China and the U.S. are clearly rivals. But Xi Jinping doesn’t want to call it a competition.
While meeting with Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Beijing last week, the Chinese leader cautioned the U.S. against engaging in what he described as “vicious competition” with China. “China and the United States should be partners rather than rivals,” Xi told Washington’s top diplomat, according to the official Chinese account of the gathering.
That is by now a familiar—though somewhat puzzling—line of argument coming from Beijing.
Back in November, when Xi met with President Biden for four hours at a secluded estate outside San Francisco, he also challenged the White House’s view that relations with China are defined by competition, saying that he rejected the idea of a “major-country competition.” During that trip, Xi also emphasized to American CEOs that China doesn’t want to be in a competitive relationship with the U.S.
It has been obvious to all that competition has dominated the U.S.-China relations in recent years, in areas ranging from technology and overall economic development to geopolitical influence.
The Biden administration has repeatedly talked about the need to manage the rivalry with China responsibly so that it doesn’t get so out of control that it leads to conflict.
But why is Beijing not willing to accept Washington’s way of defining the bilateral relationship?
The reasons are twofold. First, decades of American engagement with China, or “win-win cooperation,” as the Chinese like to describe it, have benefited the country greatly through trade and investment. It helped the Chinese economy take off.
To the leadership in Beijing, publicly accepting Washington’s “competition” framing of the relationship would mean accepting the use of tech and investment restrictions as legitimate competition tools–and acknowledging that engagement is truly over.
“No way a competitive relationship with the U.S. would work better for China than the previous engagement and cooperation,” said a China analyst.
Second, in Beijing's views, defining its relationship with Washington as one dominated by competition doesn’t rhyme well with Beijing’s messaging to the rest of the world that China's rise is benevolent and peaceful—especially at a time when the country is viewed as an increasingly aggressive global power by many in the West.
All systems go
How Beijing defines the bilateral ties in public, however, is at odds with the fact that it is all systems go in China when it comes to outcompeting the U.S. In other words, winning against the U.S. underpins China’s every move even as it is publicly denying there is a competition at all.
Most notably, the Chinese leadership has accelerated a state-led drive to reorient the country’s growth model to advanced manufacturing—seen among China’s leaders as key to outcompeting the U.S. Beijing has also been ring-fencing data collected within China, including the records by foreign companies operating in the country, in a bid to avoid giving other countries—the U.S. in particular—a competitive advantage.
That’s why Elon Musk—even as Beijing blessed his plan to roll out Tesla’s driver-assistance service in China—is having so much difficulty convincing Chinese regulators to approve the transfer of data that Tesla’s cars collect in China to the U.S. Data from China, Tesla’s second-largest market with 1.7 million drivers, would help Tesla improve its algorithms.
This is one instance where the world should watch what China does, rather than what it says.
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