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David Shambaugh is a leading authority on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia. A prolific author, his latest book, Breaking the Engagement: How China Won & Lost America, examines the deep-seated historical factors that lie behind the deterioration of U.S.-China relations in recent years. Currently the Gaston Sigur Professor of Asian Studies, Political Science and International Affairs, and founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University; Shambaugh is also a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University.

In a 2021 interview with The Wire China Professor Shambaugh described his own personal evolution over four decades in U.S.-China relations; in this interview about his new book we focus on his substantive views of America’s former Engagement policies and their replacement by what he describes as a new “Counter China Coalition”. The following is an edited transcript of that recent written interview.

Q: You begin the book describing how the relationship between the U.S. and China has oscillated from periods of closeness to those of more intense rivalry. What is your underlying theory as to why this has been the case? 

A: Trying to understand and explain why the U.S.-China relationship has repeatedly oscillated back-and-forth between cycles of amity and enmity — what the late and great historian of U.S.-China relations Warren Cohen described as the “love-hate cycle” — is the central puzzle that stimulated me to research and write this book. These two countries just cannot seem to find and sustain a cooperative and productive equilibrium. This fluctuation is not only the case over recent decades, but I argue and show that it goes all the way back to the eighteenth century! 

My underlying theory to explain this repetitive oscillation, and the basic argument of the book, is that when China’s policies and behavior conformed with American expectations the two could cooperate and generally had non-conflictual relations — but when China did not conform to American desires then frictions tended to follow. America’s expectations of China have been the independent variable while China’s policies and behavior have been the dependent variable in the relationship over time. 

American expectations have been embedded in the Engagement strategy since the normalization of diplomatic relations in 1979, and have been comprised of four core elements: to contribute to China’s economic and technological modernization while building up a market economy; to liberalize China politically and socially; to integrate and socialize China into the multilateral international institutional (Liberal) order; and to exchange people and personnel in pursuit of these three objectives. It is important to note that the United States was not simply forcing these objectives on China — but that reformers in China purposely and explicitly sought American expertise and assistance towards these ends. 

To be sure, there has been a long and strong element of paternalism in the way Americans have approached China — which I describe as the “missionary impulse” to shape, mold, and change China — but at different points in time China willingly sought and accepted such paternalistic largesse. When this was the case, American and Chinese goals were congruent and the two generally got along. But, at other times, Chinese nationalism resented and pushed back against U.S. efforts to induce change in the country and the Chinese Communist regime perceived such efforts as politically, socially, intellectually, and economically subversive (so-called “peaceful evolution”). The basic “rub” in the relationship, as I see it, is American Liberalism bumping up against Chinese Leninism.

You write about how one of the perennial defects in the U.S. approach towards China has been this missionary zeal, the desire to ‘change’ China. Is there not another, less ‘positive’ American characteristic at play: the constant need for a bogeyman to rally against? 

I would not at all — and do not in the book — characterize this “missionary zeal” and desire to change China as a “perennial defect.” I view it as an empirical fact in the relationship — the desire to mold, shape, and change China has been deeply embedded in American DNA over centuries; it has been a continuous fact, not a policy preference to be turned on and off, and China has stood to benefit. It is, in my view, the most important underlying driver of the U.S.-China relationship over time. The American desire to change China is not going to change until China changes — and by that, I mean it becomes a genuinely more liberal polity, society, and economy.

Nor do I at all share your characterization that the United States has a “constant need for a bogeyman to rally against.” My esteemed colleague Chas Freeman characterizes this as American “Enemy Deprivation Syndrome” (EDS). I can certainly understand why it may seem as such to many outside of America, as America has fought many wars and pursued a wide variety of methods to try and shape other countries politically, socially, and economically — but I would argue that this has been the result of a combination of America’s belief in the universality of its system rather than some kind of chronic malign need to find a “bogeyman”.

Do you see the downturn in relations in the last decade or so as just another swing in the relationship, or something more permanent? Has the relationship in turn now achieved some kind of equilibrium, albeit not one as friendly as some would have hoped? 

I think it is both, i.e. it’s another swing in the long history of the cooperative/confrontational pendulum; but also this time around the competitive dynamics are more structural and enduring. 

The relationship at present and into the future is what I describe as ICCR: indefinite comprehensive competitive rivalry. It is inherently a competitive interactive relationship where each side constantly maneuvers to improve its strengths and counter the other’s. The competition extends across virtually all functional domains (strategic/military, economic/commercial, technological/innovative, political/ideological, cultural/soft power, diplomacy and global governance, presence in all geographic regions of the world, outer space, the Arctic and Antarctic, etc.); it is a classic Great Power rivalry, and all of these elements are going to last indefinitely into the future. This is thus a qualitatively different phase in the long evolution of U.S.-China interactions. 

Another key difference this time around is that China has now become America’s genuine peer competitor in many realms and thus the relationship is no longer as asymmetrical as it has always been.

You go into depth analyzing the years where the U.S. policy towards China was one of engagement. You write that you yourself have changed your mind about the wisdom of that policy. Can you talk about what led you to this rethink? 

John Maynard Keynes famously said: “When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?” In my case, I began to change my mind about the efficacy of Engagement during 2010 when I last lived in China (as a Senior Fulbright Scholar in the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of World Economics and Politics, when I was researching my book China Goes Global). 

It was during that year when Chinese government behavior became much more repressive and restrictive domestically and much more assertive and caustic externally. Normal collaboration with Chinese interlocutors became increasingly difficult for a range of Americans and Westerners. Scholars, businesspeople, government officials, NGO workers, journalists, universities, philanthropic foundations all began to encounter increased Chinese Government restrictions on carrying out their normal work in the country, and externally China was becoming a much more truculent and assertive actor. 

Engagement was about far more than “bringing China into the global economy…” It was about — and intended to be — instituting policies and empowering actors that would comprehensively transform China in liberal directions in multiple domains.

Many China watchers noted this at the time as an inflection point, and I experienced it personally in Beijing. As a result, it began to become evident to me that Engagement as a set of policies had begun to run its course (because of Chinese Government resistance) and hence what I describe in the book as the “Engagement Coalition” of various actors inside the United States began to atrophy and crumble.

The debate over the rights and wrongs of engagement will likely continue for years to come. What was the alternative, though? Could and should policy makers in the late twentieth century really have given up on China without attempting to bring it into the global economy? 

The American (and Western) Engagement policies began during the 1980s, and you’re correct: there was no real alternative. Containment had collapsed as a policy a decade earlier, and China under Deng Xiaoping was intent on “joining the world” and taking what the world could offer to support the country’s “Four Modernizations” policies. 

But Engagement was about far more than “bringing China into the global economy,” as you put it. It was about — and intended to be — instituting policies and empowering actors that would comprehensively transform China in liberal directions in multiple domains.

Is there a danger that the U.S. and its allies have given up on China too readily; that policy makers have discounted too quickly the possibility that China could again change in a more liberal direction, once Xi Jinping has departed the scene? 

As long as Xi Jinping remains in power, the deeply repressive illiberalism will continue. I see no altering of that course. Even after Xi were to leave the political scene, please remember that the core institutional components of the Chinese Communist Party — the Organization Department, Propaganda Department, Discipline Inspection Department, the internal security services, the PLA, and the state-owned enterprises — will all remain in place and power. Xi will surely go one of these days, but the CCP’s Leninist bureaucratic mechanisms of control will remain (and Xi did much to strengthen them).

That said, I think it is entirely possible that post-Xi China and the CCP could return to a more liberal domestic path and a less assertive external posture. I say this because of two factors. 

First, we know that there exists considerable discontent across society and within the Party over many of the draconian directions and policies that Xi has pursued. Second, ever since Deng Xiaoping came to power in 1978 the CCP has evolved through what Western scholars of China politics identify as the “fang-shou cycle” (放收周期). Fang means to open, shou means to close or contract. Since 1978 Chinese politics have passed through six such oscillating phases: 1978–83 (fang), 1983–84 (shou), 1984–89 (fang), 1989–1995 (shou), 1996–2010 (fang), 2010–present (shou). Chinese politics have displayed this repeated tendency, and I would hypothesize that there is a good chance the CCP would return to a more liberal and tolerant set of fang policies when Xi leaves the scene. In any event, this prolonged period of shou is the longest ever, and China is long overdue for a return to fang-ist policies.

This has direct relevance to the findings of my book. When the CCP has pursued more liberal fang policies domestically it opened space and created opportunities for Americans from a wide variety of professions to work in China and pursue their agendas to contribute to the liberalization of the country. The CCP has previously pursued relatively relaxed, open, tolerant, and liberal policies under Deng, Jiang Zemin, and Hu Jintao — and there is no reason a post-Xi CCP could not do the same. If it did, tensions with the United States would diminish considerably and areas of cooperation would open again. 

This is not to suggest that the U.S. Engagement policy would be able to be put back together like Humpty Dumpty, as the structural competitive elements now prevalent in the relationship would serve as constraints — but a new period of “competitive coexistence” could ensue.

Conversely, there are people such as our recent interviewee Ely Ratner, who believe that ‘not enough people [in Washington] are waking up in the morning and saying to themselves, ‘Okay, I’ve got to get to the office because the United States is in intense competition with China, and we need to do what we have to do.’ Do you think he is right? 

Americans have many things to focus on and worry about. China should definitely be one of the central priorities. There are many means by which the United States could and should strengthen its competitiveness vis-à-vis China, both domestically and internationally. That’s why in the final chapter of my book I set out in some detail my own recommended policy prescriptions for a U.S. policy of “Assertive Competition and Competitive Coexistence.”

Much of the book is about the successes and failures of the U.S.’s approach to China; yet its sub-title is ‘How China Won & Lost America’. Where do you, then, ultimately put the blame for breaking the two countries’ engagement? 

I definitely blame Xi Jinping and his regime’s policies for breaking the engagement and hence “losing America.” Xi’s policies have definitely undermined the ideational and strategic rationale for America’s Engagement strategy of four decades. This argument echoes Susan Shirk’s in her excellent recent book Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise, and our two books are quite complementary to each other. Susan focusses mainly on China’s actions while mine focuses more on America’s responses to China’s behavior.

You analyze the current schools of thought on the best approach for the U.S. towards China. Can you briefly outline those schools; and where you see yourself on the spectrum of opinion now.

In a chapter called “The Great American China Policy Debate” I identify five separate Schools of Thought that I see in the debate of recent years:

• The Stealthy Rival School who subscribe to the idea that China has a secret grand strategy to undermine, overtake, and replace the United States as the world’s principal power. For members of this school, all of the dots in China’s domestic and global behavior connect and they point to a regime doing its best to undermine the United States and the Global Liberal Order.
• The Comprehensive Competition School is a loose coalition of those who argue that the U.S. is locked into a series of competitive relationships in different spheres — security, diplomacy, commerce, technology and innovation, research and development, higher education, soft power, domestic politics and ideology, global governance, and other areas — and that the U.S. needs to go on the offense in each of these spheres, to push back against and resist China while advancing American national interests, all while simultaneously investing in these capacities at home.
• The Reengagement School: those who argue that the United States simply needs to get back to the old Engagement strategy, should never have abandoned it under the Trump 1.0 and Biden administrations, that the old strategy still serves American interests well, that China is not an adversary or even a competitor of the United States, and that the U.S. needs to re-extend a hand and reengage with Beijing.
• The Strategic Empathy School is a slight variant of the Reengagement School — those who think that China is only reacting to assertive or aggressive American actions. This group argues that the U.S. thus needs to better understand China’s insecurities and neuralgia, not provoke them, not demonize China, but rather to be “strategically empathetic” of the CCP regime.
• The Managed Competition School: who believe and argue that competing against China and protecting American national interests must be pursued and assertively so, but at the same time that a series of guardrails, buffers, off-ramps, and dialogue mechanisms — some resurrected from the détente phase of Cold War 1.0 with the USSR — need to be constructed in order to “manage the competition” so that a full-blown adversarial relationship or war do not result.

I place myself in both the Comprehensive Competition and Managed Competition schools.

You write that you think you may have coined the term “managed competition”. If that, or “competitive coexistence”, is to be the essential guiding principle of U.S.-China relations going forward, what are the risks? What could blow a new equilibrium centred on such ideas off-course? 

I believe that I was the first to use this term in an article in Asia Policy back in 2017. Subsequently, the Biden administration picked it up as its leitmotif during 2023-2024. In another article in the journal International Security in 2018 I similarly coined the concept of “competitive coexistence” to describe U.S.-China relations (in Southeast Asia). So, I may hold intellectual property rights over these two now more commonly used concepts. 

What could “blow such ideas off-course”? Well, either a Grand Bargain between the two sides in which the two find new — and extensive — reasons to forge a cooperative relationship, or a shooting war between the two. Either of these two extremes would alter the “equilibrium” of my twin concepts — but short of these two scenarios I believe that both America and China need to adapt to a fluid, dynamic, indefinite and comprehensively competitive relationship, and do their best to manage the multiple points of friction without the relationship becoming fully adversarial.

You are particularly critical of the role of the business community, and essentially accuse it of failing to understand the need to disengage from China more deeply now. Why are you calling for a greater level of decoupling? Won’t this set back American companies not just in terms of profits, but increasingly in terms of opportunities to gain expertise in areas where China is now forging ahead? 

I realize that I hold a controversial view on this subject — that the American business community is deeply complicit in having built up a peer competitor that threatens American national interests and national security. I find this highly objectionable. U.S. corporates have placed their own commercial interests above national interests, and this includes their longstanding self-censorship and unwillingness to criticize China’s malign behaviors. It is way past time for a systematic decoupling of our two tech sectors, ending forced technology transfer to China, and erecting robust export controls to restrain China’s high-end technological and military development, and holding corporate executives to account before Congressional committees. 

…competition is an indefinite state of affairs and thus the U.S. needs to be in it for the long haul, be strategic and proactive, countering China’s advantages and exploiting its weaknesses.

You also suggest that this would set back corporate profits: I could care less. It has been their blind pursuit of profit (as Lenin predicted a century ago when he said that “the capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them”) that has led corporate America (and fund investors) to ignore U.S. national interests and national security. I am aware of the argument that such decoupling may handicap American tech innovation, but that may be the necessary price to pay. Continued integration of the two tech and R&D sectors is just a recipe for more intellectual property theft and espionage that fuels the PRC’s own military-industrial complex.

Do you sense in the U.S. not just concern about China’s intentions, but also a fear that for the first time since it became the world’s leading country it faces an opponent whose system — for all its faults and problems — might actually work better? 

The argument that China’s autocratic system is more efficient than America’s democratic system has been around for a long time, and that the U.S. needs to “learn from China.” I recall some pundits arguing this as far back as the 1980s. There is no doubt that China’s system is more efficient — and that it has contributed to spectacular technological and industrial innovation (such as its high-speed national rail network). So, yes, I do think that the United States excessively handicaps itself through excessive regulations and its laborious legal system.

I think we do need to retain overall confidence in our own system — political, economic, cultural, and otherwise — but we need to make it much more efficient and less encumbered by excessive regulations and legal delays.

As a follow on: do you think the U.S. can repeat its long-term strategy with the USSR during the original Cold War — essentially waiting its opponent out until its inherent weaknesses led to its collapse? 

China is not the Soviet Union, although the two Communist parties do share many similarities and weaknesses. I have spent much of my career studying these comparisons. What I would say at this point in time is that we need to conceptually de-couple China from the Chinese Communist Party. The country has many strengths while the Party exhibits both strengths and weaknesses. I want to be clear here: I do not think that the CCP is in any real danger of “collapse” or being overthrown, but Leninist parties have certain intrinsic defects that make them unsuitable to responsive governance or what’s known as “inclusive innovation” (society led). China as a country exhibits countless attributes and strengths which the Soviet Union never had, but the CCP is afflicted by many of the same maladies as the CPSU. 

A common point made in analyses of how the U.S. should approach China boils down to some version of saying the U.S. should co-operate where possible and necessary, and compete or be adversarial everywhere else. Where and how do we draw the lines here, though, between where to cooperate or compete? 

I agree with this characterization — and my own sense is that the two governments should cooperate where possible on transnational issues of global governance but otherwise compete comprehensively.

Can you briefly summarize your policy recommendations for the U.S. towards China that you detail towards the end of the book? 

Sure. I felt that it was only fair — after reviewing and critiquing so many others’ views on American China policy — that I offer my own in the concluding chapter. In brief, I argue for a strategy of “Assertive Competition and Competitive Coexistence.” This includes a variety of elements and components that are too lengthy to detail here — but they all revolve around America proactively competing with China across all domains. They include a variety of steps to strengthen American indigenous capacities while pushing back against China’s presence, behavior, and policies worldwide and in a variety of sectors. My bottom line is that competition is an indefinite state of affairs and thus the U.S. needs to be in it for the long haul, be strategic and proactive, countering China’s advantages and exploiting its weaknesses.

Your book is a terrifically thorough overview of the development of the US-China relationship, particularly in recent times. I wondered: of the various scholars and U.S. officials whose contributions you analyze, is there anyone you particularly admire, or who you think has been most perceptive in their own analysis of the relationship? 

This is very hard to say, as I have sincere respect for many scholars and officials who have contributed to the Great American China Policy Debate (chapter 7), but I really respect and agree with the writings of scholars Elizabeth Economy and Aaron Friedberg.

How do you assess the Trump 2.0 approach to China so far? Are we living through yet another period where American intentions to pivot attention towards Asia and China are frustrated by events elsewhere? 

It is really too early to say, as the second Trump administration has yet to fully conceptualize or articulate its broad China strategy and specific policies. The outlines of such are apparent — and they suggest a comprehensively competitive framework — but these are still early days. 

If the Trump administration is inclined towards pursuing a comprehensively competitive strategy towards China, then they and I are on the same page. However, one specific area of competition where we deeply diverge has to do with soft power: the Trump administration is systematically dismantling America’s instruments of soft power and public diplomacy (USAID, Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, the Fulbright program, various government grants to support university’s China studies, exchange programs with China, etc.). I also deeply disagree with the Trump administration’s weaponizing of government grants to universities and research institutions, which directly undermine America’s core competitiveness. 

At least the American side has engaged in a robust and protracted debate over appropriate U.S. policies toward China… If the Chinese side cannot be similarly self-reflective and self-critical it is not helpful to finding common ground.

These moves are all hugely damaging and ill-advised — whereas my policy recommendations include a number of specific measures to strengthen these capacities.

Does anyone in China feel they ‘lost’ America? 

I certainly cannot speak for people in China, but some do express the view that some of Xi Jinping’s policies have contributed to the downward spiral in relations with the U.S. over the past decade. I also get the sense that there is considerable regret among many urban and educated Chinese that the relationship has deteriorated so sharply — but that is different from affixing blame for the deterioration. Precious few Chinese are willing to (openly) blame China or Xi for contributing to the downturn. Indeed, my book contains a lengthy Appendix — a separate chapter really — which analyzes in depth a wide variety of China’s so-called America experts’ publications concerning the engagement and post-engagement periods. These individuals accept zero blame on China’s part for the deterioration of the relationship over the past decade. As far as they are concerned, the deterioration of U.S.-China relations over the past 8-10 years is 100 percent the fault of the American side!

While I am not anticipating a Chinese translation, it would thus behoove the Chinese side to read my book to better understand that the profound changes in U.S. policies and perspectives are a reaction to China’s own behavior. As such, I find that there has unfortunately not been a “Who Lost America?” debate in Beijing. The combination of the hegemonic Communist Party propaganda combined with rigid censorship has not allowed a debate to occur, at least in print. This is regrettable and in itself is an impediment to improving ties. At least the American side has engaged in a robust and protracted debate over appropriate U.S. policies toward China, with some arguing that the Trump 1.0 and Biden China policies have been inappropriate and self-defeating. If the Chinese side cannot be similarly self-reflective and self-critical it is not helpful to finding common ground.

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