These cooperation spirals are presented with sweeping scope. Spirals are offered not only for hot-buttons like the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, and Cross-Straits relations, but also climate change and environmental concerns; Sino-American economic relations; economic cooperation, competition, and investment in Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East; and the two countries’ trilateral relationship with both India and Japan. Each of these spirals is preceded by a survey of the public debate Americans and Chinese have had about these issues in prominent research articles, policy proposals, and op-eds. Goldstein’s surveys of the Chinese language debates are probably the most important (and certainly the most interesting) sections of the entire book, providing American readers with a rare glimpse of discussions to which they would not otherwise be privy.[15] His policy proposals follow naturally from the literature reviews. Goldstein is aware that there is a temptation to nitpick at the various proposals (one hundred in total) listed in the book. He welcomes this, encouraging issue and area experts to “propose superior cooperation spirals, with greater specificity, realism, and thus promise to improve the relationship.”[16] This is a wise approach. In international affairs, conditions change quickly enough that rigid adherence to any set of proposals would leave the lot of them out of date. The true meat in Goldstein’s book is in the broad conceptual approach he outlines; its myriad applications simply illustrate how that approach might be turned from concept into policy.

It is thus in terms of broad concepts Meeting China Halfway must be judged—and it is here Meeting China Halfway is most deserving censure. Goldstein’s approach is simply unworkable. Any attempt to apply it in the real world would be met with immediate cries of outrage that the entirety of America’s foreign relations and domestic policies were being sacrificed to the God of Close Sino-American Ties. Just a sampling of these recommendations illustrates the problem. For the sake of various cooperation spirals, Goldstein recommends that the U.S. government formally acknowledge Israel as a nuclear weapons state, stop all drone attacks in Pakistan, invest in high speed rail infrastructure projects across the continental United States, and disband Africa Command. These policies may be of themselves worthy ones, but the hope that they will be widely adopted for the sake of stronger Sino-American relations is fantastic.

The reason for this is fairly simple: subordination of global policy to Sino-American cooperation (or, for that matter, Sino-American rivalry) is the subordination of the entire American bureaucracy to its few China hands. As a China hand, I welcome the status and authority this new conception of world affairs might grant me—but I would not want to be the man tasked with telling the fellows over at AFRICOM they must close up shop for the sake of improved U.S.-China relations! The resistance of the non-Asianists in the U.S. bureaucracy and foreign policy community to a Goldstein-style foreign policy will be too ferocious to bear.

The reaction of U.S. allies in the Asia-Pacific would also be terrible to face. Goldstein is curiously dismissive of these allies’ concerns. One can sympathize with the time constraints that shaped his treatment of them—a titanic amount of research was required simply to survey the existing debates inside Washington D.C. and Beijing, and it would be too much to expect Goldstein to provide a thorough survey of the debates being had in Seoul, Manila, Taipei, Tokyo, Singapore, and New Delhi as well; but this unwillingness to consider events as seen by anyone outside of Beijing or Washington leads Goldstein to bizarre places. He outright dismisses Taiwan’s 23 million citizens with the curt (and unsubstantiated) claim that those who seek to put Taiwanese opinion first in discussions of their future “lack an objective view of history, culture, and identity.”[17] Goldstein dismisses other allies’ fears that Beijing’s growing strength might harm their interests by comparing them to children’s “talk of monsters hiding under the bed or in the closet.”[18] Patronizing comments of this sort undermine the spirit of mutual understanding Goldstein claims is central to successful strategy for peace. Meeting China Halfway begins with an earnest appeal to not treat the Chinese with arrogance, paternalism, or undue hypocrisy. This appeal would be far stronger if he avoided these same vices when discussing the lesser powers in the region.[19]

Weighing Fire and Cooperation on Fundamentals

This partly answers the puzzle of how these two analysts could start off so similarly but end up so far apart. Haddick thinks that serious consideration of the perceptions and interests of regional powers are critical to a successful China policy. Goldstein believes they can be dismissed as easily as the monsters hiding in toddler’s closets. Goldstein never discusses what will happen if lesser powers decide they do not wish to play along with the division of Asia into two great spheres of interest. This is Haddick’s nightmare scenario.

But this is not their biggest difference. The essence of Goldstein’s argument is that:

China must make a comprehensive effort to increase the transparency of its national security apparatus, reform some of its long-held claims, and influence certain partners to conform to international norms. In a series of de-escalatory steps, the United States should reciprocate by limiting the scope of its military deployments and military engagement activities.[20]

This is almost exactly the opposite of Haddick’s recommendations for the region.

The fundamental difference between the two analysts is their theory of what makes the Communist Party of China tick. Reading these two books next to each other is a reminder of just how important an analyst’s inner model of Chinese decision making is.[21] Under Goldstein's schema, fear of American power, not contempt for American weakness, is what has led the Chinese down the path they now tread. Haddick's case is built on the opposite view. Not all they have to say, but a great deal of it, follows from these opposing opening assumptions.

It is these assumptions—these unstated models of Chinese decision making—that keep me from endorsing either argument. I have presented a different version of what makes Beijing tick. As I (along with folks like Lee Hisen Loong and Bilahauri Kaukisan) have argued, Xi Jinping’s regime believes that the Western-led liberal order and the demands it makes on those who join it are corrosive to authoritarian control, and will eventually lead to the collapse of the Party.[22] For them the Party comes first. When translated into concrete policy, “putting the Party first” means eliminating Western influence from within and actively reshaping regional rules from without. What China is doing is not an inevitable consequence of great power competition, but the fruits of very specific fears of a specific ruling regime.

If this explanation for China’s behavior is correct, then neither Haddick’s nor Goldstein’s proposals are tenable. Haddick's entire strategy is predicated on the idea that you can build a military machine whose might will raise the costs of conflict so high that the Chinese must eventually back down. But if Zhongnanhai serves the Party before it serves the country then none of that matters. The Communist Party of China’s continued domination of China is justified to the Chinese public on the grounds that hostile Western forces have always sought to contain and cripple China, but under the guardianship of the Party, the Chinese people will never be forced to bow down to foreign powers again. Backing down and accepting Western order threatens their legitimacy. It is an existential threat to their continued rule. The costs of war cannot compete with this. In the worst case war scenario, Party leaders suffer the same fate they would most likely suffer in any existential crisis (violent death); at best, they get lucky and win the war. This is not a recipe for stability.

This model of Chinese decision making also makes Goldstein's cooperation spirals exceedingly difficult, if not impossible, to implement. Beijing does not just fear specific American policies—it fears the entire American-led system. The Chinese can bide and endure this order, but they cannot permanently compromise with it. It is hard to compromise with a system whose existence threatens your survival.

There are probably less than a hundred people on this planet who actually know why Beijing does what it does. They are unlikely to share this information with American analysts.

One’s inner model of Chinese decision making thus matters quite a lot. The most disturbing thing about reading these books together, however, is that neither of these analysts, exceedingly intelligent and well respected in their field, pauses to explain where their assumed model of Chinese decision making comes from. These operating assumptions are left unstated and unproven, despite how readily everything else these authors write follow from them.