Chinese Security Policy

Structure, Power and Politics

Robert Ross

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781135968816
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This volume provides a coherent and comprehensive understanding of Chinese security policy, comprising essays written by one of America's leading scholars.

Chinese Security Policy covers such fundamental areas as the role of international structure in state behavior, the use of force in international politics (including deterrence, coercive diplomacy, and war), and the sources of great-power conflict and cooperation and balance of power politics, with a recent focus on international power transitions. The research integrates the realist literature with key issues in Chinese foreign policy, thereby placing China's behaviour in the larger context of the international political system. Within this framework, Chinese Security Policy considers the importance of domestic politics and leadership in Chinese policy making.

This book examines how Chinese strategic vulnerability since U.S.-China rapprochement in the early 1970s has compelled Beijing to seek cooperation with the United States and to avoid U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan. It also addresses the implications of the rise of China for the security of both United States and of Chinese neighbors in East Asia, and considers the implications of China's rise for the regional balance of power and the emerging twenty-first century East Asian security order.

This book will be of great interest to all students of Chinese Security and Foreign Policy, Chinese and Asian Politics, US foreign policy and International Security in general.

Part I
Great power politics and East Asian security

1
China learns to compromise

Change in U.S.–China relations, 1982–1984

U.S.–China relations experienced significant change during the Reagan administration. In contrast to the 1970s, when China criticized American “appeasement” of the Soviet Union and U.S.–Taiwan diplomatic relations, and to the early Reagan years, when China threatened to downgrade relations over American arms sales to Taiwan and badgered Washington on a host of lesser issues, relations were remarkably free from challenges to a developing and expanding relationship from late 1983 until the June 1989 massacre.

What is less clear, however, is the source of change. Often observers point to the 17 August 1982 joint communiqué as a watershed in the relationship, reflecting Washington’s eventual understanding of the need to be sensitive to Beijing’s interest in a “one-China” policy.¹ Other scholars recognize that PRC hostility continued after the signing of the joint communiqué. They explain the restoration of stable relations as a function of regained Chinese trust in American intentions. Only after the secretary of commerce, Malcolm Baldridge, visited Beijing in May 1983 and announced relaxed restrictions on American technology exports to China were PRC leaders confident that the Reagan administration could be trusted to respect Chinese interests. At that point, China moderated its hostile posture and U.S.–China relations stabilized.²

While there is a large measure of truth in both these perspectives, this article offers an explanation for China’s policy shift which focuses on the impact of changing U.S.–China bargaining relations. Signals of resolve from the United States and China’s perception of its reduced importance in American security policy informed Beijing of its reduced bargaining leverage and of the wisdom of compromise. This perspective not only explains Beijing’s shift to a more accommodating policy but also explains why China’s contentious diplomacy continued well after May 1983 and only fully subsided in late 1983 and early 1984.

Bargaining between security partners

Relations between security partners are primarily characterized by co-operation against common threats. Nevertheless, there remains ongoing competition and “redistributive bargaining” over conflicts of interest as each state tries to shift a greater share of the cost of co-operation to its security partner.³

In contrast to redistributive bargaining between adversaries, where the dissatisfied state may use the threat of war to compel its adversary to make concessions, between security partners the dissatisfied state threatens increased tension and diminished co-operation, which would increase its security partner’s isolation before the common adversary. In such circumstances, the state supporting the status quo, trying to call the bluff of the dissatisfied state, may simply stand firm and allow the dissatisfied state to endure the increased isolation associated with the ensuing “cracks” in relations. Ultimately, that state which can least stand the isolation will pay the cost of restoring stable co-operation.⁴

Thus the issue between security partners is not whether conflicts will be resolved but what compromises each will have to make to stabilize co-operative relations. As tension continues, the state with the greater “resolve” to withstand increased strategic vulnerability will benefit from its security partner’s concessions. At its extreme, this is “brinkmanship” in alliance relations.

Redistributive negotiations between security partners often occur over the direct cost of security, as in “burden sharing” negotiations over defence budgets. But they also take place over unrelated issues. Such has been the case in U.S.–China relations. In the era of strategic co-operation in the context of the Soviet threat, the issue involving most conflict was U.S.–Taiwan relations. While neither Beijing nor Washington wanted to jeopardize their security relationship, each sought to impose on the other the greater burden of co-operation. For Washington, this meant from 1979 having diplomatic relations and expanding economic and security co-operation with Beijing while maintaining a full range of economic, political and military relations with Taiwan. By contrast, China tried to compel the United States to isolate Taiwan by reducing U.S.–Taiwan military relations and by acquiescing to Taiwan’s explusion from international organizations.

The argument presented here is that during a period when a perceived threat suggests the need for strategic co-operation, changing perception by each negotiator of the other’s intentions and resolve leads to accommodation to previously unacceptable costs of co-operation, and that this change happens during the bargaining process. Tension occurs because at least one of the actors possesses “incomplete information” about the other, but they learn more through negotiation. As perceptions change and the actors develop a more accurate understanding of each other’s attachment to stable co-operation, tactical and, given sufficient bargaining setbacks, policy adjustment will take place.⁵

The prerequisite for such dynamics is the perception by the two states in negotiation of a significant threat from a third party. Under such conditions, the necessity for co-operation promotes mutual compromise. Clearly, during the post-Cold War period of the early 1990s, these conditions are not present in U.S.–China relations. But during the early and mid-1980s Beijing and Washington sought co-operation to contend with the shared threat from the Soviet Union. However, whereas China saw the threat as serious throughout this period, American perception of the Soviet threat began to decline. This divergence would play a key role in determining the outcome of U.S.–China negotiations.⁶

In this strategic setting, Beijing initially adopted a rigid position in negotiations. From prior and erroneous assumptions, it incorrectly estimated the price the United States was willing to pay to avoid tension, and pressed Washington for changes in U.S.–Taiwan relations. The result was continuing conflict which ultimately communicated to Beijing Washington’s re-evaluation of the importance of tension-free U.S.–China relations to American security. By late 1983 Beijing understood that it faced a choice between continuing tension or adjustment to the status quo. It chose the status quo.

An important issue in the analysis concerns Chinese recognition that the United States was not bluffing. How did Washington communicate its resolve so that Beijing reached the conclusion that Washington would not compromise? In this analysis, it is useful to distinguish between “signals” and “indices.”⁷ Signalling is the direct, bilateral communication between negotiators conveying messages designed to achieve each side’s respective objectives. They are inherently unreliable indicators of a state’s resolve, for negotiators often manipulate them to disguise the actual value they attach to the avoidance of conflict. Thus negotiators cannot know from signals alone whether their counterparts are bluffing or are unwilling to incur the costs of escalated conflict.

In contrast, indices “carry some inherent evidence that the image projected is correct because they are believed to be inextricably linked to the actor’s capabilities or intentions.”⁸ Negotiators therefore use indices to determine whether or not their counterpart is bluffing. In adversarial relations, indices include attempts to alter the bilateral military balance of power and preparations for war. Between security partners, the point is not to disrupt co-operation but to redistribute its costs. In such circumstances, multilateral considerations are paramount. If there is “inherent evidence” that changing relations between a state’s security partner and the common adversary have reduced the former’s view of the threat and therefore its need to co-operate, signals of resolve accrue greater credibility.

This is the process we will observe in China’s evolving policy towards the United States. Change in U.S.–China relations between 1982 and 1984 reflected a combination of bilateral and multilateral dynamics in which change in Washington’s China policy occurred in the context of changing superpower relations. Chinese leaders ultimately understood that the signals from the United States of its willingness to incur the costs of continuing tension reflected American resolve, rather than an attempt to bluff China into making unnecessary concessions, when they realized the significant changes taking place in the global balance and their implications for Chinese leverage in U.S.–China negotiations. They then recognized the necessity for policy adjustment. U.S.–China tension was required for this change to occur, for the tension reflected bargaining with incomplete information and the signalling and learning process in which old assumptions were challenged by policy setbacks. This tension in the context of changing indices of U.S. intention ultimately persuaded Chinese leaders to compromise and accept Washington’s preferred distribution of the costs of co-operation, including the status quo in U.S.–Taiwan relations, in the interest of strategic co-operation.

U.S.–China bargaining and the 17 August 1982 communiqué

After a decade of superpower détente, with its strong suggestions of U.S.–Soviet collusion against China and its adverse implications for Chinese security, Chinese leaders welcomed the impact of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan on U.S.–Soviet relations and the rapid demise of détente.⁹ They were also pleased with Ronald Reagan’s election victory. Rather than harp on alleged western “appeasement” of Soviet aggression, Beijing observed that Washington was now determined to resist Soviet “expansionism.” One PRC analyst said that Reagan “takes practically every problem as part of the U.S.–Soviet struggle for hegemony.”¹⁰ A senior analyst in the Foreign Ministry’s Institute of International Studies argued that although the Carter administration had developed a “new policy of containment” after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, “it did not put forward a new set of strategic concepts.” Reagan, however, “stresses that the Soviet Union is ‘the root cause of all troubles’.” An “important change” had occurred in the United States’ Soviet policy.¹¹

A second component of Washington’s strategic posture also suited Chinese policy objectives. Although Washington recognized the need to cope with Soviet power, it remained weak and unprepared. An analyst from the State Council’s influential Institute for Contemporary International Relations reported that the United States “must speed up military preparation” to cope with enhanced Soviet capabilities.¹² Similarly, a leading observer of the United States at the Foreign Ministry institute wrote that the Reagan victory was the American reaction to the “new low” in its international position and to the prospect that it was becoming a “second-class power, militarily inferior to the Soviet Union.” Americans hoped that Reagan would stop the “trend of their country’s declining position in the world.”¹³

Washington’s objectives were clear, but China doubted its ability to secure them. In late July 1982, just prior to the signing of the 17 August communiqué, Zhang Yebai, a senior analyst at the Institute of American Studies of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), offered an especially disdainful view of American policy. In a comprehensive “special commentary” in Renmin ribao, Zhang insisted that despite the administration’s “ambitious” objectives, its foreign policy was “divorced from complex reality” and “progressing with difficulty,” placing the United States in a “passive position.” Whereas “Soviet expansion policy had not changed at all,” Washington’s “‘position of strength’ had not fundamentally improved” and its “military strength is not sufficient to check Soviet expansion.” Such weakness was caused primarily by American political and economic difficulties and exacerbated by conflict with West European countries over economic policy and policy toward Moscow, including defence spending and the construction of the natural gas pipeline from Western Europe to the Soviet Union. Zhang concluded that “under pressure and constraints from all sides, the Reagan administration’s foreign policy still can hardly avoid falling into a passive position.”¹⁴

Revitalized American containment of the Soviet Union improved Beijing’s ability to negotiate with Moscow. China no longer confronted such extreme Soviet pressure and Moscow could use improved Sino-Soviet relations to ease the burden of responding to American Soviet policy. As early as 1979, Beijing expressed interest in ameliorating Sino-Soviet hostility. Following the interruption caused by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Sino-Soviet rapprochement developed further in 1981 when Beijing suggested a resumption of border talks.¹⁵ In April 1982 Moscow and Beijing agreed to recommence border trade and increase the value of two-way trade by 45 per cent, attaining the highest level since 1967. And by this time China had stopped labelling the Soviet leadership as “revisionist,” eliminating the ideological obstacle to rapprochement.¹⁶

This combination of a renewed U.S.–Soviet cold war, Washington’s “defensive” and “passive posture” in the face of continued Soviet “expansionism,” and ameliorated Sino-Soviet tension maximized Beijing’s bargaining leverage in U.S.–China relations. Washington could not be sure that Sino-Soviet relations would not continue to improve, which would further reduce Moscow’s security concerns and heighten American vulnerability.

These indices of diminished American resolve encouraged Chinese leaders to pressure Washington to compromise on the arms sales issue. Although Reagan’s contentious remarks during the 1980 presidential campaign concerning official relations with the “Republic of China” must have alarmed Chinese leaders, long after the White House retreated from its provocative posture Beijing remained on the diplomatic offensive. China’s determined effort to redefine U.S.–Taiwan relations was a response to more than mere American rhetoric. During the 1978 normalization negotiations China had disagreed with White House statements maintaining the American right to continue to sell defensive weaponry to Taiwan. Now that its bargaining position had improved, the PRC took the offensive. An authoritative analysis in Guoji wenti yanjiu (International Studies) made this clear. It argued that elements of the American elite possessed an

old outlook: so long as the United States opposes Soviet expansionism, China will not care ver...

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part I Great power politics and East Asian security
• Part II Deterrence and coercive diplomacy in Chinese security policy
• Part III Domestic politics and foreign policy
• Notes
• Index