Political Reform in China and U.S.-China Relations: Engagement vs. Regime Change

• In Event: Deciphering Chinese Politics and Foreign Policy: New Empirical Analysis

Abstract

One of the pillars of U.S. engagement with China was the expectation that with the introduction of American investment and technology, China’s political system would eventually liberalize, and it would be closer to the U.S. in terms of ideology, values and holding the powerful at check. However, it has slowly dawned on American leadership and elite that this expected change will probably never take place. By 2008, there was a group of American China watchers who declared that the China model of shining wealth without liberty poses a threat to the American way of life and even national security. By the time President Trump came into the White House, there was increasing call not only to disengage China but also to do things to trigger a regime change in China. While the Biden administration does not promote a policy of regime change on China, it is equally paranoid of the so-called CCP penetration of the American society at large.
Parallel to the changes of American thinking on if China would launch political reform, Chinese leaders and elite have always believed that the U.S. has a plan to destabilize China and to engineer the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party. This concern became policy implementations around 2015 when China’s foreign NGO law was introduced. The pandemic in the past few years have totally paralyzed most of US NGO operations in China. At the same time, China has made it clear it does not want to decouple with the U.S., not economically nor in the area of people-to-people exchanges.
This paper plans to examine the changes of American view on China’s possible quest for political reform and how these changes have impacted US policy toward China. It will also investigate how Chinese government has tried to prevent an America-instigated color revolution in China and the measures it had implemented to prevent a repeat of the collapse of the Soviet Union. The paper will offer a preliminary analysis on if the U.S. and China could peacefully compete if China becomes more authoritarian politically.

Author

• Yawei Liu, The Carter Center