China's Strategic Competition with the United States

Russell Ong

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN: 9781136594359
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: National Security
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This book examines the transformation and the multifaceted nature of the relationship between US and China in the post-Cold War era. It examines their nature and implications of their strategic competition in military, political and economic terms, as well as in relation to Taiwan, Japan, the Korean peninsula and Central Asia; the author argues that both powers compete in virtually every sphere in the international system; their relationship is overall competitive rather than co-operative, even in areas that are amenable to co-operation such as trade and nuclear non-proliferation.

The book addresses important questions including: does China's growing power and influence unavoidably come at the expense of the United States or the wider world? And asks to what extent do the national interests and policies of the United States and China coincide or diverge on a host of regional issues? It covers all the important issues including politics, security, nuclear deterrence, military modernization, energy, trade and economic interaction, and Asia-Pacific power reconfiguration.

1 The US’s Global Supremacy

In this chapter, the aim is to examine how China perceives and copes with US preponderance in the post-Cold War international system. Basically, the disappearance of a direct strategic competitor since the Soviet collapse has led to a certain degree of US leadership in international politics. In addition, the emergence of transnational terrorism as a challenge to American national security has inadvertently provided the US with the rationale to pursue a war against terrorists. This ongoing war to eliminate terrorism – an international security threat – has in turn given Washington an opportunity to exercise its military and political leadership in the global arena to a large degree. The important thing to note is that these recent developments reinforce the traditional Chinese fear of unbridled US unilateralism.

In terms of structure, this chapter first considers the implications of unipolarity for China. It then considers the notion of US hegemony and how this is perceived by China. In addition, US military prowess is eliciting concerns for Chinese defence planners and this will be analysed. Finally, the case for Sino-US co-operation in world affairs, which is centred on the shared aim to maintain international stability, is assessed. We begin by examining China’s concerns over unipolarity.

Unipolarity

First and foremost, a unipolar world where American leadership in the international system is inadequately challenged has implications for China’s national interests. In International Relations, polarity refers to the distribution of power in the international system at a given period of time. In a unipolar system, there is a dominant state and this state can often shape the global order to its advantage. This means that under such circumstances, China’s national interests could be threatened as America seeks to redefine a new world order following the end of bipolarity in 1991. Given the conflictual nature of Sino-US relations, it is expected that China has consistently advocated a multipolar world structure where America should ideally be just one of several poles of powers.

In fact, China’s preference for multipolarity can be traced further back to its experiences since joining the international system, after the collapse of the Sino-centric world order. In the age of imperialism, China often manoeuvred between various Western imperial powers by playing one aggressor off against another with some degree of success, in order to maintain its territorial integrity and sovereignty.¹ At the same time, this was a strategy of the weak as it was premised on the basis that the Western powers would not collude on their encroachments into Chinese territories. From China’s perspective, the task of keeping Western imperial powers at bay was highly challenging in the age of European expansionism. Nonetheless, in such a multipolar system, China had more strategic choices in maintaining its national security interests; it could shift from one European power to another, depending on the international power structure at a given point in time.

In the era of bipolarity from 1945 to 1991, China had less strategic choices as the number of poles in the international system was narrowed down to two – the Soviet Union and the US. After the Second World War, China viewed the US in the context of an international system that was largely defined by a bipolar world of East-West conflict, with Beijing’s military and political security considerably entwined with this structure. From an ideological perspective, Communist China naturally leaned towards the Soviet Union in the 1950s in order to counter the US offensive against the Communist bloc. At the same time, it is important to note that national survival was arguably the main reason for the conclusion of the Sino-Soviet military alliance in 1950 as a young People’s Republic of China (PRC) sought to ensure its very own survival in an anarchic international system. However, the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s led to China regarding the Soviet Union as a “social imperialist”. At this point in time, China had to face two hostile superpowers on its own simultaneously. Accordingly, the solution for China was to count on the moral and ideological support of Third World countries, especially Marxist ones, to counter the threat posed by both the Soviet Union and the US. Again, this was a challenging task as the two superpowers carve out their spheres of influence on a global scale and this was a limitation to China’s strategy.

Gradually, during the 1970s, China’s attitudes towards the US changed and parallel concerns about Soviet global power became more pertinent. The result was China tilting to the US to counter the Soviet threat, which was regarded as more menacing at that time. In fact, China fought a border war against the Soviet Union on the Ussuri River in 1969. From about 1979 onwards, China essentially manoeuvred between the US and the Soviet Union. Within the strategic triangle, Beijing oscillated from one superpower to another, depending on which one was regarded as the more dangerous threat to its national security at a given point in time. At the time, some analysts have contemplated a notion of tripolarity in the international system as China was becoming a more powerful country by the 1980s. However, it must be pointed out that if one argues that the international system was indeed tripolar, then China was clearly a distant third behind the two superpowers. In short, a stronger argument is that the Cold War system was essentially bipolar and China had to work within such a structure, like any other major country such as France or Britain.

From the above historical analysis, the important point is that in a non-unipolar world, Beijing has more room to manoeuvre. From China’s perspective, multipolarity is the best because it allows for the most number of strategic options in seeking alliances, for example. Historically, the next best option is bipolarity, where the options for forming alliances – formal or informal – are reduced to two. Clearly, the worst-case scenario is one where there are no options but to balance against the hegemon.² In short, a key Chinese concern today is that the US no longer faces a direct strategic competitor following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. As such, China has to face the US very much on its own with little realistic option of balancing against the US together with another great power. The point is that currently, Russian influence in international politics is not at the level of the Soviet era and hence there is no adequate balance to American power. As for the notion of a united European bloc, the national interests of the key countries there have yet to diverge too radically from those of the US, attesting to the enduring nature of the Atlantic Alliance.³ In the absence of a direct strategic competitor, it appears that the US is free to pursue its national interests and shape the international system to a large extent, which will have implications for China.

From China’s perspective, the US grand strategy is to completely replace the East-West bipolar system with an American-led unipolar structure in the twenty-first century. Accordingly, a key problem is how to stop the single superpower from aligning closely with the advanced industrialised democratic states in western Europe and regional rival Japan. Although the US is far ahead of other states in terms of national power, it still needs the support of key allies to maintain the international order. The key issue here is the sustainability of a US-led world order. In the long run, one may argue that US unilateralism is difficult to sustain for two reasons. First, non-traditional security factors such as terrorism, energy shortages, financial crises and global diseases require multilateral solutions. Second, and perhaps more importantly, US unilateralism has been rebuffed to some extent by some of its European allies. In particular, during the Bush administration, the adoption of a strong unilateralist posture has led to disharmony with European allies such as Germany and France.⁴ From China’s perspective, the possibility of certain European states and Russia offering a higher degree of counterbalance to US preponderance in the international system in the forthcoming decades is a good sign. In general, the various scenarios of the US’s relations with its European allies and Russia have implications for China’s national security strategies in the twenty-first century.

In the meantime, from China’s perspective, one common tactic is to exploit the differences between the US and its closest allies. For instance, the US continues to pressurise its western European allies to maintain the arms embargo that was imposed on China after the 1989 Tiananmen event, even warning that lifting the embargo could have a negative impact on bilateral defence cooperation. From the US perspective, the embargo should be maintained for three reasons: serious human rights abuses persist in China (see Chapter 2), ending the embargo would have a negative impact on cross-Taiwan Strait and Asian stability (see Chapter 5), and no mechanisms are currently in place to prevent China from transferring technology and lethal weaponry to other, less stable regions of the world or to use it for internal repression. Compared to its European allies, the US is definitely more forceful in demanding that China improve its human rights record. Hence, it is in China’s interests to highlight the importance of bilateral ties, especially economic ones, with European states in the hope of winning more diplomatic support there. At the same time, this task has become more pressing given that the US can affect China’s military security, albeit marginally, by insisting that its European allies do not sell China specific types of weapons.

In general, one of China’s fundamental goals in the current era is to replace unipolarity with, ideally, multipolarity. The classic Structuralist argument in international relations is that states can do relatively little to affect the international system; in other words, the onus is on states to devise appropriate national security strategies largely in reaction to systemic forces. At the same time, this does not necessarily imply a passive acceptance of the existing status quo; rather, it entails states employing resources effectively in order to facilitate a certain degree of favourable change in the international structure. For China, this basically means working towards eroding the US’s status as the lone superpower in the world and pre-empting the possible negative American impacts or pressures on itself. In the medium to long term, the US is likely to maintain its position as the lone superpower in the international system. For a considerable period of time, America will continue to be a major influencing factor in international relations and also China’s relations with other great powers such as Russia. In this sense, China’s room for manoeuvre is somewhat limited and, accordingly, it needs to address the relationship with the US strategically, in the hope that multipolarity would soon ensue.

At the same time, it must be stressed that China’s active promotion of multipolarity does not equal an anti-American position, although the actual effect will weaken the position of the US as the lone superpower. Interestingly, a common conclusion today is that China will emerge as the most likely direct strategic competitor to the US in the foreseeable future. The other potential strategic competitors to the US include a resurgent Russia or a more united Europe, as noted earlier. Although China has the potential to challenge the US in the long run, it must be stressed that, at the moment, a considerable power gap still exists between itself and the US. Hence, the biggest challenge for China is closing this gap in the shortest possible time span by building a strong economic base to enhance comprehensive national strength.

Currently, China cannot afford to oppose the US openly on every international security issue because of the current capability gap between the US and itself as well as between the US and other great powers. Moreover, open opposition to the US risks alienating potential supporters such as France and many developing countries; for China, a better option is to invest more resources in winning recognition and support from countries that share some concerns over unipolarity. The general Chinese argument is that multipolarity is a natural and inevitable requirement of a globalised world where countries are increasingly interdependent one another; such an argument is in line with the themes of globalisation as well as with the domestic emphasis on rapid modernisation. At the same time, it must be noted that Chinese analysts still largely adhere to a Realist approach to international relations whereby great power competition is deemed as central and inevitable; to a large extent, they see the US now taking steps to prevent another powerful foe, like the Soviet Union had once been, from challenging American hegemony.⁵ In this sense, China is right that the US will use all its resources to maintain its hegemony in the international system.

US Hegemony

In this section, we move from the international structure to focus specifically on the implications of US hegemony for China. As a key concept in international relations, hegemony refers to the dominance of one great power over other states in the international system through military, political, economic or other means. Given that the concept of hegemony encompasses various aspects of international relations, it is worth noting that Realist and Marxist strands in Chinese strategic thought have accordingly converged in the interpretation of this concept. Chinese realists worry about a hegemon’s ability to impose its political will on others while Chinese Marxists interpret American efforts to expand the community of market democracies as a new form of hegemony. Both the realist and Marxist perspectives give grounds for concerns that the US will use its power to seek hegemony with possible negative consequences for China. Hence, opposing any form of US hegemony in the current era is regarded as an important principle and vital to China’s national security.

Importantly, China has its own usage of the hegemony concept and this is in many ways linked to its modern history in general and experience of Western imperialism in particular. As noted in the Introduction, before the arrival of the Western powers, China was the regional hegemon and it could impose its will on smaller neighbouring Asian states via the tributary system. Tracing the roots of the Chinese concept of hegemony further reveals that this concept actually dates back to ancient times. The character ba, the term from which baquan zhuyi (hegemony) is derived, can be found in Chinese political thought and has appeared in a variety of records beginning from the Warring States period.⁶ In short, the concept of hegemony is not alien to China’s rulers because they have actually pursued it and imposed it upon neighbouring states when they had the chance to do so. It was the arrival of the Western powers in the nineteenth century that led to China losing its hegemonic role in Asia. To be more specific, China’s own security was directly threatened by those powers and neighbouring Japan.

To a certain extent, the loss of its traditional hegemonic role in Asia has led to China emphasising the hegemonic tendencies of other great powers, be it the US or the Soviet Union in the era of superpower rivalry. In other words, given that China could not become the dominant power in Asia during the Cold War, it adopted the stance of denouncing the hegemonic ambitions of the US, as well as the Soviet Union. In the post-Cold War era, China’s task has become more specific as US hegemony is now the sole target of criticism. Specifically, undermining US hegemony in the international system today can only strengthen China’s own position regarding America. From China’s perspective, the worrying thing is that the events of September 11, 2001 have provided the rationale for the US to sustain its hegemony since the Soviet collapse. In other words, the war to eliminate terrorism has provided the US with further impetus to reinforce the notion of a new world order, whereby American military strength will preserve international security through, among other things, defeating terrorists.

In particular, the US mission to defeat rogue states, which often provide military, financial and moral support for transnational terrorist networks, has implications for China. The definition of a rogue state varies but is generally understood to mean states that develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD), defy international norms and support terrorism.⁷ Inevitably, these states have become more obvious military targets for the US after the events of September 11, 2001. Specifically, the US’s plans for drastic action against the “axis of evil” – North Korea, Iraq and Iran – have implications for China.⁸ To date, the US has eliminated the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq and American efforts have been focused on dealing with the remaining two states. Specifically, it must be emphasised that the Bush doctrine has left its mark on how China perceives the US.⁹ The previous US administration’s attempt to draw a dividing line has forced China to make a strategic choice, whether to join or oppose US efforts in the war against terrorists. The point is that China accepts the need to eliminate terrorism, but a specific concern is that the US might violate the sovereignty of other states and intervene in their domestic affairs under the pretext of eradicating transnational terrorism. Through operations against terrorists, the US has in effect intervened in the affairs of some sovereign states. Such behaviour is typical from a hegemon and in fact, China had itself intervened in the affairs of other states when it was at the top of the Asian hierarchy. Intervention in the domestic affairs of the vassal state of Korea in an earlier age is a case in point. However, today, as an ardent advocate of the Westphalian concepts of sovereignty and non-intervention, China sees waging the war on terrorism as smokescreen for pursuing US hegemony.

Moreover, there is a general Chinese perception that the US leads military actions in the name of humanitarian intervention and peacekeeping in order to create an international order under its control today. To Beijing, this is a pursuit of hegemony that needs to be opposed. For instance, whereas the US saw humanitarian motivations for organising a North Atlantic Treaty Orga...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. The US’s Global Supremacy
• 2. The US and Liberal Values
• 3. The US and the International Economic System
• 4. The US and the Taiwan Issue
• 5. The US and Japan
• 6. The US and North Korea
• 7. The US and South Korea
• 8. The US and Central Asia
• 9. Conclusions
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index