Opinion | Still at Odds With China (Published 2014)

For more than a decade, the United States has been watching nervously to see how China would choose to wield its formidable and growing economic, political and military powers. The hope, as Robert Zoellick said in 2005 when he was a deputy secretary of state, was that Beijing would become a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system, working cooperatively to foster economic integration and the peaceful resolution of global tensions.

A more assertive China under President Xi Jinping, however, has emerged in the past year, raising doubts about its commitment to peaceful evolution and severely straining its relationship with the United States. High-level talks between Chinese and American officials in Beijing last week were minimally productive, but they left largely unresolved profound differences on major issues that, if not managed carefully, could have damaging consequences.

To take one prominent example, the two sides remain far apart on China’s aggressive efforts to assert sweeping claims over islands and waters in the South China Sea and East China Sea — claims disputed by Japan, the Philippines and others in the region. Secretary of State John Kerry’s plea that China agree to a legally binding code of conduct to govern navigation and prevent unilateral territorial grabs appears to have fallen on deaf ears.

This has become an urgent matter. Ships and fishing boats from China and other claimant countries confront each other regularly and risk stumbling into conflict. Chinese and Japanese jets have also been playing chicken in the skies. Amid concern that China is taking control over islands and waters bit by bit, the Americans are rightly considering new ways, including more surveillance flights and diplomatic proposals, to discourage such action and reduce tensions. Managing maritime claims through a transparent and rules-based process should be in China’s interest as much as anyone’s.

The United States and China also did not close the gap over charges that Chinese hackers are stealing industrial secrets and costing American companies billions of dollars. It is especially shortsighted that China refused to revive an espionage working group shut down in May after the Obama administration charged five Chinese military officers with hacking.