"New Dynamics of US-China Relations"--A Lecture by Dr. Quansheng Zhao

It was a Wednesday afternoon in the SIS building, and members of the SIS community ranging were gathered in a classroom, sipping on free coffee. The classroom was filled to its capacity, with people ranging from freshman to professors waiting in interest to hear Dr. Quansheng Zhao give a lecture titled, “New Dynamics of US-China Relations: A Dual Leadership.” With the relations between US and China being a hot topic, and Dr. Zhao’s perspective as a Chinese professor in America holding much promise for new insights, I was personally expecting quite a bit from this lecture. However, Dr. Zhao neglected to delve much deeper than the surface level of the topic, leading to a somewhat lackluster lecture.

Dr. Zhao began his lecture by stating that the relationship between US and China is one of the most important international relationships. This was a fairly bold statement, but it was not altogether shocking given all the press and discussion surrounding the topic of US and China. Dr. Zhao’s following statement was more intriguing: a new leadership structure is in fact emerging and in development. With that, Dr. Zhao proceeded to clearly state what the main points of his lecture would be: that the US, as the existing hegemon, is the world’s military and executive power, and that China is the world’s new economic power.

With his main points stated, Dr. Zhao transitioned into the topic of the changing world structure. He began with the Power Transition Theory, his definition being that when a rising power (presumably China) challenges the existing hegemon (the US), great conflict arises. He then continued by presenting a list of characteristics of international leadership. According to his list, international leaders are powerful, rule-making, a leader in international organizations, and a provider of public goods. One could conclude that the US and China embody all of these characteristics, leading to the idea that either country could assume international leadership. With this point made, Dr. Zhao then stated that if both countries were to emerge as leaders, cooperation is the key to success. According to him, the deliberate changing of behavior of one country is contingent on the other country’s behavior. Therefore, two nations must cooperate in order to act effectively.

Next Dr. Zhao proceeded to support his claim that China is the new world economic leader. He presented Power Point slide after Power Point slide of charts and graphs illustrating the multitude of ways China leads the world economically. One slide consisted of a list of countries, ranking them based on their economic standing. China was ranked firmly at #2. A second showed China’s current GDP growth alongside that of the US, with China’s annual growth at 10%, while the US’s annual growth was only at 2.7%. Another slide illustrated how China is the world’s largest creditor, owning 20.8% of all foreign-owned US cash and security holdings. Dr. Zhao’s final statistic to demonstrate China’s economic dominance was that from 2009-2010, China invested a total of $110 billion in developing countries—a record breaking amount for the World Bank.

After that, Dr. Zhao began to support his claim that the US is still the world’s military and political leader. He first stated that the US spends $698 billion on its military whereas China spends $114 billion, connecting the amount each country spends on their respective militaries to each country’s military dominance. Then, the professor provided a list of reasons as to why the US is the world political leader: the US’s foreign policy reflects a high moral stance, the US leads news media to guide public opinion, the US has a strong international credibility that maintains its alliance relationships, and the US’s domestic and foreign policies are relatively easy to change and correct. All of these statements were meant to be determining factors for the US’s political dominance.

Next, Dr. Zhao presented what he called the “Three C’s”, with one set of C’s for the positive development of a dual structure between the US and China and another set of C’s for the negative development. The “Three C’s” of positive development were coordination, cooperation, and compromise. His claim was that if all of these were invoked by US and China, then a peaceful dual structure would arise. However, there would not be peace if the “Three C’s” of negative development were invoked: competition, conflict, and confrontation. This would instead lead to the great conflict he referenced in his definition of the Power Transition Theory.

Dr. Zhao closed his lecture by presenting two questions. The first question was whether or not the new dynamics of US-China relations was a zero-sum game; that is, would the rise of one country lead to the fall of the other? He then explained to his audience that the idea of a zero-sum game is a perspective of realism that, when applied to the US and China, illustrates China as a threat to the US. However, his second question contrasted this, asking if this emerging dual structure would actually be a win-win situation. He presented the idea of China’s rise benefitting the US, and his closing remark was about how China and the US are interdependent.

Dr. Zhao’s lecture on the “New Dynamics of US-China Relations” was disappointing to me because I felt it only scraped the surface of the topic. On the one hand, his lecture did replace an afternoon of searching for statistics via the fruits of Google, and it provided a real-world application to terms we learned in class (albeit long after the date of the midterm). On the other hand, was his audience—a classroom full of international relations students and professors—actively questioning the current economic dominance of China? If I may speak for myself, I was hoping he would delve far deeper into the interdependence of the two countries, rather than merely mentioning it at the end of his lecture. This would address many counterpoints to China’s rise, such as the idea that China’s rapid GDP growth is only catch-up growth and the statement that China needs the US just as much as the US appears to need China. Unfortunately Dr. Zhao did not delve deeper than this. However, one thing we can do with this lecture is to take it as a launching point for discussion and address other ideas that Dr. Zhao might have left out.