Author
Professor David Odalric de Caixal i Mata: Military Historian, expert in International Geostrategy and Jihadist Terrorism. Director of the Security and Defense Area of INISEG (International Institute for Global Security Studies). Director of the Observatory against the Terrorist Threat and Jihadist Radicalization (OCATRY).
The “rise of China” can be seen as an essentially political process, through which the ruling Communist Party has tried to shore up its legitimacy after the Cultural Revolution irreversibly changed the nation and sparked three crises of ideological beliefs, faith in the CCP. and confidence in the future. When the Party realized that performance-based legitimacy was the only hope for prolonging its dominance, economic development became the most important policy. Consequently, the success of economic development should have political implications: external ones are carefully monitored and evaluated by China’s neighbors and the world’s only superpower: The United States.
Will China become a threat to the United States, Japan, and neighboring countries?
The reason for the American concern stems primarily from its hegemonic status in world politics and China’s ideological incompatibility with the Western value system. China’s staggering economic growth has convinced the West that it is only a matter of time until China becomes a global superpower. But its ideological orientation makes China a revolutionary power that threatens both the status and global structure of the United States. Three different logics have been constructed to support the “China threat” thesis. First, ideological and cultural factors make China a threat. For the neocons in the Bush Administration, the mere fact that China still adheres to communism makes them view it adversely. Samuel Huntington has added a cultural factor: In the clash of civilizations, the “unholy alliance between the Islamic and Confucian civilizations” is the most fundamental threat to the West. For people who use this logic, America’s sensible response is, in the short term, a policy of containment, and confrontation is possible if necessary; long-term, promoting a peaceful transformation within China. Second, geopolitical and geoeconomic factors. For many realists, even China has shed its ideological straitjacket, as a great power in size (territory, population and economy), China has to pursue its own interest and respect. Nationalism can still put China on a collision course with the United States, if the latter refuses to adapt or share leadership with China as a rising power. Some academics fear that democracy could unleash strong nationalism and that popular nationalism could make China even more aggressive toward the United States. Third, the collapse of China. In opposition to the two perspectives above, some people worry that if China suffers from a Soviet-style sudden death syndrome and gets out of control, it may create an even worse scenario. The large size of the population makes the problem of shelters, the failed state and the subsequent crises (warlords, civil war, crime, proliferation of nuclear weapons, etc.) impossible for the world to face. The relationship between the United States and China has moved from conflict to confrontation, to competition, and back to conflict, but it is rarely characterized by cooperation. An American specialist in China characterizes the bilateral relationship as “the Sino-American bittersweet relationship.” but it is rarely presented cooperatively.
The Japanese have a different set of reasons to be upset about China’s rise. Although Japan has been in cultural debt to China since the Tang Dynasty, somehow Japan has developed a strong Oedipus complex towards China, that is, committing partricide against its cultural patron. In the last century, China suffered several serious acts of aggression at the hands of the Japanese. The mutual animosity between these two countries has been strong. Japan’s deep involvement in Taiwan, its stubborn refusal to offer unequivocal apologies to neighboring Asian countries for their aggressions, and the US military alliance with Japan have been irritating to the Chinese. The construction of Chinese nationalism based primarily on anti-Japanese sentiment among the Chinese made Japan an easy target. To some extent, the Chinese leadership has tried to unleash popular anger against the regime by directing it towards local tyrants or international bullies (the United States and Japan are two natural candidates). Now Japan and China have yet to develop any framework to resolve their territorial disputes and their relationship has reached a low point. The Chinese often suspect that the United States and Japan are the authors of a variety of “China threat” arguments. Chinese leadership has tried to unleash popular anger against the regime by directing it towards local tyrants or international thugs (the United States and Japan are two natural candidates). Now Japan and China have yet to develop any framework to resolve their territorial disputes and their relationship has reached a low point. The Chinese often suspect that the United States and Japan are the authors of a variety of “China threat” arguments. Chinese leadership has tried to unleash popular anger against the regime by directing it towards local tyrants or international thugs (the United States and Japan are two natural candidates). Now Japan and China have yet to develop any framework to resolve their territorial disputes and their relationship has reached a low point. The Chinese often suspect that the United States and Japan are the authors of a variety of “China threat” arguments.
In addition to the ideological threat, many other neighboring countries have more stakes at stake in China’s new movement. For the Southeast Asian nations, the presence of a sizable and extremely wealthy Chinese ethnic group and their increasing dependence on the Chinese economy for growth forced them to be very careful in managing their relationship with China. With a continental size (China is almost twice the territorial and population size of all other Asian Pacific countries combined), China consumes a huge amount of foreign direct investment and generates a huge volume of exports; other countries feel competition from China. At this time, no government in the Asia Pacific region has adopted a clear policy against China; but there have been sporadic anti-Chinese riots in Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines; and a strong resentment has arisen against the economic and cultural invasion of the North in Myanmar (ex-Burma), Thailand, Vietnam and other countries.
The combination of staggering economic growth and unpredictable political governance raises deep concern about China among the nations of the world. The Chinese leadership has realized the urgency to allay these concerns and build a supportive international environment for their ancestry. To make their rise less of a threat, the Chinese government has sponsored many public relations events, such as exhibitions in foreign countries, promotion of Chinese language programs, etc. But more importantly, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao presented the thesis of “China’s peaceful rise” in his speech to a Harvard University audience in December 2003.
Under the guiding principle of “China’s peaceful rise,” the Chinese government has actively carried out diplomacy at four (at least) different levels: Creating strategic partnerships with second-tier powers. China has signed strategic association treaties with the EU, Russia and India to strengthen their relations and balance American power. Promotion of the “good neighbor policy” in the Asia Pacific region. By increasing trade with the Asia-Pacific region and also allowing these countries to enjoy a trade surplus with China, China has positioned itself as an important trading partner with these countries. In addition, China has entered into various regional cooperation mechanisms with these countries. During the Asian financial crises of 1997, the fact that China refrained from devaluing its currency and helped stabilize the regional economy by mobilizing its reserve of foreign currency elicited positive reactions from this region and the United States. Over the past five years, Chinese leadership has been cautious and successful in managing domestic nationalism and US unilateralism, to some extent, thanks to the war on terror. Now, some signs have indicated that the honeymoon between the United States and China after the September 11 attack and the counterterrorism coalition has come to an end. If the United States shifts its policy toward a hard line toward China, cyclical turmoil in the Sino-US relationship may soon resurface. This could jeopardize China’s plan for a peaceful rise. At the microeconomic level, the United States seems to have been more provocative towards China, the latter has been more on the defensive; But if we look at the relationship between China and the US from the macro level, it seems that China can take the lead if it can remove the thorn of communist ideology and authoritarianism, because Americans tend to believe that under the doctrine of the democratic peace, democratic countries do not fight war with each other. Therefore, to create long-term internal and external stability, the CCP has to learn to play the democracy card. Is that the same as asking a leopard to change its spots?
Edward Friedman and Barrett McCormick, What If China Doesn’t Democratize? (Armonk, New York: ME Sharpe, 2000).
Peter Hays Gries, China’s New Nationalism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2004).
David M. Lampton, Same Bed, Different Dreams: Managing United States-China Relations: 1989-2000 (Berkeley, CA: California University Press, 2001).
Robert Sutter, The Rise of China in Asia: Promises and Dangers (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
