Myanmar’s Escalating Civil War and the Limits of Chinese Intervention
Possible Trump Policy, Education Exchange, & Lessons from Bush Sr.’s China Policy: An Interview with Dennis Wilder
Among China experts in the United States, very few have Dennis Wilder’s unique expertise: an accomplished lifelong career in the top positions in national security coupled with teaching and research at a top university. His views on protecting U.S. national security while managing bilateral relations so they do not spiral into military conflict deserve more attention. The U.S.-China Perception Monitor’s Juan Zhang, senior writer and managing editor for its Chinese site (中美印象), recently interviewed Wilder on a range of issues, from the areas in which Chinese students should not come to the United States for a Ph.D. program to a possible Trump policy on China and other pressing issues. Wilder also shared lessons from President George H.W. Bush’s China policy on stabilizing bilateral relations under difficult circumstances.
Trump’s potential China policy if re-elected: TikTok, Taiwan, and trade
Juan Zhang: It was very unfortunate that we saw an assassination attempt against former President Trump not long ago. This shooting incident was also closely watched in China and heavily reported on by the Chinese media. How do you view China’s handling of this incident so far? Will it become a new disputable topic between the two countries?
Dennis Wilder: The Chinese handling of American politics is not a big issue unless there is an attempt to interfere in the election. In fact, President Biden talked to President Xi on that in San Francisco.
The concern can be things like, for example, TikTok being used by the Chinese government to put skewed information into the site feed that would support one candidate for president over the other candidate so that Americans who read their news from TikTok got a very distorted picture of what was going on in the election.
But merely reporting on the election in the Chinese media system factually is not a problem. The United States government is used to countries around the world reporting and commenting on its long-drawn electoral process. It may not always be pretty, and sometimes it looks incredibly chaotic, but we are proudly a representative democracy.
JZ: Speaking of TikTok, what do you think of its future if Trump wins, especially when he says a TikTok ban would empower Meta? Will TikTok get a break under his administration?
DW: I think there is a fundamental problem with TikTok that has not been resolved. TikTok is owned by a Chinese news and entertainment company. In the United States, traditionally, major newspapers and television stations must be owned by American citizens. For example, the owner of Fox News, Rupert Murdoch, had to become an American citizen before we allowed him to buy Fox. So, I think that is where I am concerned about TikTok, which is if it is becoming the primary source of news for over 100 million Americans, a very large group of Americans, I think it should be American-owned. Congress has been very clear that TikTok needs to be under U.S. ownership. So, Trump’s view is not the only one out there. I think the pressure on TikTok to move to American ownership is very strong.
JZ: In light of a possible second Trump administration, two articles by the former Trump administration officials stood out: No Substitute for Victory and The Return of Peace through Strength. Basically, they argued for a policy of an all-out offensive approach to China and criticized the Biden administration’s China policy as being too soft. What is your general impression of those two articles? How effective do you think their approaches are?
DW: I have real problems with these articles because I believe they are very simplistic and do not understand the complexity of the geostrategic situation today. The idea that our end goal should be an attempt to have victory over Chinese communism is very unrealistic.
First of all, we will not be able to get our allies to agree to that kind of goal. For example, the Koreans, the Japanese, and the Australians are so interconnected with China that the idea of a tremendously hard policy toward China is simply unrealistic for these nations, and they aren’t going to go along with it. Any policy in which the United States goes it alone to try and cause regime change in China is doomed to fail. We have tried regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan recently. It did not go well. Those were very small countries that were easily overwhelmed at the beginning. To try to do it to the world’s second-largest economic power? I think it is an extremely unrealistic goal, even if we do not like to have China as a communist nation.
JZ: If Trump is elected, how do you think his team will approach the Taiwan issue? There are voices criticizing the strategic ambiguity as an out-of-date policy. What do you think is the best policy to maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait?
DW: First of all, on the question of what Trump policy will be, I think that it’s extremely difficult to predict. The reason is that Trump himself is not very pro-Taiwan, but his advisors are likely to be very pro-Taiwan, and therefore, there is an inherent tension between Trump and the people he will probably select to be his national security advisors. And I don’t know where that debate will come out in the Trump administration. So, I think today we cannot predict where they will be on the Taiwan issue.
In terms of Taiwan policy, I have always believed in strategic ambiguity. I think it is the best American policy. I have not seen any proposals that were better. My view is that we should have a policy of assurance and deterrence for both sides. What I mean by that is we reassure Beijing that we are not in favor of independence. At the same time, we deter Beijing by having a strong defense that ensures Taiwan has the capability to defend itself, and American forces are forward deployed in a way that helps defend Taiwan. On the other hand, we deter Taiwan by saying we would never support independence, and we reassure Taiwan by saying we would never allow Beijing to use military force or any other coercion to force reunification.
I think that is the wisest American policy. It’s the one that the Bush administration followed when I was in its national security team. Other administrations have followed it. It works. It keeps Taiwan relatively independent. It keeps Taiwan prosperous, safe, and a wonderful democracy.
JZ: You raised a very interesting observation that Trump is not very pro-Taiwan. Can you explain further why that is?
DW: I think that President Trump feels that America’s biggest interests are with China. That he wants to, for example, fix the trade imbalance with China. He wants a relationship with Xi Jinping, and he sees China as the most important player in the Indo-Pacific. I think he values Taiwan less than other people do. Trump is less interested in the issues of democracy versus autocracy than many of the people around him.
The other part of it is that Trump believes that our allies must pay more for their own defense and that America pays too steep a price in defense of other countries. What he is saying about Taiwan is very consistent with his view on the Europeans, on our Asian allies: that America can’t keep sustaining the lion’s share of the cost for the defense of its allies and partners. Indeed, I think Taiwan does spend too little on defense. Also, Taiwan has not modernized its military sufficiently. So, I think actually President Trump has some points here.
JZ: Trump has threatened to eliminate China’s Most Favored Nation (MFN) status. He has also said he would impose a 60% tariff on all Chinese goods. Could you explain to our readers which of those proposed approaches will have the most potential damage to U.S.-China economic relations?
DW: The end of MFN would be a huge damaging factor, not only to American-Chinese trade but international trade in general. Prices for Americans would go very high for imported goods and, therefore, would lead to very high inflation. A 60% tariff would also have the effect of creating inflation in the United States, but less so.
My own view is that Trump really isn’t serious about either of these. I think that President Trump is using these to try to scare Beijing into negotiating. I would predict that if Trump is president again, he will negotiate a new trade agreement with China like the one he negotiated when he was president the first time. He wants a win-win with the Chinese. He is really not about to decouple the two economies. He knows better than that. So, I think he is making a lot of noise in the system in order to scare Beijing into negotiations.
Education exchange: should the United States continue to educate Chinese STEM students?
JZ: Ambassador Nicholas Burns, in recent interviews, blames China for impeding people-to-people exchange and preventing the Chinese from attending events at the American Embassy. On the other hand, China accused the United States of unfairly screening Chinese students at U.S. ports of entry. If we put the two sides’ stories together, what does that tell you? Do you have any suggestions for de-escalation of the situation? Could you tell us a bit more about Georgetown University’s efforts in this area?
DW: I’m a great believer in student exchanges. I think that the more that Chinese students and American students can get together and listen to each other’s viewpoints and understand each other’s viewpoints, the more they will find points of common interest while also exploring the very real differences.
Indeed, my students don’t agree on everything when they meet with students from Beida [Beijing University] and Fudan [University], but they begin to see each other’s points of view through dialogue. That is important. At Georgetown, we have a long tradition through the Jesuits of believing in dialogue. We like to say that we are the children of Matteo Ricci, who went to China in the 1500s and created an understanding between the Catholic church and China that was very positive. As a result, he was greatly respected in China and did some profound work. So, we like to think that we’re trying to do that kind of thing today on a much smaller scale.
I have to say that I think that Ambassador Burns is absolutely right about the restrictions that the Chinese are putting on today. President Xi Jinping, in my view, has gotten overly obsessed with national security. And that makes it very difficult for the American Embassy to do its job in Beijing. People who want to come to the Embassy are monitored. We do not monitor Americans who go to the Chinese embassy here. They can go freely there, and Chinese should be free to come to the American Embassy and our Consulates for educational programs, for entertainment, etc. That isn’t happening right now.
So, I think the Chinese side needs to reconsider that. Similarly, Xi Jinping talks about inviting American students. If he’s going to invite American students, they must be allowed much more freedom. American students tell me they don’t want to go to China because they can’t use their social media apps. They need to be allowed to access social media. The only program in China where they are allowed to freely use the Internet is the Schwarzman program in Beijing. In my view, if you want American students to come, you must give them the ability to use the full range of Internet capabilities. Otherwise, you’re not going to get American students there. That’s just a reality that China is not facing right now.
In terms of Chinese students in the United States, I have had no Chinese students complain to me about their treatment by US Customs. In fact, as Ambassador Burns has said, there is a tiny number of Chinese students who have been screened at the border. This is not an issue. This is a fictitious issue made up by Beijing to justify their actions. We have almost 300,000 students coming into the United States from China; there may be 0.01% who have been asked about things at the border. It’s very small. This is not an issue. China is exaggerating this issue for its own purposes. The facts are there. I know no Chinese student has been blocked at the border.
JZ: Does the current education exchange of higher education between the two countries outweigh the risks, and should the United States continue to allow Chinese students to study STEM in its colleges and universities?
DW: It is to the long-term benefit of both sides to have students from both countries study in the other country. We have nearly 300,000 Chinese still in American universities. We at Georgetown have a thousand Chinese students on our campus. And I’m very much in support of that. I think that those Chinese students will get a perspective on the United States that they take home, and hopefully, they influence Chinese policy over the long term.
We have a problem with American students going to China. The number today may be as low as 900. That is an inequality of study in the two countries. That is troubling because it means we’re not creating enough Americans with China expertise. It’s a very difficult problem to solve. I’m not sure how we will do it, but we need to increase the number of American students going to China because, at this point, most of the American students studying Chinese are going to Taiwan. While Taiwan is a great place to study language, it is not a great place to truly understand mainland China.
I think there are areas that are national security concerns that Chinese students should not be allowed in, such as areas where a university is involved in defense projects that are clearly of a sensitive nature. Chinese students should not be allowed into those programs any more than the Chinese would allow American students to study in PLA-related programs in China. So, I am for the restrictions on Chinese students where it concerns American national security.
JZ: The tricky question is how to define the areas of sensitive technology.
DW: No, it’s not. The United States knows how to define these. The Pentagon gives money to U.S. universities to do certain research. Anything to do with a Defense Department program, the Chinese students should not be allowed into.
I think we have been very loose. Americans have had a very naive view that you can work with Chinese scientists and not give away American national defense secrets. So, I think that we are right to be much more careful in areas like artificial intelligence and cutting-edge technologies, where we don’t want to help the Chinese military. It is foolish for the United States to create new emerging technologies and then hand them over to China. That makes no sense to me at all.
JZ: But the vast majority of Chinese students studying in AI do not go to the Chinese military. They very likely ended up working in Silicon Valley.
DW: I am hardline on this. It is naive to think that you can have PhD students studying AI in the United States who will not be taking home the latest and greatest information on emerging technologies that could go right back to the Chinese military. What assurance do we have that students aren’t going to go work for the Chinese military? None. Sorry, you’re not going to convince me of this topic.
JZ: I think there is a great need to clarify exactly which areas or majors Chinese students cannot study. As we speak, there may be a young student from Tsinghua University who is thinking of applying for a Ph.D. program in AI at MIT. We need to give them clear information so that they can make their personal plans. So, can a student from Tsinghua attend a Ph.D. program in AI at MIT?
DW: Chinese students studying AI have many options other than the United States. They can go to Canada. They can go to the UK. I don’t care where they go. But no, they should not be going to study AI at MIT, period.
I think that clarifying the rules is a very good idea. The U.S. government must figure out which areas of STEM can be safely allowed for Chinese students. In the area of emerging technologies where things are developing so quickly and where the military applications are very clear, we have to err on the side of caution in the United States. I would have to say, and I know the Chinese will not like me saying this, but I don’t see the Chinese allowing American students to study AI in China. So, there’s no reciprocity on the Chinese side. So, to put the onus on the United States when there is no chance for an American student to study these subjects in China, it seems to me that we are unfairly criticizing the United States.
JZ: How about areas like cancer research and climate change? Can they come to study these majors?
DW: Of course. Areas that are non-defense related (are acceptable).
JZ: Do you favor extending the U.S.-China Science and Technology Agreement (STA)?
DW: I think that having a Science and Technology Agreement with China is perfectly fine and a positive thing. There are areas, for example, like cancer research where the United States and China should be working together as best they can to find solutions to world health issues and other issues of that sort. So as long as the Science and Technology agreement protects American national security, I’m in favor of it.
How to manage the U.S.-China relations?
JZ: In one of your recent interviews with SCMP, you said: “It is a strategic competition that we have to be careful so it does not intensify to the point that it ignites a new Cold War or World War III.” A group of American scholars advocate managing this competition so that it does not spiral into military conflict. How confident are you about their approach’s success?
DW: The ability to manage the U.S.-China relationship is there. It is very possible to do this. My friend Da Wei has called the relationship an uncomfortable coexistence. We need to be realistic in that we aren’t going to be friends, that we don’t share the same values, and that we have very different worldviews, but that doesn’t mean we have to be in direct conflict with each other.
What needs to happen is a realistic understanding on both sides that this competition can actually be positive. Competition in sports is positive. It makes each contestant better, and competition is not a dirty word. So, I believe that we can be competitive with each other in the world without it spilling over into conflict or war.
We just have to be wise. We must communicate with each other. We must understand each other and each other’s motivations and goals. If we do that, we can maintain a reasonable relationship, not always comfortable, not always working together, but able to deal with world problems together to some degree while still having a very intense competitive nature in economics, military, and political approaches to the global south, and all sorts of areas.
JZ: We did an interview with Da Wei some time ago. One of my biggest takeaways from that interview was that he said China would not engage with the United States in establishing guardrails for this relationship if the United States’ end goal was to defeat China. What is your take on this?
DW: I think what is missing today in the U.S.-China relationship is a set of mutually understood principles about the relationship and competition in the relationship. What I mean is that under Nixon, Kissinger, Mao, and Zhou we came to some principles that both sides understood and were comfortable with. So, for example, today, what would these principles be? Certainly, one would be that the United States does not seek to change China’s political system. On the Chinese side, it would be that the Chinese accept the United States as a major power in East Asia; on the Taiwan issue, that the United States does not support independence. On the Chinese side, China will not use coercive means to force unification.
So, you can construct a set of principles that both sides agree to, and these principles will guide the relationship going forward. This is something we haven’t been able to do yet, but I hope it can be achieved. I think the level at which you would have to work on those principles would be between the American National Security Advisor and someone on the Chinese side like Wang Yi. So, I would advocate for more meetings of the sort that Jake Sullivan has had with Wang Yi and in a new administration, the same kind of thing because those secret meetings that have been held in Thailand and elsewhere by the two are the most productive way to work on these kinds of strategic principles.
JZ: There was a crisis in U.S.-China relations at the end of 1980s. How did President George H. W. Bush manage that crisis? Are there any lessons to learn for today’s management of the bilateral relationship?
DW: President George H. W. Bush had a very sophisticated ability to make friends with foreign leaders and to be able to engage foreign leaders in a positive way. He always believed that international diplomacy required leaders to meet and understand each other well.
He put a lot of effort into understanding Deng Xiaoping and the Chinese leadership. And when the events of 1989 occurred, he did not want the U.S.-China relationship to be derailed by one very tragic, awful event. What he did was to send his national security advisor secretly to Beijing two months after that to meet with Deng Xiaoping and to say to Deng very directly that he would be putting sanctions on China on military sales and exchanges but that he did not want the overall relationship to be disrupted. Because of the kind of relationship he had developed with Deng Xiaoping, Deng understood what the United States had done and was willing to work to stabilize the relationship very quickly.
So, there are two lessons that I take away from that situation. One is that it’s incredibly important for our leaders to know each other, not just the presidents but the national security advisors, the Secretary of State and the Foreign Minister, the Defense Minister and the U.S. Secretary of Defense. All of these levels need to build a mature relationship with their counterparts because it’s only through doing that you can manage the relationship successfully.
The second thing is that you need to use the channel, as I’ve talked about before, of the National Security Advisor to the top advisor to the Chinese president. That is a channel that needs to operate out of the limelight in secret, where they can have very candid discussions with each other. So, I would advise any administration that at least twice a year, the National Security Advisor should meet with his or her Chinese counterpart for at least a two-day discussion in order to work on strategic issues as opposed to the issues that the Secretary of State works on, which tend to be very tactical.
JZ: During the recent NATO summit, China got a new title, “decisive enabler,” for helping Russians in the Ukraine war. We also noticed that some analysts and scholars put China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea as the Axis of Anti-American Resistance. Those narratives easily lead people to think about the two adversarial blocs during WWII. From a U.S. scholar’s perspective, what is your take on this trend of re-grouping countries this way?
DW: I have studied authoritarian regimes for most of my life, and one thing I understand about authoritarian machines is that the blocs between authoritarian regimes are very unstable blocs. For example, people thought for many years that the Soviets and the Chinese would never split. They thought that this was a very stable block. We now know from our study of history that it was never a stable situation between the Chinese and the Soviets. For example, Mao had great difficulty with Khrushchev of the Soviet Union. Mao and other Soviet leaders had very big disputes that we couldn’t see.
It’s very dangerous to assume that these countries are somehow going to engage in close-bloc behavior. Iran is an Islamic theocracy. It does not share common values and goals with either Russia or China. Similarly, the Chinese relationship with North Korea has been fraught with difficulty all the way back to the Korean War, and before, they have never been a bloc in the sense that you might call the American relationship with its allies a bloc.
So, I am not worried about bloc behavior on the part of these regimes because I think their values and cultures are very different. While they will coordinate with each other at times, and that can be a problem for us, such as the Chinese helping the Russians rebuild their defense industries right now. I don’t think that in the long term, we will see a close block between Russia and China.
Juan Zhang is a senior writer for the U.S.-China Perception Monitor and managing editor for 中美印象(The Monitor’s Chinese language website).
The views expressed in this article represent those of the author(s) and not those of The Carter Center.
