Cognitive Analysis Of America's China Policy After The Cold War Policy Makers

During the Post-cold War era, China-U.S. relations experienced ups and downs,and even several crises, but eventually resume to the normal track of development bypassing through the risky crises. This is considered a significant rule of China-U.S.relations of the Post-cold War era. By adhering to the policy principle of “keeping alow profile, do something previously unreleased” and “peaceful development”international strategy, the Chinese side examines and handles China-U.S. relationsfrom strategic and long-term perspectives, grasps the peaceful development of overallrelations between the two countries. As a result, the guiding principle for thedevelopment of China-U.S. relations has determined. To the contrary, The UnitedStates has not formed a consensus on the policy to China. Relying on its nationalstrength, the United States holds the initiative on the changes of China-U.S. relations.Therefore, the U.S. China policy is the focus of research to grasp the direction ofdevelopment of China-U.S. relations. This paper tries to find the root causes of thispattern from the perplexing influential factors of U.S. policy towards China. Theauthor considers that the formulation and implementation of the U.S. policy towardChina is worked out by people---the decision-makers is key to the formulation andimplementation of policy toward China.By analyzing the cognitive structure, consisting of belief systems and politicalschema, of policy makers in the four administrations after the Cold War includingBush, Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, with the method of cognitive psychology,the paper finds out the psychological factors of America’s policy makers towardsChina, and then the essence of the America’s policy towards China at the micro level.The belief systems which are the ideological root of the decision makers informulating the policy towards China mainly comprises the growth course (President,Secretary of State, Vice President, the President’s National Security Adviser, NationalSecurity Council East Asian Affairs Director, Defense Minister, Finance Minister,Assistant Secretary of State, Deputy Secretary of State for East Asian and PacificAffairs, and Ambassador to China), religious belief, education background, career,governing ideas, of the administrations’ members. On this basis, the author mainlyuses political schema theory which refers to the second generation theory of cognitive structure based on information processing to analyze the psychological factors ofAmerica’s policy makers towards China. Schema refers to "a mental framework orstructure reflecting certain aspects of the real world, organizing people’s knowledgeand expectations by focusing on a specific theme and helping understand and processsocial information". The author considers, in the Bush administration the politicalschema of the policy makers towards China is the combination of the Trinity, i.e. theU.S. strategic objectives, economic interests and values; and in the Clinton, George W.Bush and Obama administrations, the political schema is the combination of four, i.e.American strategic objectives, economic interests, values and security interests. Thesepolicy makers process large amounts of China-related information under theinternational and domestic environments. With the change in internationalenvironment as the foundation, such information centers upon the China-U.S.interactive relations and is influenced by domestic factors and the third-party factors(such as the U.S. allies, hostile countries, and international emergencies).China-related information exists in the minds of those policy makers in the form ofrepresentation, which reflects the objective things on one hand, and interacts with theestablished political schema of policies towards China on the other hand. The U.S.policy makers take the political schema as intervening variable, and process therepresentation they get to make sure any policy made towards China is in accordancewith the established political schema; if not, the policy makers will test and modifythe policy with its political schema, and eventually make right policy and put it intopractice.By the comparative analysis of political schema of the U.S. four administrations’policy makers after the cold war, the author tries to find out their similarities anddifferences, especially the common features, which help discover the essence of theU.S. policy towards China at the micro level, and then China’s policy towards the U.S.can be formulated accordingly. The author found that the political schema of the fouradministrations’ policy makers all includes three aspects: the U.S. strategic objectives(i.e. maintaining the hegemony), economic interests (e.g. maintenance of theeconomic hegemony, economic development at home, etc.) and values (e.g. freedom,democracy, human rights, etc.). From the Clinton administration on, the politicalschema incorporated the security interests (e.g. nuclear non-proliferation, fightingterrorism, global issues, etc.). In all political schemas, the U.S. strategic objectives are dominant. The difference is that as the international situation and the China-U.S.interactive relations change, under the influence of the different traditional beliefsystem of the two countries, the priorities of the U.S. economic interests, the U.S.values and the U.S. security interests in the maintenance of its strategic objectives areadjusted; therefore, different forms of combination are formulated. At the same time,the competition and compromise between hardliners and moderates in theadministrations and Congress has greatly influenced and adjusted the U.S. policy toChina. This is reflected in the transition of the policy to China from confrontation orcompetition at the beginning to contact and cooperation in the former threeadministrations, whose mistakes in the policy the Obama administration consciouslyavoided, but its policy to China at the beginning is kind of overcorrected.The author thinks that the starting point and the essence of the U.S. policytoward China is to protect the U.S. hegemony in the world, to prevent China as anemerging power to challenge its leading position in the world, and is never giving upto carry out its values to China. It should be pointed out that, the U.S. policy makersin the four administrations, especially the hardliners, have the cognitive deviation inthe China’s development path, the world development trend and the universality of itsvalues. In fact, China, which develops peacefully, does not intend to challenge the U.S.hegemony, but is determined and able to safeguard its own interests. Under theeconomic globalization, the U.S. is inseparable from the cooperation with China inthe economic, political, security and other fields; relations between the world leadingand emerging powers is no longer a simple competition for hegemony andsubstitution, but of cooperation and interdependence; the U.S. values are not universal,and are not applicable at a certain stage of social development and in a lot of nationsand peoples. The cognitive deviation of the U.S. policy makers in these aspectsinfluences the development direction of the U.S. policy towards China and Sino-U.S.relations to a large extent.The biggest problem currently in China-U.S. relations is a lack of strategicmutual trust, namely "strategic mutual suspicion" is on the rise. When making thepolicies towards the U.S., China should grasp the essence of the U.S. policy to Chinaand avoids its cognitive deviation. In order to make the U.S. believe China’s path ofpeaceful development, great attention should be paid to the publicity of China’s policyto the U.S. and China’s foreign strategy, and what’s more important is to enhance mutual trust through communication, correct the cognitive deviation of the U.S.policy makers psychologically, and finally reach a consensus in the direction of thedevelopment of China-U.S. relations. The author considers that China-U.S. relationsshould be dealt with from three views of points: the essential problems, the long-termdevelopment and the present relations. China and U.S. should respect each other inideology, social system and historical and cultural traditions and so on; strengthen themutually beneficial and win-win cooperation from long-term strategic point of view,reducing adverse competition and unnecessary friction; manage and controldifferences by considering and taking care of each other’s needs and concerns,compromising to each other, and establishing crisis management mechanism. Chinashould persuade the United States to make joint efforts to explore the connotation ofnew type of relations between great powers, and actively promote the construction ofmore mature new type of great power relations between China and U.S.