The People’s Republic of China (PRC) is the major power in its neighborhood and an emerging great power on the wider global stage. China’s rise has been underway for almost seventy years, but has occurred in a much more serious and sustained manner since the late 1970s. The PRC’s initial upward trajectory – until the late 1980s – was remarkably restrained and peaceful as the country experienced an unprecedented period of domestic political stability. The first decade following China’s launching of the policy of reform and opening to the outside world was accompanied by a largely moderate foreign policy with limited use of coercion. Moreover, during the 1980s and 1990s China witnessed rapid rates of economic growth along with largely manageable internal political and social transformations with the crisis of 1989 being the glaring exception. However, since the 1990s, the PRC appears to have grown more assertive and belligerent externally, China’s economic growth has slowed, and some observers believe that China may be at greater risk of internal political instability than at any time since 1989.1
Despite presiding over an unprecedented strengthening of China’s hard and soft power capabilities and expansion of these assets, PRC leaders remain deeply insecure.2 Chinese leaders attach greater importance to some geographic zones than others; hence, their insecurities are not evenly distributed. Not surprisingly, they perceive the home front and those areas most proximate to the PRC as being vital to national security and those more distant as less critical. When Chinese leaders gaze out of their office windows in Beijing they see China as the center of a world ringed by four concentric circles. The innermost ring contains all the territory that the PRC controls or claims (including continental and maritime areas); the second ring extends just beyond the periphery of these borders to those countries and areas immediately geographically adjacent to the PRC; the third ring encompasses China’s larger Asia-Pacific neighborhood (comprising the regions of Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Oceania, South Asia, Central Asia); the fourth ring includes the rest of the globe (the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and the Americas).
Is China rising?
Most observers take it as a given that China’s emergence as the world’s most powerful state is ongoing and inexorable.3 While this outcome is quite possible, it is far from preordained. China’s economic growth has continued from the 1990s and 2000s through the 2010s but the rates of this growth have slowed significantly from the double-digit annual average surge of the 1980s and 1990s to more modest rates of expansion in the 2000s and 2010s. Moreover, other countries are not standing still. The U.S. economy continues to grow albeit sluggishly. Closer to home, many of China’s neighbors are experiencing quite impressive rates of economic growth; these neighbors include India and Southeast Asian states.
Moreover, China is facing significant domestic challenges to its economic growth. These include a property bubble, an under-regulated financial sector, serious income inequalities, and uneven regional growth rates. Indeed, Chinese leaders are especially concerned about these problems, fearful that one or more of these problems will derail or even destroy China’s economic vibrancy. A top priority of Chinese leaders is to protect and sustain economic growth.4 This fear is grounded in the assumption that the political legitimacy of CCP rule is closely linked to economic performance. Consequently, Chinese leaders are highly motivated to do whatever it takes to keep the economy growing.
These efforts include a sustained initiative to improve the infrastructure in western China and furthering the country’s integration into the global economy. Chinese leaders appear to have concluded that they have no alternative but to embrace the world economic system, despite being extremely worried about China’s vulnerability to a wide range of external threats. PRC leaders have concluded that walling off China from the outside world would undermine the country’s economic growth. Their unofficial mantra has become: “Thinking locally demands acting globally.”5
While China’s economy has demonstrated impressive resiliency in the face of internal or external shocks, credible past performance is no guarantee of strong future growth. Remarkably China was able to weather successive international financial turbulence without much damage; the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997 did not hurt China significantly, and a decade later the Global Financial Crisis similarly left China relatively unscathed.6 But it would be dangerous to assume that China would also be immune to the next external economic crisis especially because the country is likely to have far greater international vulnerabilities. Indeed, the PRC is “getting out [into the global economy] by getting deeper in.”7 China is proceeding with the internationalization of the Renminbi and in 2013 the PRC embarked on the highly ambitious “One Belt, One Road” initiative. In the latter effort, President Xi Jinping has promised tens of millions of dollars in investment for infrastructure projects in countries around the world, starting with U.S.$46 billion to Pakistan announced during his visit to Pakistan in April 2015. Furthermore, China has moved to expand its use of credit to other countries through various development banks and financial entities, notably the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB).
China is also rising militarily, but this defense buildup is not without its challenges and obstacles.8 PRC defense budgets have grown at a healthy average annual rate of above ten percent since 1990. By other measures too, China’s national defense capabilities are being considerably enhanced. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA), as all branches of the PRC’s military are known, is undergoing comprehensive modernization acquiring a vast array of newer weapon systems, better educated and trained personnel, and overhauling its organizational structure.
The PLA has replaced its antiquated aircraft, surface and subsurface vessels, and ground force equipment with more modern and capable systems. This transformation should not be minimized. For example, between 1990 and 2010 the PLA Air Force retired almost 3,500 “obsolete” airframes which comprised some 70 percent of its inventory of combat aircraft.9 The PLA also has more numerous and capable ballistic missiles and cruise missiles. The transformation has not gone unnoticed by China’s neighbors or the United States. The Pentagon has gained new respect for PLA capabilities. This is evident in the use of such terms as “anti-access and area denial” (also known as ‘A2/AD’) and more recently in discussion of the “Third Offset.”10
In terms of technology, despite having an impressive military industrial complex, China is still unable to build an indigenous jet engine, and the PLA is beset by a culture of corruption, excessive bureaucratization, and distracted by internal security missions. Indeed, since 2013 PRC President Xi Jinping has focused efforts on battling corruption, cutting bureaucracy, and reorganizing the PLA to be better postured for warfighting. Chinese men and women in uniform are better trained and educated, but they remain untested in combat. Under Xi hundreds of retired and active duty officers have been purged, military regions have been trimmed from seven to five, several hundred thousand soldiers are to be demobilized, and the PLA is to be more focused on joint planning and operations.11
At the end of the day what these reforms should mean is a PLA that is far more capable and competent operating at, and in close proximity to, China’s borders. Consequently, the PLA is increasingly a force to be reckoned with within the first three rings of China’s security perimeter – armed forces increasingly able to project power in its Asia-Pacific neighborhood and go toe to toe with adversaries. Moreover, the PLA is supported by professional and well equipped paramilitary formations, including maritime security forces, such as the coastguard, and the People’s Armed Police.12
However, in the fourth ring – beyond the Asia-Pacific – the PLA is much less present, let alone capable. The much hyped out of area deployments and employments are noteworthy more because they constitute the exception rather than the rule. Anti-piracy operations since 2008 in the Gulf of Aden, an air force exercise with Turkey in 2010, a noncombatant evacuation of PRC citizens from Yemen in April 2014, a naval exercise with Iran in September 2014, and the establishment of a logistics hub in Djibouti in 2016 are all significant developments, but they are far from heralding the arrival of a new global military power. Moreover, the first ring still exerts a “domestic drag” on the PLA in the sense that internal security remains the primary national security focus of Beijing and corruption undermines mission effectiveness. While the new order of battle for the PLA has yet to emerge completely, it is likely to be very consistent with the previous order of battle with the majority of Group Armies located in eastern China in close proximity to major metropolitan areas rather than near to the PRC’s frontiers.13
In sum, China continues to rise economically but its growth has slowed with significant vulnerabilities. Meanwhile, militarily, China has grown appreciably stronger although important limitations remain.
Is China assertive?
Has China become more assertive in recent years? The overwhelming majority of foreign observers assume that answer is an unqualified “yes.” There does tend to be a widespread conviction both inside and outside of China that Beijing has adopted a more vigorous defense of its national interests within the Asia-Pacific, outside of the region, as well as vis-à-vis the United States in a broad range of arenas. Certainly China has become more vocal about protecting its so-called “core interests.” This phrase, which enjoys far greater official usage, is code for a set of issues that are of the highest national security priority to PRC leaders, namely territories inside China’s first ring of security: Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang.
But a China that talks and acts assertively is not a new phenomenon. PRC political and military leaders have long used harsh and jarring language to address other countries. This was true from the very birth of the People’s Republic. In 1950, Chinese leaders warned that the PRC “would not stand idly by” as U.S. forces advanced northward on the Korean Peninsula.14 And Chinese leaders have repeatedly backed up tough talk with resolute military action: in Korea (1950), against India (in 1962), against Russia (in 1969), against Vietnam (1979).15 Moreover, China has provided significant military troop presences to support allies in Korea (until 1958) and in Vietnam (1965 until 1970). Furthermore, Chinese border forces have engaged in extended small-scale clashes and confrontations with India and Vietnam over disputed land borders.16 Arguably there was a decade-long period in which China exhibited a more accommodating posture to its neighbors and the outside world dur...
