The round-table conference 'CHINA AND THE WORLD: CHANGING REALITY AND SHARED FUTURE' was held online sucessufully on 31st July 2020, which was co-organized by the Institute for a Community with Shared Future (ICSF) from China, the Centre For New Inclusive Asia (CNIA) from Malaysia, and The Dialogue of Civilizations Research Institute (DOC Research Institute) from Germany. Experts and reserchers from China, Germany, Malaysia, the UK, the US, Singapore, South Africa and etc. shared their perceptions and ideas with rational arguments from multi-perspectives towards the transforming world situation under both the COVID-19 pandemic and the tension of China-US relation, and then discussed solutions to expect a promising shared future for the whole humankind. The article below was compiled from some expert's speech on the conference. --Eds
Professor Klaus W Larres
Richard M Krasno Distinguished Professor of History
& International Affairs, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Thank you very much for the nice introduction. And thank you very much for the invitation. It's indeed a great pleasure to be here. That's all the previous speaker said. This is an important topic. And I think we have lots to discuss. And we have very different points of view, I'm sure. But hopefully we arrive at a common conclusion how to proceed for the future. Actually, my talk today, I would like to talk about the past and our current situation for a bit, and then also speculate about the future what maybe 2020, 2021 will bring us.
Europe is indeed torn between China and the United States, and there are both push and pull factors. Clearly, regarding the pull factor, China's big market is highly attractive for Germany's industrial nations, for Europe's industrial nations, not least Germany and France and Britain. But the negative factor is what has been regarded as the expectation of China of its superpower status of its huge market. Regarding the United States, clearly the Europeans are attracted by American values, by America's traditional values, by the long history of European-American cooperation about the alliance relationship with United States. They are put off by the Trump administration and what has been regarded as Trump's anti-multilateral policies. This has estranged many European countries from the United States, including Germany. that is relatively recent phenomenon. Trump has only been in power for 3.5 years, and the long history is a long friendship between the US and the Europeans goes back much sooner. So I don't think they should put too much into the 3.5 years of the Trump relationship of the Trump government and the relationship with the Europeans. Therefore, I think it is wrong to say that there is an equal distance of estrangement on equal distance of friendship between the Europeans and China and the Europeans and the United States.
When I travel in China, people always ask me, both ordinary people and academics and policy makers: when are the Europeans going to give up on the United States and on Trump and could move a little closer to China? The relationship between the Europeans and the United States is very firmly embedded. We should not be too distracted by what has happened under the Trump administration. If there were a second Trump administration or similar administrations to Trump, this could change. But at the moment, this is not likely. Therefore, I think the long history between the Europeans and the United States, a similar government, just does the value system also the common which is much more difficult, is not much less widely spoken in Europe. So I think there is no equal distance between where the Europeans are standing there, still standing more closely to the United States as of now.
However, Europe has had a very long, benign attitude towards China, a much longer benign attitude than the United States has. When you look back in recent American history, you can notice that already under Bush Junior, George W Bush, the more skeptical attitude towards China developed in the United States. The first year of Bush was actually often expected to go much harsher against China. That was actually the case in reality. And that can be explained with the event of 911 and push distraction by the fight against international terrorism. So he basically did have no time to focus on China. If 911 had not happened, I would have expected a much harsher Bush government policy towards China.
When you go back to the Obama administration and the pivot to Asia, you can notice that already a more critical skeptical attitude towards China was at least cautiously developing both in geopolitical terms but also in trade terms in Europe. But that was not so much the case if this can be explained, because there has been no geopolitical competition between most European countries and China. The South China Sea concerns the Europeans are worried about it, but they are not really directly involved themselves. Therefore, it leaves them relatively cool that they can take a more neutral position, and also the trade and the economic relationship. The technological relationship has been highly been efficient, beneficial for a large number of years.
However, there was a turning point in European-Chinese relations. And I think that turning point occurred in the year 2016. It was the year when the Europeans noticed a huge investment pinch of many Chinese companies, both private companies and state-run companies. And they became concerned. And that was also the year when China tried to buy up robotics companies and technical companies which concerns the Europeans. They believe that they are most precious industries were being bought up by Chinese companies and perhaps then transported their knowledge to China. And then the industrial plan 2025, which was conceived in 2015. But whose impact really only became really recognized in 2016 that also came on top of that. So I would say in 2016, you could notice that benign European attitude towards China gradually began to change. And it clearly overlapped with what then Trump's policy towards China was a very hard policy. So in 2017 and 2018, despite all other problems, Europeans and the Trump administration felt that they had a lot of things in common, regarding their attitude towards China and to mention just a few things. These are market access issues. These are reciprocity issues where intellectual property theft issues, things like that. And in a normal world, you would have expected the Europeans and the United States to actually form quite a strong joint alliance to tackle what they perceived as a China Club that didn't happen or only happen very much at the margin that was due to Trump's enact policies. Trump did not want to cooperate with the Europeans, even was very skeptical of the old European-American alliance. This is very difficult to explain.
I've asked American policy makers, so why did Trump not cooperate with the Europeans in their joint approach towards China? Because their positions were not all that far apart. And the answer I given was always that Trump wished to get the credit himself. He did not wish to cooperate with anyone. And then also having to share the credit for what he perceived a long overdue policy towards China. So that alliance between the Europeans and the the Americans on China has not materialized during the last two or three years was largely due to what Trump understands as his America-first policy.
That is the present and that leads me to the future. And the future I believe we'll see on the 3rd of November of this year, the American Elections will take place whatever president Trump has indicated. And I think that we'll see a landslide by Joe Biden. I cannot see that Trump will win the election that will even come close to winning the elections. I expect a huge victory by Joe Biden, who's and will form a new administration. Joe Biden has also a critical policy and attitude towards China. His recently published foreign policy program that comes across also the democrats in congress are also quite skeptical towards China. However, the difference is you can be critical on areas of substance. You can or should be critical towards another country. But how you deal with it, whether you enter into a shouting match, or whether you try to actually enter into a constructive dialogue to talk about these differences and perhaps overcome them, at least partially, that is what matters. And I think the Biden administration will also be very critical towards China's policy, like trade policies, market access policies, intellectual property theft, some geopolitical issues. But it will be done in a much more constructive way. And to China, and the US will probably enter into prolonged negotiations about all these issues. So we will see a much more traditional approach towards international politics under Biden than under Trump. That still means that they are huge differences. But these differences will be improved in a more gentlemanly manner, if you like, in a more constructive manner.
I think the Biden administration will also realize how important the European allies, how important it is. And there will be overtures to the Europeans by the Biden administration. And the Europeans will be very happy to correspond accordingly. And there will be something like a joint endeavor between the Europeans and the Chinese, to deal with China, to negotiate with China, and to overcome the various problems which have been point which I've pointed out regarding China.
I can see that China will also recognize that new wind which will be blowing in international affairs from January 1921. So I would predict that the Chinese, they are very realistic geopolitical and trade policy players. So I can see that at the latest in early 2021 spring or summer 2021, there will be a big new re-engagement between the United States and China and the Europeans. And constructive negotiations will be entered into the various issues, which at the moment divide all these major powers.
I can see, for example, that regarding the WTO compromise can be achieved, the United States under a bi-administration and China are not that far apart nothing, and the Europeans are pushing both sides together to really find a constructive compromise to make the WTO survive and to function constructively. I can also see that regarding the Belt and Road initiative compromises can be achieved, to make it more transparent to put the finances of these many projects under the Belt and Road initiative on a more transparent footing. Because that also is in China's interest, that is not something China will actually be opposed to. Because not all of these Belt and Road initiatives we have seen in the recent hours have been all that successful. China has lost a lot of money. And if it can help to avoid these sort of complications in the future, it will be happy to do so. I can see WTO， Belt and Road， some constructive compromises can be achieved without too many difficulties regarding the South China Sea, regarding Taiwan, and regarding Hong Kong, that will be much more difficult.
And I think here is the negotiations which has to be entered into, particularly regarding the South China Sea, will prove extremely difficult. But having said that, China is a realist in international fairs, I believe some sort of compromise will be achieved. Probably the US will accept that China will be the major player in the south China Sea, will not accept all the territorial ambitions. China has embassy, but will probably not oppose it as strongly as they should and could in return for perhaps China taking a more subdued role in the Arctic Sea for example. So some sort of solution could even be achieved for the South China Sea.
Taiwan is probably untouchable. I think the status will be maintained, as will be the new state in China. I don't think that will be touched Xinjiang. That is a serious human rights problem, as we all know. And I think something has to be done about that. If China's image in international affairs is to recover, I think that is also recognized by China. I would be surprised if the current policy in Xinjiang, a very hard-line policy in Xinjiang, will be continued by the Chinese. I can see the very quiet change of policy in Xinjiang. It won't be allowed generally pronounce on too loudly pronounced policy. But I can see that all the quiet things will hopefully change for the better. And that will placate the Western world.
Regarding Africa, regarding climate change, I think cooperation is possible, but not always easy. And here I can see the continuation of some constructive competition where neither the US nor China will actually change much of their positions. But that, I think, is not too bad because there will be areas where the two superpowers and the Europeans will compete with each other. But these are hopefully areas where military conflict, the serious geopolitical conflict is not danger, which is just looming around the corner.
So on the whole, to summarize, I would say the current situation regarding the United States and China and Europe is very poor. And we can all hope that it will not escalate further. Under a new Biden administration, which I seek and will be elected into office in November, I think we will see a big new re-engagement between the United States and China, with the Europeans also playing a very constructive role between the two superpowers. And that will replace the Europeans because they neither want to support all their relations with China, and definitely certainly they don't want to spoil their relations with the United States. Thank you very much.
The Speaker: Klaus W Larres