1. I see a debate here on Twitter on whether we should take internal Chinese Communist Party statements and documents at face value as geopolitical intent and policy. It's an interesting issue, and I have some thoughts to share, parallel to the main discussion.
2. I should say up front that I am not an expert who pours over such material in the original Chinese, comparing this year's statement to last. I come at this as someone who has witnessed Chinese policies evolve on a practical basis over several decades, on the ground.
3. My own view is that statements of intent or strategy are just that, and offer useful - with certain caveats - insights into how decision-makers are thinking about problems and opportunities as they see them.
4. They do not necessarily provide equal insight into how these problems and opportunities will actually play out, or even how the decision-makers will truly respond to them in real life, when "the rubber meets the road".
5. Perhaps the best way to appreciate what I'm saying is to stop thinking, for a moment, about China and think about how it applies to the US.
6. There is no doubt that anyone interested in US policy should take the time to read and understand the National Security Strategy paper and similar documents issued and speeches made by Administration officials. whitehouse.gov/articles/new-n…
7. They reflect, within certain limitations, what senior Administration officials are thinking, how they see certain problems, and what they would like to prioritize - and that's certainly useful.
8. What kind of limitations? Institutional, to begin with: such statements are often compromises between different agencies with different underlying priorities - which may or may not play out the same way when decisions actually need to be made.
9. There are also ideological limitations: objectives or strategies may be couched in terms and concepts that the speakers find comfortable, or that they think their audiences will understand and find appealing.
10. In a similar way, to flip back to China for a moment, Chinese officials will use Marxist-Leninist frameworks and language to conceptualize and articulate their positions, without fully examining or questioning the assumptions that underpin them, or their implications.
11. More importantly, though, intentions are not implementation - certainly not until they've been tested by the fire of real-life decision-making. A couple examples may help understand this.
12. The US may express a strategy to either (in the past) be able to fight two wars at once, or to "fight one and hold one". That may, indeed, be a goal everyone agrees is either necessary or desirable.
13. But then realities intrude: taxes, budgets, what you can get through Congress, cost overruns, glitches with new systems, Congress' political priorities, which agencies actually win different battles ...
14. The actual shape of the policy, and the country's capabilities, depend as much on these vicissitudes as the expressed intent.
15. Or take the longer-term policy goal of the Iraq War: to create a stable democratic ally in the Middle East. The goal may be sincere, the people proposing it may believe it achievable. They may be willing to do everything in their power to make it happen.
16. But whether it is achievable or not depends on realities beyond those people's control. What do Iraqis think and how do they respond? What price is Congress and the American people really willing to pay? Are our strategies effective in achieving our goals?
17. Decision-makers will likely spend as much time, or more, responding and adapting to these realities as they will pursuing their intended path. And that's assuming they do so effectively.
18. During the Obama Administration, the US laid out its "Pivot to Asia". No doubt a Chinese policymaker should have paid attention to the expressed intent, including TPP.
19. But they should also have paid attention to the resource and political constraints that ultimately hobbled that policy, and made it far less effective than its planners had hoped. That includes the domestic political realities that led to the US quitting TPP.
20. By the same token, there have been no lack of statements by Trump, Navarro, and others laying out a concept of what they intended to achieve, at least in a broad sense, in reordering US trade relations with China.
21. Their intent was clear: they were skeptical of the benefits of trade, prioritized reducing the bilateral US trade deficit with China, were confident in the efficacy of tariffs to achieve this, and equally confident they help the negotiating upper hand over China.
22. More broadly, they were skeptical of multilateral trade arrangements and wanted to replace them with bilateral "deals" in which they believed the US could "get more" in terms of advantage. All of this, they believed, would contribute to noticeably higher US growth.
23. Okay, that's the intent, and it's worth understanding. But several of these propositions ran headlong into a very different reality.
24. US businesses were worried by tariffs and their uncertainty weighed on short-term growth. The Chinese thought they had the negotiating advantage and didn't cave. And arguably, many of the economic conceptions that underlay the US approach were deeply flawed.
25. In the end, faced with a slowing economy, Trump settled for a trade "deal" - really a temporary truce - with China that satisfied few of his initial objectives and validated few of his initial assumptions.
26. You would not have been able to anticipate Trump's action by looking solely at his expressed intentions, but only by subjecting them to critical examination and evaluating how they would fare when confronted with complicated and uncooperative realities.
27. So I'd argue that when we look at CCP statements of strategy or intent, couched in the Marxist-Leninist language of international class war or whatnot, or even the Chinese nationalist language of rising to past greatness, we shouldn't dismiss it as irrelevant ...
28. But we shouldn't look at them uncritically either. It may be that these aspirations, however serious, face constraints or even clash with realities that will real pose challenges to pursuing them, which are equally important for us to understand.
29. They may pose trade-offs that Chinese decision-makers have yet to fully comprehend, or clash with other priorities they will have to choose between.
30. China may wish to establish the yuan as the world's leading reserve currency, but what does this mean? It may, I'd argue, directly clash with other priorities they may find more important, or be hobbled by other problems are likely to face and the need to respond.
31. The CCP may prioritize staying in power above all else, but what does this mean? The fact is, in practical terms, this has meant very different things at different times over the past several decades. Even if it is the fixed goal, it does not have fixed implications.
32. Man proposes, God disposes. We should pay attention to what Man proposes, but not see it as determinative of what will actually happen. It may be that Man is dead wrong and will have to think again.
33. There have been times - particularly in 1978, 1989, and 1992 - when China's rulers have had to rethink what "staying in power" meant and what that required of them. The answer has been conditioned as much by things happening to them as by their own concepts or desires.
34. And I'd say the same thing is true of US policymakers from Bretton Woods to Korea to Vietnam to the War on Terror. Our strategic conceptions and intentions have only been part of the relevant equation.
