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TOC | Summary | Foreword | Two | Three | Four | Five | Notes | About the Author “China Threat” or “China Challenge” One of the most profound changes in international politics and the global economy in the last decade of the twentieth century is the phenomenal economic growth of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Indeed, contrary to the predictions of many China experts after the 1989 Tiananmen tragedy, China’s economic development had deepened and accelerated from 1992 to 1997, registering a growth rate in its gross national product (GNP) of around 10 percent annually (this estimate is based on a consecutive annual GNP growth rate of around 10 percent throughout the 1980s—with an interruption between 1989 and 1992 in the wake of Tiananmen). Depending on how one measures it, the Chinese economy today is probably already the world’s third or fourth largest (although a more prudent and widely-accepted estimate ranks the Chinese economy the ninth in the world).1 If China can successfully withstand the effects of Asia’s current severe financial crisis, the Chinese economy may become the world’s largest by the middle of the twenty-first century. Conventional wisdom holds that the expansion of a nation’s economic capacity is usually followed by its quest for more international influence and power. The prospect of China’s rapid economic development thus raises the question of whether or not it will emerge as a dominant regional power, or even a hegemonic world power, in the twenty-first century. For many in the West and China’s neighboring countries, this prospect is very troublesome. Their worries are based on a variety of observations and deliberations, among which the following three considerations are the most consistently and frequently cited: First, while the Chinese economy has developed at an unprecedented speed, China’s political system remains characterized by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) one-party reign. With the persistent dominance of political authoritarianism in Beijing, China’s human rights record, as many (especially international human rights watchers) view it, has not been improved, and may have even worsened, in recent years. A renowned scholar of Chinese history and politics, Arthur Waldron, thus makes the general observation that since 1989 China has been “moving toward renewed dictatorship.”2 Will a China that does not respect its own people’s political rights be willing to act responsibly on the international scene? Many in the West have serious doubts. Second, in terms of the PRC’s military build-up in the past decade, some scholars, journalists, and military analysts emphasize that there exists a very strong tendency on the part of Beijing not only to modernize China’s national defense but also to provide the Chinese military with an offensive capacity far beyond China’s borders. In examining the PRC’s military modernization program, they claim that Beijing’s military expenditures may have reached as much as $87 billion per year, if not more.3 Consequently, they speculate that underlying the PRC’s military build-up is a blueprint for a head-to-head conflict with the United States sometime in the twenty-first century. Third, although China has been increasingly incorporated into the world economic system as a result of its “reform and opening” process of the past two decades, it has remained, as many judge it, an “outsider” in the international system which refuses to embrace some of the system’s basic international norms and regulations. For example, on the Taiwan issue, Beijing has firmly rejected renouncing the use of force as a possible means to solve the problem. In the field of arms control, Beijing has been suspected of irresponsibly exporting weapons to other countries, such as Pakistan, Syria, and Iran. The expansion of the PRC’s power potential, many thus fear, will allow it to create more substantive damage to the stability and order of the world in general, and of the Asia-Pacific region in particular. This concern finds reinforcement in the historical record, where some scholars find that Beijing has frequently used force to cope with crisis situations in China’s external relations. For example, in a plausible recent study about Chinese strategic culture, Harvard political scientist Alastair Iain Johnston points out that the PRC resorted to violence in eight of eleven foreign-policy crises during the period 1950–1985, proportionally far more frequent than any other major power in the twentieth century.4 Although Johnston cautiously claims that it is not his intention to “imply that contemporary China has inherited a predisposition to aggressive, offensive use of force,” readers of his book may think differently. Warren I. Cohen, a leading scholar in American–East Asian relations, commented that “If Johnston’s analysis of China’s strategic culture is correct . . . [t]he powerful China we have every reason to expect in the twenty-first century is likely to be as aggressive and expansionist as China has been whenever it has been the dominant power in Asia.”5 In other words, if Beijing has demonstrated a tendency to use force to solve foreign policy issues in the past, how can one expect that Beijing’s leaders will be less willing to do so in the future, especially if China’s economic development dramatically strengthens its power potential? Given this history, and in view of the political and military developments in an increasingly rich and powerful China, the notion of an emerging “China threat” increasingly penetrates U.S. strategic thinking while, at the same time, forming a prevailing theme in the American media. In recent years, especially since early 1997, the “China threat” has caught the attention of many policy practitioners, scholars, and journalists, particularly in a recent book, The Coming Conflict with China. The authors, Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro, two journalists who have covered Beijing extensively, argue that China is an “unsatisfied and ambitious power whose goal is to dominate Asia,” and that “if China remains aggressive and the United States naive,” a direct confrontation between China and the United States will come sooner or later.6 Thus they appeal to policymakers and the general public alike to pay closer attention to the serious threat China will eventually pose to vital American interests in Asia and in the world overall. The grave estimation of the “China threat’s” serious nature leads to all kinds of policy prescriptions emphasizing the need either to “constrain” or to “contain” China. These prescriptions, though varying from case to case, generally argue for the strengthening of U.S. military capabilities in general and its military presence in Asia in particular. They also urge that, with Washington playing a leadership role, China’s neighbors should take coordinated actions to deter the PRC’s putative expansionist maneuvers. In a few extreme cases, the PRC is equated with Hitler’s Germany, and the crisis scenario that could be created by the China threat is compared to “a Cold War as bad as the last.”7 The worries about an emerging China threat are overstated, though not totally without grounds. As would be the case with any other nation in a comparable situation, the rapid development of China’s economic capacity will inevitably cause profound changes in the international balance of power, introducing new elements of instability in international relations, thus “threatening” the existing world order. But the “China threat” thesis, no matter how sophisticated its articulation, is fundamentally flawed: It fails to account for the challenges resulting from China’s growth that the Chinese people must meet in the first place. Furthermore, it creates a confrontation line between China and the rest of the world, making them regard each other as enemies and potential enemies. The thesis thus risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. It is here one finds that although the Cold War has ended, Cold War–style thinking has not. This essay proposes an alternative approach to the “China threat” thesis. The central argument of this essay is that the problems generated by China’s emergence as a prominent world power should be defined as a “China challenge,” with which both the Chinese people and the rest of the world must cope through mutual understanding and cooperation, rather than a China threat, against which the rest of the world must form a strategy in a well-planned collective effort. In the following parts of this essay, I will first review the history of the PRC’s foreign-policy behavior, especially during the Maoist era, when China was a revolutionary power, with the hope that this review will provide useful insights into the orientation of China’s external behavior during the post–Cold War era. I will then discuss the “China challenge” from a Chinese perspective, paying special attention to several key issues: the profound legitimacy crisis that the Chinese Communist state is facing, the Chinese people’s difficulty in identifying “China” and its position in the world, and the dilemma of pursuing economic development and democracy simultaneously. This section will conclude with a discussion emphasizing that the “China challenge” is not merely a Chinese problem, but one that will solicit attention and answers by peoples in other parts of the world. In the last part of the essay, I will discuss the implications of the “China challenge” for U.S. policy toward East Asia in general and China in particular and provide policy prescriptions for dealing with a few problems that have the potential to cause serious conflict between Beijing and Washington. In particular, I will emphasize Washington’s need to establish a consistent and long-term vision, based on a real understanding of China’s problems, in formulating its policy toward the “China challenge.” The essay will conclude by making several salient points that are crucial to the stable development of Sino-American relations in the twenty-first century. TOC | Summary | Foreword | Two | Three | Four | Five | Notes | About the Author Home | Jobs | FAQs | Contact Us | Directions | Privacy Policy | Site Map United States Institute of Peace -- 1200 17th Street NW -- Washington, DC 20036
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