China wants stabilized relations with the United States in the short term as it faces domestic economic challenges and Asia returns to its assertive diplomacy, White House Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt Campbell said Thursday.
Frustrations over China’s strict COVID-19 protocols boiled over into widespread protests last month, the biggest show of public discontent since President Xi Jinping came to power in 2012. fresh concern that the virus will soon run.
Campbell said these issues, coupled with the fact that China has antagonized many of its neighbors, meant it was interested in more predictable relations with Washington in the “short term.”
“They have embraced and challenged many countries at the same time,” Campbell told an Aspen Security Forum event in Washington, mentioning Chinese territorial disputes with Japan and India. “I think they recognize that has backfired in many respects.”
“All of this suggests to me that the last thing the Chinese need right now is an openly hostile relationship with the United States. They want a degree of predictability and stability, and we’re looking for that as well,” Campbell said.
In the next few months, Campbell said, the world would see “a resumption of some of the more practical, predictable elements of great power diplomacy” between Washington and Beijing.
“I think we will see some developments that I believe will be reassuring for the region as a whole,” he said without elaborating.
Campbell’s remarks came after a first face-to-face meeting as leaders between Xi Jinping and President Joe Biden last month and two days after Washington announced plans to ramp up its rotational military presence in key regional ally Australia amid shared concerns about China .
Campbell said Russia’s war in Ukraine has led to more behind-the-scenes discussions in the Indo-Pacific about maintaining peace and stability over Taiwan, the democratically-ruled island China claims as its territory.
“If it were a challenge, it would have terrible consequences, strategically, commercially, and that is not in anyone’s interest. And so I think that every country understands the delicacy here,” he said.
Separately on Thursday, Ely Ratner, the top Pentagon official for the Indo-Pacific, said that 2023 would likely be the most transformative year for US force posture in the region in a generation.
“We’re going to make a strategic commitment that people have been looking for for a long time,” Ratner told the American Enterprise Institute, emphasizing cooperation with regional allies the Philippines and Australia.
Campbell noted currently limited US diplomatic, intelligence and military capacity in the region and added: “Building that is no small feat. It will take a substantial amount of time.”
Australia’s US ambassador Arthur Sinodinos told another Aspen panel that Japan would also be more involved in future military force maintenance initiatives in northern Australia.
Australia, Britain and the United States last year reached a security agreement, known as AUKUS, which gives Australia the technology to deploy nuclear-powered submarines, a deal their defense ministers discussed in Washington this week.
Britain’s Washington envoy Karen Pierce told the Aspen Forum that there was a risk of miscalculation and misunderstanding with China “because we don’t have as many mechanisms as I think we are able to deal with what comes from Chinese activity.
“And if you compare that to what we had with the Soviet Union in the Cold War, I think you can see there’s a deficit there,” she said.
