The Pivot and America’s Status Concern
This negotiation occurred in the midst of America’s “pivot/rebalancing” to Asia, which is a hallmark of Barak Obama’s foreign policy. The Obama administration from its onset had signaled its commitment to redress the predecessor’s perceived indifference to the Asia-Pacific, a dynamic region that the administration officials believed was to define the future of world politics.
20 China’s growing capacity to reshape the order in the region and beyond placed accords Beijing centrality in this policy. As a matter of fact, elements of the “pivot/rebalancing” policy were in place prior to the Obama administration. What Obama’s team did most was to instill symbolic coherence to that policy by committing American prestige to a wide variety of security, economic, and developmental issues in the Asia Pacific [
54,
55].
Status as a sort of symbolic capital matters crucially in the reassertion of American influences in Asia. By definition, status helps to legitimize authority of a state over another by eliciting voluntary deference [
56]. In this regard, a variety of diplomatic elements of Obama’s Asia policy (such as increasing participation in the multilateral organizations, enhancing engagement with China, and strengthening alliance networks) were designed to signal US centrality to regional orders, a sign of America’s status preeminence in international politics. During her first trip to Asia following Obama’s inauguration—which featured an enhanced US engagement with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)—Clinton hailed that, “the United States is back [
57].” In an equally high profile trip to Asia one year later, Clinton labeled American policy as “forward deployed diplomacy,” which reflected the civilian-military consensus.
21
The challenge for Washington’s diplomacy in Asia was to balance the drive for strengthening regional leadership role with the imperative to reassure China of its benign intention. The Americans “needed a sophisticated strategy,” in the words of Hillary Clinton, “that encouraged China to participate as a member of the international community, while standing firm in defense of our values and interests [
60].” In other words, the United States sought cooperation with China in dealing with practical matters, with a view to retaining its overall status preeminence in world politics.
The Status Dilemma at Play: The “Core Interests” Polemics
At the onset of the Obama administration, American and Chinese diplomats worked to combine annul economic and strategic dialogue mechanisms into a comprehensive one, covering issues of military security, human rights, energy and climate change and so on. As wished by Hillary Clinton, the integrated dialogue mechanism helped elevate the security and political issues to the same level as the economic issues.
22 The Americans in large part expected the dialogue to be a problem-solving mechanism. A key proponent of the Strategic and Economic Dialogue, the Undersecretary of State James Steinberg gave much emphasis to the problem of security dilemma to the neglect of matters of status. In his view, the imperative for US-Chinese leaders was to “avoid the worst consequences of the
security dilemma” [emphasis added] [
62]. To this end, Steinberg specified a set of measures to clarify each side’s intentions and increase the credibility of commitments. In practical terms, this meant the Strategic and Economic Dialogue session would serve as a vehicle for dialogue on sensitive security issues. Through this mechanism, both China and the United States could clarify what is involved in their core interests [
63,
64]. This endeavor could certainly lay the groundwork for interactions based on reciprocity and trust. The process, however, may aggravate mistrust if one or two sides put more emphasis on the symbolic values of the issue at hand, as opposed to its practical importance.
In the Chinese eyes, by contrast, this dialogue mechanism not only gave them a greater voice over matters of importance beyond the bilateral relationship, but also helped signal China’s status preeminence as an emerging power. Particularly, the Chinese took pains to ensure that the Obama administration agreed to elevate the bilateral relationship from the “constructive, cooperative, and candid” one to a “positive, constructive, and comprehensive” relationship.
23 As Jeffrey Bader (the US senior official at the National Security Council) noted, “the Chinese tend to start with the overall nature of the desired relationship (as captured in a phrase) and then move toward more specific points of cooperation.”
24 While the Americans were willing to accommodate Chinese negotiating style, they paid little attention to the Chinese intent to signal status preeminence.
The status dilemma became visible as the Chinese and US officials attached divergent meanings to the dialogue mechanism. The Implication 1 of status dilemmas can be confirmed when we see that the US officials were too focused on confidence-building measures designed to deal with the security dilemma. This is of course not to suggest that the Chinese officials were oblivious of the need for strategic reassurances with their American counterparts. Rather, it was the Americans’ lack of attention to the Chinese concern with status implications of security dialogues that caused the emergence of status dilemma.
Initially, the term “core interests” was inserted in the Joint Statement between Hu Jintao and Barack Obama during the American president’s first visit to China, and the State Councilor Dai Bingguo lay out the most authoritative definition of Chinese core interests by far as “sovereignty and territorial integrity,” “basic state system and national security,” and “continued stable social and economic development.”
25 From Dai’s standpoint, China’s core interests revolving around “sovereignty, security, and development” are fundamental to national survival, and they are not expansive [
66]. Clarifying these interests could help to mitigate the security dilemma. As suggested by international relations theorists, if two interacting players have good knowledge that the other side harbors no ambitions beyond survival, then they can avoid falling into a spiral of conflict escalation [
67‐
69]. For Steinberg, clarifying the “core interests” could help deal with the relatively urgent issues such as “arms race instability” and “crisis instability” that might arise when China felt the temptation to use its newly acquired power to reshape international security order to its favor.
While the US diplomats tried to clarify with their Chinese counterparts where Beijing’s core interests lay, they in large part overlooked the symbolic value placed by the Chinese on such concepts. The
Implication 2 of status dilemmas thus manifested itself in the US treatment of China’s protest over the issues associated with their “core interests” such as Taiwan and Tibet. In January 2010, the US government decided on Taiwan arms sales—an issue put in motion during the Bush years—while at the same time, President Obama believed that at this juncture settling on a meeting with Dalai Lama. Obama’s foreign policy team, though, went to considerable lengths to dampen the repercussions of such symbolic events on US-China relations. Accordingly, it was arranged soon thereafter that two senior officials Jeffrey Bader and Steinberg visit Beijing to mend fences with the Chinese officials. In addition, Obama decided to meet with the newly appointed ambassador in the White House at an earliest possible date [
70].
Initially, the Chinese official responses were mild and did not deviate from its established pattern of protest against similar provocations.
26 According to a senior Chinese diplomat Dai Bingguo, he and his colleagues thought that the US acts were not abnormal [
72]. This perhaps had mislead the American officials into believing that the irritant polemics over Taiwan and Tibet in US-China relations would not escalate. And yet, as the Chinese symbolically asserted their prerogatives over the Taiwan and Tibet issues, they inadvertently fostered a permissive atmosphere for the signaling of status preeminence vis-à-vis the Americans. At this juncture, botched diplomatic communications were to jeopardize the bilateral relationship to an unprecedented degree. The
Implication 3 of status dilemmas then manifested itself as the Chinese undertook an unexpected act that asserted China's identity as an emerging superpower. During Steinberg and Bader’s meeting with the Chinese officials, “the Chinese executive vice foreign minister gave a lengthy presentation on China’s rights in the South China Sea, highlighting it as a national priority [
73].” Subsequently, the leak of this talk led to an inaccurate report by the
New York Times, which mentioned that “[for] the first time the Chinese labeled the South China Sea a core interest, on par with Taiwan and Tibet.”
27 With this media assertion having become a widespread meme over the following weeks, foreign and domestic pressures grew so overwhelming that it was hard for the Chinese and American leaders to clarify the matter. As a senior foreign policy official in China revealed, “once the story was out, the MFA could not publicly say that the South China Sea was not a core interest……Nor could it state publicly that no senior officials had said the South China Sea was a core interest, that the
New York Times source was wrong. This, too, might have raised the ire of nationalists within the population and the elite.”
28Arguably, the labeling of the South China Sea as part of “core interests” signaled China’s claim to status preeminence. Here, the symbolic significance of the labeling outweighed the instrumental values, as it contributed little to China’s de facto maritime control. Put differently, security imperatives—such as securing China’s shipping lanes in Southeast Asia—did not entail high-profile declarations. China could have pursued a policy of “creeping assertiveness” to expand its maritime influence.
29
By contrast, the US officials saw a challenge to its hegemony looming on the horizon. In the aftermath of the “core interests” polemics, the US officials were reluctant to echo the Chinese proposal of the “core interests” on the occasion to which Beijing attached great symbolical importance.
30 There was no mention of the term “core interests” in the US briefing on the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue 2010 Outcomes of the Strategic Track [
80]. In the concluding joint statement of the S&ED, whereas China’s State Councilor Dai Bingguo suggested four times that the bilateral relationship be based on respecting or accommodating the “core interests” of each side, the concept "core interests" found no echo on the US side [
81]. This pattern of interactions reaffirms the
Implication 2 of status dilemma.
China’s assertion of its core interests has more to do with status preeminence than security imperatives. The US then showed reluctance to accord the Chinese the desired status preeminence in Asia, as Washington feared that its acquiescence in Beijing’s assertion of their prerogatives in the South China Sea could undermine the credibility of US capabilities or resolve to employ power in defense of its allies in the region. In short, America’s status preeminence is intertwined with its geopolitical security interests. Subsequently, Secretary Clinton asserted America's role in the South China Sea disputes in which China was involved at the Hanoi ASEAN Regional Forum in July 2010. At a meeting with senior officials from ASEAN countries as well as China, Clinton found it imperative to signal status preeminence of America in the regional order. She thus claimed that, “the United States has a national interest in freedom of navigation, open access to Asia’s maritime commons and respect for international law in the South China Sea [
82].”
Clinton’s gesture was puzzling from the standpoint of security imperatives: prior to the Hanoi meetings, the US government did show signs of disinterest in raising the South China Sea issue, with a view to defusing tensions with China [
83]. Viewed from the standpoint of status dilemma, however, Clinton’s gesture was understandable: it represented an attempt to signal America’s status as the established hegemon. That is, the US role in safeguarding the norm of freedom of navigation embodies America’s status preeminence in world politics. The openly stated commitment to safeguarding that maritime norm, in particular, could demonstrate its distinctiveness vis-à-vis other nations. Only the global hegemon is entitled to the “command of the commons.” To the extent that this is common knowledge, it shows the US was persistent in its rhetorical signaling of the established hegemonic status—hence the confirmation of the
Implication 4 of status dilemmas.
A participant in that meeting, the Chinese foreign minister Yang Jiechi was caught off guard by Clinton’s remark, to which he protested by leaving the meeting for an hour. Apparently, Clinton’s assertion of US role in guarding the free maritime order posed challenge to Chinese status as a rising power, which Yang felt compelled to defend. After his return, Yang engaged in a “rambling thirty minutes response,” during which he forcefully asserted China’s great-power status. In particular, the Chinese foreign minister charged Clinton’s offer to mediate the South China Sea disputes as an “attack on China.” And he subsequently dismissed a Singaporean minister with the words, “China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact [
84].” Yang’s response presents clear evidence that emotions could heighten status concerns: Clinton’s challenge seemingly inspired a feeling of frustration on Yang’s part which prompted him to assert China’s status as “a big country.” In this case, the Implication 1 of status dilemmas finds reaffirmation.
With Yang’s words being widely cited as a prominent sign of China’s growing ambition, the image of the Chinese quest for great- power status at the expense of America in Asia and beyond came to gain currency. In the long run, of course, China's reclamation of the artificial islands in the South China Sea would undermine the US geopolitical influences. Yet, Chinese naval power was clearly no rival to the US command of the maritime commons, and will not be in the foreseeable future [
85]. As such, the South China Sea should not have been an arena for the Chinese to engage in a zero-sum competition for status vis-à-vis the United States. Rather, asserting its claim in the South China Sea simply served the purpose of signaling China’s status as an emerging power. In this regard, China has been imitating status-signaling acts of all great powers which aspired to being perceived as maritime power, rather than challenge the US maritime domination per se.
For Washington, however, the intrinsic values of the disputed maritime domains could be outweighed by the symbolic drawbacks of acquiescing in the perceived (or perhaps alleged) Chinese assertion of core interests in the South China Sea. This would have negative implications for America’s status in Asia and beyond, which links to other tangible interests such as the command of the maritime commons. Hence, during her visit to Australia in November 2010, Clinton asserted that Dai said the South China Sea was a “core interest” of China and she expressed opposition immediately to Dai’s remark [
86]. It is less likely that Clinton misremembered her conversation with Dai than that she wanted to “deter China from attempting to add South China Sea to its list of core interests.”
31 As the US-China diplomacy over the “core interests” failed to clarify the status quo intention of each other in 2010, thereafter senior US officials as well as policy analysts came to express growing concern about the development of Chinese military power [
88]. Hence the situation increasingly became analogous to the security dilemma. While those American concerns were rooted in a persistent lack of transparency of Chinese military budgets and uncertainty about the likely change of Chinese intentions, there is no denying that “independent of material power, leadership rhetoric and political statements can generate insecurity” in other states.
32 Inasmuch as political rhetoric and diplomatic interactions have to do with status recognition, the status dilemma could trigger security dilemma dynamics.