J. Stapleton Roy, a former U.S. ambassador to China, was born in Nanjing in east China and spent his teenage years in Chengdu in southwest China.

A photo presents the front profile of Stapleton Roy. He sits behind a table with a wall shelf in the background.

J. Stapleton Roy

The U.S. seeks to engage with China “from a position of strength” that will put pressure on China and give Washington an advantage. J. Stapleton Roy, a former U.S. ambassador to China, discusses the feasibility of this approach in his conversation with Wang Huiyao, President of the think tank Center for China and Globalization. Roy thinks the U.S. must stop thinking in terms of dominance. The U.S. and China should shoulder their responsibilities as two great nations and not let the differences in their systems block cooperation.

Wang Huiyao: You are a seasoned diplomat who has lived in China for many years. What’s your take on the past, present and future relationship between China and the U.S.?

J. Stapleton Roy: For much of the last 50 years, the United States was confident that China’s growing wealth and power was no threat to its vital interests and bilateral differences could be managed by diplomacy and engagement. But that is no longer the case.

A starting point to understand what has happened is to recognize that the United States and China are both in the midst of fundamental transitions that affect their respective places in the world. The United States is seeking to adjust to an international situation in which it is no longer the sole superpower. This is not so much because of a decline in power, but because other countries have risen to major power status and China, of course, is the first and foremost example of that.

A new multi-polar world is emerging. Not surprisingly, the United States is reluctant to give up the dominant position it has occupied since the end of the Cold War, and to accept the adjustments that must be made in order to establish a new equilibrium. At the same time, there is no question that the social and political polarization that has been a prominent feature of the U.S. domestic scene over the last half decade has damaged the international image of the United States and the perception of its reliability as a great power.

China, on the other hand, has in a remarkably short period of time regained the wealth and military strength that are the attributes of major powers. This has altered the psychology of the Chinese and it has changed Chinese behavior patterns, which have become more assertive. These are two of the key background factors that have influenced the plunge in the U.S.-China relationship to the lowest depths in half a century.

Fortunately, despite some superficial similarities, the Biden administration is fundamentally different from its predecessors. It is moving carefully to iron out internal differences and adopt sustainable policies. The administration has reaffirmed that it would adhere to the one-China policy and does not support independence for Taiwan, which is particularly important for U.S.-China relations. It is also seeking a pattern of regular consultations with Beijing.

A hardline American approach to China does not mesh well with the interests of U.S. allies and friends in East Asia who do not wish to see the region polarized. In other words, if the United States tries to work with its friends and allies, it will discover they do not support a hardline approach to China, and I think that will have an impact over time.

Wang Huiyao: One of the things that is of great concern is the move to link the origin of the COVID-19 virus to a lab in China. Your comments?

J. Stapleton Roy: This, in particular, is an issue on which we should be cooperating and not fighting each other. I think it is important to trace the origins of the virus and we have our own views about how that should be pursued. But the basic point is that the pandemic threatens every country in the world and if the two leading countries in the world are unable to cooperate in dealing with the common threat, then there’s something wrong with both of us and we need to consider what the problem is that is preventing us from cooperating on this vital issue.

Wang Huiyao: There is a saying now in the U.S.—“China doesn’t converge with us and has not become one of us.” China has its own unique system and it doesn’t have to converge with the U.S. system. What do you think about the future developments between China and the U.S. from the perspective of a very experienced China hand?

J. Stapleton Roy: You can’t have a new equilibrium if either China or the United States is setting dominance as a goal because the other side will not accept it. You have to have a balance of power in East Asia, otherwise we’re going to be continually in strategic rivalry with each other. That’s one reason why I think it is absolutely wrong to think that our dominant factor has to be strategic rivalry because strategic rivalry always focuses on the military component and that ends up generating an endless arms race in which resources are diverted away from economic development into military development. I think the United States has to stop thinking in terms of dominance, and I think the Biden administration was wrong by introducing this concept of “dealing with China from a position of strength.” Anybody would understand that China would never accept that as a basis for engagement.

That means national interests have to be defined in a way that doesn’t exclude the possibility of peaceful coexistence. So I think there is enormous scope for China and the United States to stop looking at the world in terms of their own domestic driving factors. They have to look at the external circumstances in the world in an objective way and then formulate foreign policies that are compatible with the international circumstances in which they have to operate and gain domestic support for that approach.

The United States is not yet doing that. For example, if we look at East Asia, where all the countries have more trade with China than with the United States, it is clear that if we ask Asian countries to choose between China and the United States, they are not going to do so because they have very important interests with China. So we have to understand that and our foreign policy approach to China and the way we talk about China must not be in a way that requires countries to choose between a “good United States” and a “bad China.” That’s the wrong way to formulate our foreign policies.

Wang Huiyao: Former ambassador to the United States Qin Gang has said that the door to Sino-U.S. relations was opened five decades ago following Dr. Henry Kissinger’s secret visit to China and it will not be closed.

J. Stapleton Roy: I think Dr. Kissinger’s visit to China five decades ago is well worth commemorating. It illustrates that when the national interest is served by cooperation, differences in political and social systems do not block that cooperation. The problem with differences in systems, which have become a big issue in the United States in terms of thinking about China, is that at some level, it does influence cooperation, but it shouldn’t block it, if it’s in the national interest to cooperate.

There are forces in the United States that want to block our cooperation with China because of the differences in our political systems and we need to rethink about President Richard Nixon and Kissinger opening to China at a time when there couldn’t have been bigger differences between our domestic systems. At that time China was also at the height of the “cultural revolution” (1966–1976). If we look at what the world requires as our responsibilities as great nations, it is clear to me that the lesson from Kissinger’s visit to China is that when it is necessary to have cooperation between China and the United States, we should not let the differences in our systems block that type of cooperation. So I think it’s a very important visit. Historically, it created the possibilities for the United States and China to create enormous common interests and those common interests, in my opinion, continue, and we have to find ways to cooperate to promote them.

(Reported by Wang Enbo and Zeng Nai)