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CHINA'S GRAND STRATEGY AND U.S. FOREIGN POLICY
by Avery Goldstein
September 27, 2005
Avery Goldstein is Professor of Political
Science,
University of Pennsylvania, and Senior Fellow of the Foreign
Policy Research Institute. This essay is based on an FPRI
talk on Dr. Goldstein's latest book "Rising
to the
Challenge: China's Grand Strategy and
International
Security" (Stanford University Press, 2005) and on testimony
delivered before the U.S-China Economic and Security Review
Commission (July 2005).
CHINA'S GRAND STRATEGY AND U.S.
FOREIGN POLICY
by Avery Goldstein
China's increasing economic and military capabilities have
attracted much attention in recent years and prompted many
to ask: How should the world, especially the United States,
respond to this emerging great power? A sensible response
requires not only figuring out the speed and extent
of
China's rise, but also answering a question
that has
received much less attention: What is China's
grand
strategy? In the following I briefly outline an answer to
this question. I begin by explaining the origins of China's
current grand strategy whose elements coalesced in the mid-
1990s as the leaders in Beijing adjusted to the realities of
the post-Cold War world. The elements of this strategy came
together when China's leaders recognized the unexpectedly
stiff international challenges they faced in pursuing their
central foreign policy goal-to enable China to emerge as a
true great power during the 21st century. After discussing
the factors that shaped the grand strategy
they have
adopted, I then describe its basic features and conclude by
considering some of its implications for
U.S.-China
relations and U.S. policy towards China.
Two preliminary points of clarification are in
order.
First, although the terrorist attacks of
9/11 have
unquestionably affected China's foreign relations, in the
post-Cold War era the turning point for Beijing, in contrast
to Washington, was not 2001 but rather the mid-1990s. It
was during the mid-1990s that the essential elements
of
China's current approach were woven into a more coherent
framework. Second, China's grand strategy is not explicitly
articulated in a formal declaration; it remains implicit and
is discerned through observing China's
international
relations in recent years. Nevertheless, my use of the label
"grand strategy" is not meant merely as rhetorical
window
dressing for a broad description of China's foreign policy.
Instead, the term is used to indicate that
there is
something distinctive about the combination of political,
economic, and military means Beijing has adopted over the
past decade to ensure the country's vital interests in a
possibly dangerous world. My invocation of "grand strategy"
also indicates that I see a central logic that underpins or
integrates Beijing's foreign policy decisions across issue
areas and, as importantly, that this logic takes account of
or anticipates the expected reaction of others to China's
choices.
THE MOTIVATION FOR CHINA'S STRATEGIC TURN
Four factors explain why China embraced its current foreign
policy approach in the mid-1990s.
1. U.S. Strength. By the mid-1990s, Chinese
analysts
recognized that, contrary to their belief when the Cold War
ended, the world was not quickly going to become multipolar.
Instead, unipolarity would last for decades, with the U.S.
remaining the world's sole superpower. As such, for the
foreseeable future China would have to operate in a setting
where the U.S. would have the ability to frustrate China's
international ambitions.
2. China's Weakness. Although China's
economic and
military capabilities were growing as a result of the reform
program in place since 1979, it still lagged far behind the
world's leading states, especially the U.S. Perhaps most
significantly, as China's leaders witnessed U.S. military
operations during the 1990s, beginning with Operation Desert
Storm in 1991, they more clearly recognized just how far
they had to go before their armed forces were in the same
league as those of the U.S. and its allies.
3. Nervous International Reaction. Even though
China
remained economically and militarily outclassed in the first
half of the 1990s, its growing capabilities had already
begun to prompt others to debate "China's rise" and led some
to react in ways that could damage China's interests. In
the U.S., there was new talk about a "China threat" and what
might have to be done about it. Among China's immediate
neighbors, especially those in Southeast Asia, there was new
concern about China's assertive posture towards resolving
maritime and territorial disputes, and some wondered what
this might portend about the role an even more powerful
China would play in coming decades.
Against this
background, China's leaders were
alarmed by
Washington's efforts in the mid-1990s to update its Cold
War-vintage alliances with Australia and Japan, as well as
enhanced U.S. military cooperation with the nations
of
Southeast Asia -- trends that Beijing worried might be the
beginnings of an American-led regional effort to contain
China.
4. Taiwan Tensions. In 1995-1996 China saw a challenge to
its sovereignty claim over Taiwan from a new cohort
of
elected leaders on the island. When Beijing used military
exercises to warn Taiwan about the risks
of pursuing
independence, Washington responded with its own
naval
maneuvers that clearly signaled a continued
American
interest in Taiwan's security and the likelihood of U.S.
intervention if China used force to press its claim
to
Taiwan. This mini-crisis over Taiwan clarified for Beijing
that in addition to long-term, hypothetical concerns about
the U.S. and others frustrating China's rise to great power
status, China had to worry about a more immediate, specific,
short-term military contingency -- the risk of a war in the
Taiwan Strait that would require China to engage the U.S.
military even while China's military remained distinctly
outclassed.
In short, by about 1996, the international situation looked
pretty bleak from China's perspective. What could Beijing's
leaders do about it? Their answer has been the
grand
strategy, or the logic, that has guided China's foreign
policies in the years since 1996. This grand strategy was
not announced with a formal declaration, or even given a
clear name. In the last few years, some in China did begin
referring to their approach as the strategy of "peaceful
rise," a term more recently shunned in favor of
"peaceful
development" (a shift in terminology for reasons of style
rather than substance). Whatever label one uses to describe
it, China has adopted a strategy that aims to facilitate
China's rise by reducing the likelihood its
growing
capabilities will alarm others or provoke them to oppose
China.
CHINA'S GRAND STRATEGY
How has this strategic logic been translated into policy?
Since mid-1996 China's leaders have centered their foreign
policy around two broad efforts.
First, they have embraced policies designed to reassure
China's neighbors and to enhance the PRC's reputation as a
more responsible and cooperative international actor.
Beijing's widely touted self-restraint during the wave of
currency devaluations that accompanied the Asian financial
crisis in the late 1990s was an early example
of this
effort. Of more enduring significance has been China's
active embrace of multilateralism since the mid-1990s that
includes its central role in the Shanghai
Cooperation
Organization, its participation in the attempt to work out a
peaceful resolution of the nuclear crisis on the Korean
peninsula, and especially its multipronged effort
to
facilitate cooperation with the ASEAN countries of Southeast
Asia.
Second, since 1996 China's leaders have been engaged in a
concerted effort to improve bilateral relations with the
world's other major powers in order to reduce the likelihood
that they will unite to prevent China's slow but steady
rise. By cultivating various types of partnerships, Beijing
seeks to increase the benefits other great powers see in
working with China and to underscore the opportunity costs
of working against it. These partnerships are expected to
establish a simple linkage: if China's great power partners
opt to press Beijing on matters important enough to sour
relations, they will jeopardize important benefits such as
economic opportunities for trade and investment
and
cooperation in managing the security problems of weapons
proliferation and terrorism.
In sum, then, the grand strategy that has guided China's
foreign policy over the past decade emerged as a reaction to
the stiff challenge Beijing faces as a relatively
weak
state, but one whose growing power and
international
aspirations already make others nervous and might lead them
to oppose China. The combination of policies designed to
cultivate China's reputation as a responsible international
player and to nurture partnerships with major powers seeks
to ensure an international context in which China has the
opportunity to continue the decades-long process
of
modernization that will be necessary if it is to become a
true great power.
IMPLICATIONS OF CHINA'S GRAND STRATEGY
In itself, China's current grand strategy, a strategy that
seeks a "peaceful rise" or "peaceful development,"
raises
few concerns. It is important, however, to recognize that
this is explicitly a strategy for a period of transition,
designed for the decades it will take China to rise. What
happens after China rises? Will it continue to embrace the
current policies that make it basically a responsible status
quo power? Or, once it has amassed greater capabilities,
will China demand changes in the international order that
signal its arrival as a disruptive, revisionist
power
determined to alter the international system
to its
advantage? Confronted with these important questions,
Chinese officials and analysts typically assert that China
will "never be a hegemon, never practice power politics, and
never pose a threat to its neighbors or to world peace." Yet
many analysts outside China respond to these questions with
equally firm convictions, insisting a more powerful China
will inevitably pose a threat to international peace and
stability; they typically justify their view by drawing on a
preferred theory about international relations or by citing
examples of rising powers that caused trouble in the past.
Which of these contrasting views is closer to the truth? My
answer is not only that we don't know, but that we simply
can't know. At least not yet.
In looking to the future, the Chinese may very well
be
sincerely representing their peaceful intentions today.
Nevertheless, they cannot possible know how a
Chinese
government several decades from now will view its country's
interests or how it will choose to respond to what
will
inevitably be a much different international situation. And
in looking to the future, while foreign analysts are surely
correct in pointing to persuasive academic theories about
the disruptive potential of rising powers and in citing
worrisome historical examples of them, there are also some
academic theories and historical examples that suggest the
rise of a new great power need not inevitably spell trouble.
UNCERTAINTY AND POLICY
If we cannot be sure about how a more powerful China will
behave, how can we sensibly deal with a rising China in the
coming years? The key to sensible policy in dealing with
China is to recognize that we are in the midst of what the
Chinese sometimes refer to as a "period
of strategic
opportunity." For at least the next couple of decades, the
areas of conflict between the U.S. and China (especially
difficult economic problems and even the potentially
dangerous disagreement about Taiwan) are in fact manageable,
not intractable, problems. And both China and the U.S. have
important common interests (fighting terrorism, dealing with
proliferation, coping with environmental degradation, and
addressing public health crises in a globalized setting)
that provide strong incentives for both Beijing
and
Washington to work hard to manage and contain bilateral
conflicts. Because conflicting interests do not yet swamp
common interests in U.S.-China relations, there is time,
most likely a couple of decades, to learn whether a longer-
term modus vivendi is possible. Each side will be drawing
conclusions along the way. Time will provide the Chinese
with the opportunity to learn whether the U.S. is willing to
accept a larger international role for a more
powerful
China. Time will also provide the U.S. with the opportunity
to learn whether China is in fact emerging as a responsible
great power with which the U.S. can coexist
without
sacrificing American vital interests. A sensible policy is
not only one under which the U.S. seizes this
"period of
strategic opportunity" to monitor what China does, but also
one which encourages China's responsible behavior whenever
possible.
There are, of course, no guarantees about how China will
respond to a sensible U.S. approach of
contingent
cooperation. Others might well argue, then, that prudence
requires us instead to "to prepare for the worst," that it
is "better to be safe than sorry," and that wisdom suggests
it is wiser to take a hard line against China while it is
still weak. For three reasons, I think that position is
misguided.
First, it would undermine currently important
U.S.
interests; China would reciprocate our hostility and that
would make it much more difficult for us to address the many
international economic, environmental, and security problems
on which Chinese cooperation is important.
Second, a policy designed to contain China and prevent its
rise would be exceedingly difficult to implement. Unlike
the U.S. effort to contain the former Soviet Union,
an
attempt to contain China would find little support from the
countries whose support is essential for such a strategy to
succeed. On the contrary, with a few exceptions, such an
approach would most likely aggravate relations with many
American allies and partners around the world.
Third, and most importantly, urgent calls to deal now with
the possible dangers China's rise might one
day pose
overstate the risks for the U.S. of waiting and watching,
responding as China acts, and adjusting our approach towards
a rising China as events warrant. The U.S. holds
huge
advantages over China, both in hard and soft power. There
is no need to be stampeded into prematurely dealing with
China as an adversary. China cannot become a great power
overnight; it will be a rising power for several decades and
will only emerge as a great power if it
succeeds in
overcoming some very daunting domestic obstacles
to
modernization. China has adopted the grand strategy
I
described because it recognizes just how weak it is relative
to the U.S. and its allies. As such, China's
strategy
reflects its attempt to play a weak hand well. The U.S., by
contrast, holds most of the high cards; we need only be sure
that we don't play our strong hand poorly. A
rush to
judgment about the nature of the China we are likely to face
several decades from now is not only unwise, it is
also
unnecessary.