The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2022

28 JULY-AUGUST 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL suppressing China all over the world” and “actively respond to the ‘two lists’ and ‘three bottom lines’ put forward by China, and take concrete steps to improve China-U.S. relations.” Moving Ahead From the above, it is clear that it will be very difficult for the United States to convince Beijing to undertake political reforms or assume the role of a “responsible stakeholder” in the present international order. Former Assistant Secretary and current National Security Council Coordinator for the Indo-Pacific Kurt Campbell wrote in 2018: “The starting point for a better approach is a new degree of humility about the United States’ ability to change China. Neither seeking to isolate and weaken it nor trying to transform it for the better should be the lodestar of U.S. strategy in Asia. Washington should instead focus more on its own power and behavior, and the power and behavior of its allies and partners.” Similarly, the 2022 U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy underscores that “our objective is not to change the PRC but to shape the strategic environment in which it operates, building a balance of influence in the world that is maximally favorable to the United States, our allies and partners, and the interests and values we share.” It indicates that we will continue to work with the PRC in areas like climate change and nonpro- liferation, believing that “it is in the interests of the region and the wider world that no country withhold progress on existential transnational issues because of bilateral differences.” As I see it, however, the lesson we should have learned is not that we cannot and should not seek to change China, as it continues to violate international trade rules and laws and universal human rights principles. Rather, it is that we need to be willing to take stronger measures—and accept the necessary costs and risks—to achieve the long-term goals of the U.S. engagement policy that commenced 50 years ago. In his 1967 article, Nixon warned: “The world cannot be safe until China changes. Thus our aim, to the extent that we can influence events, should be to induce change. The way to do this is to persuade China that it must change: that it cannot satisfy its imperial ambitions, and that its own national interest requires a turning away from foreign adventuring and a turning inward toward the solution of its own domestic problems.” If we allow China to continue to take advantage of the present global order to pursue its eco- nomic growth, then I believe we are simply postponing the day of reckoning, as we now see more clearly in the case of Russia. PRC Foreign Minister Wang Yi, shown here addressing the Munich Security Conference in 2017, insists that coop- eration must involve U.S. concessions to China. KLEINSCHMIDT/MSC We cannot afford to pursue a policy of “strategic patience” in the case of a rising and increasingly powerful and assertive China. So what specifically should the United States do? I argue here that, apart from defensively “shaping the strategic environment” around China, we can and should start by taking direct and stronger measures to ensure that China cannot continue to pur- sue the egregious trade practices that have enabled its economic and military rise and enhanced its internal controls. It is critical that President Joe Biden has retained the Section 301 trade mea- sures taken by the previous administration, but more needs to be done, including immediate action to enforce the Phase One Agreement Beijing has clearly not fulfilled. The United States should act to impose stronger sanctions on Chinese entities that violate U.S. intellectual property rights and promote China’s industrial policies. While remaining open to work on “common interests,” the U.S. should reject any linkage to other bilateral issues and minimize further dialogues and negotiations that are simply meant to delay U.S. action. To enhance the impact of these measures, the United States should collaborate with our allies and within the WTO; but we should not hesitate to act on our own as soon as possible. At the same time, the United States should work with the European Union and other democracies, as well as relevant nongovernmental organizations, to document and publicize even more widely Beijing’s gross human rights violations within China, especially against the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, and its policies that support authoritarian regimes abroad, including