Chinese officials have reacted differently to the two “Kennan-style cables” that came out before and after the Trump administration left office. If their reaction to the former was rational, their reaction to the latter “longer cable” was outrageous (see “U.S. grand strategy toward China calls for Kennan-style wisdom and vision”).
Chinese official anger and disgust with the “longer cables” centered on several aspects: first, the anonymity of the authors was particularly offensive. Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said that this fully exposed the dark psychology and cowardly mentality of some people in the United States. Jia Chunyang of the Institute of International Relations’ Institute of American Studies said the reluctance to reveal his real name reveals the author’s speculative mentality, and possibly his timidity and fear of becoming the target of Chinese sanctions. Second, he is particularly disgusted by the idea of stripping Xi Jinping of tens of millions of CCP members, which he sees as a vain attempt to divide the Chinese leadership from the Chinese people. Third, they are furious at the idea of containing China, believing that this new Cold War and ideological confrontation, and calls for regime change in China, are contrary to the trend of the times and unpopular.
In contrast to these angry outbursts against the “longer telegram,” there are some Chinese think-tankers who have a more sober and rational understanding of the first “Kennan-style telegram” and its containment ideas. The representative work is “U.S. containment of the Soviet Union and current strategy toward China” published by Yu Jiantuo and Lu Mai of the China Development Research Foundation on January 20. They have done a lot of homework on Kennan’s containment ideas, referring to John Gaddis’ “Containment Strategy” and “George F. Kennan’s Biography,” George Kennan’s “Kennan Diaries” and Paul Hill’s “George Kennan and U.S. East Asia Policy” to sort out the background of the emergence of the containment strategy, the theoretical framework and the U.S. containment strategy toward the Soviet Union in different periods and other issues. In an article in Comparative magazine back in 2018, they stated that the U.S. strategy toward China has completed the transition from engagement to containment.
Yu Jiantuo and Lu Mai conclude that today’s China is not the Soviet Union of the past, and the current United States is not the United States of the past; because of this, the future endgame of this containment will turn out better for both the United States and China than when the U.S.-Soviet containment ended (with one side declining in arrogance and the other disintegrating), and with less negative consequences for the rest of the world. Yu and Lu are confident that the U.S. attempt to contain China is a dubious strategy both in terms of its goals, capabilities, circumstances, and means; as long as China does not make subversive mistakes, the U.S. containment strategy against China is unlikely to succeed.
They cite several specific reasons. For example, although the United States is still the most powerful country in the world, it no longer has the same relative advantage in power over China that it had over the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and that relative advantage is rapidly diminishing. The United States now sees China as an adversary, an adversary with much smaller weaknesses than the Soviet Union; instead, the United States has demonstrated many weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the course of its wrestling with China. Also, the Soviet Union at the Time dominated a closed system, while China today is the largest trading partner of more than 120 economies, and it would be difficult for the United States to succeed in trying to get its allies to give up their interest in cooperating with China. Moreover, when competing with the Soviet Union, the United States was highly confident in its own values and its own development model, but today the United States has become very unconfident.
In short, the different official Chinese reactions to the two “Kennan-type cables” tell us that the anger shown by the Chinese foreign ministry and certain research departments may be superficial, or that they “had to show” their reactions, but what really deserves attention is The real concern is the study by Yu Lu and others. Their research, especially the judgment that U.S.-China relations are shifting from engagement to containment, should be said to be largely accurate and in line with the trajectory of U.S.-China relations over the past few years and with expectations for developments in the years to come. Beijing has probably prepared its mind for the development trend between the two countries. In addition, they believe that the common interests and differences between China and the United States will coexist for a long time, and that China should respond to future U.S.-China relations with “two hands” against “two hands” – a strategic approach to U.S. China should respond to future U.S.-China relations with a “two hands” versus “two hands” approach – taking countermeasures against U.S. strategic encirclement while seeking cooperation. Now, it seems likely that China will start preparing in 2018 to deal with the two hands of the United States with China’s two hands.
Interestingly, the Yu-Lu report shows a super confidence in the CCP system, in the rise of China and the decline of the US. But if one carefully examines their article, one will find that their super-confidence is conditional, and that condition is “as long as China does not make subversive mistakes. It should be said that this condition is very interesting, and “subversive mistakes” may be the biggest potential crisis for China in the future.
As for the U.S. strategy toward China, the probability is that it will move toward a containment trend, but not necessarily with the word containment. Competition, accountability, checks and balances, etc. will more or less carry the meaning of containment.
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