The satellite images of bright strips of sand rising from turquoise waters and surrounded by an intricate network of support ships struck a nerve around the globe. The man-made islands vividly showed China’s slow-motion efforts to assert more control in the South China Sea but, more than that, they represented a direct challenge to the US which has long policed a waterway crucial to the global economy.
The images, released in April by the Washington-based think-tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies, have contributed to a distinctive shift in the American debate about China. Washington is starting to sound rattled. Not only is the US alarmed at Beijing’s ambitious foreign policy, whether in the South China Sea or the launch of its own international banks, but there is also a creeping fear that America is no longer sure about how to cope with Beijing’s growing influence.
“The consensus of 35 years and five administrations about how to deal with China is fraying so severely that we have lost confidence in the fundamental underpinnings of US-China policy,” says Frank Jannuzi, former Asia adviser to John Kerry and now head of the Mansfield Foundation, a Washington think-tank. “So people are beginning to look for a new approach.”
A decade ago Robert Zoellick, then the deputy secretary of state, summed up the relaxed confidence with which the US viewed China’s rise when he urged Beijing to become a “responsible stakeholder” in a US-led world. Instead of a “responsible stakeholder”, however, many in Washington now see a rival with increasingly sharp elbows and a plan to squeeze the US out of Asia.
The White House is still committed to an approach that involves engaging China and hedging against its increasing military power. It will emphasise the potential for co-operation when the two governments meet in Washington this week for an annual summit, known as the strategic and economic dialogue.
But among the former officials, analysts and think-tanks who set the tone for the broader Washington debate, there is an urgent search for a plan B. The proposals range from major military spending to cutting a grand bargain with Beijing but they are all rooted in a fear that the status quo cannot hold.
Mr Zoellick, an adviser to Jeb Bush’s presidential campaign, thinks the extent of the Chinese challenge to the US-led system is sometimes overstated, noting Beijing’s constructive role during the financial crisis. But he acknowledges that “it is one of these fluid periods and the United States has lost the initiative on a lot of these issues”.