Guest Column | The Election and U.S.-China Relations

Since the 1970s, challengers in United States’ presidential campaigns have criticized incumbent administrations’ China policies — policies that have reflected a durable, bipartisan American consensus that the United States should maintain a good working relationship with China.

This consensus has rested on the recognition that both countries benefit from cooperation on many issues where their security interests coincide (such as combating international terrorism, slowing nuclear proliferation, and containing instability on the Korean Peninsula) or where their economic interests are complementary (such as a trading relationship that benefits American consumers by providing inexpensive goods manufactured in Chinese factories that employ millions entering its labor force).

From Reagan through Clinton through Bush, this mainstream view on the wisdom of American China policy has been embraced even by presidents who had adopted a sharply critical tone prior to taking office.

President Reagan accepted the U.S. position on Taiwan’s status that he blasted as a candidate, President Clinton ultimately pushed for permanent normal trade relations with China after campaigning against coddling the “butchers in Beijing;” and President Bush worked hard to defuse tension with China after the forced landing of a U.S. spyplane on Chinese territory and later sought China’s cooperation in the “global war on terrorism” even though he had run for office in 2000 arguing that China was America’s strategic competitor in Asia — not the strategic partner touted by the Clinton administration.

If history is a guide, therefore, one can discount the shrill campaign rhetoric of 2012 as more of the same old story. Gov. Romney’s charges that President Obama has been too soft on China and his promise to be tougher — most notably by threatening to “declare China a currency manipulator on day one” — are unlikely to be a preview of what he would do as a president facing the practical consequences of a more provocative U.S. China policy that risks painful retaliatory actions by Beijing, if not a full-blown trade war.

In the third debate, Gov. Romney’s recognized that he will have to figure out a way to work with China if he wins the election. Similarly, President Obama’s recently tougher language about China as he responds to his challenger’s charges — most notably beginning his one answer on China at the third debate by referring to China as an “adversary”— almost certainly is a tactical maneuver that does not signal a strategic shift in China policy if he is re-elected.

So does any of this really matter? Is the U.S.-China relationship locked into a steady course that is immune to the vagaries of our sharply partisan presidential campaign season? Maybe. But there is another, less sanguine, view rooted in three new considerations.

First, the stakes in U.S.-China relations are higher than ever as a result of China’s rise and the closer intermingling of Chinese and American economic and security interests. These interests are not always open to “win-win” solutions — as reflected through the America’s decision to refocus its strategic attention to East Asia.

Second, with the stakes raised, the familiar pattern in which U.S.-China relations are only temporarily disrupted by the need for candidates to indulge in a little China bashing, may now be riskier than we’d like.

In the past, over the first year or two in office, newly elected presidents could gradually tack back toward the broad mainstream of U.S. China policy without much penalty. Given the current economic significance of China and the potential for crises or conflicts to arise over territorial disputes between China and some of its neighbors who are U.S. allies, the economic costs and military dangers of a chill in U.S.-China relations that lasts for many months are greater than ever.

Third, for the first time since 1992, China’s once in a decade leadership transition coincides with the U.S. presidential election cycle. The selection of Xi Jinping as the top leader in China at a meeting that convenes two days after the U.S. votes for president is almost certainly a foregone conclusion. Yet, he will rule in a polity that, while authoritarian, now requires even the top leader to accommodate competing public and private interests on economic and security policy.

As the transition to a new leadership group surrounding Xi Jinping emerges over the next year, the pressures facing him as he develops his foreign policy will in part be shaped by China’s reaction to the policies of the country most important to its future — the United States.

Consequently, to an unprecedented degree, the legacy of the U.S. presidential campaign immediately after January 20, 2013 has the potential to significantly affect U.S.-China relations and to do so at a time when the relationship is growing more important than ever.

Avery Goldstein is a political science professor and the director of the Center for the Study of Contemporary China. His email address is agoldstn@sas.upenn.edu.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.