US and China should cooperate on reducing Asian nuclear threats, scholars say

Beijing and Washington should set aside political differences and work together to reduce risks of nuclear proliferation in northeast Asia, Chinese and American scholars said this week.

At Hong Kong University on Monday, Jia Qingguo, a US specialist at Peking University, said that nations such as North Korea and Russia had exploited the US-China schism to take actions that undermined the global order.

"The deteriorating relations between China and the US have left the existing world order more difficult to be sustained, because there are a lot of countries that have grievances and want to challenge the world order," he said, at a seminar hosted by HKU's Centre on Contemporary China and the World.

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"It's a great pity that these two countries cannot cooperate and only focus on areas of tensions."

Because of the intensifying US-China rivalry, "some countries have seen opportunities to do things that normally they were not able to do", he said, citing North Korea's accelerating nuclear and missile programmes and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

"The deteriorating relations between China and the US have left the existing world order more difficult to be sustained," Jia Qingguo says. Photo: Peking University alt="The deteriorating relations between China and the US have left the existing world order more difficult to be sustained," Jia Qingguo says. Photo: Peking University>

Noting reports that several US allies voiced desire to join the US-led Aukus security pact with Australia and Britain, Jia said that recent polls showed more South Koreans and Japanese had become supportive of deploying or even developing nuclear weapons amid regional security challenges.

Beijing has denounced Aukus - an alliance first unveiled in 2021 that is equipping Australia with nuclear-powered submarines - as a move to contain China, and a violation of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty.

"The US and China should talk to each other and make clear the limits about what they can do. And they should cooperate more to ensure nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction would not proliferate. This is in our common interests and the stake is very high. We should talk and work together," said Jia, the former dean of Peking University's school of international studies.

"But I'm worried that this [Aukus deal] has created a disincentive that would keep China from cooperating with the US."

He criticised US President Joe Biden's recent moves to sharply raise tariffs on an array of Chinese imports, including electric vehicles, batteries and solar cells, calling them "an excuse for protectionism".

"It doesn't make sense," he said.

Such tough restrictions would undermine US business interests and "force China to develop its own alternative technology".

If China was successful, the US dominance in hi-tech sectors would disappear, which he said was "not in the best interests of the US".

Michael O'Hanlon, foreign policy research director at the Brookings Institution think tank, said the US should "collaborate with China better" on North Korea.

From left, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak deliver remarks on the Aukus partnership at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego, California, on March 13, 2023. Photo: Reuters alt=From left, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, US President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak deliver remarks on the Aukus partnership at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego, California, on March 13, 2023. Photo: Reuters>

He said that, aside from forging a three-way alliance with Japan and South Korea to strengthen deterrence, the Biden administration had largely followed former president Barack Obama's policy of "benign neglect" on North Korea's repeated provocative missile tests.

O'Hanlon described the Aukus deal as "a signal to China" demonstrating the "united front" by the US and its regional allies worried about Beijing's assertiveness in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.

O'Hanlon expressed concerns about the impact a possible re-election of former president Donald Trump might have on the deeply troubled US-China ties.

If Trump returned to the White House, O'Hanlon said, he must be reminded that "there's really no benefit in playing around with the one-China policy" on Taiwan.

Beijing's relations with Washington first plunged into a crisis when Trump, shortly after he was elected in 2016, took a congratulatory call from then-Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen.

Trump was apparently not aware of how complex and disruptive the Taiwan issue could be to US-China ties, O'Hanlon said.

"I don't think Donald Trump really wanted to have such a big crisis with China" that could potentially lead to a war with a nuclear superpower, he said.

"I hope that he will realise that whatever else he's going to do with the economic relationship, let's try to keep the security relationship and Taiwan out of that relationship."

Jia said he was pessimistic about the prospect of bilateral ties if Trump won the November election, an apparent rematch against Biden.

"When Trump first came into office, he brought in a lot of uncertainties. In China, we hoped he would be pragmatic and he was supposed to be some kind of businessman. But it turned out he is a very different kind of businessman," he said.

Former US president Donald Trump, shown at his election-interference trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday, may still be re-elected in November. Photo: Getty Images via AFP alt=Former US president Donald Trump, shown at his election-interference trial at Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday, may still be re-elected in November. Photo: Getty Images via AFP>

He said that under Trump, Washington had become increasingly "tough, ideological and provocative on Taiwan".

Jia cited a recent Foreign Affairs article by Matt Pottinger, Trump's deputy national security adviser, which he criticised as "dangerous" in calling to undermine China's regime and political system.

Pottinger co-wrote the article last month with Mike Gallagher, a China hawk who just stepped down as the chair of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party and retired from the House of Representatives. It fiercely criticised the Biden administration's China policy and called for "a total victory" over China's alleged "malevolent strategy" in an unfolding new cold war.

Such a strategy would "turn the relationship into a power struggle for survival and that's very dangerous", Jia said.

"If Trump is back in office, more likely than not, his policy [towards China] would be tougher and more irrational and the [US-China] relationship is likely to enter a new period of rapid deterioration," he said.

This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2024 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.

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