Page 159 - 《国际安全研究》2022年第2期

Vo1. 40, No. 2, March/April 2022

Abstract

3 China-US Relations in the Perspective of the US National Security
Strategy: A 50-Year Review

DA Wei and CAI Hongyu
[Abstract] Since Nixon’s visit to China in 1972, Sino-US relations have gone through
three phases in the perspective of the US national security strategy: 1971-1989, 1989-
2017, and beyond 2017. During the three phases, checking and balancing the Soviet
Union, shaping China’s behavior and striving for superiority in its competition with
China have successively become the core logic of the US strategy toward China. To
be more specific, in the first phase, the logic of the US strategy toward China focused
on using China to gain advantage over the the Soviet Union. In the 1980s, China was
once considered a “friendly non-ally” by the United States. The second phase lasted
28 years. In this period, the rationale for the US strategy toward China was “shaping
through engagement” in the hope of molding China’s political and economic models
and its external behavior in the process of engagement. At one point in the late 1990s,
China was even treated as a potential strategic partner. The third phase began in 2017.
To avoid being overtaken by China, the United States chose to “compete to win” that
led to a complete strategic shift to a negative view of China and the US-China relations.
Over the past 50 years, the bilateral relationship has undergone two turns and
reconfigurations, with the second one still in progress. Throughout this period, the
US-China relationship has always been a key concern for the United States as regards
its overall national security interests. The China-related components of the US
national security strategy have transcended partisan differences and exhibited strong
consistency and coherence, many of which have been around for a long time, or have
been foreshadowed in advance. Undoubtedly, China-related issues are increasingly
being added to and fleshed out in the US national security strategy. In the long run,
there would be a greater potential for both cooperation and competition, with
competition strongly outweighing cooperation.
[Keywords] US national security strategy, Sino-US security relations, US strategy
toward China, US view on China
[Authors] DA Wei, Professor of Department of International Relations, Director of
Center for International Security and Strategy, Tsinghua University; CAI Hongyu,
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of International Relations, Tsinghua University (Beijing,
100084).

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