'Chinese people say they don’t want to live in a North Korea'

The recent US shooting of alleged Chinese spy balloons highlighted growing distrust between the two countries. Michael Szonyi, professor of Chinese history and former director of Fairbank Centre for Chinese Studies, Harvard University, and also editor of ‘The China Questions 2: Critical Insights Into US-China Relations’, spoke with TOI about trends in US-China ties, China’s changing worldview and approaches to India: How do you see the US shooting of alleged Chinese spy balloons? What does it say about the bilateral relationship between the two countries? There has been a lot of speculation in the media about both the balloons and the US response. We’ve seen arguments that the balloon was an effort by Xi to score domestic points by showing that China is no longer bullied by the US; that internal forces in the PLA were unhappy about efforts to restore China-US ties and tried to scuttle the Blinken visit, and that the whole thing is an accident of wind and weather. The reality is that we don’t know which of these interpretations is correct, though I do feel confident that the Chinese system – by providing broad directives from the top and then leaving it to lower-level actors to decide what to do – probably contributed something to the flights. The US system is more transparent, so we are able to make more informed assessments. medium98159204 The shooting down of the balloon reflects a bipartisan consensus that China is a threat to the US and that strong action is required to ensure continued US predominance. More precisely, as a matter of politics, no political leader in the US today can afford to be perceived as weak or accommodating of China. This means that real leadership will be needed to respond to the deteriorating relationship in any way other than racing further to the bottom. There are certainly quiet channels of communication between the two countries, and it’s quite possible that those go on between the two countries, and we don’t know whether those channels were active during “balloon-gate”. But it is enormously telling – especially if the most recent reports that the balloons are entirely civilian operations are correct – that it seems that at no point in the entire episode could the leadership on one side pick up the phone, call the other side, and get this situation resolved. Can US and China manage differences or are military clashes between the two increasingly inevitable? I don’t see these as mutually exclusive alternatives. The US and China have got to manage differences, and already there are many areas where they do. If they fail to manage their differences in specific policy areas, there is no reason to think that direct military conflicts will be the result. In my opinion, the greatest real risk of military conflict comes from the weak mechanisms in place for communications at moments of tension, misunderstanding or accidents, which are sure to become more common as the two militaries bump up against one another – this is to be expected because one power is rising and the other is seeking to stave off relative and absolute decline. That said, I think there is considerable risk of military conflict over Taiwan. Will China continue supporting Russia over Ukraine? Shortly before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, China and Russia declared that the two countries had a “partnership with no limits”. While China has mostly supported or at least not violated the international sanctions against Russia, it has supported the Russian position in many diplomatic fora, presumably in the hope that bolstering a country it perceives as an ally, Russia, will help China in dealing with what it sees as the common threat to both, the United States. Even as I say this, we are learning that US officials believe China intends to increase, not scale-back, its support for Russian. So the situation is very fluid. Regardless of how the war in Ukraine ends, one long-term legacy will be to impact Chinese thinking on the challenges of an invasion of Taiwan. Has China fundamentally changed with Xi Jinping giving himself a third term at the head of the party-state? China has fundamentally changed, but Xi Jinping’s self-appointment to a third term as CCP Secretary General is only a small part of that. China is a rising power, increasingly self-confident and active on a broad spectrum of domains as it becomes increasingly powerful. Part of this self-confidence is reflected in an apparent consensus in the Chinese leadership that the US does not in every area offer an attractive model for China to follow. Chinese leaders are now more open about saying that they don’t see convergence with every aspect of US leadership as necessarily the right direction for China. I am quite confident that Xi Jinping thinks this way. To be frank, there is plenty going on in the US today that supports this view. At the same time, Chinese society is also changing in profound ways. I hear from many Chinese people that they don’t want to live in “West North Korea”. This is a subtle way of saying that changes in Chinese political life are not something that everyone in China supports. What does China’s management of Covid say about Chinese governance today? At a certainly very obvious level, China’s zero-Covid policy shows the continued heavy-handedness of the regime, its extraordinary capacity to shape and constrain a wealthy and opinionated population on issues that it thinks are important. Probably the most interesting thing about the policy is its sudden abandonment last year, a 180-degree shift. To me, this says that the CCP recognises that it does require popular legitimacy to govern, in other words that it can’t ignore popular reactions to its policies, and that the trend of China’s opening up to the world both economically and in other ways is irreversible. Is East Asia going to be the next global flashpoint? I hope not. Certainly there are a number of places in East Asia: the Taiwan straits above all, but also the South China Sea as well as the Koreas, that show alarmingly high potential for military conflict. But China’s neighbours are all looking for ways to get along with China and with one another, as a major source of regional stability. This reduces the likelihood of conflict, though as I noted above, it doesn’t rule out the possibility of accidents. Can China realise Xi’s ‘Great China Dream’ and replace the US? I don’t think Xi’s China Dream actually involves replacing the US, but rather returning China to what Xi sees as China’s rightful and historical place in the world: as a leading if not the leading economic centre, and with the capacity to get what it wants in its own region. But as Geremie Barmé and I wrote in an essay called “Chinese History in the Era of the China Dream,” this is a singular, monolithic and national dream.My Chinese friends and colleagues want many different things; they want to pursue their own “dream.” I foresee tension between these two sets of objectives. How do you interpret Chin’s and the US’s approaches to India today? This is so far from my area of expertise that I’m reluctant to say much on the subject. My sense is that neither country has much of an approach to India on its own terms, but rather see India in terms of broader strategic goals. The US approach to the Quad, for example, which is a major focus of US policy in the region, is really about the US view of the role of its allies in a broader China strategy much more than it is about India. But it’s hardly surprising that this is what comes across a China specialist’s radar. I’m sure there are many aspects of US policy towards India that I simply lack the bandwidth to monitor or appreciate. What do you make of India-China border skirmishes? Will China ever respect India? We’re only a couple of months from the latest round of skirmishes, and there’s no reason to think either side is likely to take serious measures to ensure they do not occur in the future, or to elevate the issue to a major foreign policy concern. That said, I’m not sure that the clashes are driven by any Chinese disrespect for India.