Washington, D.C. IR/PS Alumni Breakfast Roundtable Discussion Series
Can China
09/21/2006
David Chen,
On September 21, 2006 the IR/PS Alumni Association of Washington, D.C. hosted the fifth session of its breakfast roundtable discussion series. The topic for this session was China’s claims of a “peaceful rise” and the implications for U.S. policy. The panelists were Dean Cheng, senior Asia analyst at CNA Corporation; Melissa Murphy, research associate with the Freeman Chair in China Studies at CSIS; and Admiral (Ret.) Dennis Blair, former commander-in-chief, Pacific Command from 1999 to 2002. The experts spoke about the historical context of China’s rise, domestic factors constraining China’s leadership, and the military balance in the Asia-Pacific region.
All the speakers agreed that being a rising “status quo” power rather than a disruptive one was in China’s domestic and foreign policy interests in the short and medium term. Dean Cheng of CNA Corporation juxtaposed China’s current period of growing domestic and international self-confidence with the “century of humiliation” that preceded the 1949 revolution. Historical anxieties of domestic rebellion and chaos inform the Chinese leadership’s current domestic priorities, including deterring foreign aggression, building national power through modernization and economic reform, and ensuring a stable domestic environment for modernization. While a rising China might seek retribution for past grievances, the current leaders have gone out of their way to reassure China’s neighbors that China poses no threat to them.
Melissa Murphy of CSIS focused her remarks on the host of domestic problems that constrain China’s leadership, including problems of corruption, growing economic inequality, demographic imbalance, environmental degradation, mass urban migration, and social unrest. While the United States is hedging against the possibility of a non-peaceful rise by China, China is hedging against a U.S. policy of containment against China. In China’s next five-year plan the focus of domestic policy is shifting towards providing for “social goods,” like education and environmental protection, in order to lift up those left behind by globalization, a focus that should occupy China and maintain peacefulness for at least the next ten years.
Admiral (Ret.) Dennis Blair gave his assessment that the military balance in the Asia-Pacific region continues to be very stable. While security flashpoints exist, they are well known, Taiwan and North Korea being foremost. While China’s land borders are long and adjacent to fourteen nations, no obvious “Alsace-Lorraine” tempts regional powers with a land grab. Maritime disputes over islands in the East and South China Seas may provoke posturing and saber-rattling, but the stakes involved would not be high enough to fight a war over. However, increasing nationalism in East Asia heightens the possibility of escalation, miscalculation, and perhaps wars fought for national image or pride rather than strategic calculus.
In the question and answer period, panelists made the point that China’s military strength would have to improve immensely before becoming a direct threat to U.S. naval predominance in the region. Dean Cheng described the “three pillars” of military modernization as being equipment, training, and doctrine, and that while most analysts focus on the first, the latter two are just as important, but much harder to gauge, often requiring advanced language skills. Melissa Murphy pointed out that the military balance may be a zero-sum game, but economic growth does not have to be. U.S. firms have invested in Chinese companies currently making foreign investments in strategic commodities like oil and minerals.
