It’s Time for China to Start Paying Off Its Debt to the U.S.

President Trump, who prides himself on being the ultimate deal-maker, can start collecting on the debt the PRC incurred to Nixon and his successors whose policies helped build China into the economic and military powerhouse it is today — and into the Frankenstein monster they helped create.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s meeting with President Donald J. Trump next month provides an opportunity for the Chinese leader to begin paying off the debt he owes to the U.S. president as well as some of the larger debt owed by the People’s Republic of China (PRC) to the United States.

When the U.S.’ democratically elected president accepted a congratulatory telephone call from Taiwan’s democratically elected president in December, Beijing’s undemocratic government took great exception.

President Trump dismissed Beijing’s “right” to challenge his communications with other heads of state and even questioned the value of the U.S.’ “one China” policy, further deepening official Chinese concerns (though it’s doubtful the average Chinese citizen much cared about such diplomatic esoterica).

Beijing responded with its usual inflammatory rhetoric whenever American or other leaders depart from its prescribed international playbook. Think tanks on both sides of the Pacific accused the new U.S. president of upending four decades of carefully choreographed U.S.-China relations and even precipitating a risk of conflict.

Beijing’s initial response was to state there would be no congratulatory call from President Xi until Trump backed off his “one China” heresy.

So, when the U.S. president appeared to knuckle under a few days later and paid proper obeisance to “one China,” it was widely perceived as a Xi/PRC diplomatic victory and a Trump/U.S. defeat.

Beijing touted the apparent reversal as vindication of its “one China” principle, which says that Taiwan is part of China. Yet, Trump had merely reverted to the U.S. “one China” policy, which is agnostic on Taiwanese sovereignty but acknowledges that Beijing and a diminishing few on Taiwan see it differently.

Trump surely knew that his rhetorical shift would be brandished by China and others as a somewhat humiliating, if widely welcomed, backdown to PRC pressure. But evidently he was willing to pay that price in the larger cause of improving Washington’s negotiating posture vis a vis China.

Trump surely knew that his rhetorical shift would be brandished by China and others as a somewhat humiliating, if widely welcomed, backdown to PRC pressure. But evidently he was willing to pay that price in the larger cause of improving Washington’s negotiating posture vis a vis China.

Now it is time to collect on the favor he granted Xi by seeming to fold on “one China.” What can the president demand from Xi at Mar a Lago? He can start by reminding the Chinese leader that, as quickly as the “one China” card was played and pulled back, it can be played yet again and in several variants.

To forestall such U.S. moves, Beijing needs to give Washington a substantial and commensurate concession — namely, withdrawal of the threat to use force against Taiwan.

That means re-deployment of the 1,600 ballistic missiles targeting Taiwan, and rescission of Beijing’s 2005 Anti-Secession Law “legalizing” force against Taiwan not only if it moves toward independence, but also if it fails to submit to Chinese sovereignty. Xi warned in 2013 that the Taiwan question “cannot be passed on from generation to generation.”

When that Sword of Damocles is removed from cross-Strait relations, then Washington can live indefinitely with the reinstated “one China” policy, because Beijing will be accepting a peaceful outcome achieved with the consent of the Taiwanese people.

At the same time, Washington can continue on its nonnegotiable course of gradually upgrading U.S. relations with Taiwan and expanding its international space. So, is Taiwan a U.S. bargaining chip? Yes, but only in a way that works to Taiwan’s, as well as the U.S.’, advantage.

Aside from the Xi-Trump dynamic on Taiwan, what of the larger PRC indebtedness to the U.S.? For starters there is China’s meteoric rise itself.

When Richard Nixon began his dramatic opening to China in 1972, he was implementing the philosophy he had presaged in his 1967 Foreign Affairs article: “We simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations, there to nurture its fantasies, cherish its hates and threaten its neighbors.”

All that followed during “the week that shook the world” — the Shanghai Communiqué, his meetings with Mao Zedong, the implied promises of full diplomatic recognition and severance of ties with the Republic of China — were built on the premise that a different, more cooperative and peaceful China would emerge from the new historic process.

U.S. President Nixon toasts Zhou Enlai, Mao’s trusted aide, during the “Week that Shook the World.”

Over ensuing decades and eight U.S. administrations, the flow of Western investment, trade, technology, and diplomatic respect expanded exponentially.

Contrary to incessant, self-serving Beijing propaganda, Chinese development, prosperity, even economic competitiveness were not anathema to the West but were seen as a healthy economic win-win. All the world wanted was for China to be “a responsible international stakeholder.”

Contrary to incessant, self-serving Beijing propaganda, Chinese development, prosperity, even economic competitiveness were not anathema to the West but were seen as a healthy economic win-win. All the world wanted was for China to be “a responsible international stakeholder.”

When Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick used that phrase in 2005, Chinese officials expressed puzzlement over its meaning. In a meeting with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (I was the note-taker on the U.S. side), China’s State Counselor Dai Bingguo asked for some clarification.

Rumsfeld said it was as if he, Dai and four others had jointly purchased a car for their shared use and each would then take on equal responsibility for maintaining it in good running order. Dai, delighted with the explanation, said he now understood the new American concept of China’s role in the world.

Whether he actually grasped it or was just being polite, nothing in Chinese behavior since has suggested a positive response. I asked Zoellick about it at a conference years later. He said he was glad for the question because he needed to say publicly that China’s lack of responsiveness had been a major disappointment.

Only six years after his meeting with Mao, Nixon himself began having second thoughts on what had been achieved and whether China was moving in the peaceful direction he had envisioned. He warned in his 1978 memoir:

We must cultivate China during the next few decades while it is still learning to develop its national strength and potential. Otherwise, we will one day be confronted with the most formidable enemy that has ever existed in the history of the world.

The West followed Nixon’s advice and we now know what that generous and welcoming approach has produced — a menacing nuclear and conventional arsenal that looks less defensive and more potentially offensive in the service of an expansionist foreign policy. China’s aggressive moves in the South and East China Seas are but the tip of its spear.

Moreover, while Beijing abandoned its direct support for “wars of national liberation” against former Western colonial powers across the globe in the 1960s, to this day it still renders military, economic, and diplomatic support to the world’s worst governments.

That includes disseminating nuclear and ballistic missile technology to rogue regimes starting with North Korea but also including Iran, Syria, Libya, and others in a network of shared lethality. China is not only a leading proliferator of weapons of mass destruction — it is a proliferator of proliferators.

What virtually all beneficiaries of Chinese destructive largesse share is deep anti-U.S. and anti-West hostility, thereby compounding and complicating Washington’s ongoing efforts to preserve a stable and liberal international order.

The most vivid example is the North Korea card which Beijing has played successfully to its own advantage, gaining significant leverage over its Western interlocutors as the indispensable partner which always must be indulged but never quite delivers.

Along with the mutual economic advantages that 40 years of engagement with China has given the world, the mounting danger must also be calculated into the equation. Asian and global peace demand a different dynamic.

President Trump, who prides himself on being the ultimate deal-maker, can start collecting on the debt the PRC incurred to Nixon and his successors whose policies helped build China into the economic and military powerhouse it is today — and into the “Frankenstein” monster Nixon had feared he’d helped create.

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