American political scientist David M. Lampton is professor emeritus and former Hyman professor and director of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS)-China and China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of SAIS. A former president of the National Committee on United States-China Relations, he is the author of many books including, The Three Faces of Chinese Power: Might, Money, and Minds.

A photograph of David M. Lampton.

David M. Lampton

Promoting infrastructure construction across the globe has been a major political and diplomatic concern of many countries in these years. The Belt and Road Initiative proposed by China in 2013 is often called the biggest infrastructure-building project in the world that has boosted regional integration and economic growth of the partner countries. The Build Back Better World (B3W) proposed by the U.S. at the G7 also indicates that these countries are keen to play more significant roles in this area. Can China and the U.S. cooperate on global infrastructure construction? David M. Lampton speaks on this to Wang Huiyao, President of the Center for China and Globalization.

Wang Huiyao: What’s your general take on the U.S.-China relationship?

David M. Lampton: The first thing to say is that in a way, we’re in the most unprecedented time in the U.S.-China relations, perhaps since President Richard Nixon went to China in 1972. So to borrow a phrase from Deng Xiaoping, I think both sides are “making their way across the river by feeling the stones.” I think we are engaged in a kind of incremental step-by-step attempt to understand how we can manage this relationship in a far different environment, which is different from what we dealt with for the last 40 years in several respects, for China has made enormous strides in its economic power and its capacity to shape the regional economic architecture and infrastructure.

So to summarize, I think it’s better to talk than not to talk. I’m glad we’re talking. I think that is certainly the first step to make progress.

Wang Huiyao: I would interpret the problem between the U.S. and China as mistrust and also misunderstanding to some extent. For example, China has always been a highly centralized country and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) play a unique role in China. And that really helped to have these big infrastructure projects across the country, the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River in Hubei Province, or the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge, the world’s longest sea-crossing bridge and tunnel system. But the unique role of the SOEs in China is not really understood well outside China.

David M. Lampton: You’re right. China has a different history and a different geography. You have to deal with a much bigger population. But I think that by the same token, Americans should better understand China’s particular circumstances, and China too needs to recognize our particular circumstances, that is, small and medium businesses are the backbone of the American economy and even our biggest corporations for the most part have little or no direct ownership by our government. And so in our politics, the private sector or small business look at China and they say, how can we compete with state-financed corporations that have more centralized decision making?

Along with China’s applying to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, the new version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, I hope we can move toward the direction that both China and the U.S. are trying to join that and once again, trying to develop common economic practices that will reduce the tension. So my basic feeling is that in the last few years, since we didn’t join Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the new investment bank for funding infrastructure in Asia, or the Trans-Pacific Partnership while China has joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, both sides have been growing apart. And it seems to me that China and the U.S. have to get back trying to grow a little more together.

Wang Huiyao: What is your book, River of Iron: Railroads and Chinese Power in the Southeast Asia, co-authored with Selina Ho and Cheng-Chwee Kuik, about?

David M. Lampton: The book is about how China built a high-speed rail industry. In about 2000, China didn’t have a high-speed rail industry or a high-speed rail system. So the first part of the book describes how China built the technology and the infrastructure for a high-speed rail system, and it’s quite a story. The second part is about how China is negotiating with seven Southeast Asian countries to build a system that will possibly connect them to the south of China and hook into China’s domestic system.

Some people ask: Is this China’s strategy to take over Southeast Asia? And I would say no. Each specific project may be better or worse, overall, but the concept is strong that China is going to get rich if its neighbors get rich. If the neighbors are going to get rich, they need to be connected to China, and they need to be connected with each other. I think this is building the infrastructure for economic modernization and integration in Asia, and this isn’t a plot by China to take over the world or that region.

Wang Huiyao: Building infrastructure to connect is really great and now the U.S. is waking up to that. At the G7 Summit in 2021, the U.S. proposed Build Back Better World. Should that be combined with the Belt and Road Initiative?

David M. Lampton: My personal view is that the U.S. and others should realize the world needs infrastructure. In the end, due to the difference in their economic systems, the U.S. will probably not play as big a role as China in building infrastructure all over the world. That would just be my guess.

But I think the U.S. should try. We ought to work with our friends, in that sense, with China too, if there is an opportunity. We’re going to do more of this in more places in the world. Because frankly, if the U.S. is going to achieve economies of scale in the same way China benefits from this integration and connectivity, we need to benefit from closer connection to bigger markets. So I think we’re going in the same connectivity direction, and globalization is not dead.

It’s my impression that the Belt and Road itself is evolving over time as China gets involved in more places around the world and more different kinds of infrastructure. So I think China’s learning and becoming a little more cautious. Looking at the discussions in China, I think the Chinese are asking themselves, how much of our national talent and resource and technology should we devote to foreign countries and how much to China?

So what I try to tell Western observers is that China debates about all these issues and it’s feeling its way toward sounder policy and not becoming overly-committed financially. It’s always been my understanding that one reason China wanted the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank was to have others beside China finance a lot of this infrastructure. Frankly, I thought that was a pretty good idea. I think the United States made a strategic error under the Obama administration by not joining this.

(Reported by Wang Enbo and Zeng Nai)