David Shambaugh's New Book on China

choi

Tunku Varadarajan, The China-US Divorce. The relationship between Washington and Beijing is at its lowest ebb since Richard Nixon's 1972 visit. How did that come to be?  Wall Street Journal, June 5, 2025, at page A15
https://www.wsj.com/arts-culture ... -s-divorce-bc9140dc
(book review on David Shambaugh, Breaking the Engagement. How China won and lost America. Oxford University Press, 2025)

Quote: "The roots of America's decadeslong policy of engagement with China lie, says Mr Shambaugh, in its two-centuries-old 'missionary complex' to change China."

Note:
(a) Subtitle of the book is wordplay on the American blame game after 1949: Who lost China?
(b) "It took a personal slight to make the scales fall from his eyes, but fall they [scales, not eyes] did.)"
(i)
(A) brille
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brille
("also called the ocular scale * * * immovable * * * Brille means 'spectacles' or 'glasses' in German, Norwegian, and Danish")
(B) English dictionary:
* brille (n; "borrowed from German [noun feminine] Brille, literally, 'spectacle, eyeglass [Wiktionary is more accurate: "(pair of) glasses, spectacles (frames bearing two lenses worn in front of the eyes to correct vision)": glasses and spectacles are always plural]' ")
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/brille
(pronunciation)
(C) For anatomy of snake's eye, see David López Bosch, The World from the Eyes of a Snake. All you need is Biology, June 3, 2016
https://allyouneedisbiology.word ... 03/06/snake-senses/
("The structure of their eye is mostly identical to that of the rest of tetrapods. A difference is the focusing method: while most tetrapods focus by [through ligaments on both ends of a lens] changing the curvature of the crystalline lens, snakes focus moving the crystalline lens forward and backward. Also, while most terrestrial vertebrates have eyelids to protect the eye, snakes have an ocular scale called the spectacle which is renewed each time they shed their skin")
(D) For histology of snake's eye, see
Nicholas J Millichamp, Chapter 13 Ophthalmology of Serpentes: Snakes. In Fabiano Montiani-Ferreira, Bret A Moore and Gil Ben-Shlomo (eds), Wild and Exotic Animal Ophthalmology. Volume 1: Invertebrates, Fishes, Amphibians, Reptiles and Birds. Springer, 2022
(top arc above cornea)
[The illustration at the bottom should be here.]
(ii)
(A) "to make the scales fall from his eyes"

Bible (King James Version), Acts 9:18: "And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales: and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized."
(B) Acts 9
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acts_9
Paul persecuted Christians, and was blinded on the Damascus Road. Section 2 described Ananias delivered Saul from blindness, who then changed name to Paul.


(c) "China had needed America in what was still a unipolar world, so Beijing was largely vested in playing down discord. The 1989 Tiananmen massacre and the 2008-09 financial crisis—which sparked Chinese disillusion with American economic management—were rare blips in the pre-Xi age, when China was led by less Manichean men: Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao."

English dictionary:
* vest (vt): "if an employee's shares, payments to a pension plan, etc. vest or are vested, there is an agreed period that an employee must work for the company before they can use or sell them"
https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/vest
* Manichean (adj): "based on the belief that there are two opposites in everything, for example good and evil or light and dark"
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictio ... /english/manichaean
• That is, there is nothing in between: no shades of gray, only black and white. The religion is dualism: world is a struggle between good and evil.
• 摩尼教 "Manichaeism was founded in the 3rd century CE by the Parthian[6] prophet Mani (216–274 CE)": en.wikipedia.org forManichaeism.
• The historical region of Parthia straddles present-day (northeastern) Iran and (southern) Turkmenistan.



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“There is no realistic prospect or false nirvana of returning to an amicable and cooperative bilateral relationship,” David Shambaugh writes in “Breaking the Engagement: How China Won and Lost America.” Few American scholars have a better understanding of China than Mr. Shambaugh. So when the George Washington University professor tells us that the official U.S. strategy of engagement with Beijing is dead—“D-E-A-D”—we had better pay attention.

This isn’t only a question of state policy. The American people have had enough of China, too. Mr. Shambaugh points to a recent Pew survey, which found that eight out of 10 Americans hold “unfavorable” views of China, with 42% describing it as an “enemy.” Only 6% see it as a “partner.”

Certainly, Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s announcement that the U.S. would revoke the visas of many Chinese students who are already in this country—and make it much harder for future Chinese students to enroll at American universities—lays bare the fact that the U.S.-China relationship is at a nadir. It would not be overly shrill to say that in many of these cases we’re educating the enemy. Mr. Shambaugh, who describes himself as a “disillusioned former engager,” would agree. (His disillusion, it should be noted, began when the Chinese government banned him from Beijing’s many universities and think tanks after he published a long essay in this newspaper in 2015, titled “The Coming Chinese Crackup.” It took a personal slight to make the scales fall from his eyes, but fall they did.)

A China-hawk ever since, Mr. Shambaugh sets out to explain how Washington and Beijing have reached the lowest ebb in their relations since Richard Nixon’s “breakthrough” in 1972.

The Sino-American relationship, while always demanding vigilance, has rarely been so nakedly hostile. Mr. Shambaugh’s book covers a 75-year period, from 1949—when the Chinese Communists took control of the country—to the second election of Donald Trump in 2024. Although the relationship fluctuated during that time between “amity” and “enmity,” as the author puts it, the American desire for engagement was not merely constant but “axiomatic.” This policy of nonhostility was bipartisan in the U.S. Congress, even as some Democrats chafed at a glossing over by Washington of Chinese human-rights abuses and some Republicans “questioned the long-term wisdom” of strengthening China through trade and transfers of technology.

The roots of America’s decadeslong policy of engagement with China lie, says Mr. Shambaugh, in its two-centuries-old “missionary complex” to change China. America not only sought to trade with China starting in the late 18th century but to “mold and shape it” in other ways: “religiously, intellectually, socially, economically, and politically.” The fluctuations in bilateral relations have resulted from the dialectic between “American paternalism vs. Chinese nationalism.” To put matters at their plainest: We like the Chinese when they’re inclined to be more like us, “conforming to American expectations of liberal development.”

But one man can make a tectonic difference. American paternalism prevailed—whether genuinely or as a result of the Chinese faking conformity to extract material advantage—until 2012-13 and the ascent to power of Xi Jinping, the most hardline nationalist leader China has had since Mao Zedong. Until then, China had needed America in what was still a unipolar world, so Beijing was largely vested in playing down discord. The 1989 Tiananmen massacre and the 2008-09 financial crisis—which sparked Chinese disillusion with American economic management—were rare blips in the pre-Xi age, when China was led by less Manichean men: Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao.

Mr. Trump, too, has played a decisive role in altering the course of this relationship. His election in 2016 saw growing American hostility toward China grafted atop Mr. Xi’s mercantilist, irredentist jingoism. This hard line on China, Mr. Shambaugh observes, was continued by the Biden administration, albeit with differences in nuance and rhetoric. With the second Trump administration, we have Mr. Rubio driving important elements of America’s China policy. “He may be,” writes Mr. Shambaugh—whose book went to press before Mr. Rubio’s elevation at State in January—“the single most knowledgeable Member of Congress about China,” who has been “outspoken and unafraid to take the Xi Jinping regime to task for a variety of its malign actions.”

Given our loss of global predominance and primacy—as well as Mr. Xi’s drive to make China the global hegemon—the best we can hope for, Mr. Shambaugh concludes, is “competitive coexistence” with China. The U.S. should expose China to the world at every opportunity. “The Chinese government’s own negative behavior is one of America’s greatest assets in its contest with China, and it must be taken advantage of.” We must also retain our global strut and confidence, Mr. Shambaugh says, and not overestimate China, a country with “multiple systemic weaknesses.” These include an aging population, a stark gender imbalance, a rigid one-party system, widespread repression, massive income inequality, capital flight, a nonconvertible currency, industrial overcapacity and a vindictive control-freak at the helm. No one has the slightest idea what will happen when Mr. Xi dies.

Mr. Shambaugh’s most radical suggestion is his call to “consider resurrecting and applying the ‘Trading With the Enemy Act,’ ” which would take American companies to task for conducting business with China in ways that harm our “national interest.” The American corporate sector needs to “understand that some—much—of what it does in China is strengthening an existing rival and a potential adversary.”

This is a controversial idea. It’s also audacious. We may not stop the Chinese juggernaut in its tracks. But there’s no reason to actively help it run us over.

Mr. Varadarajan, a Journal contributor, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at NYU Law School’s Classical Liberal Institute.