But the essential caveat here is that China’s external behavior has not entirely been overreaching, and it has not entirely been driven by CCP politics. It is too convenient for Washington to characterize actions by Beijing that are highly problematic for the United States as emanating exclusively from internal Chinese sources, and as contrary to China’s own interests, and thus to argue that Beijing needs to rein itself in for its own good. And although Shirk posits that “the best hope for China’s peaceful rise is gradual political reform that lays the foundation for a democracy,” this bypasses both the external drivers of Beijing’s behavior and the probability that even a democratic China would be staunchly nationalistic and resistant to outside pressure.

This is why CCP leaders are unlikely to wholly embrace Shirk’s policy suggestions for Beijing. These include adopting a flexible approach to joint development in the South China Sea, closing the internment camps in Xinjiang, ending Chinese economic coercion, and opening dialogue with Taiwan without preconditions. Although these all make perfect sense from the U.S. perspective, from the Chinese perspective they would require Beijing to make unilateral compromises on vital issues involving China’s stability, security, or sovereignty. No accommodation by other players is presumed. U.S. strategists routinely argue that China would pocket any American concessions without reciprocating. Why would Chinese leaders not think the same thing about U.S. advice to make concessions, especially on what Beijing deems its “core interests?”

On the other hand, Shirk’s policy suggestions for Washington are well-considered and demand attention. First and foremost, she advises against “overreactions to overreach,” which are likely to be as self-defeating and counterproductive for U.S. interests as Beijing’s overreactions have been for Chinese interests. Moreover, she eloquently warns of the worst potential consequences of a race to the bottom: “The United States is competing with China by becoming more like China—nationalist, fixated on security, and politicizing the market economy—instead of becoming a better version of itself.” And she frankly asserts that “the interaction of overreach and overreaction ... has already put [the United States and China] into a cold war.”

To remedy this, Shirk urges Washington to revive the path of diplomacy with Beijing. Although she claims to be agnostic on whether Xi’s regime is “influenceable,” she insists that the United States has no choice but to coexist with China, and thus must develop a “strategy to influence its decision calculus.” Shirk asserts that “we can only assess Xi’s pragmatic flexibility through negotiations,” and that only by “dealing with China in a respectful manner that connotes goodwill to the Chinese people” can Washington hope to establish the foundation for a more stable U.S.-China relationship. Finally, she exhorts U.S. leaders to avoid an ideological cold war, claiming that although it may have been Xi who started to define the relationship as an “ideological contest,” Biden “has perpetuated this” with his democracy-versus-autocracy rhetorical framework.

In this regard, Shirk makes a valuable contribution to the important ongoing debate in the West about Beijing’s strategic ambitions. She notes that many analysts and commentators believe that “China is bent on supplanting the United States as the world’s number one power.” But she warns against “an exaggerated view of China’s threat to the United States” and “concluding prematurely that China is [an] enemy.” (Shirk also states tangentially that “American primacy is the wrong goal for our China policy,” partly because it “smacks of a playground fight instead of principled support for peace and order.”)

In the end, Shirk offers reasons for optimism that China and the United States can still achieve some level of mutual understanding and common purpose. But this is unlikely to develop if Washington is inclined to wait for Beijing to unilaterally retreat from its “overreach.” Shirk speculates that Biden did so during his first year in office by focusing on other priorities while “watching for some reassuring signs from Xi.” However, Beijing’s assertive behavior and hard line on a range of issues “deepened the skepticism within the Biden Administration about the possibility of moderating China’s behavior through diplomatic engagement and reinforced its inclination to push back instead.”

What this overlooks is the probability that the simultaneous lack of reassuring signs from Washington has deepened Xi’s own skepticism about the potential for constructive engagement and reinforced Beijing’s determination to stand firm. Just as Shirk assesses that American perceptions of China as an existential threat will prompt U.S. leaders to “enact ever tougher policies to contain the threat,” we should expect that Chinese perceptions of a U.S. strategy to “contain” China will prompt CCP leaders to move toward their own ever tougher policies. Breaking this interactive cycle would require both sides to recognize it and work together to escape it. Biden’s meeting with Xi this week could be the beginning of that process.

Paul Heer is a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the National Interest and a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. He served as National Intelligence Officer for East Asia from 2007 to 2015. He is the author of Mr. X and the Pacific: George F. Kennan and American Policy in East Asia (Cornell University Press, 2018).

Image: Reuters.