China has attracted much attention in the last decades with its perceived rise as a potential successor to the United States as the global hegemon . As history shows us, seldom has there been a great-power that rose without going to a major systemic war, like the rise of France and the Napoleonic Wars, the rise of Germany and World Wars I and II, or the rise of Japan and World War II. Because of this, China’s rise is perceived to potentially endanger international peace, too. Since the prevailing perspective in these countries and in the United States is based, particularly, on Western-centric assumptions, world politics experts in these societies often assume that in its process of ascendancy, China will inevitably clash against its immediate regional neighbors as well as with other extra-regional great-powers. Such a belief is compounded by mixed signals coming out of China over the last decade, that is, incoherence of grand strategy , where official pronouncements indicate a China that views itself like a peripheral country, trying to accomplish sustained economic development and other policy goals that are inconsistent with those of a great-power and rising regional hegemon. Yet, often deeds signal China’s desire to assert its leadership position in the region and in the world.
This ostensible contradiction has prompted a number of world politics experts to question whether this is a purposive, strategic ploy on the part of China to confuse other international actors. Thus, the argument remains that conclusions about China’s inevitable violent (or possibly peaceful) rise and its apparent purposive, tactical contradistinction between words and deeds for strategic gains are exceedingly superficial and simplistic. They overlook China’s long social, political, historical, and philosophical traditions.
It is important to keep in mind that despite China’s current reemergence as a great-power, it is an actor with a long and rich history of hegemony, great-power competition, and rivalry.1 Over the millennia of existence as a politically organized unit, China has been the cradle of civilization in the Far East. As ‘[h]uman civilization presumably emerged twice on earth independently from each other—in China and in Europe,’ (Van Ess 2013) this is a civilization quite distinct from the mind-sets originating and shaping up on the basis of the Western Judeo-Christian tradition. Therefore, the current grand strategy of China needs to be examined inevitably in a different light from other Western great-powers in order to make sense of its present and, possibly, future trajectory in global and regional politics.2
This book problematizes the current practical and intellectual contradictions in China’s grand strategy with its distinctive civilizational past and its very own ancient socio-political and philosophical ethos. In pursuing this analytical angle, I attempt to identify ideational, philosophical, idiosyncratic, cultural, historical, and religious tenets that may demonstrate ultimately if and how the origin of China’s grand strategy may produce a different evolution and projection from the way that the grand strategy of Western powers has evolved and manifested itself over time.
Consistent with the line of inquiry explained above and on the basis of grand strategy theory, this book aims to establish and trace the Chinese understanding of honor in international relations history as far back as still relevant for current historical collective memory (ca. 100-plus years), and the attendant grand strategy manifestations. For this purpose, R. Ned Lebow ’s cultural motive of honor is fundamental.3 Thus, in what Thucydides already defined as the driving forces of international relations as fear , interest, and honor , this book focuses on honor as the most important factor in trying to explain the ambivalence in China’s behavior ranging from peaceful to assertive.
The notion of grand strategy is at the core of the argumentation. The origin of this concept stems primarily from the history of the Western world. It is based largely on the experience of the European great-powers and the United States . Thus, it is imbued greatly by the Judeo-Christian tradition. Grand strategy can be defined as the general, long-term security and foreign policies of a territorial state. Grand strategy attends to the national interests of a state through the use of all means of statecraft available or at the disposal of a country, namely, economic, military, diplomatic, political, financial, and informational tools. While subscribing to the assumption that national interest always means security and survival of the nation-state in question, in China’s case additionally, the national interest is assumed to entail the preservation of its territorial boundaries and integrity, recovering territory regarded as lost, gaining the international acceptance and recognition as the only legitimate government to represent China internationally, and improving its status on the world scale (Teufel Dreyer 2012, p. 331).
To be clear, ‘internal coherence’ of any nation’s grand strategy is defined here as ‘the manner in which different policies within a grand strategy design support or undermine each other’ (Papasotiriou 1992, p. v). In the case of grand strategy incoherence, the policy inputs, that is, ‘military strategy, economic policy, diplomacy, and legitimacy’ (Ibid., p. v) will then undermine each other. In China’s case, its general grand strategy of ‘Peaceful Development (or Rise)’ and ‘Keeping a Low Profile’ contradicts the recently rising and bold assertiveness that it notably exhibits in the East and South China Sea. Yan Xuetong argues that there was a grand strategy shift from the previous grand strategy to one that he calls ‘Striving for Achievement’ (2014). Others argue that China exhibits a grand strategy along the lines of ‘Selective Leadership,’ alluding to the grand strategy notion advanced by Robert J. Art as ‘Selective Engagement’ (Chen 2014; Art 2009). Confucianism , which China has used historically as the official state ideology, contradicts China’s current power politics, saber-rattling, and muscle flexing in the region, as well as several other historical instances. Similarly, ‘Peaceful Development’ contradicts the rising assertiveness of China. What is going to be explained is the incoherence of China’s grand strategy . This means that it operates on two assumptions: first, it is assumed that China is not undergoing a change from one grand strategy to another4; and second, China (as well as any other great or rising power) actually has a grand strategy . In short, I accept the existence of a longitudinal Chinese grand strategy .
By definition, grand strategy utilizes all tools of statecraft at the disposal of the nation-state to reach strategic objectives in the military, diplomatic, and economic realms. Accordingly, grand strategy incoherence is seen when means are used to attain policy goals that are radically different from those that have been enunciated by key national policy-makers and leaders. In the military, diplomatic, and economic realms, strategic ...