U.S.-China relations had deteriorated long before the coronavirus outbreak. Over the last decade, many observers have concluded that China’s actions in the foreign policy arena have become more assertive, ambitious, and worrisome to the U.S.-led international order. APARC Fellow Thomas Fingar, however, argues that China’s foreign policy has changed far less than its rhetoric and the characterization of many commentators suggest. “I don’t think China is eager to displace the United States,” he says in our recent video Q&A.

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Fingar considers how the difficult choices facing the Chinese leadership – now exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic – are poised to determine the future course of the country’s international behavior and what successful management of the relationship with China requires. “The requirement for them and us,” he emphasizes, “is to figure out how to transform the international order into something more sustainable, and the tragedy of the last three years is that we have surrendered much of the leadership role and a great deal of the confidence others have in the wisdom of the United State.” Watch:

These issues are the focus of Fingar’s chapter, “Sources and Shapers of China’s Foreign Policy,” in the new volume Fateful Decisions: Choices that Will Shape China’s Future, now out from Stanford University Press. Coedited by Fingar and APARC’s China Program Director Jean Oi, this volume is part of APARC’s monograph series with SUP.

Fingar argues that China’s foreign policy and international behavior are key components of Beijing’s overall objectives to maximize opportunities for economic growth and modernization. As economic growth slows and Beijing finds it increasingly difficult to meet its domestic challenges, incentives to continue to work with and within the U.S.-led international order remain compelling. In Fingar’s view, the realities of interdependence and the perceived need to maintain high rates of growth and ambitious developmental targets constrain Beijing to maintain more-or-less the same foreign policy practices it has followed since the dawn of the Reform and Opening era.

However, China’s decision to pursue its interests by working within the U.S.-led international order does not mean that it would remain a largely passive participant coerced (in Beijing’s view) to abide by rules and institutions that would restrain Beijing’s freedom of action, says Fingar. Beijing expects China to play a more influential role in shaping the global order, but it does not (yet) aspire to lead it.

This is the fourth installment in a series leading up to the publication of the volume Fateful Decisions. Explore the previous parts in the series via the links below.

APARC's China Program recently hosted Center Fellow Thomas Fingar for the webinar "Was America’s China Policy a Foolish Failure? The Logic and Achievements of Engagement." In this talk, Fingar examines the longtime U.S. strategy of engagement with China as well as the potential shift toward a strategy of decoupling. "Much recent commentary on U.S. relations with China claims that the policy of 'Engagement' was a foolish and failed attempt to transform the People’s Republic into an American style democracy that instead created an authoritarian rival," he says. "This narrative mocks the policies of eight U.S. administrations to justify calls for 'Decoupling' and 'Containment 2.0.'” Fingar argues that the policy of Engagement has been fruitful and that Decoupling is not only inadvisable but also unattainable. Watch:

In 2008, the U.S. National Intelligence Council (NIC) published the fourth installment in its effort to identify “megatrends” likely to shape world events a decade or more into the future. Shorenstein APARC Fellow and China expert Thomas Fingar, the then chairman of the NIC, oversaw that report, Global Trends 2025. The unclassified report uses scenarios to illustrate some of the ways in which the factors driving world events – from climate change to demographic decline to changing geopolitical powers – may interact to generate challenges and opportunities for future decisionmakers. One of these scenarios is the emergence of a global pandemic that bears a chilling resemblance to COVID-19.

We sat down with Fingar for an online conversation about the NIC report and its pandemic scenario, the government action it spurred, the United States’ failed initial response to the COVID-19 outbreak, and the implications of the current crisis for U.S.-China relations. Watch:

Twelve years after its publication, the NIC’s "Potential Emergence of a Global Pandemic" scenario (p. 75) has proven to be woefully accurate:

“The emergence of a novel, highly transmissible, and virulent human respiratory illness for which there are no adequate countermeasures could initiate a global pandemic. If a pandemic disease emerges by 2025, […] it probably will first occur in an area marked by high population density and close association between humans and animals, such as many areas of China and Southeast Asia […] Slow public health response would delay the realization that a highly transmissible pathogen had emerged […] Despite limits imposed on international travel, travelers with mild symptoms or who were asymptomatic could carry the disease to other continents. Waves of new cases would occur every few months. The absence of an effective vaccine and near-universal lack of immunity would render populations vulnerable to infection.”

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It was not a prediction, recalls Fingar, but rather an attempt to urge policymakers to think “beyond tomorrow,” past the end of their administration, and to stimulate strategic thinking about how to reinforce positive trends and change or ameliorate negative ones. If the report and its global pandemic scenario are precise, he notes, it is because the NIC’s effort involved the best specialists within the U.S. intelligence community and engaged numerous and varied groups of non-U.S. Government experts.

Yet the United States has been unprepared for the COVID-19 pandemic and the crisis is now worsening U.S.-China tensions. To address the crisis, however, argues Fingar, both countries must cooperate in the international fora. “Let that be the way that builds towards a better bilateral relationship.”