I recently attended a small private conference that addressed the strategy the United States and its allies should pursue in the Indo-Pacific to deal with the challenge from China. I found myself isolated in advocating sustained diplomacy with Beijing aimed at some form of mutual accommodation that could facilitate peaceful coexistence. Although there was a range of views at the conference, the prevailing sense was that engagement with China has become highly problematic, if not futile, largely because Beijing’s strategic ambitions leave little room for either accommodation or peaceful coexistence. Even China’s minimalist goals were deemed by many conference participants to be both immutable and irreconcilable with U.S. and allied interests. Accordingly, the discussion focused primarily on how to forge and operationalize the coalition to deter and push back against China’s inexorable ambitions—in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to “invest, align, and compete”—with little attention to engagement or cooperation with Beijing.
I argued (without much effect) that this approach is based, first and foremost, on an inaccurate and exaggerated assessment of China’s strategic intentions. The prevailing view is that Beijing seeks to establish exclusive hegemony in East Asia, supplant the United States as the leading global power, and export its ideology and illiberal values to the rest of the world. Beijing, of course, consistently denies all of this, but these denials are just as consistently dismissed in the West as disingenuous or dishonest.
Accordingly, I have scored few points over the years offering evidence and logic pointing out that China is focused on maximizing its wealth, power, and influence in a multipolar world rather than on making a bid for global supremacy and legitimizing its governance and development model rather than expecting other countries to adopt it. Chinese leaders almost certainly recognize that pursuing exclusive global hegemony would be destabilizing and potentially counterproductive to Chinese interests and security. It would risk alienating many other countries whose hearts and minds China is seeking to cultivate. Even if hegemony were achievable, it would be unsustainable.
Yet the prevailing—or at least dominant—view at the conference was that China is not seriously interested in peaceful coexistence with the United States. Instead, it wants to impose its prerogatives on other countries, set the........