New Yorker Evan Osnos Making China Great Again
This introductory affiliate summarizes the book's argument. It explains that U.S.-China competition is over regional and global order, outlines what Chinese-led order might look like, explores why grand strategy matters and how to study information technology, and discusses competing views of whether China has a thousand strategy. It argues that Mainland china has sought to displace America from regional and global order through three sequential "strategies of displacement" pursued at the military, political, and economic levels. The first of these strategies sought to blunt American social club regionally, the 2d sought to build Chinese guild regionally, and the third — a strategy of expansion — at present seeks to practise both globally. The introduction explains that shifts in China's strategy are profoundly shaped by key events that change its perception of American ability.
Introduction
It was 1872, and Li Hongzhang was writing at a time of celebrated upheaval. A Qing Dynasty general and official who defended much of his life to reforming a dying empire, Li was often compared to his contemporary Otto von Bismarck, the architect of German unification and national ability whose portrait Li was said to keep for inspiration.1
Like Bismarck, Li had military experience that he parlayed into considerable influence, including over foreign and military policy. He had been instrumental in putting downwards the fourteen-year Taiping rebellion—the bloodiest conflict of the unabridged nineteenth century—which had seen a millenarian Christian state ascension from the growing vacuum of Qing say-so to launch a ceremonious state of war that claimed tens of millions of lives. This campaign against the rebels provided Li with an appreciation for Western weapons and applied science, a fearfulness of European and Japanese predations, a delivery to Chinese cocky-strengthening and modernization—and critically—the influence and prestige to exercise something about information technology.
In a memorandum advocating for more investment in Chinese shipbuilding, [Li Hongzhang] penned a line since repeated for generations: China was experiencing "smashing changes non seen in three thousand years."
Left: Li Hongzhang, also romanised equally Li Hung-chang, in 1896. Source: Alice Due east. Neve Little, Li Hung-Chang: His Life and Times (London: Cassell & Company, 1903).
And so it was in 1872 that in one of his many correspondences, Li reflected on the groundbreaking geopolitical and technological transformations he had seen in his ain life that posed an existential threat to the Qing. In a memorandum advocating for more investment in Chinese shipbuilding, he penned a line since repeated for generations: Prc was experiencing "smashing changes not seen in three thousand years."2
That famous, sweeping statement is to many Chinese nationalists a reminder of the land'south own humiliation. Li ultimately failed to modernize China, lost a war to Japan, and signed the embarrassing Treaty of Shimonoseki with Tokyo. But to many, Li's line was both prescient and accurate—China's turn down was the product of the Qing Dynasty'south inability to reckon with transformative geopolitical and technological forces that had not been seen for 3 thousand years, forces which changed the international balance of power and ushered in China'due south "Century of Humiliation." These were trends that all of Li's striving could not opposite.
If Li'south line marks the highpoint of China's humiliation, then Eleven'southward marks an occasion for its rejuvenation. If Li's evokes tragedy, then Xi'due south evokes opportunity.
Right: Xi Jinping, president of the People's Republic of China since 2013. Source: Reuters
Now, Li's line has been repurposed past Red china's leader Xi Jinping to inaugurate a new phase in China'due south post–Cold War k strategy. Since 2017, Eleven has in many of the country's critical foreign policy addresses alleged that the world is in the midst of "bully changes unseen in a century" [百年未有之大变局]. If Li's line marks the highpoint of People's republic of china's humiliation, then Xi'due south marks an occasion for its rejuvenation. If Li's evokes tragedy, then Xi's evokes opportunity. But both capture something essential: the idea that earth order is again at stake because of unprecedented geopolitical and technological shifts, and that this requires strategic adjustment.
For Eleven, the origin of these shifts is China's growing power and what it saw as the Due west'southward apparent self-destruction. On June 23, 2016, the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union. Then, a niggling more than three months later, a populist surge catapulted Donald Trump into office as president of the United States. From China's perspective—which is highly sensitive to changes in its perceptions of American power and threat—these two events were shocking. Beijing believed that the globe's about powerful democracies were withdrawing from the international lodge they had helped cock abroad and were struggling to govern themselves at home. The W'south subsequent response to the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, and and then the storming of the Usa Capitol by extremists in 2021, reinforced a sense that "fourth dimension and momentum are on our side," as Xi Jinping put it presently after those events.3 China'south leadership and strange policy elite declared that a "period of historical opportunity" [历史机遇期] had emerged to expand the country's strategic focus from Asia to the wider globe and its governance systems.
We are now in the early years of what comes next—a China that non just seeks regional influence as and then many great powers do, merely equally Evan Osnos has argued, "that is preparing to shape the twenty-first century, much every bit the U.S. shaped the twentieth."iv That competition for influence will be a global one, and Beijing believes with good reason that the next decade will likely determine the outcome.
What are Prc's ambitions, and does it take a chiliad strategy to achieve them? If it does, what is that strategy, what shapes it, and what should the U.s.a. exercise about it?
Every bit we enter this new stretch of acute competition, we lack answers to disquisitional foundational questions. What are China's ambitions, and does it accept a m strategy to achieve them? If it does, what is that strategy, what shapes information technology, and what should the United states of america do about it? These are basic questions for American policymakers grappling with this century'south greatest geopolitical challenge, not least considering knowing an opponent'due south strategy is the start step to countering it. And yet, as great ability tensions flare, there is no consensus on the answers.
This volume attempts to provide an answer. In its argument and structure, the volume takes its inspiration in function from Cold War studies of U.s. 1000 strategy.five Where those works analyzed the theory and practice of US "strategies of containment" toward the Soviet Wedlock during the Common cold War, this book seeks to analyze the theory and practice of China'south "strategies of displacement" toward the The states after the Cold War.
To do and then, the book makes employ of an original database of Chinese Communist Party documents—memoirs, biographies, and daily records of senior officials—painstakingly gathered and and so digitized over the last several years from libraries, bookstores in Taiwan and Hong Kong, and Chinese eastward-commerce sites (see Appendix). Many of the documents take readers backside the closed doors of the Chinese Communist Political party, bring them into its high-level strange policy institutions and meetings, and introduce readers to a wide cast of Chinese political leaders, generals, and diplomats charged with devising and implementing China'south grand strategy. While no ane master document contains all of Chinese grand strategy, its outline tin be constitute across a wide corpus of texts. Inside them, the Party uses hierarchical statements that represent internal consensus on key problems to guide the ship of state, and these statements can be traced across time. The most important of these is the Party line (路线), then the guideline (方针), and finally the policy (政策), amongst other terms. Understanding them sometimes requires proficiency not merely in Chinese, just likewise in seemingly impenetrable and archaic ideological concepts like "dialectical unities" and "historical materialism."
Argument in Brief
The book argues that the core of US-China competition since the Cold War has been over regional and at present global gild. It focuses on the strategies that ascension powers like China employ to readapt an established hegemon like the U.s. short of war. A hegemon'south position in regional and global order emerges from three broad "forms of control" that are used to regulate the behavior of other states: coercive adequacy (to force compliance), consensual inducements (to incentivize information technology), and legitimacy (to rightfully command information technology). For ascension states, the act of peacefully displacing the hegemon consists of two broad strategies generally pursued in sequence. The get-go strategy is to blunt the hegemon'due south practise of those forms of command, peculiarly those extended over the rising land; later on all, no ascent state can displace the hegemon if it remains at the hegemon's mercy. The second is to build forms of control over others; indeed, no rising country can go a hegemon if it cannot secure the deference of other states through coercive threats, consensual inducements, or rightful legitimacy. Unless a rise power has first blunted the hegemon, efforts to build order are likely to exist futile and easily opposed. And until a rising power has successfully conducted a good caste of blunting and building in its home region, information technology remains besides vulnerable to the hegemon'southward influence to confidently turn to a third strategy, global expansion, which pursues both blunting and building at the global level to displace the hegemon from international leadership. Together, these strategies at the regional and and so global levels provide a crude ways of rise for the Chinese Communist Party'southward nationalist elites, who seek to restore People's republic of china to its due place and roll dorsum the historical aberration of the West'south overwhelming global influence.
This is a template China has followed, and in its review of China'due south strategies of displacement, the book argues that shifts from 1 strategy to the next take been triggered past sharp discontinuities in the virtually important variable shaping Chinese yard strategy: its perception of The states power and threat. Communist china'south get-go strategy of displacement (1989–2008) was to quietly blunt American power over China, specially in Asia, and it emerged subsequently the traumatic trifecta of Tiananmen Foursquare, the Gulf State of war, and the Soviet collapse led Beijing to sharply increase its perception of The states threat. Prc'south 2nd strategy of deportation (2008–2016) sought to build the foundation for regional hegemony in Asia, and information technology was launched after the Global Fiscal Crisis led Beijing to see The states power as diminished and emboldened it to take a more than confident approach. At present, with the invocation of "dandy changes unseen in a century" following Brexit, President Trump's election, and the coronavirus pandemic, China is launching a third strategy of displacement, 1 that expands its blunting and building efforts worldwide to displace the Us as the global leader. In its final chapters, this volume uses insights virtually China's strategy to formulate an disproportionate The states grand strategy in response—one that takes a folio from People's republic of china's own volume—and would seek to competition Red china's regional and global ambitions without competing dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-send, or loan-for-loan.
Order abroad is oft a reflection of social club at home, and China'southward gild-building would exist distinctly illiberal relative to US order-building.
The book also illustrates what Chinese order might look like if Red china is able to accomplish its goal of "national rejuvenation" by the centennial of the founding of the People's Democracy of China in 2049. At the regional level, China already accounts for more than one-half of Asian GDP and one-half of all Asian armed forces spending, which is pushing the region out of balance and toward a Chinese sphere of influence. A fully realized Chinese order might eventually involve the withdrawal of US forces from Japan and Korea, the finish of American regional alliances, the effective removal of the United states Navy from the Western Pacific, deference from China's regional neighbors, unification with Taiwan, and the resolution of territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas. Chinese order would likely be more coercive than the nowadays club, consensual in means that primarily benefit connected elites fifty-fifty at the expense of voting publics, and considered legitimate mostly to those few who it directly rewards. China would deploy this order in ways that harm liberal values, with disciplinarian winds bravado stronger beyond the region. Club abroad is often a reflection of order at home, and People's republic of china's guild-building would be distinctly illiberal relative to US order-edifice.
At the global level, Chinese club would involve seizing the opportunities of the "nifty changes unseen in a century" and displacing the United States as the world's leading state. This would require successfully managing the main run a risk flowing from the "corking changes"—Washington's unwillingness to gracefully take decline—by weakening the forms of control supporting American global order while strengthening those forms of command supporting a Chinese alternative. That order would span a "zone of super-ordinate influence" in Asia besides as "fractional hegemony" in swaths of the developing world that might gradually expand to comprehend the globe'due south industrialized centers—a vision some Chinese popular writers describe using Mao's revolutionary guidance to "environment the cities from the countryside" [农村包围城市].6 More authoritative sources put this arroyo in less sweeping terms, suggesting Chinese order would exist anchored in Communist china'due south Chugalug and Road Initiative and its Community of Common Destiny, with the former in particular creating networks of coercive capability, consensual inducement, and legitimacy.7
The "struggle for mastery," once confined to Asia, is now over the global club and its futurity. If at that place are two paths to hegemony—a regional one and a global one—China is at present pursuing both.
Some of the strategy to achieve this global order is already discernable in Xi'south speeches. Politically, Beijing would projection leadership over global governance and international institutions, split Western alliances, and advance autocratic norms at the expense of liberal ones. Economically, information technology would weaken the financial advantages that underwrite U.s.a. hegemony and seize the commanding heights of the "fourth industrial revolution" from artificial intelligence to breakthrough computing, with the United States declining into a "deindustrialized, English-speaking version of a Latin American republic, specializing in commodities, existent estate, tourism, and perchance transnational tax evasion."8 Militarily, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) would field a world-form strength with bases around the earth that could defend Prc's interests in most regions and even in new domains like space, the poles, and the deep bounding main. The fact that aspects of this vision are visible in loftier-level speeches is potent prove that China'south ambitions are not limited to Taiwan or to dominating the Indo-Pacific. The "struggle for mastery," once confined to Asia, is now over the global society and its hereafter. If there are two paths to hegemony—a regional one and a global 1—China is now pursuing both.
This glimpse at possible Chinese order perchance hit, only it should non be surprising. Over a decade ago, Lee Kuan Yew—the visionary politico who built modern Singapore and personally knew People's republic of china'south peak leaders—was asked by an interviewer, "Are Chinese leaders serious about displacing the The states every bit the number one power in Asia and in the world?" He answered with an emphatic yes. "Of course. Why not?" he began, "They have transformed a poor society by an economic miracle to become at present the 2d-largest economy in the world—on track . . . to become the world'southward largest economic system." Prc, he connected, boasts "a civilization iv,000 years old with 1.iii billion people, with a huge and very talented pool to draw from. How could they not aspire to be number one in Asia, and in fourth dimension the globe?" Communist china was "growing at rates unimaginable 50 years ago, a dramatic transformation no one predicted," he observed, and "every Chinese wants a stiff and rich Communist china, a nation as prosperous, advanced, and technologically competent every bit America, Europe, and Nippon." He closed his answer with a key insight: "This reawakened sense of destiny is an overpowering force. . . . China wants to be China and accepted as such, not as an honorary member of the W." Prc might want to "share this century" with the United States, perhaps as "co-equals," he noted, just certainly not as subordinates.9
Why Yard Strategy Matters
The need for a grounded understanding of China'south intentions and strategy has never been more urgent. China now poses a challenge dissimilar whatsoever the United States has ever faced. For more than a century, no US adversary or coalition of adversaries has reached 60 percent of US Gross domestic product. Neither Wilhelmine Germany during the Commencement World War, the combined might of Purple Nippon and Nazi Federal republic of germany during the Second World War, nor the Soviet Marriage at the acme of its economic ability ever crossed this threshold.10 And yet, this is a milestone that China itself quietly reached as early as 2014. When one adjusts for the relative toll of appurtenances, China's economic system is already 25 per centum larger than the U.s.a. economy.xi Information technology is clear, then, that Communist china is the nearly significant competitor that the United States has faced and that the style Washington handles its emergence to superpower status will shape the course of the side by side century.
What makes 1000 strategy "grand" is not simply the size of the strategic objectives just also the fact that disparate "means" are coordinated together to achieve it.
What is less articulate, at to the lowest degree in Washington, is whether China has a k strategy and what it might be. This book defines g strategy as a country's theory of how it can accomplish its strategic objectives that is intentional, coordinated, and implemented beyond multiple ways of statecraft—armed services, economic, and political. What makes one thousand strategy "g" is not simply the size of the strategic objectives but too the fact that disparate "means" are coordinated together to achieve it. That kind of coordination is rare, and nigh smashing powers consequently practise not have a grand strategy.
When states do accept m strategies, however, they can reshape world history. Nazi Germany wielded a g strategy that used economic tools to constrain its neighbors, military buildups to intimidate its rivals, and political alignments to encircle its adversaries—allowing it to outperform its great power competitors for a considerable fourth dimension fifty-fifty though its Gross domestic product was less than one-third theirs. During the Cold War, Washington pursued a k strategy that at times used military power to deter Soviet aggression, economic aid to curtail communist influence, and political institutions to bind liberal states together—limiting Soviet influence without a United states-Soviet war. How China similarly integrates its instruments of statecraft in pursuit of overarching regional and global objectives remains an area that has received abundant speculation but little rigorous study despite its enormous consequences. The coordination and long-term planning involved in thousand strategy allow a land to punch above its weight; since People's republic of china is already a heavyweight, if it has a coherent scheme that coordinates its $14 trillion economic system with its blue-water navy and rising political influence around the world—and the United States either misses it or misunderstands it—the grade of the 20-first century may unfold in ways detrimental to the United States and the liberal values it has long championed.
Washington is belatedly coming to terms with this reality, and the consequence is the most consequential reassessment of its Communist china policy in over a generation. And nonetheless, among this reassessment, at that place is wide-ranging disagreement over what China wants and where it is going. Some believe Beijing has global ambitions; others contend that its focus is largely regional. Some claim information technology has a coordinated 100-year plan; others that information technology is opportunistic and fault-prone. Some characterization Beijing a boldly revisionist power; others see information technology as a sober-minded stakeholder of the current order. Some say Beijing wants the United States out of Asia; and others that it tolerates a pocket-sized U.s.a. role. Where analysts increasingly concur is on the thought that Prc's contempo assertiveness is a product of Chinese President Xi'southward personality—a mistaken notion that ignores the long-standing Party consensus in which China'due south behavior is actually rooted. The fact that the contemporary argue remains divided on so many fundamental questions related to Mainland china's thou strategy—and inaccurate even in its major areas of understanding—is troubling, especially since each question holds wildly dissimilar policy implications.
The Unsettled Debate
This book enters a largely unresolved contend over Chinese strategy divided betwixt "skeptics" and "believers." The skeptics have non withal been persuaded that People's republic of china has a grand strategy to displace the United States regionally or globally; past dissimilarity, the believers have not truly attempted persuasion.
The skeptics are a broad-ranging and deeply knowledgeable grouping. "China has still to formulate a true 'k strategy,'" notes one member, "and the question is whether information technology wants to exercise then at all."12 Others have argued that Prc'southward goals are "inchoate" and that Beijing lacks a "well-defined" strategy.thirteen Chinese authors like Professor Wang Jisi, former dean of Peking University's School of International Relations, are too in the skeptical military camp. "There is no strategy that nosotros could come up up with by racking our brains that would be able to embrace all the aspects of our national interests," he notes.14
Other skeptics believe that Mainland china'due south aims are limited, arguing that Prc does not wish to readapt the U.s.a. regionally or globally and remains focused primarily on development and domestic stability. One deeply experienced White House official was not even so convinced of "Xi's desire to throw the U.s.a. out of Asia and destroy U.Southward. regional alliances."15 Other prominent scholars put the point more forcefully: "[1] hugely distorted notion is the now all-too-common assumption that China seeks to squirt the Usa from Asia and subjugate the region. In fact, no conclusive testify exists of such Chinese goals."16
In contrast to these skeptics are the believers. This group is persuaded that Communist china has a grand strategy to readapt the United States regionally and globally, simply it has non put forward a work to persuade the skeptics. Within government, some top intelligence officials—including former director of national intelligence Dan Coates—accept stated publicly that "the Chinese fundamentally seek to replace the Us as the leading power in the world" but have not (or mayhap could not) elaborate further, nor did they suggest that this goal was accompanied by a specific strategy.17
Exterior of government, only a few contempo works attempt to brand the case at length. The nearly famous is Pentagon official Michael Pillsbury's bestselling One Hundred Twelvemonth Marathon, though it argues somewhat overstatedly that China has had a surreptitious grand plan for global hegemony since 1949 and, in key places, relies heavily on personal authorization and chestnut.18 Many other books come to similar conclusions and get much right, but they are more intuitive than rigorously empirical and could have been more persuasive with a social scientific arroyo and a richer evidentiary base.19 A handful of works on Chinese grand strategy take a broader perspective emphasizing the distant past or future, but they therefore dedicate less time to the critical stretch from the mail–Cold State of war era to the present that is the locus of US-China contest.20 Finally, some works mix a more empirical approach with careful and precise arguments about China's contemporary chiliad strategy. These works class the foundation for this volume's approach.21
This book, which draws on the research of so many others, also hopes to stand up apart in central ways. These include a unique social-scientific approach to defining and studying grand strategy; a large trove of rarely cited or previously inaccessible Chinese texts; a systematic study of fundamental puzzles in Chinese military, political, and economic behavior; and a close look at the variables shaping strategic adjustment. Taken together, it is hoped that the book makes a contribution to the emerging Prc contend with a unique method for systematically and rigorously uncovering China's grand strategy.
Uncovering Chiliad Strategy
The challenge of deciphering a rival's chiliad strategy from its disparate behavior is not a new one. In the years earlier the Get-go Earth War, the British diplomat Eyre Crowe wrote an important 20,000-word "Memorandum on the Nowadays State of British Relations with France and Germany" that attempted to explicate the wide-ranging behavior of a ascent Germany.22 Crowe was a keen observer of Anglo-German relations with a passion and perspective for the subject informed past his own heritage. Born in Leipzig and educated in Berlin and Düsseldorf, Crowe was half German, spoke German-absolute English language, and joined the British Foreign Function at the age of 20-i. During World War I, his British and German families were literally at war with i another—his British nephew perished at sea while his German cousin rose to become chief of the German Naval Staff.
Crowe argued in his framing of the enterprise, "the choice must prevarication between . . . two hypotheses"—each of which resemble the positions of today's skeptics and believers with respect to China'southward thou strategy.
Left: British diplomat Eyre Crowe (1864-1925). Appointment unknown. Author unknown. Source: Wikimedia Eatables
Crowe, who wrote his memorandum in 1907, sought to systematically analyze the disparate, complex, and seemingly uncoordinated range of German strange behavior, to determine whether Berlin had a "grand pattern" that ran through information technology, and to report to his superiors what it might be. In order to "formulate and accept a theory that will fit all the ascertained facts of German foreign policy," Crowe argued in his framing of the enterprise, "the choice must lie between . . . 2 hypotheses"—each of which resemble the positions of today's skeptics and believers with respect to China's grand strategy.23
Crowe'south first hypothesis was that Frg had no grand strategy, simply what he called a "vague, confused, and unpractical statesmanship." In this view, Crowe wrote, information technology is possible that "Germany does not really know what she is driving at, and that all her excursions and alarums, all her underhand intrigues do not contribute to the steady working out of a well conceived and relentlessly followed arrangement of policy."24 Today, this argument mirrors those of skeptics who claim Mainland china's bureaucratic politics, factional infighting, economic priorities, and nationalist knee-wiggle reactions all conspire to thwart Beijing from formulating or executing an overarching strategy.24
Crowe'south 2d hypothesis was that of import elements of German beliefs were coordinated together through a grand strategy "consciously aiming at the establishment of a High german hegemony, at first in Europe, and eventually in the globe."26 Crowe ultimately endorsed a more cautious version of this hypothesis, and he concluded that High german strategy was "securely rooted in the relative position of the two countries," with Berlin dissatisfied by the prospect of remaining subordinate to London in perpetuity.26 This argument mirrors the position of believers in Chinese one thousand strategy. It also resembles the statement of this volume: People's republic of china has pursued a diversity of strategies to displace the United States at the regional and global level which are fundamentally driven by its relative position with Washington.
The fact that the questions the Crowe memorandum explored have a striking similarity to those we are grappling with today has not been lost on US officials. Henry Kissinger quotes from it in On China. Max Baucus, quondam US administrator to China, often mentioned the memo to his Chinese interlocutors as a roundabout fashion of inquiring about Chinese strategy.28
Crowe'southward memorandum has a mixed legacy, with contemporary assessments carve up over whether he was right about Federal republic of germany. Nevertheless, the task Crowe ready remains critical and no less difficult today, particularly considering China is a "hard target" for information drove. Ane might hope to improve on Crowe's method with a more rigorous and falsifiable approach anchored in social science. Equally the next affiliate discusses in detail, this book argues that to identify the beingness, content, and adjustment of Prc's one thousand strategy, researchers must observe show of (i) chiliad strategic concepts in authoritative texts; (2) thousand strategic capabilities in national security institutions; and (3) grand strategic conduct in land behavior. Without such an arroyo, any analysis is more than likely to fall victim to the kinds of natural biases in "perception and misperception" that frequently recur in assessments of other powers.29
Affiliate Summaries
This book argues that, since the cease of the Cold War, China has pursued a grand strategy to displace American order commencement at the regional and at present at the global level.
Chapter 1 defines chiliad strategy and international order, and then explores how rising powers displace hegemonic order through strategies of blunting, building, and expansion. It explains how perceptions of the established hegemon's power and threat shape the selection of rising power grand strategies.
Affiliate 2 focuses on the Chinese Communist Political party as the connective institutional tissue for Prc's grand strategy. Equally a nationalist institution that emerged from the patriotic ferment of the belatedly Qing flow, the Party now seeks to restore China to its rightful place in the global hierarchy by 2049. As a Leninist institution with a centralized structure, ruthless amorality, and a Leninist vanguard seeing itself as stewarding a nationalist project, the Party possesses the "grand strategic capability" to coordinate multiple instruments of statecraft while pursuing national interests over parochial ones. Together, the Party's nationalist orientation helps set the ends of Chinese grand strategy while Leninism provides an instrument for realizing them. Now, every bit China rises, the same Party that sat uneasily inside Soviet order during the Common cold War is unlikely to permanently tolerate a subordinate function in American order. Finally, the affiliate focuses on the Party equally a subject of research, noting how a conscientious review of the Political party's voluminous publications can provide insight into its grand strategic concepts.
Part I begins with Chapter 3, which explores the blunting phase of China's post–Cold War grand strategy using Chinese Communist Party texts. It demonstrates that China went from seeing the The states equally a quasi-ally against the Soviets to seeing it equally Mainland china'south greatest threat and "main adversary" in the wake of three events: the traumatic trifecta of the Tiananmen Square Massacre, the Gulf War, and the Soviet Collapse. In response, Beijing launched its blunting strategy under the Party guideline of "hiding capabilities and biding time." This strategy was instrumental and tactical. Party leaders explicitly tied the guideline to perceptions of United states power captured in phrases like the "international balance of forces" and "multipolarity," and they sought to quietly and asymmetrically weaken American power in Asia across war machine, economic, and political instruments, each of which is considered in the subsequent three book chapters.
Chapter 4 considers blunting at the military level. It shows that the trifecta prompted China to depart from a "ocean control" strategy increasingly focused on holding afar maritime territory to a "sea denial" strategy focused on preventing the U.s.a. military from traversing, decision-making, or intervening in the waters nearly Communist china. That shift was challenging, and then Beijing declared it would "take hold of up in some areas and not others" and vowed to build "whatever the enemy fears" to accomplish it—ultimately delaying the acquisition of costly and vulnerable vessels like aircraft carriers and instead investing in cheaper asymmetric denial weapons. Beijing and so congenital the world's largest mine arsenal, the world'south showtime anti-send ballistic missile, and the world'southward largest submarine fleet—all to undermine US military power.
Affiliate 5 considers blunting at the political level. Information technology demonstrates that the trifecta led Communist china to opposite its previous opposition to joining regional institutions. Beijing feared that multilateral organizations similar Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (ARF) might exist used past Washington to build a liberal regional order or even an Asian NATO, then Cathay joined them to blunt American power. It stalled institutional progress, wielded institutional rules to constrain U.s. liberty of maneuver, and hoped participation would reassure wary neighbors otherwise tempted to join a Usa-led balancing coalition.
Chapter 6 considers blunting at the economic level. It argues that the trifecta laid bare China's dependence on the US market, capital letter, and technology—notably through Washington's postal service-Tiananmen sanctions and its threats to revoke most-favored-nation (MFN) trade condition, which could have seriously damaged China's economy. Beijing sought not to decouple from the United states just instead to demark the discretionary use of American economic power, and it worked hard to remove MFN from congressional review through "permanent normal trading relations," leveraging negotiations in APEC and the World Trade System (WTO) to obtain it.
Because Political party leaders explicitly tied blunting to assessments of American power, that meant that when those perceptions changed, then also did Mainland china's grand strategy. Part II of the book explores this second phase in Chinese grand strategy, which was focused on edifice regional gild. The strategy took place under a modification to Deng's guidance to "hide capabilities and bide time," one that instead emphasized "actively accomplishing something."
Affiliate vii explores this building strategy in Party texts, demonstrating that the shock of the Global Financial Crunch led China to see the United States as weakening and emboldened it to shift to a building strategy. It begins with a thorough review of People's republic of china's soapbox on "multipolarity" and the "international residuum of forces." It so shows that the Party sought to lay the foundations for order—coercive capacity, consensual bargains, and legitimacy—under the auspices of the revised guidance "actively accomplish something" [积极有所作为] issued by Chinese leader Hu Jintao. This strategy, like blunting earlier information technology, was implemented across multiple instruments of statecraft—armed forces, political, and economic—each of which receives a chapter.
Chapter 8 focuses on edifice at the military level, recounting how the Global Financial Crisis accelerated a shift in Chinese military strategy away from a singular focus on blunting American ability through body of water deprival to a new focus on building order through sea command. China at present sought the capability to hold distant islands, safeguard sea lines, intervene in neighboring countries, and provide public security appurtenances. For these objectives, People's republic of china needed a different forcefulness structure, i that it had previously postponed for fear that it would exist vulnerable to the Us and unsettle China's neighbors. These were risks a more confident Beijing was now willing to have. Red china promptly stepped up investments in aircraft carriers, capable surface vessels, amphibious warfare, marines, and overseas bases.
Chapter 9 focuses on building at the political level. It shows how the Global Financial Crunch caused Red china to depart from a blunting strategy focused on joining and stalling regional organizations to a building strategy that involved launching its own institutions. China spearheaded the launch of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the tiptop and institutionalization of the previously obscure Briefing on Interaction and Conviction-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). Information technology and then used these institutions, with mixed success, as instruments to shape regional club in the economical and security domains in directions it preferred.
Chapter 10 focuses on building at the economic level. It argues that the Global Fiscal Crisis helped Beijing depart from a defensive blunting strategy that targeted American economic leverage to an offensive edifice strategy designed to build Red china's own coercive and consensual economic capacities. At the cadre of this try were China'south Belt and Road Initiative, its robust employ of economic statecraft confronting its neighbors, and its attempts to proceeds greater financial influence.
Beijing used these blunting and edifice strategies to constrain United states of america influence within Asia and to build the foundations for regional hegemony. The relative success of that strategy was remarkable, simply Beijing'south ambitions were non limited but to the Indo-Pacific. When Washington was again seen as stumbling, Mainland china'south grand strategy evolved—this time in a more global management. Accordingly, Part Iii of this volume focuses on Communist china's tertiary grand strategy of displacement, global expansion, which sought to blunt only peculiarly build global order and to displace the United States from its leadership position.
Chapter 11 discusses the dawn of People's republic of china'south expansion strategy. It argues that the strategy emerged post-obit another trifecta, this time consisting of Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and the Due west's poor initial response to the coronavirus pandemic. In this period, the Chinese Communist Party reached a paradoxical consensus: it concluded that the United states was in retreat globally just at the same time was waking upwardly to the China challenge bilaterally. In Beijing'southward mind, "bang-up changes unseen in a century" were underway, and they provided an opportunity to readapt the United states equally the leading global state past 2049, with the next decade deemed the most critical to this objective.
Chapter 12 discusses the "ways and means" of China's strategy of expansion. It shows that politically, Beijing would seek to projection leadership over global governance and international institutions and to advance autocratic norms. Economically, information technology would weaken the financial advantages that underwrite Us hegemony and seize the commanding heights of the "4th industrial revolution." And militarily, the PLA would field a truly global Chinese armed forces with overseas bases effectually the world.
Affiliate 13, the book's final chapter, outlines a Us response to China'south ambitions for displacing the United States from regional and global order. It critiques those who advocate a counterproductive strategy of confrontation or an accommodationist one of k bargains, each of which respectively discounts US domestic headwinds and China's strategic ambitions. The chapter instead argues for an asymmetric competitive strategy, one that does not require matching Communist china dollar-for-dollar, ship-for-ship, or loan-for-loan.
This cost-effective arroyo emphasizes denying People's republic of china hegemony in its home region and—taking a page from elements of China'south own blunting strategy—focuses on undermining Chinese efforts in Asia and worldwide in means that are of lower cost than Beijing'south efforts to build hegemony. At the same time, this affiliate argues that the United States should pursue guild-edifice as well, reinvesting in the very same foundations of American global gild that Beijing presently seeks to weaken. This discussion seeks to convince policymakers that even as the United States faces challenges at home and away, information technology can notwithstanding secure its interests and resist the spread of an illiberal sphere of influence—only only if it recognizes that the key to defeating an opponent's strategy is first to empathize it.
About the Writer
Acknowledgments
Spider web design: Rachel Slattery
Rush Doshi is currently serving as director for China on the Biden administration'south National Security Council (NSC), but the book this excerpt was drawn from was completed before his government service, is based entirely on open up sources, and does not necessarily reflect the views of the U.Due south. regime or NSC.
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Source: https://www.brookings.edu/essay/the-long-game-chinas-grand-strategy-to-displace-american-order/
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