daily trading volume exceeds $18 billion. Shanghai’s combination of scale and
wealth compares favorably to any city in the world.
After several long cab rides around the sprawling megacity in the spring of
2008, I was left with the impression that if the future is a race for bigger and
better infrastructure, China has already left the United States in the dust. The
city is a vast sea of concrete, asphalt, and super high-rise towers stretching on
into the distance. It is hard not to come away awestruck by the immenseness
of it all.
There are, of course, important caveats to China’s rise. Most of China is
growing, but not nearly as fast as Shanghai.10 As of 2009, over a quarter of
China’s population still lived on less than $2 a day, and China’s autocratic
political system stifles the sorts of freedoms that typically lead to thriving
societies over the long run.11 Added to that, China’s “one child” policy and the
cultural preference for boy babies could eventually turn China into a nation of
aging bachelors who are expected to care for their elderly parents. These are
just a few of the developments that have the potential to turn China’s boom
into a bust in the decades to come.
That downside prospect cannot diminish the fact that so much of China is
already developing at breakneck pace. On a 2011 trip to Sichuan province’s
Chengdu, one of China’s largest inland cities, a young graduate student
explained in excellent English that her parents were “semi-literate peasants.”
In a span of a single generation, she had moved from a world defined by a rural
9 For the GDP of Pudong, see, “Shanghai’s Pudong Sets Double-Digit GDP Growth,” Xinhua, April 19, 2010, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/bizchina/2010–04/19/content_9747072
.htm.
10 China’s Gini coefficient, a standard metric used to measure income inequality, has wors-ened from 0.3 in 1986 to 0.5 in 2011. See Dexter Roberts, “China’s Growing Income Gap,”
Bloomberg Businessweek, January 27, 2011, http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/
11_06/b4214013648109.htm; Dr. Damian Tobin, “Inequality in China: Rural Poverty Per-
sists as Urban Wealth Booms,” BBC, June 29, 2011, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-13945072; Thant Myint-U, Where China Meets India: Burma and the New Crossroads of Asia (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011), p. 130.
11 “Poverty headcount ratio at $2 a day (PPP) (% of population),” The World Bank, http://data
.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.2DAY.
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village to one in which she could earn a university master’s degree and aspire
to a well-paid corporate job in China’s new globalized economy.
By the numbers as well, China’s rise is very real. In the past twenty years,
the Asian giant has averaged an annual growth rate of over 9 percent.12 Even
if China is unable to keep up its torrid economic expansion, its momentum
may carry its GDP past that of the United States as early as 2027.13 In recent
years, China pushed the United States aside to become the top trade partner for
India, Japan, and South Korea. China also has extensive investments in Africa,
Central Asia, and Latin America.14 With trade and investment come greater
diplomatic influence, especially in China’s case, since the authoritarian state
itself controls many business decisions.
China is also busy transforming its wealth into military power. China has
long maintained a huge active-duty military, with well over 2 million personnel
in 2010, but those impressive numbers did not translate into a modern or
especially capable force. Over the past twenty years, however, the People’s
Republic has expanded its defense budget to address those shortcomings. A
2011 report to Congress by the U.S. Department of Defense found that China’s
total military-related spending exceeded $160 billion in 2010.15 That same
Pentagon report noted that “during 2010, China made strides toward fielding
an operational anti-ship ballistic missile, continued work on its aircraft carrier
program, and finalized the prototype of its first stealth aircraft.”16
As a consequence of these and other investments over the past two decades,
Princeton professor Aaron Friedberg concludes that China’s “PLA [People’s
Liberation Army] is approaching the point where it may have (or its leaders
may believe that they have) a real chance of knocking U.S. forces out of the
Western Pacific, at least in the opening stages of a war, using only conventional
weapons and without hitting targets on America’s home soil.”17 China may
not be there yet, but in time its new military capabilities are likely to alter
fundamentally the balance of power and influence in the region.
12 Kevin Brown, “ADB Warns on China’s Long-Term Growth,” Financial Times, September 28, 2010, http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/7d660492-cad4–11df-bf36–00144feab49a.html#axzz29
Up6Ij7V.
13 “China Overtakes Japan as World’s Second-Biggest Economy,” Bloomberg News, August 16, 2010, http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010–08–16/china-economy-passes-japan-s-in-second-quarter-capping-three-decade-rise.html. For an assessment of what it will mean for China’s economy to surpass that of the United States, see Arvind Subramanian, Eclipse (Washington: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2011).
14 For a summary of China’s overseas investments, see Nargiza Salidjanova, “Going Out: An Overview of China’s Outward Foreign Direct Investment,” USCC Staff Report, U.S.-China Economic & Security Review Commission, March 30, 2011.
15 “Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2011,” U.S. Department of Defense, p. 41.
16 “Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2011,” p. 13.
17 Aaron L. Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy (New York: W.W. Norton, 2011), p. 224.
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From the Outside-In
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Even if China still has a long way to go before it catches up to the United
States in terms of its overall wealth, military power, or quality of life, China’s
national power relative to other actors on the world stage is now indisputably
greater than at any previous point in the modern era.18 Henry Kissinger,
America’s high priest of Realpolitik, observes in his monumental volume, On
China, that this development is in many ways a return toward China’s tradi-
tional role as the “Middle Kingdom,” or “Central Country,” whose leader was
“conceived of (and recognized by most neighboring states) as the pinnacle of a
universal political hierarchy.”19
Of course, China will not be the only rising Asian state. The other rising
giant, India, and many of their smaller neighbors throughout the Asia-Pacific
region also have expanding populations, dynamic economies, and heightened
ambitions. Nor will the t
raditional powers – Europe, Russia, and especially
the United States – simply cede their dominant roles. This will be a complex,
at times competitive, and perhaps even a violent process, with existing powers
looking to protect their historical clout from the growing ambitions of rising
states.
America’s Response
Washington has always been aware of China’s strategic significance, whether
in the context of Nixon and Kissinger’s secret diplomacy with Mao Zedong
during the Cold War or Clinton’s effort to include Beijing in an expanded global
free trade regime. But it was not until the George W. Bush administration that
American leaders spoke of placing China at the center of their global vision and
declared that China should be viewed less as a “strategic partner” and more as
a “strategic competitor.”20
That shift had its limits. The new Bush administration had no particular
interest in picking a fight with China. Many of Bush’s policies, especially in
the realm of economics, were as conciliatory as any that came before. Yet the
Bush team appreciated that the end of the Cold War and the rise of China
represented fundamental shifts in the global balance of power. For this rea-
son, the administration came into office concerned primarily about shoring up
traditional alliances and managing relations with other powerful states.
In April 2001, an unexpected turn of events catapulted China to the top of
the Bush administration’s agenda. A U.S. EP-3 reconnaissance plane was flying
in the South China Sea over waters that China considers – contrary to standard
18 Michael Beckley makes an important contribution in his study of China’s rise relative to the United States, concluding that America’s edge is likely to endure and maybe even grow. Yet even if Beckley’s argument is correct, China’s absolute rise is real and Beijing will have an increasing role to play on the world stage. See “China’s Century?” International Security, 36(3) (Winter 2011/12), pp. 41–78.
19 Henry A. Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011), pp. 2–3.
20 Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy, p. 94.
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No Exit from Pakistan
interpretations of international law – off-limits to foreign military planes and
ships. In an over-aggressive effort at harassment, a Chinese fighter pilot flew
too close to the EP-3. For him, the mistake proved fatal. Luckily, the American
plane managed an emergency landing on a Chinese island and all twenty-four
of its crewmembers survived, but the Chinese immediately detained them and
impounded their sensitive aircraft.
Bush’s secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, recalls that the ensuing diplo-
matic crisis foreshadowed the potential for future tensions with China. He
urged President Bush to take a firm stance. It was important, Rumsfeld believed,
not to look like a “weak supplicant” in a way that might “embolden China’s
military and political leaders to commit still more provocative acts.”21
Rumsfeld’s hawkish advice was only partially heeded by the White House,
but his recollection of events reveals the mind-set of the era. The incident
was ultimately defused diplomatically, although Beijing did not return the U.S.
EP-3 for three months. Had it not been for the 9/11 attacks and later, the
war in Iraq, one would have to assume that “much of the money, manpower,
and brainpower that has been directed to analyzing and responding to more
immediate threats would doubtless have been directed toward Asia and the
long-term challenges of a rising China.”22
More than a decade after 9/11, China is again beginning to garner the same
sort of attention it did in the early Bush administration. Some of the shift has
been driven by China’s own behavior. Starting in 2009, Beijing took a hard
line in a number of diplomatic disputes with the United States and neighboring
Asian states, including Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, and India.
In March 2009, five Chinese vessels surrounded a U.S. Navy reconnaissance
ship, the USNS Impeccable, about seventy-five miles from Hainan Island where
the EP-3 had crash-landed in 2001. In what amounted to a maritime replay of
2001, the Chinese waved flags and crossed dangerously close to the Impeccable, forcing it to take emergency evasive action.23 Fortunately, the incident did not
escalate further. The following year, in another naval incident, a Chinese fishing
boat rammed two Japanese patrol vessels in disputed waters. Video shot by
the Japanese shows that the Chinese captain clearly intended to provoke an
incident. He got his wish; when the Japanese detained him, Beijing demanded
his release. Then, when Tokyo was slow to act, China took the unusual step
of halting exports to Japan of rare earth minerals used in the manufacture of
high-tech components.24
21 Donald Rumsfeld, Known and Unknown: A Memoir (New York: Sentinel, 2011), p. 314.
22 Friedberg, A Contest for Supremacy, p. 3.
23 Ann Scott Tyson, “U.S. Protests Chinese Shadowing in International Waters,” Washington Post, March 10, 2009, www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/09/AR2009
030900956.html.
24 Keither Bradsher and Hiroko Tabuchi, “China Is Said to Halt Trade in Rare-Earth Minerals with Japan,” New York Times, September 24, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/25/
business/global/25minerals.html. For a broader analysis of the rise of rare earth minerals as Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. University of Sussex Library, on 05 Mar 2019 at 17:37:58, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781107053755.006
From the Outside-In
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Some analysts interpreted Beijing’s handling of these events as but one facet
of a more confident, even strident, Chinese approach to foreign affairs. This,
in turn, raised questions about whether China’s growing power will put it
irreversibly at odds with the United States and its interests.25
Other China watchers and policy analysts have been less inclined to see
China as an especially belligerent power.26 Geography and history bequeathed
China more than a few territorial disputes, but many of these have been settled
peacefully. Most important, China has worried mainly about its own eco-
nomic fortunes. Its Communist Party leadership appears desperate to keep a
lid on possible sources of domestic discontent. Overall, these scholars conclude,
China’s parochial view of the world is more likely to render Beijing irresponsi-
bly risk averse than dangerously aggressive.27 This too could be problematic; a
wealthy, powerful China that does too little to take on the burdens of leadership
would be worse than a missed opportunity; it would be a terrible abdication
of responsibility.
The truth is, China itself may not be sure of its own international course. And
in a very general sense, at this stage of the game, it may not matter. Whatever
China’s goals and intentions, it has grown so large that its actions will affect
the American interest one
way or another. In President Barack Obama’s words:
We can’t predict with certainty what the future will bring, but we can be certain about the issues that will define our times. And we also know this: The relationship between the United States and China will shape the 21st century, which makes it as important
as any bilateral relationship in the world.28
In November 2011, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expanded upon the
president’s theme when she observed, “As the war in Iraq winds down and
America begins to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, the United States
stands at a pivot point. . . . One of the most important tasks of American state-
craft over the next decade will therefore be to lock in a substantially increased
investment – diplomatic, economic, strategic, and otherwise – in the Asia-Pacific
region.”29
a strategic commodity, see Keith Bradsher, “Earth-Friendly Elements, Mined Destructively,”
New York Times, December 25, 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/26/business/global/
26rare.html?pagewanted=all.
25 Kissinger describes this strident tone as one pole in a Chinese debate about its national destiny.
See Kissinger, On China, pp. 503–7.
26 Andrew J. Nathan and Andrew Scobell, “How China Sees America,” Foreign Affairs (September/October 2012); Alastair Iain Johnston, “How New and Assertive Is China’s New Assertive-ness?” International Security, 37, no. 4 (Spring 2013), pp. 7–48, http://www.mitpressjournals
.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/ISEC_a_00115.
27 Thomas J. Christensen, “The Advantages of an Assertive China: Responding to Beijing’s Abra-sive Diplomacy,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2011).
28 “Remarks by the President at the U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue,” Office of the Press Secretary, White House, July 27, 2009.
29 Hillary Clinton, “America’s Pacific Century,” Foreign Policy (November 2011).
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No Exit from Pakistan
In short, China’s rise and the U.S. response will likely represent the primary
international drama for the next several decades. Relations with China will
Daniel S Markey Page 37
