Experts see major flaws in US strategy

The strident language in the US National Security Strategy (NSS) regarding China has drawn criticism from US experts.

US President Donald Trump singled out Russia and China as competitors in his NSS speech on Monday, saying that "China and Russia challenge American power, influence and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity"

"To say that China is attempting to erode American prosperity is a strong statement that would be hard to back up," said David Dollar, a senior fellow at the John L. Thornton China Center of the Brookings Institution.

Dollar, a former World Bank country director for China, said much of the economic exchange between China and the US - including two-way trade, Chinese students in the US and investment in both directions - is mutually beneficial and a foundation of global stability.

He also believes it is "overly harsh" for the NSS to conclude that engagement with China has failed.

"There have been many positive results from the engagement, most recently the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal. The world has had a long era of peace, rising global incomes, and falling poverty - surely China's integration into the global system has had something to do with that," Dollar wrote on

Thursday on the Brookings website, without noting that Trump announced he would withdraw the US from the Paris agreement.

Upon the threat made in the NSS against China for its so-called "unfair" trade practices, Dollar believes this is just rhetoric and China will respond with rhetoric of its own to the effect that the economic relationship is mutually beneficial and that the US is risking a trade war that will make both sides worse off.

"If the United States introduces harsh measures, we can expect China to retaliate proportionally and both economies will be damaged," said Dollar, a US Treasury emissary to China during the Obama administration.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying on Tuesday blasted the NSS as "Cold War" and "zero-sum" mentality.

The NSS also claimed that the US will consider restrictions on foreign STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) students from designated countries to ensure that intellectual property is not transferred to our competitors.

Christopher Meserole, a fellow at the Brookings, believes that such restrictions are almost entirely directed at China. "Yet however well-intentioned, they are misguided," he said.

Merserole believes the US will be more talent constrained than China in the long-run, and to maintain our current advantage, the US will need to develop, recruit, and retain top talent from around the world, including and especially from China.

"To turn away Chinese talent wholesale, without a priori evidence of malfeasance, would do a great disservice to both the American economy and our strategic competitiveness," he said.

The 50-plus page NSS declared that a geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order is taking place in the Indo-Pacific region.

Ryan Hass, a fellow at the Brookings and also an Obama administration official on China, said no other country in the Indo-Pacific region creates such a dichotomy to distinguish between the US and China, and no country in the region wants to be forced to choose between the US and China.

"By seeking to paint the region in such black-and-white ideological terms, the United States sets itself apart from the rest of the region, a place where pragmatism, initiative, innovation, and integration are the currency of influence," said Hass, who, from 2013 to 2017, served as the director for the Chinese mainland, Taiwan and Mongolia at the White House National Security Council.

chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com