New article by Wenting He on ambiguity and the US-China economic relationship

Asia Policy Roundtable: Diplomacy and Ambiguity: Constructing Interests in Cooperation

Wenting He has co-authored a new article with Wesley Widmaier entitled ‘Ambiguity and National Interests: Foreign Policy Frames and U.S.-China Relations’. The article is part of a wider roundtable, published by The National Bureau of Asian Research’s Asia Policy journal, on how constructive ambiguity can enable policy consensus and flexibility in Asian diplomacy and international relations.

In their article, He and Widmaier suggest that despite significant tensions between the U.S. and China, there is potential for cooperation between the two countries as a result of constructive ambiguity. Focusing on the concept of the national interest, they demonstrate that the national interest is inherently ambiguous and capable of being interpreted by practitioners in various ways. Interpretation occurs as interpretive practitioners reshape national interests through exploiting constructive ambiguity, in ways that vary over time and sometimes have an enduring, self-reinforcing character.

Tracing US narratives on cooperation with China from the mid-1990s, the authors pay particular attention to the role of US Treasury Secretary, Janet Yellen. They unpack the existence of ‘positive-sum’ framings associated with Yellen’s “New Keynesian” approach, which emphasize the need for US-China cooperation amidst uncertainty and instability, particularly on economic and environmental issues.

They argue further that the U.S. national interest in relations with China is characterised by ambiguity stemming from the blend of Yellen-style accommodation, and the security and other tensions that have rather more been emphasized by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. As the authors conclude: ‘the larger narrative of U.S.-China relations in the post–Cold War period has been marked by stages of misplaced certainty with respect to both early optimism in “constructive engagement” and later pessimism regarding conflict.’