Agreeing to Agree (and Disagree)
Mini Teaser: China’s rise will inevitably increase Sino-American competition, but delineating common areas of agreement between Beijing and Washington could arrest tensions.
HISTORICALLY, THE rise of one great power at the expense of the dominant one has nearly always led to conflict between the two and, more often than not, eventually to a war between them that drags in other great powers. Is this violent history of rising and dominant great powers the future for U.S.-China relations?
Clearly, there will be political and economic conflicts and friction between the United States and People's Republic of China as the PRC's economic and military power in east Asia and its global economic and political reach continue to expand. There will also be some arms racing between China and the United States as each jockeys for an advantage over the other and as each is driven by its military necessities of intimidating and defending Taiwan, respectively. Historically, dominant powers have not readily given up their top position to rising challengers, and rising challengers have always demanded the fruits that they believe their growing power entitles them to. There is no reason to expect that things will be different in this regard with China and the United States; consequently, they will not be able to avoid a certain level of tension over the next several decades as China's influence continues to grow and as the United States seeks to deal with it. So, even if China's rise remains peaceful, Sino-American relations will not be harmonious.
Nonetheless, there are some significant shared interests between the United States and China (noted below), and hence some bases for cooperation in both the medium and longer term. Will the peace-inducing aspects of the U.S.-China relationship overshadow the conflict-producing ones? No one can say for certain. However, if we believe that there are distinct elements in the Sino-American relationship that differ from past rising-versus-dominant-power competitions, then the dismal history of these past competitions need not be the future for this one.
Stopping China's Rise?
WE CANNOT predict the exact nature of China's intentions and goals a few decades from now (nor can the Chinese), but we can, with high confidence, predict that China will want its "place in the sun", just as every other rising great power has. This does not mean that China will be an aggressive, warlike nation or, to the contrary, a strictly peaceful one. It means only that China will do what all great powers do-not simply react to its international environment, but instead act to shape that environment in ways that are conducive to its national interests.
Greater Chinese influence over east Asia and over the international system more generally, however, will not always coincide with America's national interests. If that is the case, is it within America's power to stop the rise of China?
Stopping China's rise means containing and constricting Chinese power. That, in turn, requires halting or drastically curtailing China's economic growth, upon which all else depends, and thwarting its rising influence regionally and globally. Stopping China's rise would be equivalent to what I have called "compound containment", which was applied against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Compound containment involves two central ingredients: stalemating a power militarily and waging economic "denial" against it. The former is designed to prevent the state from gaining any political leverage from its military power; the latter, to weaken a state economically, either by actually reducing its gross domestic product (GDP) or by severely constricting its technological improvement and economic growth rate.
The most direct way for the United States to hurt China economically would be to block all of China's exports to the United States. In 2005 (the latest year for which figures are available), China-which includes mainland China, Hong Kong and Macau-exported $270 billion to the United States, or 26 percent of its total exports for that year. In 2005 China's GDP (in current prices) was $2.2 trillion. This means that in 2005, 12 percent of China's GDP was exported to the United States, an astoundingly high figure that appears to demonstratea huge Chinese dependency on access to the U.S. market. (The actual dependency is somewhat lower because China's exports are measured in terms of gross value, not value added in China, and because much of China's exports involve the processing of imports.)
The problem is that such a policy of economic warfare would be highly disruptive to the United States as well because China holds a powerful financial lever over Washington and could retaliate. As of December 2006, Chinapossessed $350 billion (7 percent) of the approximately $5 trillion of the total outstanding U.S. Treasury securities that are privately held. (Japan is the biggest holder at $644 billion, or 13 percent.) China could retaliate against an American embargo on China's exports by dumping its holdings of Treasury securities or by refusing to buy any more. This would hurt China by devaluing its U.S. Treasury holdings, but unless others stepped in to pick up the slack, it would hurt the United States too. U.S. interest rates would have to rise, probably significantly, and that would bring on a recession, or perhaps even something worse-a financial crisis.
More importantly, waging economic warfare through a ban on Chinese exports to the United States, a cessation of U.S. foreign direct investment in China, a ban on U.S. agricultural and high technology exports to China and the like will not work if only the United States imposed them. Historically, such policies have not worked well if only one country implements them, even if that country is as powerful as the United States. Absent a sufficiently strong Chinese provocation, however, other states, not only in Asia but also globally, are not going to join a coalition to wage economic warfare against China. The Chinese market is simply too important to too many states for them to cooperate with the United States in waging economic warfare against a state that is pursuing a peaceful-rise strategy, and the Chinese are too smart to take the actions that would create a hostile coalition against it. Thus, we are led to this perverse result: If China's low dependence on foreign economic activity made it a poor target for economic warfare during the Cold War, then China's high dependence on foreign economic activity today-a manifestation of its high level of involvement in the international economy-still makes it a poor target for economic warfare.
So, if the purpose of America's policy towards China is to produce as cooperative, benign and satiated a great power as possible by integrating it into the Western order, then an American policy of unprovoked economic warfare against a state cannily pursuing a policy of peaceful rise and reassurance is downright stupid. Short of preventive war, which is not a viable option against a nuclear-armed state, stopping China's growing economic and military power through unilaterally-imposed U.S. economic actions is not an option. Only self-defeating diplomacy abroad or gross political and economic malfeasance at home can thwart the PRC's rise. Thus, China's rise is China's to lose.
Security Threats and Shared Interests
IF THE United States can do little to thwart China's rise, what does that portend for the United States? The record of three clashes between rising and dominant powers-Germany versus Britain before World War I, Germany versus Britain before World War II and the Soviet Union versus the United States during the Cold War-is instructive.
China does not present the type of security threat to the United States that Germany did to Britain. In World Wars I and II, the German threat was clear: If it conquered the continent and harnessed its economic-industrial resources, then it could build a military machine to crush Britain. China cannot do that to the United States. It must first cross the Pacific to attack the United States, butAmerica's nuclear forces could swiftly "nuke" any invading Chinese armada, and China would commit national suicide if it dared to attack the United States with its strategic nuclear forces. Nuclear weapons alone protect the United States from a powerful China in a way that Britain could never be secure from German hegemony.
Moreover, China does not constitute the same type of geopolitical threat to the United States that the Soviet Union once did. The Soviet geopolitical (as opposed to the nuclear) threat was twofold: to conquer and dominate the economic-industrial resources of western Eurasia and to control the oil reserves of the Persian Gulf. Europe (including Britain) constituted one of the four industrial-military power centers of the world during the Cold War-Japan, the Soviet Union and the United States being the other three. The Persian Gulf contained the bulk of the world's proven oil reserves. If the Soviet Union had succeeded in dominating Europe and the Persian Gulf through either conquest or political-military intimidation, then it would have controlled two of the four power centers of the world and the largest proven oil reserves. That would have been a significant power shift.
If China ends up dominating the Korean peninsula and a significant part of continental Southeast Asia, so what? As long as Japan remains outside the Chinese sphere of influence and allied with the United States, and as long as the United States retains some naval footholds in Southeast Asia-such as in Singapore, the Philippines or Indonesia-China's domination of eastern Eurasia cannot present the same type of geopolitical threat to the United States that the Soviet Union did. As long as Europe, the Persian Gulf, Japan, India and Russia remain either independent power centers or within the U.S. sphere of influence, Chinese hegemony in eastern Eurasia will not tip the world balance of power. The vast size and central position of the Soviet Union in Eurasia constituted a geopolitical threat to American influence that China cannot hope to emulate.
If judged by the standards of the three rising-versus-dominant great-power competitions of the last century, the Sino-American competition appears well-placed to be much safer. Certainly, war between the two is not impossible because either or both governments could make a serious misstep over the Taiwan issue. War by miscalculation is always possible, but the potential cost of nuclear conflict restrains both actors, minimizing miscalculation. Moreover, the high economic interdependence and the lack of intense ideological competition between the two help reinforce the pacific effects mutually assured destruction induces. Apart from Taiwan, then, it is hard to figure out how to start a war between the United States and China.
These three factors should make us cautiously optimistic about keeping Sino-American relations on a peaceful rather than a warlike track. The peaceful track does not, by any means, imply the absence of political and economic conflicts in Sino-American relations, nor does it foreclose coercive diplomatic gambits by one against the other. What it does mean is that the conditions are in place for war to be a low-probability event, if policymakers are smart in both states, and that an all-out war is nearly unimaginable. By the historical standards among rising and dominant powers, this is no mean feat.
Finally, it also helps that China and the United States broadly agree on important Asian issues, even if they differ on the proper approach to them or their priority.
I have identified six overarching U.S. interests in east Asia. They are: first, preservation of Sino-American mutually assured destruction; second, stability in the Taiwan Strait and a peaceful resolution of the Taiwan issue; third, the denuclearization and ultimate unification of the Korean peninsula; fourth, the preservation of the U.S.-Japan alliance and the maintenance of Japan's non-nuclear status; fifth, the peaceful settlement of China's maritime disputes with its neighbors and the preservation of freedom of commercial navigation in the South China Sea; and finally, the preservation of economic openness in east Asia.
Beijing shares all these interests. After all, China wants to have a secure second strike capability. It prefers stability in the Taiwan Strait, a peaceful resolution of Taiwan's status and no unilateral moves towards independence engendering war with the United States over Taiwan. China favors denuclearization of the Korean peninsula and its ultimate re-unification, if that does not bring U.S. troops up to its borders-and especially if it leads to U.S. troops leaving the peninsula altogether. Beijing certainly favors preventing Japan from going nuclear, even if it no longer sees the U.S.-Japan alliance as firm a constraint on Japan as it once was. China appears to favor the peaceful settlement of its maritime disputes with its neighbors; it clearly benefits from economic openness with the United States and with states in the region, and it does not want to see economic closure with either.
To stress that China and the United States share many common goals for east Asia is not to make light of their many differences. But disputes over means to achieve ends are easier to manage than disputes over goals. There is clearly more room for bargaining, horse trading and successful negotiation in the former case than in the latter.
Principles of Policy
THERE ARE no big surprises on the general principles of policy that the United States should follow over the long haul with respect to China's increasing power; they flow from the basic assumptions about China and the nature of America's interests in east Asia laid out above. Moreover, none of the six recommendations below are new to long-time students of U.S.-China relations, though they remain important.
First, do not undermine Sino-American mutually assured destruction. For general stability in Sino-American relations, particularly for crisis stability, it is crucial that China believe that its nuclear deterrent is not vulnerable to a U.S. first strike or that a U.S. missile-defense shield could render useless its retaliatory capability. This requires two things from the United States.
It should not make a political issue of China's efforts to develop a larger and more secure strategic nuclear force. Because it is dangerous for either or both states to feel vulnerable to a first strike, it is, ironically, in America's interest that China modernize its strategic nuclear forces. China does not need a strategic nuclear force as large and sophisticated as America's, but it definitely needs one that is larger and more advanced than its current force. The United States should welcome its arrival.
Additionally, Sino-American stability requires that if the United States persists in building a missile-defense system, then that system should remain limited enough so as not to challenge China's strike-back capability. It is wasteful of resources, and potentially dangerous to boot, for the United States to stimulate an offense-defense arms race with China by building a missile-defense force-should it ever work-large enough to neuter China's strategic nuclear force.
Second, the United States must continue to draw two unambiguous red lines on the Taiwan issue. That means making crystal clear to China that the United States will not permit it to resolve the issue forcefully and informing Taiwan that the United States will not allow it to move towards de jure independence.
Maintaining these red lines requires, in turn, that the United States do these three things: maintain a strong naval and air presence in east Asia, not permit U.S. domestic forces to push for a more independent Taiwan and keep a firm hand on any Taiwanese moves towards independence. In regard to the last, the United States must continue to make it unequivocally clear to any Taiwanese government that takes provocative steps towards independence that: "Do so and you are on your own." President Bush said as much on December 2, 2003, when he stated, "We oppose any unilateral decision by either China or Taiwan to change the status quo." The United States does not owe Taiwan political independence from China; it owes Taiwan the opportunity to have its status resolved peacefully with China.
Third, avoid policies that produce adverse self-fulfilling results. The principal policy prescription here is to avoid taking actions against China that appear simultaneously punitive and unprovoked. Punitive actions may be necessary at times, but if they are unprovoked, or more importantly, if they appear to be so in the minds of America's allies and friends in east Asia and elsewhere, they will backfire politically within China and will not receive the required multilateral support. Actions that seem like premature containment-military encirclement, economic warfare and the like-should be avoided, unless they can be credibly justified as responses to Chinese aggression or heavy-handedness with its neighbors.
Fourth, maintain the cohesion of America's east Asian alliances and security arrangements. The United States has a number of formal alliances and strategically important security arrangements with Australia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, South Korea and Japan. At present, it is in America's interest to maintain these alliances and security arrangements if it wants to remain an east Asian military power.
Eventually, the end of the U.S.-South Korean alliance may well be the price of Korean unification, but the price is well worth it if the peninsula is denuclearized or if North Korea's nuclear weapons fall into the hands of a democratic Korea. Should the U.S.-South Korean alliance pass into history, it will not destroy America's position as an east Asian military power.
While the alliance with South Korea is expendable, the one with Japan is not. The U.S.-Japan alliance remains the key to, and the bedrock of, America's maritime presence in east Asia. It is Japan's strategic location, economic might and military power that make it America's most important regional ally. Therefore, the nurturing and preservation of this alliance remains a central task for every American administration. Of course, to preserve the U.S.-Japan alliance while maintaining good relations with China, the United States must square the circle: use the alliance with Japan in ways that serve both U.S. and Japanese interests, but in doing so, minimize the friction that the alliance causes with China.
A more powerful Japan allied with the United States is clearly not China's first choice (a weak Japan), but rather a second-best solution, and yet one that is clearly better than the worst outcome (a powerful and unaligned Japan). China's leaders need to be constantly reminded that the second-best solution is mutually beneficial: It is better for both powers that Japan remain tethered to the United States rather than independent of it. The real choice for China is not between a militarily strong or weak Japan, but between a powerful Japan tied to the United States and an even more powerful Japan, probably nuclear-armed, independent of it.
Fifth, preserve U.S. maritime supremacy in east Asia. This supremacy is essential if the United States is to remain a significant political-military player in the region. After all, states there will not want to remain allied with the United States if it cannot back up its political actions with credible military power. Maritime supremacy means that the United States can defeat China in a conflict on the high seas, maintain freedom of the sea lanes in the area and protect the region's insular nations from Chinese political-military coercion, attack and conquest-except for Taiwan. There the United States can prevent coercion and conquest but cannot thwart a devastating mainland air and short-range ballistic missile attack, should the mainland launch one.
Preservation of U.S. maritime supremacy does not require a weak Chinese navy, although it would be easier with one. China will make certain, as its power grows, that it can protect its coasts from attack and its overseas commerce from interference; consequently, as its global interests continue to grow, China will not be satisfied with total reliance on the U.S. Navy to protect its sea lanes of commerce. Over time, therefore, the United States will have to adapt to a more powerful Chinese navy. However, given its large lead, long naval tradition and experience, unparalleled systems integration capabilities and wealth, the United States should be able to maintain the capabilities necessary to defeat on the high seas any Chinese navy, thereby ensuring that its power-projection capabilities are superior to those of China. Thus, just as the United States will have to accept a more powerful Chinese navy, China will have to accept America's maritime supremacy, just as the Soviet Union did.
Finally, institutionalize security multilateralism in east Asia. East Asia is not as multilaterally institutionalized as Europe, and the possibility of establishing either a NATO-like institution or an EU-like security and defense policy in east Asia is problematic for the foreseeable future. These are organizations designed to protect states against attack. For such a multilateral institution to develop in east Asia, there would have to be a radical transformation in political relations among the states in the region, as well as a dramatic change in the nature of two of them (China and North Korea). Instead, what the United States should aim for is the creation of a security-dialogue organization that encompasses the main actors in the region. Such an institution could be broad-based and include Australia, Japan, Korea, China, Russia, the United States, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam, Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia. Or, it could focus on northeast Asia and be organized around the six-party talks (the United States, Russia, China, Japan, North Korea and South Korea); be more narrowly based and include only the great powers-the United States, China, Russia and Japan; or, be restricted only to the United States, Japan and China.
No matter how broad or narrow the organization is, what matters is that China must be in it-if for nothing else than to softenthe exclusionary and anti-China aspects of the U.S.-Japan alliance and to recognize institutionally the prominent role that China now plays in the region. Over time, it may be possible for such an organization to moderate security-dilemma dynamics among the great powers and perhaps even foster cooperative approaches to common security problems.
THE PATH for both U.S. and Chinese policy is clear. In future decades, these two states are likely to experience considerable tensions due simply to their changing positions in east Asia and globally. China is the one power best placed to challenge the United States' global status, certainly economically and perhaps one day militarily too. China knows that, so does the United States. The United States will have to adjust to China's growing power and influence in east Asia and worldwide, but so too will China have to adjust to the fact that there will remain two economically and militarily powerful states in east Asia-itself and America-with neither possessing hegemony on both land and at sea.
A combined strategy of accommodating China's interests when they do not threaten vital U.S. interests and drawing clear red lines on matters of utmost importance to Washington is best suited to keep China on the path where American and Chinese interests can largely, although never completely, overlap. This is a daunting challenge-but fortunately not impossible.
Robert J. Art is the Christian A. Herter Professor of International Relations at Brandeis University, research associate at Harvard University's Olin Institute for Strategic Studies and director of MIT's Seminar XXI Program.
Essay Types: Essay