Abstract
Yan Xuetong’s recent article¹ is a smart effort to explain why, after 30 years of diplomatic relations Sino–US relations are still unstable, indeed becoming more so. He develops the concept of ‘superficial friendship’. While he does not explicitly say so, this appears to be a theory of excessive and failed expectations. That is, leaders on both sides mistakenly believe the relationship is more cooperative than it really is. Thus, when they receive negative signals from the other side, their expectations come crashing down; they react more strongly than they otherwise would have, had their expectations been more realistic.
Some might argue that this sense of disappointment has been especially obvious in the Obama–Hu interaction. Unlike previous presidents, Obama came to power without bashing China in the US presidential elections. He proposed close cooperation on a number of global governance issues. According to a leaked US State Department cable distributed by Wikileaks, in 2009 China’s chief foreign policy official, Dai Bingguo, described the interactions between the two as being like that of ‘old friends’.² The two sides agreed at the Hu–Obama summit in November 2009 to be careful not to challenge core interests. By January 2010, less than two months after the successful summit meeting, but after a US decision to approve old arms sales and a set of new arms sales to Taiwan, some Chinese scholars were reporting that Obama was now being referred to as a ‘false gentleman’ (weijunzi 伪君子), someone who is hypocritical and shameless. Anecdotally, ‘disappointment’ seems to be an appropriate summary of how the US viewed relations in 2010. The Washington Times even called one of the alleged factions in the US–China policy process the ‘sad and disappointed’ faction.³
Yan’s characterization of the Sino–US relationship, therefore, seems very much on the mark. He suggests that this cycle of exuberance and disappointment, however, is not characteristic only of the last year or two, but has been a key feature of Sino–US relations since the end of the Cold War. This instability will persist as long as both sides refuse to acknowledge that their major conflictual and competitive interests outweigh their non-conflictual ones. Instead of spending time praising what is a very thoughtful analysis of the sweep of US–China relations over several decades, let me raise some questions that, I think, need to be answered before further development of this theory of superficial friendship. The first set of questions deals with theory, the second with evidence, and the third with alternative explanations.
Read the article here.