The Failures of the ‘Failure of Engagement’ with China

One core element in the current narrative in Washington about China as a challenger to the so-called U.S.-dominated liberal “rules-based order” is that the previous U.S. engagement strategy, pursued mainly from the Clinton administration on, has failed. The “engagement failed” idea rests on two empirical claims and one (mostly unspoken) counterfactual claim. The first empirical claim is that engagement was designed to create a Chinese commitment to the U.S.-dominated liberal order, but basically failed to change China’s preferences toward the international norms and institutions that constituted this order. The second empirical claim is that engagement was designed to liberalize, even democratize, China’s political system, and as such has failed. The counterfactual claim is that, had the United States never adopted the engagement strategy in the first place, the United States would be better off today because it would have been better prepared to compete with or contain China earlier. In this article, I argue that the first empirical claim exaggerates the degree to which there has been a singular U.S.-dominated liberal order and misses the considerable diversity in China’s policies toward international norms and institutions. The second empirical claim excessively simplifies a more sophisticated causal argument developed by proponents of engagement in the U.S. government. As for the counterfactual argument, opponents of engagement fail to consider other equally plausible alternative histories.