regions. We believe that in this era, nothing is more precious than unfiltered truth and transparency, so we hope this article series will succeed in providing candid, thought-provoking perspectives.

Writing upon walls – irreverently, when needed –  is the responsibility and consciousness of our generation’s young writers and scholars. We are therefore pleased to present our inaugural piece in this series on the topic of US-China frictions, focusing on Presidents Xi and Biden’s recent meeting in San Francisco and where this most consequential of relationships may be heading. 

Our featured experts are Zhu Feng, Executive Dean of School of International Studies at Nanjing University and leading consultant to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and James Steinberg, former United States Deputy Secretary of State.and current Dean of Johns Hopkins SAIS. This article will be published in three separate installments. 

Editor’s note: Readers may notice a marked difference in style, not only in content, between the responses provided by our featured experts. It should be noted that, for this piece, Dean Zhu Feng provided his responses via email, while Dean Steinberg spoke with us in person. 

Responses have only been very lightly edited for clarity. No viewpoints or statements have been excluded.

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Think back to when it was announced that there would be a meeting between US President Joe Biden and China’s President Xi Jinping during the San Francisco APEC summit this month. Did you expect bilateral relations to improve after this meeting, the first instance in a year that the two presidents had sat together following their meeting in Bali last year?

Dean Zhu Feng: I was basically confident that the San Francisco summit meeting between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden would be candid and productive. There is no doubt that China-US relations have become the most complex set of power relations in the world, as Beijing and Washington have fallen into the “Thucydides Trap” – a term which usually indicates that ties between the No. 1 biggest power and No. 2 biggest power are deemed to be, simultaneously, in their most contentious, complicated and confrontational of times.

The US has completely reversed course in its relations with China by targeting Beijing as its biggest strategic competitor. The original policy of engagement with China, in effect since the normalization of relations going back to early 1979, has awfully and tragically come to an end. Beijing has no choice but to stand up to the US-imposed “new Cold War” now pounding on all fronts. But China, ultimately, is in no position to confront the US as Washington is confronting Beijing.

The reason is very simple: decoupling from the US and getting into full confrontation would cause China’s reemergence to falter. Therefore, China must learn how to stay near to the US, on one hand, while fortifying its development on the other. The same logic is seemingly echoing in Washington, as full disengagement with China would be remarkably unbeneficial. 

Therefore, Beijing and Washington now are ardently seeking for some sustainable method to cope with each other, given the new reality of 21st century world politics. It seems that both prefer to establish a part-complementary, part-confrontational, but authentically manageable and stable relationship. Thus, the summit in San Francisco could be part of that shared vision by offering a significant chance for both sides’ top leaders to sort out a way forward for mutually-preferred cooperation. Meanwhile, they also need to sideline potential flash points, like Taiwan tensions, that would absolutely be harmful to China as well as the US. 

Dean James Steinberg: Right. So I think one could be hopeful about this largely because they have met before.Their having a meeting isn’t a guarantee of success, but because they know each other and because the Bali meeting was, I believe, a successful one, I think there was reason to hope that this would be a constructive meeting. I think both sides signaled that there weren’t huge expectations about substance coming out of the meeting, but the fact of communication at the highest level is still extremely important.

Some experts believe that agreements formed during China-U.S. summits are often not fully implemented, further intensifying trade tensions between the two great powers. Do you agree with this observation? 

Dean Zhu: Yes. I agree that some of the agreements reached by top leaders have suffered from revision or even been blocked afterwards. But some agreements have shown a very solid record of implementation, as well. A record of going back and forth on implementation is a poor reality both leaders should learn lessons from. 

Yet, given the cruel reality of the China-US relationship in the era of strategic competition, abiding by existing agreements which would be difficult to reach again presents a harder push for both leaders to seriously consider making. The primary implication, right now, is that any potential improvements on the basic outlook for China-US ties should deserve more serious input and commitment. Otherwise, any prospect for improvement will be tragically short-lived.

Dean Steinberg: Well, there are certainly examples of agreements in the past that haven’t been implemented. I can think back to the Obama administration in particular, where there were two important agreements that were reached between President Xi and President Obama, one on industrial espionage and cyber attacks and one on military base building in the South China Sea. 

On the first, for a while, it appeared that there was some real progress, and it was a very positive thing. On the second, there was almost none. And I certainly agree that, in some respects, you’re almost worse off having agreements that aren’t implemented than not having agreements at all. But I believe you can overstate this. There have also been a lot of agreements over the years that have been implemented. Leaders need to be mindful that just making an agreement isn’t a “freebie” if they’re not really prepared to implement it.

Many observers both in and beyond China believe that US trade barriers and technology restrictions on China have already weakened the medium- and long-term economic growth prospects for China. Do you believe that actions that the United States has taken in its trade war with China is a major reason, or the main reason, for China’s current economic underperformance?

Dean Zhu: Yes, I have to say that US trade barriers and high-tech sanctions – not only on China – have caused disastrous spill-over effects that are significantly slowing down China’s economic growth. If US actions continue to move in this direction, China’s current economic under-performance will get worse.

Now, China has been thrown into a historical conundrum as to how to restore its growth momentum. China is the largest trading power in the world, but high tech-centered commercial competition remains an advantage for the US, Japan and some European powers. China needs to reposition itself onto the economic fast lane, not just continue complaining of all the US-imposed restrictions. For example, furthering reform and openness and seeking high-quality development are now large, unstoppable mandates throughout China.

My confidence remains unchanged about China’s upcoming economic prospects, as 1. 4 billion Chinese have been fully mobilized. They are mostly hardworking, capable of bearing hardship, and very pragmatic. Beijing, also, has shown it is highly aware of the cooling situation by repeatedly arguing to keep development as the first priority. Thus, I am quite convinced that US-imposed restrictions and sanctions may delay China’s reemergence but will never terminate its economic resurgence. To be honest, I am fully confident of this. 

Dean Steinberg: Well, I’m not an economist, so to some extent I would defer to my colleagues who are economists to look in a more rigorous way at that. But I think there’s strong evidence that most of the problems that the Chinese economy is facing now have nothing to do with either the trade barriers or the export controls. Not that these might not have an impact, but I think the larger problems in the Chinese economy have to do with domestic problems, including problems with asset bubbles and problems with SOEs. This is not to say that there aren’t issues around these (US-imposed) economic measures, but in my informed but not expert opinion, I would not say they’re the primary cause of China’s short and long term economic challenges.

(Follow-up) We asked this question because a lot of Chinese experts, political economists, predicted this summit would be critically important for China. So we are wondering whether this analysis links to the US sanctions on China.

And I do think it does. But there are other parts of this. 

I saw this when I was in Shanghai two weeks ago: China is giving a very strong signal. It’s worried about the international perception that China is not a good place to do business, and that’s different from the export controls and the tariffs. And I do think that this issue is having an impact on China, that firms are moving production out of China. There are people who are more reluctant to do business there.

So, I believe part of it – and we saw this in the meeting that Xi had with with the business leaders (in San Francisco) – is that China is trying to send a signal, which obviously indicates that, at least from China’s point of view, that it still feels it needs international firms to do business and invest in China.

This concludes Part I of our bidirectional interview with Dean Zhu Feng and Dean Steinberg. Part II will include their thoughts on the future of the trade war.