I recently attended a small private conference that addressed the strategy the United States and its allies should pursue in the Indo-Pacific to deal with the challenge from China. I found myself isolated in advocating sustained diplomacy with Beijing aimed at some form of mutual accommodation that could facilitate peaceful coexistence. Although there was a range of views at the conference, the prevailing sense was that engagement with China has become highly problematic, if not futile, largely because Beijing’s strategic ambitions leave little room for either accommodation or peaceful coexistence. Even China’s minimalist goals were deemed by many conference participants to be both immutable and irreconcilable with U.S. and allied interests. Accordingly, the discussion focused primarily on how to forge and operationalize the coalition to deter and push back against China’s inexorable ambitions—in the words of Secretary of State Antony Blinken, to “invest, align, and compete”—with little attention to engagement or cooperation with Beijing.

I argued (without much effect) that this approach is based, first and foremost, on an inaccurate and exaggerated assessment of China’s strategic intentions. The prevailing view is that Beijing seeks to establish exclusive hegemony in East Asia, supplant the United States as the leading global power, and export its ideology and illiberal values to the rest of the world. Beijing, of course, consistently denies all of this, but these denials are just as consistently dismissed in the West as disingenuous or dishonest. 

Accordingly, I have scored few points over the years offering evidence and logic pointing out that China is focused on maximizing its wealth, power, and influence in a multipolar world rather than on making a bid for global supremacy and legitimizing its governance and development model rather than expecting other countries to adopt it. Chinese leaders almost certainly recognize that pursuing exclusive global hegemony would be destabilizing and potentially counterproductive to Chinese interests and security. It would risk alienating many other countries whose hearts and minds China is seeking to cultivate. Even if hegemony were achievable, it would be unsustainable.

Yet the prevailing—or at least dominant—view at the conference was that China is not seriously interested in peaceful coexistence with the United States. Instead, it wants to impose its prerogatives on other countries, set the rules of international behavior, and dictate the terms of the U.S.-China relationship. Why is it difficult to acknowledge the probability that Beijing knows that it could not successfully or sustainably do any of these things? Chinese leaders recognize that there are limits to China’s global power and leverage. They cannot realistically hope to subordinate the United States and the rest of the world to their will within a Sino-centric global order. That vision is a chimera in Beijing and a bogeyman in Washington.

However, the notion that Beijing has excluded the possibility (or the viability) of peaceful coexistence raises the question of how receptive Washington itself is to the idea. Chinese leaders no doubt believe that it is the United States that seeks to govern the world, impose its prerogatives on other countries, set the rules, and dictate the terms of the U.S.-China relationship—and think it has the power to do all these things. For both sides, it is easier to claim that the other side has made it a winner-take-all contest than to consider the compromises that would make peaceful coexistence possible. 

And that’s the central challenge of peaceful coexistence: it ultimately would require some form and level of reciprocal compromise and acknowledgment that this is necessary due to the circumstances of economic interdependence, limits on both sides’ leverage, and the imperative for cooperation on many vital transnational issues. But both Washington and Beijing are resistant to compromise and to admitting the need for it. Moreover, at present, it does not appear politically popular or smart in either Washington or Beijing to suggest concessions to the other side. Hence the stalemate and the apparent zero-sum nature of the competition.

China shares ample responsibility for this. Its arrogant, mercenary, coercive, and often belligerent international behavior and rhetoric—not to mention the appalling aspects of its domestic governance—fuel the aversion in the United States to accommodating any of Beijing’s preferences. And it is clear that China seeks to reinforce its global position relative to, and often at the expense of, the United States. That competition is inevitable, even if it need not be zero-sum.

At the same time, if Washington deems even Beijing’s minimal strategic goals to be both unacceptable and unchangeable, this would leave little room for accommodation. It would also blame Beijing exclusively for resisting compromise—a sentiment that Washington itself shares. The fact is that Beijing is genuinely interested in peaceful coexistence. Yet, like Washington, it is skeptical that the other side is similarly inclined or has already concluded that it is not. Both sides need to stop using this premature judgment as an excuse for rejecting the idea in advance or for avoiding the domestic political challenge of promoting and pursuing it.

Apropos of this stalemate, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) recently published a report entitled “Defining Success: Does the United States Need an ‘End State’ for Its China Policy?,” featuring essays by prominent scholars and strategic thinkers on U.S.-China relations. Several of the contributors highlight the need for Washington to undertake the challenge of diplomacy aimed at negotiating peaceful—albeit competitive—coexistence with China. Former White House official Evan Medeiros asserts that the task for Washington is that of finding “the optimum mix of engaging, binding, and balancing policies” because all three “are needed to compete effectively” and “engagement policies enhance competition rather than undermine it.” 

China scholar and former U.S. diplomat Susan Shirk writes that the United States needs to test “the potential for intensified diplomacy” and “the possibility of mutually beneficial compromises” with China. This may not always succeed, she notes, but “it will provide a foundation for a more stable relationship in the future.” Moreover, Washington must not reject the effort before trying it: “Only if a series of strategically-designed diplomatic interactions attempted over an extended period of time fail to moderate Chinese conduct should Americans conclude that the only option is to pull the grim trigger to deny and degrade China.” The default for many strategists today is to pull that trigger.

Other contributors emphasize the strategic necessity for Washington to pursue this approach. Singaporean diplomat Bilahari Kausikan observes that the United States and China “are both uncomfortable because their interdependence exposes their mutual vulnerabilities” and that “composing oneself for the long-term management of an issue with little prospect of any clear resolution is not an attitude that sits naturally with most Americans.” However, he concludes that the United States needs to find a way to overcome that discomfort because “the relativities of power have irrevocably changed,” and the United States “will have to share the Asia-Pacific space” with China. China scholar Yun Sun states succinctly that “China will always remain a geopolitical challenge for the United States, regardless of its regime type.” Still, since it “will not, of course, go away…some type of coexistence with China is almost a given.”

Not surprisingly, there are many skeptics of this approach. In the same report, scholar Zack Cooper suggests that “a policy of accommodation” with China is “unlikely to succeed given that [previous] engagement efforts largely came to naught.” Similarly, scholar Hal Brands characterizes the belief that U.S.-China rivalry is “severe but not immutable” as probably “illusory” because the Chinese Communist Party is “governed by a fundamentally zero-sum mindset which bodes ill for long-term strategic accommodation.” This outlook, however, is based in part on debatable premises about both China’s intentions (as outlined above) and the historical record of U.S.-China engagement. And by prematurely dismissing the potential for accommodation, it negates any reason for Washington to explore it.

In addition to accepting the need for compromise, the pursuit of peaceful coexistence will also require acknowledging that China has legitimate interests and ambitions. This, too, will be a hard sell, given the prevalence of the view that Beijing’s strategic objectives are fundamentally inimical to and irreconcilable with American values and interests. At the conference I attended, most participants appeared reluctant to concede openly—or at least specify—any legitimate Chinese security or economic interests in the Indo-Pacific. Indeed, one of the discussants said emphatically that they would “concede nothing” to China. Such an outlook would appear to offer no path toward mutual understanding and peaceful coexistence, perhaps due to skepticism that they are possible. It is almost certainly based on inaccurate assessments of both China’s ambitions and the United States’ relative leverage in constraining them.

This is important because U.S. receptivity to legitimate Chinese interests will be a key variable in determining the extent and limits of China’s objectives. Beijing currently judges that Washington is resisting both multipolarity and the idea that U.S.-China coexistence could be peaceful. If strategic trends continue to reinforce the Chinese perception that the United States seeks to contain China, hinder its development, or deny the legitimacy of its ambitions, this will increase the chances that Beijing will feel compelled to adopt a more confrontational and aggressive posture.