Debate: is the rise of China’s military power a threat to East Asian stability?
About this debate
China's military modernisation is of a pace and kind that inevitably makes its neighbours feel vulnerable—not necessarily to a direct attack, but to the emerging superpower's ability to throw its weight around and force nearby countries into its sphere of influence. At a time when America and the major European powers are reducing defence spending, China's has been growing by about 12% a year for more than a decade. China's defence spending is currently less than a quarter of America's, but if current trends continue, its defence budget will overtake America's in about 20 years' time. Much of that spending has been on so-called asymmetric capabilities designed primarily to nullify the force projection power of American naval and air assets in the event of a future crisis over Taiwan. But now China is also developing power-projection capabilities of its own.
China insists its "peaceful rise" threatens nobody, but there is a lack of transparency about its intentions. America and its allies in East Asia must hope for the best, while assuming the worst—and planning accordingly.
For two decades East Asia has experienced an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity thanks to the political stability underwritten by America. China has arguably been the principal beneficiary of this stability, as reflected in its remarkable economic growth. Indeed, since the end of the cold war each American administration has sought to engage China in the hope that Beijing would become a "responsible stakeholder" in an international system that emphasises the peaceful resolution of disputes among nations and recognises the common interest all nations have in the effective functioning of a global economy.
A central element of China's response has been to undertake a major military build-up, now in its second decade, even while hundreds of millions of its citizens still languish in poverty. China is the only major power engaged in such a build-up. It is also the only great economic power under the grip of authoritarian rule.
While China's leaders profess they are engaged in "peaceful development", both the capabilities being fielded by the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and the government's recent actions suggest otherwise. For example, the PLA is developing the means to target the American military's information networks, which rely heavily on satellites and the internet to conduct and support operations. The Chinese successfully tested an anti-satellite missile in 2007, and have reportedly used lasers to temporarily blind American satellites. America and its East Asian allies and partners have also been subjected to increasingly frequent cyber-attacks originating in China. These attacks have a number of objectives, including identifying military vulnerabilities.
The Chinese are developing and fielding so-called anti-access/area-denial capabilities to threaten American and allied forces out to the "second island chain", a line that extends as far east as Guam. The PLA has fielded ballistic and cruise missiles that can strike American facilities from Kadena Air Base on Okinawa to Andersen Air Force Base on Guam.
The PLA also seeks to restrict American and allied navies' freedom of action in international waters. To detect naval vessels at progressively greater distances, the PLA is constructing over-the-horizon radar and deploying reconnaissance satellites. To stalk American carriers and the surface warships tasked with protecting them, China's navy is producing growing numbers of submarines equipped with advanced torpedoes and high-speed, sea-skimming anti-ship cruise missiles. And the PLA is developing a ballistic missile designed to strike ships at sea.
The PLA's actions can hardly be explained away as a response to an American arms build-up. If anything, over the past decade the United States, consumed with its "global war on terrorism", has focused most of its energies on its ground forces, which pose no threat to China, in support of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Rather, the PLA's growing capabilities are designed to slowly, but inexorably, shift the regional military balance in China's favour until its neighbours conclude that there is little America can do to assist them if China engages in acts of coercion. This is consistent with China's strategic culture. As its great military theorist, Sun-tzu, famously observed, "To win 100 victories in 100 battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."
While the Chinese government asserts that its intentions are benign, its recent actions suggest a growing aggressiveness to match its expanding military power. We are beginning to see what a China-dominated western Pacific would look like. Witness China's declaration that its "core interests" now include nearly all of the South China Sea's 1.3m square miles, or its refusal to accept North Korea's culpability for sinking a South Korean warship despite the evidence provided by an international investigation. At a 2010 international summit, Yang Jiechi, China's foreign minister, bluntly dismissed Singapore's concerns over China's growing territorial claims declaring: "China is a big country, and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact." One PLA general has gone so far as to state publicly that China should simply occupy disputed islands, militarise them and establish a new administrative zone over them.
This increasingly aggressive behaviour has convinced many countries in the region that relying solely on engaging the Chinese government diplomatically and economically is not sufficient to maintain stability. Virtually every country has begun augmenting its military forces, a development that is widely attributed to growing concerns over China's rapidly expanding military capabilities.
Belatedly, the American government has concluded that engagement must be balanced by active efforts to maintain regional stability. This is reflected in the Obama administration's decision to increase its emphasis on preserving the military balance in East Asia. America's goal and that of its partners is a simple one: sustain the conditions that have provided for the security and welfare of all states, rather than witness the emergence of a new order that benefits one state at the expense of others.
In opposing the motion that China is a threat, it must first be admitted that China's behaviour in the past was not perfect. For instance, in the 1960s it used to support revolution in other countries, even though it said its foreign policy was one of non-intervention (this sort of support ended in the 1980s). However, in arguing that China is now not a threat, I will not deal with ideology-based foreign policies, but instead confine the discussion to traditional notions of interstate security relationships. I will also not deal with non-traditional threats or domestic issues, such as financial problems and climate change, even though these are also of increasing importance to the region.
Why is China not a threat? First, let us look at the map. Over the past six decades, China's territory has shrunk. In the past, the demarcation borders in Asia were often unclear. The Communist Party, in founding the People's Republic of China in 1949, had good reasons to emphasise sovereignty, having suffered humiliation and semi-colonisation at the hands of the Western powers in the past. However, China has peacefully concluded negotiations with some of its neighbours, including North Korea and Myanmar, conceding land that had been under its control.
China even gave an island to North Vietnam in its war of unification, which eventually undercut own interest in claiming the associated maritime. Though tsarist Russia took much Chinese land in the 19th century, the People's Republic of China settled this border issue with present-day Russia and neighbouring Central Asian countries peacefully, respecting the reality with some small adjustments. A country conceding territory to its neighbours is not the kind of country that can be considered a threat.
The second reason is that, rather than being a threat, China's legitimate desire for national unification with Taiwan has been greatly undermined, partly because of the threat of military intervention by another major power. That superpower also in the past threatened to use nuclear weapons against China, which prompted China itself to go nuclear. On acquiring nuclear weapons, China made a pledge of no first use, the only country so far to do so among all acknowledged nuclear-weapons states. A country limiting its own options in such a way cannot be more threatening than others.
Third, as a large Asian country, China has tried to settle all territorial disputes peacefully, with much success. Traditionally the borders between Asian countries, on land and sea, have been less clear-cut than in Europe. There are, however, still some issues to be resolved, and China has tried to develop new approaches for dealing with them. For instance, despite the territorial dispute between China and India dating back to the 1960s, the two countries have worked on military confidence-building along the line of control contributing to peace and tranquillity in border areas.
In 2002, China signed a Declaration on the Conduct of the Parties in the South China Sea with the ASEAN countries, pledging not to use force to settle territorial disputes. This is unprecedented, as all the signatories commit to solely peaceful means in order to handle sovereign issues. Recently China has worked out guidelines with ASEAN states to implement this declaration and set up a research fund for peaceful use of the area. It has also confirmed that it would not claim the entire South China Sea, but just islands/islets and their surrounding waters. For such disputes, China has suggested using both historical evidence and contemporary international law as the basis for settlement. Further, it has proposed shelving disputes and co-developing the region. Such a formula has been applied to the Diaoyu Islands (Senkaku Islands), claimed by both China and Japan. A country of such rationality and restraint is hardly threatening.
Finally, China has also become a major contributor to international peace-keeping efforts. Over the past decade, it has sent the more forces to such UN efforts than any of the other permanent members of the UN Security Council. In terms of international collaboration on anti-terror and non-proliferation, China has been a key player in helping to stabilise a number of critical regions. A country taking such actions will not itself become a threat.
China's defence budget is indeed rising and the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is modernising. The PLA Navy is also building a blue-water navy capability and will be able to project power at a distance over time. But China's capacity-building is a natural outcome of its economic development, and its military development in recent years began from a very low level of modernisation. Though it is understandable that China's increased capacity might lead some to be concerned, a threat is the product of intent as well as capacity, and China has no such threatening intent.
Certainly China can and will do more over time to enhance stability in East Asia: providing greater transparency and explaining its intentions; familiarising itself with international law and institutions in settling inter-state disputes; improving the communication of its intentions, and being more patient in defending its legitimate interests while reconciling the interests of other state actors, even if China itself is not a stakeholder.
Source: Economist
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