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Reimagining China and Asia
Reimagining the International Environment: Part II
Ambassador Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, Ret.)
Senior
Fellow, the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, Brown
University
23
March 2017, Providence, Rhode Island
This
is the second of three lectures on the changing international political,
economic, and military environment after the Pax Americana. The first considered changes in the pattern
of relations between great and middle-ranking powers. The third will address the changes underway
in the Middle East.
Seventeen years ago, the turn of
the 21st century marked a phase change
in global geopolitics and economics. The
age of Euro-American global dominance that began with Vasco da Gama and
Columbus five centuries before is well
on the way to ending, if it is not already over. China’s national resurgence is the most
recent phase in a half-millennium-long contention between great powers for
politico-military control of areas under historic Chinese and Indian influence
as well as China and India themselves.
Meanwhile, the two-century-old
global infatuation with American aspirations for a more moral political order
has faded. The Trump administration has
replaced previously complacent American assumptions of global supremacy with a
whining narrative of victimization by exploitative foreigners. U.S. dominance
of the international state system is expiring-- a process accelerated by the
new administration's determination to unilaterally disarm U.S. diplomacy. This raises the question of what, if anything,
will replace U.S. and Western leadership of global governance.
There is no reason -- other than linear
thinking and a lack of imagination -- to assume that another civilization or country must inevitably
succeed the North Atlantic or the United States in achieving global military
primacy or imposing its political and economic norms and systems on the rest of
the world. But, if one does, the most
likely candidates are India and China.
Neither is well suited to the role.
Both lack the messianic zeal to impose their values on others that is
the hallmark of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. Historically, their international influence
has rested on their ability to awe others, beguile them with displays of
wealth, fascinate them culturally, and inspire them to seek to emulate Indian
or Chinese civilization. Neither has
habitually relied for its prestige on the use of military power beyond its
frontiers. On its face, the common
American assumption that either China or India must now do so is an instance of
"mirror-imaging," projecting one's own presuppositions and behavioral
patterns onto others.
India's population is about to
surpass China's, but its economy is less than one-fifth as large. It is the paramount power in its region but,
despite historical cultural influence in a wider arena, has little reach beyond
it. It has great potential to take a
larger role in global governance but, unlike China, it has yet to articulate
a strategic concept for the
transformation of either its sub-region or the broader Eurasian landmass.
For the time being, therefore it
makes sense to focus on China, rather than India, as the key agent of change in
Asia. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping [邓小平] led China in abandoning dogmatism and adopting an
eclectic, pragmatic approach to rebuilding Chinese wealth and power. The result was three decades of Chinese
emulation of many aspects of the U.S. economic model. This gratified Americans and greatly
benefitted Chinese. But in 2008, Wall
Street's vultures came home to roost in a financial crisis and worldwide
recession. This discredited the vaunted
“Washington consensus” on how countries should organize their socioeconomic
systems. China's three-decade-long veneration
of the U.S. model came to an effective end.
It began a search for symmetry in its relations with America to reflect
its de facto economic parity and
growing diplomatic clout both in Asia and on the world stage.
In February 2012, President Xi Jinping
[习近平] formally enshrined
China’s search for coequal status with the United States in a call for a “new type of great power relations.” Beijing saw this as a way to get Washington
to work with it to define rules for a Sino-American relationship based on
recognition of interdependence, mutual deference to each other’s interests, and
the setting aside of disagreements to facilitate a search for common ground on
global and regional issues. The American
policy establishment viewed the concept as an alarming Chinese attempt to
undermine – if not overthrow – U.S. primacy in the Asia-Pacific.
China sought "face." The United States judged it would be demeaning
to provide it and declined to explore doing so.
In the ensuing dialogue of the deaf, whatever opportunity the Chinese
proposal might have offered to define principles for long-term cooperation
between the United States and China was lost.
Diplomatic paralysis set in. The
two sides made no effort to find a formula for peaceful coexistence. Instead, they stepped up their strategic
rivalry, which found expression in escalating military confrontation in and
over China’s near seas.
The absence of any Sino-American understanding
about how best to manage the shifting balances of economic and military power in
the Asia-Pacific has not halted the erosion of U.S. politico-economic primacy
in the region. It has simply left these
balances to take their own course. Their
steady shift in favor of China coincides with its growing wealth and power. It also reflects America distraction by wars
and alliance management challenges in multiple regions far from the United
States. China is not so distracted, and
it is on its home ground.
China and the United States have now
entered a bilateral arms race. The naval
warfare arm of the People’s Liberation Army (the PLA Navy or “PLAN”) has come
to boast nearly 500 ships of various classes, dwarfing – in numbers if not in
combat power – the roughly 170 vessels the U.S. Navy can call upon in the 7th
and 3rd Fleets. The PLAN is
both increasing its numerical advantage and narrowing the gap between its
war-fighting capabilities in the Western Pacific and those of the United
States. So are the Chinese air and
rocket forces. The result is a progressive
reduction in the longstanding American military supremacy in areas near China.
No one currently forecasts a reversal of this shift toward greater
capacity by China to fend off U.S.
military pressure or attack.
China’s growing weight as well as
doubts about the staying power of the United States , exacerbated by White
House rhetoric, have caused China’s neighbors, including longstanding U.S.
allies, to begin to reposition themselves.
They are all looking for ways to adjust to evolving strategic
realities. They want to retain as much
autonomy as possible, avoid antagonizing their powerful Chinese neighbor, and
offset the likely continuing retreat of U.S. influence in the region both by
building up their own defense capabilities and seeking new security
partnerships.
A few examples tell the tale. Last year, under President Duterte, the
Philippines turned its back on America, reached out to China, and sought to
establish a connection to Japan independent of Tokyo’s alliance with
Washington. Japan is developing military
capabilities that can either support the United States or allow it to act
autonomously, as Tokyo chooses. To
counter China on a more independent basis, Japan is working toward
rapprochement with Russia and security and intelligence partnerships with India
and Vietnam.
The region’s most astute judges of
pecking orders and power balances and its least remorseful bandwagoners, the
Thai, have left their American perch and are tightrope-walking somewhere
between China and America. Malaysia has
begun a campaign to strengthen its ties to China. Some others, like Cambodia and Laos, have
moved firmly into the Chinese orbit.
Australia is considering how best to cope with the probable future
deference of still more Asian countries to China. Other wobbles are clearly in prospect.
All this movement is taking place
in a region of 4.4 billion people in which most supply chains converge in China,
and which is growing much faster than the world average. America’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership (TPP) left China in the chair as pan-Asian negotiations seek to
thrash out new rules for trade and investment through a proposed “Regional
Comprehensive Economic Partnership.” RCEP
is a multilateral agreement whose terms none of its members can dictate. The rules governing trade and investment in
the Indo-Pacific will not be written by China, but by committees in which
Australia, India, Japan, and south Korea as well as ASEAN all have a say. But, inasmuch as TPP’s stated purpose was to
keep America first by enabling it rather than China to write such rules for
Asia, it is ironic that China will now lead the rule-drafting process. The United States has excluded itself from
any direct role in whatever China and other Asians now come up with.
And RCEP is far from the only such
game underway in the Indo-Pacific without input from the United States. China is an active participant in almost
every gathering in Asia, while America is often unrepresented or excluded. The Trump administration’s massive budget
cuts to the non-military foreign-affairs functions of the U.S. government promise
to deepen the decline in American influence in the region as well as globally.
As China’s economic centrality to
the Asia-Pacific economies has grown, a distinctive Chinese style of coercive
diplomacy has emerged to complement the manner in which China uses force. Those seeking to cope with rising Chinese
power need to study and understand this.
Take economic issues first. Unlike
most other countries, Beijing habitually applies economic sanctions without
announcing, confirming, or denying them.
It sets no specific conditions for ending them. This allows China's leaders to adjust or end
its coercive measures without being held to account for their results or the
lack thereof. The imprecision of Chinese
demands leaves the target of these measures to guess what it must do end them. This puts the onus for a solution on the victim
of Chinese pressure and sometimes leads to factions within it negotiating among
themselves rather than with China about what might satisfy Beijing.
On occasion, China has gone beyond
economic measures and applied trumped up charges to take foreign corporate
representatives hostage, while denying any connection between their detention
and the existence of tensions over trade. (The only effective constraint on such abuses
has been China's willingness to subject itself to World Trade Organization (WTO)
dispute resolution procedures. Will it
continue to do so if the United States exempts itself from these procedures as
senior officials of the Trump administration suggest it may?)
Chinese sanctions are usually
designed to affect the other side on a hugely disproportionate basis, presumably
on the theory that overkill will speed victory.
They seldom involve restrictions on Chinese exports.[1] Typically, they curtail Chinese imports,
sometimes by abusing inspection for standards and phytosanitary purposes,
sometimes by informal guidance to importers, and sometimes by encouraging
consumer boycotts organized through social media.
For example, in 2000, after south
Korea curbed garlic imports from China, it banned the import of Korean cell
phones and polyethylene goods. In 2001,
China applied import quotas to Japanese automobiles and air conditioners in
response to Japanese restrictions on Chinese mushrooms and straw for tatami
mats. (Both disputes were resolved on
terms favorable to China.)
China has also used economic
coercion in politico-military disputes.
In 2012, the maiden attempt by the Philippine Navy to enforce exclusive
Philippines jurisdiction in the atoll at Scarborough Shoal [黄岩岛] led to China closing
it to Filipino fishermen. China then
impounded bananas, pineapples, and other fruit from the Philippines and
suspended travel by Chinese tourists to the Philippines. In late 2016, the Philippines reached a broad
accommodation with China that temporarily set aside the two countries' territorial
disputes in the South China Sea.
Also in late 2016, China suspended
loan negotiations and blocked truck traffic to punish Mongolia for allowing the
Dalai Lama to visit. Mongolia agreed not
to do so again.
China is currently putting heavy
pressure on some businesses in south Korea to drive home its objections to the
deployment to Korea of a U.S. ballistic missile defense system. The system has a radar that China believes
will degrade its nuclear deterrent capabilities, enabling the United States to
intimidate it in future. China's
exploitation of its close ties to the Korean economy for political purposes may
be a dry run for a future campaign to compel Taiwan to negotiate a resolution of
its unsettled relationship with the rest of China.[2]
China also displays a unique style
in its uses of force. The PRC first
applied its military power abroad in Korea. It has since done so against the rival Chinese
regime in Taiwan and against India, the
Soviet Union, south Vietnam, and Soviet-backed Vietnamese empire-building in
Indochina. Lately, while fortifying the
rocks and reefs it occupies, it has used paramilitary forces – in the form of
its Coast Guard – to oppose Southeast Asian and Japanese claims to desert
islands and fishing grounds in the South and East China Seas.
Sometimes China uses force or shows
of force simply to underscore the fact that an issue is in dispute. Examples include the once-every-other-day
bombardment of Quemoy [金门] offshore
Fujian Province from 1958 through 1978, the firing of missiles into targets
near the Taiwanese cities of Keelung [基隆]and Kaohsiung [高雄]
in 1995 and ‘96, and the current naval jockeying with Japan to refute Tokyo’s
claim that its administrative control of the Senkaku [钓鱼] Islands is undisputed.
When China has launched what it has
euphemistically labeled “defensive counterattacks,” it has often achieved
surprise despite having offered strategic warning that its adversaries’
objectionable behavior was about to evoke a strong response. Examples include China’s mauling of the US X Corps at Chosin Reservoir
[长津湖] as it drove toward the
Yalu in north Korea in November 1950, the PLA's rout of the Indian Army in
October-November 1962, and various incidents in the seven-month undeclared war
along the Sino-Soviet frontier in 1969.
In 1979, Vietnam took China seriously and was ready when it
attacked. By contrast, despite the
well-established pattern of China making good on its threats, Washington was
surprised when China’s response to the provocative visit of President Lee
Teng-hui [李登輝] to the United States in 1995 was not just verbal, but kinetic.[3]
Chinese warnings should clearly be
taken seriously. But Chinese
aggressiveness, whether economic or military, should not be overestimated. China tends to act with prudence, upon warning,
not rashly. It adheres to limited
objectives, limited means, and limited time scales. On the other hand, it is characteristically
determined, once the die is cast, to invest whatever level of effort is
required to achieve its objectives.
China has been notably careful to avoid “mission creep” in the wake of
success. It has never moved the
political goalposts upon military victory.
There is no evidence that its ambitions are open-ended or unbridled. Quite the contrary.
In the economic sphere, China has
settled its trade disputes with others either bilaterally or through litigation
at the WTO. It has remained focused on
specific issues and not sought to extract extraneous concessions from its
trading partners. It sticks to its
original objectives. It does not move
the goalposts. It is willing to talk.
In the military domain, China has
evidenced a similar pattern of strategic discipline. It showed great patience
in its long wait for a negotiated rather than forcible return of Hong Kong and
Macau to its sovereignty. It has been
willing to make generous concessions to resolve border disputes peacefully with
its neighbors. It has done so with all
except India (which will not itself compromise) and maritime claimants who have
declined to lend legitimacy to China’s claims by agreeing to negotiate with
it). Even when China goes to war, it
keeps channels of communication open. As
numerous examples attest, it is careful not to overreach.
Thus, China’s objective in Korea in
1950 was to prevent the deployment of hostile forces on its border. When it achieved this goal, it dug in, more
or less along the original dividing line between north and south Korea of the
38th Parallel. Beijing’s
objective in its 1962 border war with India was to compel New Delhi to address
its offer of an exchange of Indian recognition of Chinese claims in Ladakh for
Chinese recognition of Indian claims in NEFA (now Arunachal Pradesh). Once the PLA enforced China’s claims in
Ladakh, Beijing renewed its offer to trade claims with India. China had imposed by force precisely the deal
it had offered to reach peacefully. The
PLA retreated behind the original line
of control in NEFA. (India preferred to continue the dispute rather than settle
it under duress.) In 1979, China’s war with
Vietnam was directed at teaching the Vietnamese that they would be unable to live
with the consequences of attempting to build an empire to China’s southwest in
alliance with China’s Soviet enemy. Once
this lesson had been imparted, China stood down.
China’s wars in Korea, India, and
Vietnam illustrate its habit of setting clear political objectives for its uses
of force, even if it does not announce their specifics. Once the Chinese have begun to pursue these objectives,
they persevere until they achieve them, however great the sacrifices
required. This was the case with China’s
enormously costly intervention in Korea.
It was also the case in its 1979 war with Vietnam. The PLA’s bloody encounter with Vietnamese
infantry – then the world’s best – was far more costly than Beijing had expected.
But the PLA carried on until it had made the politico-military point the
Politburo had assigned it to make.
Vietnam dutifully knocked off its empire building.
Given these patterns of Chinese behavior,
China's size, its regional preeminence prior to the arrival of Western
imperialism, and its newly demonstrated willingness to defend its interests as
it sees them, China's neighbors view it with apprehension. They see it as difficult and sometimes
overbearing without necessarily meaning to be.
But China does not threaten either their independence or their
identity. Unlike Western powers, it is
famously indifferent to the way its diplomatic or business partners organize or
conduct their internal affairs. Chinese
have no apparent ideology to export and do not seem to regret this. They do not insist that others conform to
Chinese norms before accepting them as legitimate members of their
international relationship networks [关系网]. On the other hand, as is the case with cross-cultural
communication everywhere, understanding and respecting Chinese norms eases
intercourse with them.
China's growing power allows it to
bully others if it wishes to do so.
Sometimes it does. But its
inclination to do this is restrained by its having internalized the Westphalian
fiction of the sovereign equality of states and having harmonized this fiction
with the concept of “face,” the key norm of Chinese society. ”Face” is self-regard born of the apparent
esteem of one’s peers. It is sustained
by elaborate courtesy and mutual expressions of respect, often transparently
feigned rather than sincere. “Face” and
deference to the sovereign equality of states have melded in the Chinese
mind. China makes a fetish of avoiding
interference in the internal affairs of other states, even its ingeniously
obnoxious neighbor, north Korea.
In its foreign relations, China
confers face by ostentatiously lavishing the same formal hospitality and
official attention on ministates as on great powers. It gains face and is conciliated by the
willingness of foreigners – especially powerful foreigners – to defer to
it. When their deference, like that of
President Nixon in 1972, manifestly belies their superior power, China’s gain
in “face” can enable it to compromise in ways it otherwise could not without
feeling demeaned.
The United Nations, which enshrines
the legal principle of sovereign equality in its General Assembly but
pragmatically acknowledges the reality of a hierarchy of power in its Security
Council, suits Chinese psychology well.
This helps to explain why China has become a prime defender of the UN
Charter. Beijing’s proposed “new type of
great power relations” can be read as an attempt to gain agreement to a
“face-based” global order consistent with the UN Charter.
The 2012 Chinese offer to work with
America toward a new order in world
affairs came in the context of a palpable shift in the balances of power
between China, the United States, and Chinese neighbors like India, Japan, and
Korea -- all of which now have formidable economies and military capabilities. These shifts in power balances are driven
mainly by economic factors. They will
continue to take place, regardless of American lack of accommodation or
resistance to them. The only question is
whether the concomitant adjustments in relations between state actors in the
region will be gradual or abrupt, accomplished by mutual accommodation or
engineered by armed conflict over Taiwan or some other territorial issue.
The notion that the United States
can forever dominate China’s periphery and its near seas is still an article of
faith in Washington. It has steadily
diminishing credibility in Asia. America's
power is visibly declining not just in relation to China but also to the
increasingly self-reliant allies and friends of the United States in the region. These trends give every sign of
accelerating. Increased U.S. defense
spending will not alter or reverse them.
Sino-American rivalry -- political,
economic, and military -- seems destined to intensify. China can and will easily match defense
budget plus-ups by the United States. Despite
much shadowboxing by the U.S. armed forces, American military primacy in the
Western Pacific will gradually waste away.
Both the costs of U.S. trans-Pacific engagement and the risks of armed
conflict will rise. The states of the
region will hedge. They will either draw
closer to Beijing, cleave to Washington, or – more likely – try to get out of the
middle between Chinese and Americans. For the most part, they will not repudiate
their alliances with America. Why give
up something for nothing? But they will
rely less on the United States and act more independently of it.
China’s role in both regional and
global governance will grow, even if the United States recovers from its current diplomatic anorexia and wallflowerism. Some sort of regional economic order centered
on China is clearly emerging. While
America plays solitaire, China is becoming a leader in the evolution of
trans-Pacific institutions. Beijing’s
“belt and road” initiative is in the process of connecting Europe, the Middle
East, Russia, Central, South, and Southeast Asia to China in a pan-Eurasian
community of sorts. This is a grouping
that has the potential to completely overshadow the United States globally
later this century.
The world before us is manifestly
one in which America can no longer get by on its muscle. It must live by its wits. It may well be that
the Department of State and related agencies, as well as the United States
Foreign Service, are poorly adapted to meeting the challenges of the emerging
world and Asian regional orders. It does
not follow that the answer is to dismiss the diplomats, ignore the spies, shut
the door, stock up on weaponry, and look for military solutions to non-military
problems. That is the opposite of statecraft.
It is a waste of taxpayer dollars as well as international opportunities
for America. And it is dangerous.
Fortunately, despite the present schizoaffective
disorder in Washington, there is every reason to be optimistic about the emerging order in the Asia-Pacific. As China's
paramount leader Xi Jinping once remarked, the Pacific Ocean is "wide
enough" to accommodate peaceful interaction between China and the United
States as well as other great regional powers like India, Indonesia, and
Japan. As power diffuses more widely and
balances of power in the Indo-Pacific become more complex, middle-ranking
powers like Australia, Korea, Pakistan, and Vietnam will have room to maneuver
in relation to their larger and more powerful neighbors.
The regional order will no longer
be managed primarily by the United States.
But this is no reason to expect that any other great power, including
China, will dominate it. Unless the
United States and China act in such a
way as to contrive a different result, Asia's politics are more likely to
continue to be driven by economic rather than military dynamics.
[1]An exception was a 2010 Chinese ban on exports of rare
earths. China then accounted for 97 percent
of the production of these 17 elements, giving it an effective global
monopoly. Exports were mostly managed
by Japanese trading companies. Rare earths are essential to the worldwide electronics
industry, much of which is centered in Japan.
The Chinese ban was partially motivated by a desire to curb illegal
mining and smuggling activities but had the added advantage of penalizing Japan
at a time when the Sino-Japanese dispute over the Senkaku / Diaoyu Islands was
becoming acute. By 2012, the ban had
become a set of reduced export quotas.
In 2014, in a case brought by the United States, the WTO ruled against China,
which then dropped the quotas.
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