The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2019

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JULY-AUGUST 2019 27 Susan Thornton on an April 2017 secretarial visit to China aboard a C17 that was being used because Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s plane had broken down. top-down state control. Although ruled by a communist party, its economy is a highly dynamic and unique mixture of market capitalism and state paternalism, inspired by Deng Xiaoping’s vision for modern China and by lessons Chinese communists took from the collapse of the Soviet Union. In sum, China is an authoritarian colossus in a fragile transition, whose trajectory will have a major impact on every other country in the world, includ- ing the United States. It is clearly in the interest of all countries to try to shape China’s interests and future to converge with our own. And that will require a renewal of strategic, patient and firm coalition diplomacy to maximize the chances for success. Some will say that our attempt to accomplish this over the past four decades failed, that the deadline by which China was to have transformed has been crossed, and that it didn’t hap- pen. Others claim that China’s interests are increasingly diverging from those of the United States. Some claim that our efforts to engage China were naive, as if turning China into a democracy were the only goal of Nixon’s opening or of World Trade Organization accession. It is time now to abandon such efforts, they say, to “face reality and to get tough.” In this telling—we’ll call it the “clash of titans” (not the “clash of civilizations”)—Xi Jinping’s “China Dream” will inevitably be raised as evidence of China’s “Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower.” The Chinese state, as this narrative has it, is seeking a global strategic military presence under cover of its Belt and Road Initiative and global and military technological superiority through its Made in China 2025 program (which encourages intellectual property theft); and its “community of common destiny for humankind” is a trope for a Sino-centric order in East Asia and beyond. Those who spin this narrative cite as evidence their reading of Chinese strategic and military documents, isolated cases such as the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota, and quotes from various Chinese officials and scholars. The “China Dream” But the “China Dream” is not defined in terms of the United States. Its mission is not, as Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev famously declared of his country, to “bury us.” Most countries, including China, do not formulate their national strategies—or think about their futures—through the prism of other countries. China has its own long and proud history and has conducted its own affairs for thousands of years. Chinese officials will tell you that the main focus of national energy is to be a well-off socialist society by 2049, the hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Like their counterparts in other governments, they couch their goals in domestic and patriotic terms. The “China Dream” is to be rich, powerful, modern and admired. In other words, the China Dream is to be more like the United States . This will be well understood by State Department employees around the world who are used to seeing American “soft power” at work in the field. The leadership, attitude and example of the United States as an open, free and toler- ant society has powerful attractive force in the world. Even when governments in places like Iraq, Iran, Cuba and the Soviet Union opposed the U.S. government, their people were attracted by our principles. Even as a unipolar superpower that lurched, at times, into mis- adventure, the United States, as a benevolent hegemon, got the benefit of the doubt and the world’s support. At a recent event in China, a high-ranking State Security Ministry official and a People’s Liberation Army general sepa- rately sought advice from American counterparts on getting Most countries, including China, do not formulate their national strategies—or think about their futures—through the prism of other countries. COURTESYOFSUSANTHORNTON