Why US shouldn’t seek regime change in China

There are at least two ways to view Sino-American tensions. The United States and China are two great powers competing for pre-eminent strategic influence over the same geographic region. But they are also the leaders of two contending ideological blocs pitting liberal democracies against authoritarians.

The latter view suggests that regime type is the root problem. Some US observers have argued that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cannot peacefully co-exist with governments based on liberal political values. They conclude the free world must work to overthrow the CCP – not just to bring relief to the oppressed Chinese people but as a matter of self-defense.

A famous recent example was the July 2020 speech by then-US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “We, the freedom-loving nations of the world, must induce China to change,” he said. “And if we don’t act now, ultimately the CCP will erode our freedoms.” In that case, “our children’s children may be at the mercy of the Chinese Communist Party.”

In the May/June edition of the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs,Matt Pottinger, like Pompeo a former senior official in the Trump administration, and former Congressman Mike Gallagher, a Republican from Wisconsin who was chairman of a China-focused committee, reprised the argument that the US government should make defeat of the CCP a primary goal of US policy toward China.

Beijing under the CCP cannot tolerate a world that holds to liberal values, they wrote. Seeking détente is “doomed to backfire on the United States.” Therefore, the US should strive to “win” rather than “manage” the competition with China.

Their definition of winning would fulfill two metrics. First, Beijing would no longer have hope that it could best the