From “The Defense Monitor” – Center for Defense Information,
Washington, DC
Is China an Aggressive Power?
by Senior Analyst Nicholas Berry, nberry@cdi.org
October 10, 2000
Is China an aggressive power?
The answer to this question will largely determine the future size and shape of
the U.S. military establishment.
The drafting of the
Pentagon's 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review is underway. With threats from Iraq
and North Korea fading, the current scenario of simultaneously fighting two
major theater wars becomes increasingly less credible. The emergence of a
perceived Chinese threat, however, would demand that the U.S. military's force
structure, troop deployments, weapons procurement, and research and development
be primarily focused against China. Needless to say, it would also keep the
Pentagon's budget moving up. Without a Chinese threat, force levels and
deployments could be reduced and a national security strategy based on building
multilateral regional stability could be adopted.
History tells us a good deal
about the rise of aggressive powers. A review of Chinese history reveals that
the Asian giant does not fit the mold, and thus the likelihood of Chinese
aggression is close to zero. The U.S. military can be safely reduced.
Five factors appear to be
crucial before a country uses military force to establish hegemonic control
over foreigners or at least to make the attempt to do so:
These five factors tend to be
sequential, each one feeding on the preceding ones. The factors will be
outlined, illustrated, and shown why they are sequential. China then will be
compared to the five factors.
1. A LARGE, UNIFIED STATE
Logically, one may suspect
that the other four factors precede this one and to some extent they have. It
is considered first because a unified political unit of relatively significant
size must first be established before it can embark on foreign domination.
Athens, once a dusty little village, had to grow, incorporate surrounding land
for agriculture, develop its port at Piraeus, and enlarge its population. It
was then in a position to create an empire beyond its established polity. Rome
followed the same pattern, most importantly subduing and replacing its Etruscan
neighbor and competitor to establish a secure city-state on the Italian
peninsula. Islam roared out of Arabia after Mohammed and his successors united
all of the Arab-speaking tribes. The Spanish in the 15th century had to unite
under Ferdinand and Isabella and expel the Moors before they could think of
bigger things. Elizabeth I had to consolidate control of the British Isles and
ward off the Spanish Armada before the British could turn their attention to
global affairs. Similarly, the Dutch in the 17th century had to expel their
Spanish occupiers before they could contemplate a maritime empire.
The Russians under Ivan the
Terrible had to ward off invasions from both east and west before becoming
sufficiently territorially secure to modernize under Peter the Great. In the
same century, the United States fought its war of independence and immediately
thereafter sought to achieve its "Manifest Destiny" to expand
coast-to-coast, albeit with a minor setback in failing to take Canada during
the War of 1812. The Germans and Italians only achieved national unity in the
19th century in an era of rampant European nationalism, prepping them for their
future ill- fated imperialism. Japan, the next to the last modern state (before
China) to consolidate central government control with the 1868 Meiji
Restoration, established the foundation for its military expansion.
China
China united in 221 B.C.
under the emperor Qinshihuangdi after the Warring States era, but still
suffered internal wars until finally pacified by the conquering Mongols. In the
13th century under the Khans, China sent its hoards westward, conquering all
before them. Although two attempted invasions of Japan failed because
"divine winds" (kamikaze) scattered the Chinese amphibious force,
China dominated the Asian land mass north of the Indian subcontinent. In the
15th century it seemed poised to become the world's greatest expansionist
power. Its economy was bureaucratically integrated; it employed the Chinese
inventions of printing, paper, and advanced metallurgy; it had gunpowder and
rockets and possessed the world's leading mechanical engineers. China built
huge warships, some over 400 feet in length with eight, sometimes nine, masts
carrying hundreds of officials, sailors, and marines. Its fleets - one totaled
317 vessels - plied the Indonesian islands and entered the Indian Ocean in the
first half of the15th century, having great commercial and imperial ambitions.
But the enterprise collapsed. A combination of discomfort with dealing with
non-Chinese people, the huge expense of the maritime enterprise, unprofitable
trade, and an internal power struggle back home won by the Confucian-inspired
isolationists over the internationalists ended China's overseas expansion. The
new emperor called the fleet home and had it destroyed. In 1477, even the logs
of the great voyages were burned. David S. Landes in his The Wealth and Poverty
of Nations (W. W. Norton, 1998) concluded that the Chinese abandonment of
maritime expansion had long-lasting effects: "Isolationism became China.
Round, complete, apparently serene, ineffably harmonious, the Celestial Empire
purred along for hundreds of years more, impervious and imperturbable. But the
world was passing it by."
China did indeed remain an
isolated Middle Kingdom for the next four hundred years. China didn't need the
world; it had everything needed. Internal power struggles, however, were
frequent. The 19th century witnessed European and Japanese intrusions into a
technologically backward China. China lost the Opium War to Britain and a naval
war to Japan (which took Taiwan as booty). Foreigners carved up China's coast
into spheres of influence. Christian missionaries entered to convert the
Chinese people. Chinese nationalists felt their country degraded.
Anti-foreign,
anti-imperialist Chinese nationalism surged, first with the Boxer Rebellion in
1900 and culminating with the overthrow of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty in 1911.
Under Sun Yat-sen and then Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalists (Koumingtang or
KMT) methodically defeated the regional warlords, but then faced two
challenges. The KMT-Communist alliance broke down into a power struggle in
1927, with the KMT defeating the urban-based Communists. (Mao Zedong's
rural-based wing of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] survived and made its
1934 Long March to a northwest sanctuary). Before the KMT could consolidate its
hold on power, the Japanese in 1931 seized Manchuria and began a full-scale
invasion in 1937. That put the second round of the KMT-CCP power struggle on
hold, only to resume in 1945 at war's end.
The CCP emerged victorious on
the mainland on October 1, 1949, and Chiang and his KMT fled to Formosa
(Taiwan) where they came under the protection of the U.S. Seventh Fleet after
China intervened in the Korean War against the U.S.-led UN forces.
The 20th century must be seen
as China's search for national unity and sovereignty. The Japanese were
defeated, warlords eliminated, foreigners expelled, and Tibetan autonomy
suppressed. Although Hong Kong was regained in 1997 and Macao in 1999, Taiwan
remains separate. In effect, China's historic pattern of seeking territorial
integrity is both old and new. The old unity spawned an attempt at overseas
imperialism that fizzled out in the 15th century. That legacy and the distaste
for foreign imperialism provide a highly negative background for a new attempt
at military aggression. The possible exception is the uncompleted effort to re-
incorporate Taiwan. How the issue will be resolved will play a role in
determining the level of Chinese foreign policy assertiveness. If military
force is the mechanism by which Taiwan is reunited with the mainland, then
China would likely seek to limit U.S. influence throughout East Asia in order
to protect its security against a hostile United States. On the other hand, a
peaceful reunification with Taiwan would dampen Chinese assertiveness for
reasons that will become clear.
(The reader will have noticed
that the more recent the attempt at continental or world hegemony, the more
disastrous the attempt turned out. The efforts of the Soviet Union, Nazi
Germany, and Imperial Japan all ended quite badly, with each country suffering
millions of deaths and ultimate state collapse. China's second historic pattern
of expansion for national unity appears even later in the game, which, as will
be analyzed below, does not facilitate Chinese imperialism.)
2. A RISING ECONOMY
The historic struggle to
consolidate state unity always creates a feeling of collective energy and an
urge to use the state to promote greater production and create larger markets.
Recent studies have shown that the economy - land, labor, capital, and trade -
is the best predictor of national power, more so than military might. Athens
excelled in agriculture, health measures, water management, the crafts, and
trade to build its economy. Rome followed suit, adding a safe land and water
transit/trade infrastructure and introducing factories powered by waterwheels
to increase production. For a time, science, technology, and trade flourished
in the Islamic world. Later, the Industrial Revolution shifted economic
development to Europe where Great Britain became its first beneficiary. Few
areas on the planet have been more hospitable to economic growth than North
America with its climate, arable land, rivers and harbors, and natural
resources. Add to this mix the energetic, pioneering spirit of its immigrant people
and the first program of mass, public education, and an economic takeoff became
inevitable. The United States by 1900 was the world's leading economy. The
economic growth rates of Russia, Germany, and Japan also soared before World
War I.
The imperial thrust of all
these states rested on expanding economies. A country's popular belief in a
"place in the sun" is largely determined by its rate of economic
growth compared to others. (How seductive it is to conclude that economic
productivity is the measure of an advanced civilization.) Superiority on doing
what sustains and enriches life fosters ideas that superiority in other areas
would be quite natural. The notion of the political survival of the fittest
existed long before Darwin. The fittest - those with the economy to produce a
strong military and the pride to inflame popular enthusiasm - would not only
survive but would dominate.
China
China historically resisted
labor-saving technology in favor of a labor-intensive economy, which encouraged
rapid population growth. It resisted the comparative advantage of trade in
favor of self-sufficiency. It resisted promoting literacy, encouraging an urban
middle class, and advancing modern science and social science in favor of
maintaining elitism and tradition. China slumbered, entering the 20th century
as "the sleeping giant."
World War II and the civil
war did nothing to spur economic development. The consolidation of mainland
China under CCP rule gave the Middle Kingdom an opportunity to modernize its
economy. For all the horrors of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward and Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution, his dictatorship destroyed feudal land
relationships, instituted mass education (including for women), and began
large-scale industrialization. However, by the time of Mao's death, the Chinese
economy had stagnated.
It fell to Mao's successor to
abandon the stale communist economy by introducing private enterprise, market
pricing, foreign direct investment, and trade-promoting policies. From 1978 ,
when he took power, Deng Xiaoping until his death never wavered from his
central idea that a growing economy would maintain Chinese unity, keep the CCP
legitimate and in power, facilitate the reunion of separated parts of China,
prevent foreign military intimidation, and make China a major player on the
world stage. He called for the "four modernizations" - economy,
agriculture, education/technology, and military. Data confirm the success of
Deng's economic reforms. China's economy took off in the 1980s, averaging over
9 percent in annual GDP growth. Since 1980 the GDP has quadrupled to $4.8
trillion and is now the world's fifth largest economy. Per capita income
(purchasing power parity) is $3,600. Trade has zoomed to an annual (1998) $340
billion.
On the surface it might
appear that China has created the foundation for an expansionist foreign
policy. However, substantial internal and external impediments remain.
Internally, the western region of China has not prospered as have the provinces
around the coast, although major programs are underway to redress the
imbalance. Attention is being paid to failing state enterprises where labor
strikes, protests, and regional unemployment present immediate problems that
must be addressed. So too must endemic corruption in the form of bribes,
influence peddling, smuggling, and protection rackets - all enemies of
entrepreneurship. Finally, environmental pollution has reached the point that
health concerns in major cities, especially Beijing, indicate that expensive
corrective measures cannot be put off.
But most inhibitors of
Chinese aggression are external. At one time a nation's "place in the
sun" referred to a rising state acquiring colonies as a just reward for
the increase in state power. Colonialism, however, is dead and gone forever. A
place in the sun today is a seat at the policy-making table in powerful
international organizations. China is a member of the World Bank, the
International Monetary Fund, and is about to join the WTO. It occupies one of
the five permanent seats on the UN Security Council. It wields influence in
ASEAN's Regional Forum (ARF) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC)
forum. Nowhere is China denied its rightful place in world affairs.
Globalization decrees that, in an open, competitive international system, what
a state achieves is up to that state. Although this system does penalize those
states that have difficulty competing (and the World Bank and IMF are just now
properly considering debt relief and other ways to help the less advantaged),
China has benefitted greatly from globalization. Its economy is highly
integrated with the world via trade, foreign direct investment, education
(China ranks number one in the number of foreign students studying at American
universities), and technology transfers. China's economy is highly
interdependent with the economies of the United States, Japan, Taiwan, South
Korea, Australia, and Singapore. Why would it risk economic collapse by
becoming an international pariah as a result of embarking on imperialistic
adventures?
No modern economy can
function alone. As regimes in Iraq and Serbia have learned, aggression provokes
isolation. More importantly, all China's major economic partners have close
relations with the United States, and Washington would insist that an
aggressive China be quarantined.
In addition, China's economy
still pales when compared to that of the United States. The U.S. economy is
more capable of sustaining the arms and ideology promoting international power
than is China's economy. In short, Chinese leaders have no intention of taking
on the United States and its allies in a quest for regional or world dominance.
They prefer a multipolar world and have not formulated an ideology of
dominance.
3. AN IDEOLOGY OF DOMINANCE
The Greeks saw barbarians
beyond their borders. The Romans saw uncivilized and unwashed bothersome tribes
that needed to be placed under the protection of Rome. Islam believed it had
God on its side, as did the Spanish New World conquerors. The Dutch, French,
and British believed that people in their "nonage" required the
enlightenment of European civilization, and so they assumed in the "white
man's burden." The Americans held to the myths of occupying the "city
on the hill" and racial superiority; they took the Philippines, in the
words of President McKinley, in order to guide "our little brown
brothers." The Soviet Union believed its ideology was universal and
inevitable; what Kremlin leaders decreed was truth. Nazi Germany saw its racial
superiority as fully supporting its efforts at military superiority. Japan saw
itself as a superior civilization - one that had resisted European colonialism
- and so was the perfect candidate to rid Asia of European colonialism. And by
the way, it would create its own empire called the "Greater East Asian
Co-prosperity Sphere."
China
China may think it represents
one of history's great civilizations, but nowhere is there a dogma on racial
superiority. Quite the opposite. To counter racism, the Chinese have long
argued that European and American notions of race were simply devices used to
justify imperialism, nothing more. Perhaps it once believed in the
inevitability of communism, but the leaders in Beijing have been running away
from the strictures of Marxist-Leninism at Olympic speed. Culturally, the
Chinese have great difficulty integrating with non-Chinese. Their civilization
is only their civilization, and not for other peoples. Even in melting-pot
America, many Chinese-Americans find security in Chinatowns. Other overseas Chinese
act the same. Their ethnocentrism is not a prescription for dominating
foreigners - their own Uihgar and Tibetan minorities excepted. Without an
ideology of dominance, China is missing a key ingredient for embracing
imperialism. Its military forces, therefore, have other duties.
4. SUPERIOR MILITARY CAPABILITY
Athens had its fleet and
subservient allies. Rome had its invincible legions. Islam had its cavalry and
was the first to use cannon effectively when it conquered Byzantium. The
Spanish, Dutch, and British employed their advanced ships and firepower to
establish empire. The Soviet Union used the Red Army to create and dominate its
East European empire. And Nazi Germany and imperial Japan believed their
martial spirit and modern military strategies, the use of blitzkrieg and
aircraft carriers respectively, gave them superiority over the states they
would attack. Historians can count on one hand the countries that made war
knowing that they were militarily inferior to their enemies.
China
China's People's Liberation
Army (PLA) is heavily skewed to land forces. Only recently has the emphasis
shifted to ballistic missiles and air and sea capabilities. It has twenty or so
antique DF-5 liquid-fueled ICBMs and its sold-fueled DF-41 is still four or five
years away from deployment. It has no aircraft carriers. Of its 3,500 jet
fighters, only fifty or so are advanced - the Russian made SU-27. It has two
modern Sovremenny-class destroyers with Sunburn anti- ship cruise missiles -
also bought from Russia. Its amphibious and air assault capability is
insufficient to conquer Taiwan, although 400 or so ballistic missiles across
the Taiwan Strait are targeted on that island.
Put simply, the PLA seriously
menaces none of its neighbors, all of whom have some relationship with the
United States. This is not to say that there is no concern, but if China is
planning to create an empire, it certainly is casual about developing the
military means to do so.
The PLA does have an agenda.
First, it serves to defend the homeland, although that mission is fading with
the absence of threats. Land forces are being reduced by the hundreds of
thousands. Second, the PLA is an instrument of internal control, deterring and
combating separatists in Xinjiang and Tibet, pro-democracy dissidents in the
cities, and guarding against rural protests. Third, it is a coercive force to
back China's territorial claims in the South China Sea. Fourth, its nuclear
forces exist to deter any attempts at nuclear blackmail. The ability to engage
in nuclear retaliation, the Chinese leadership believes, will prevent the
United States from again using nuclear threats against China as it did in the
1950s over Quemoy and Matsu. And finally, the PLA is gearing up to punish
Taiwan if Taipei dares to declare independence.
The threat to Taiwan is real.
PLA officers frequently say: "We have no intention of attacking anyone,
but if called upon [to punish Taiwan] we will do so without question."
Such a threatened action is highly credible regardless of the consequences.
There is an arrogance in the PLA born of China's rise to prominence and all the
attention paid to it - especially by Americans - as a nation on the move. There
is no doubt that any U.S. attempt to foster and uphold Taiwan independence will
result in armed conflict. Taiwan is considered an internal matter, and any
outside intervention on the issue would affront Chinese "sovereignty and
territorial integrity." It is not imperialism, Chinese officials insist,
to regain a "renegade" province. A proud China on the verge of unity
simply would not tolerate dismemberment.
At the same time, the
maintenance of the "one China principle" will keep Beijing patient.
The costs of developing an assault capability, of provoking international
economic isolation, of killing fellow Chinese, and of risking military failure
if the United States supports Taiwan will keep China focused on peaceful
efforts to regain Taiwan.
Until recently, Chinese
leaders have had a hard time understanding that Taiwan needs to be wooed, not bullied,
into reunification. As long as the costs of re-unification are perceived on
Taiwan as unacceptable, the marriage will not occur. Eventually, the sentiment
for Chinese unity may well push Beijing to adopt further, more rewarding
approaches to woo Taipei.
5. POPULAR SUPPORT FOR AN AGGRESSIVE
FOREIGN POLICY
Perhaps the only historical
exception to this factor as a prerequisite for imperialistic adventures is
Italy beginning in the 1930s. Mussolini had some enthusiastic public support
for his military attack on Ethiopia, but it soon faded with Italy's aggression
against Albania, Greece, France, and the Soviet Union. The clear confirmation
of this is the dismal combat record of Italian forces at the time. An army and
a people must believe that surrender would be cowardly. Most of all, they must
believe that killing foreigners is morally acceptable - as seems to have been
the attitude of Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Dutch, British, Russians,
Germans, and Japanese.
Americans, however, were
bothered by the killing during the U.S.-Philippine War. An extensive
anti-imperialist movement emerged at the time led by people as disparate as
Andrew Carnegie and Mark Twain. Many historians have suggested that America's
own history as a colony of Great Britain has produced an ingrained streak of
anti-imperialism in the American psyche.
China
The same anti-imperialism
sentiments exist in China. China cannot continually protest its history of
foreign exploitation and then adopt a cultural norm that its exploitation of
foreigners is acceptable. The Chinese may accept that life is full of
contradictions, but this one would exemplify cognitive dissonance in the
extreme.
Taiwan, of course, is not
populated by foreigners.
CONCLUSIONS
Those Americans who see China
as the new imperialist threat might do well to review the historical record.
Unless history is meaningless as a predictor of events, China will never seek
an empire. As long as it is secure on its periphery - and no country is
prepared to attack China - the PLA will carry out its internal and defensive
tasks, including putting pressure on Taiwan not to leave the fold. China is not
an imperialist power.
China will, however, use
military force to secure its territory if its leaders believe such action is
necessary. China did so in Korea, in border wars with India and Vietnam, in
suppressing Tibetan separatists, and in a border skirmish with Soviet forces on
Damansky Island. Taiwan remains under the Chinese gun.
Overall, imperialism is passe
in this globalization age. The world's governments, especially the major powers
that benefit most from globalization, are status quo powers and are willing to
intervene to prevent regional hegemons from disrupting the system. Coalitions
in a globalized world have proven to be relatively easy to organize against
major threats to the system, beginning with the UN operation in Cambodia
through Desert Storm, Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor. The existence of
globalization has not been challenged by any major power.
Therefore, the central task
for U.S. foreign policy is to sustain globalization by striving to integrate
all states into international organizations; assist weak states to the point
that the system rewards them; work with other states to settle regional
conflicts; promote trade, direct investment, and financial stability; and
moderate weapons proliferation and arms races. China can be a partner in each
area. While there is no need for it to be a "strategic partner,"
because there is no common enemy, a "normal partnership" would be
just fine.
A realistic Pentagon
assessment of the Chinese military threat for its QDR will conclude that a
smaller U.S. military establishment focused on regional stability in Asia would
be more than sufficient to provide for U.S. security.