For decades, the South China Sea has enjoyed relative calm, despite occasional territorial disputes. This has so far depended on a predominant U.S. military umbrella under which regional states thrive in a China-centric global production- and-supply chain. This stability has now been disturbed on several fronts.
First, China views the South China Sea as assuming ever-increasing strategic weight. Apart from Taiwan, China has long-standing historical territorial claims over certain islets and atolls and a consequential large swathe of the South China Sea, demarcated by the controversial “U-shaped nine dashed lines”(1) Click here. Situated in these waters are sea lanes vital for economic survival, as well as huge potential energy reserves. China’s rival territorial claimants have now become more assertive with their claims, egged on by rising nationalism and emboldened by America’s Pivot to Asia. This has resulted in recent series of high-sea standoffs.
Over the years, as part of a peaceful “rise” or “development” strategy, China has been building harmonious relations around and beyond her periphery. China became the first non-ASEAN nation to sign the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia in 2003. With the ASEAN-China Free Trade Area, the “ASEAN way” based on consensus and equality between states has been gaining traction. This mutually-beneficial harmony is now showing signs of strain. After a fallout on how territorial claims should be handled, the 45th ASEAN meeting in July, 2012 failed to issue a joint communiqué for the first time.
Second, there is growing U.S.-China military rivalry. China is starting to build a blue-water navy with the commissioning of a first aircraft carrier. Although this is a re-fitted old Russian model and China’s naval force remains decades behind, U.S. strategists are becoming alarmed by China's advances in "A2/AD (anti-access/area-denial)" capabilities, including mobile "aircraft-carrier killer" missiles, and in “C5ISR” (2) , cyber-warfare and space technologies. These are being deployed and continually developed to deter and delay potential adversary military deployment in case, for example, of a war over the Taiwan Strait.
To counter China, the U.S. military is reported to be planning a major expansion of radar missile defences in Asia. Concurrently, the Communist Party-run Global Times reported that China was developing a long-range, nuclear-capable, multiple-warhead ballistic missile that could potentially overcome US anti-missile defences.
Third, there is a looming split in the U.S.-China symbiotic economic relationship, dubbed “chimerica” by historian Niall Ferguson in 2006. America is now feeling the pain of outsourcing jobs to China. It is alarmed by excessive debt-driven consumption financed by China’s largesse in American treasuries. On her part, China is wary of over-reliance on exports and the folly of tying up too much savings in a “U.S Dollar Trap” (3) Click here. Moreover, a prevailing “China threat” has resulted in unease, suspicion, and mistrust, if not paranoia. A “Great Sino-American Divorce” is now looming on the horizon (4). Click here
These regional fault-lines therefore call for a re-think for a more sustainable Asian Order.
It must first be appreciated that with daunting domestic challenges, China needs a stable and peaceful international environment to progress. Following Deng Xiaoping’s advice, China would be loathe to seek leadership before becoming fully developed. Moreover, as China’s economic welfare and national security continue to depend on integration with the world order, it would be in China’s interest to behave as a “responsive great power” (5). China’s rise has thus been characterized by “normative” and “remunerative” rather than “coercive” power (6). This “peaceful rise” trajectory conforms to the “new security concept” articulated by former Foreign Minister Qian Quichen, a concept of strategic reassurance based on cooperative security, dialogue, and mutual economic benefit.
China has therefore been operating within, and stands to benefit from, a stable regional order largely underwritten by the United States. While a rising China can no longer unreservedly accept America’s dominance, it would not be in China’s best interest to dislodge the United States from the Asian region, even if China is able to do so, which remains unlikely for a long time. Seen in this light, China’s rise in Asia need not be at America’s expense (7).
Additionally, in an inter-connected and inter-dependent world, the United States’ capacity to lead has become more constrained, according to the U.S. National Intelligence Council (8). To tackle global challenges and to maintain world order, America needs to work closely with a host of state and non-state actors as well as allies and non-allies, including a rising China. Instead of checking China’s “peaceful rise”, therefore, America should strategically capitalize on it to achieve sustainable regional stability.
Moreover, while free-riding on America’s military protection, none of China’s neighbours, including Japan, wants to join an overt anti-China military bloc, as all depend for their economic growth on China as their largest market and trading partner.
Against the above background, ideas for a more stable Asian Order are now being offered by a number of prominent strategists.
Drawing on his thought-provoking book “The China Choice”, Professor Hugh White floats the idea of a “Concert of Asia” to avoid a possible “deadly strategic rivalry”. America is to partner and share regional power with China as an equal, accommodating or balancing China’s core regional interests, along with those of India and Japan (9). Click here Although White’s approach may work, the challenge is how this can be achieved without compromising the interests of America’s key regional allies.
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a doyen in American foreign policy, has advanced a global American grand strategy, comprising a “Larger West” by drawing Russia and Turkey into an enlarged European Union , and a ““Complex East”, where the U.S. would act as “regional balancer”, similar to the role played by the United Kingdom in intra-European politics before the early 20th century (10). Click here
A lynchpin of Brzezinski’s eastern component is a “U.S.-Japan-China Cooperative Triangle” to be nurtured through reconciliation between China and Japan, similar to that between Germany and France as well as Poland after World War II. The guiding principle should be to uphold obligations to Japan and South Korea without being drawn into a war between Asian powers.
To accommodate China’s core regional interests, Brzezinski suggests early resolution of the main sticking points in US-China relations, particularly the Taiwan issue. As Washington no longer recognizes Taiwan as a sovereign state, protecting a separate Taiwan indefinitely by arms sales is likely to intensify Chinese hostility. Given China's growing power and greatly expanded cross-Strait links, he doubts that Taiwan can indefinitely avoid the evolution of a more formal connection with the mainland, perhaps under a "one country, several systems" formula subject to exclusion of any PLA deployment on the island.
China’s re-emergence as a world power marks another turning point in the tide of history. A classic drama of power transition is playing out. The fracturing of the Asian Order is a clear manifestation. A purely military strategy is fraught with uncontrollable risks of a “security dilemma” that may escalate into a regional if not global war. Managing and accommodating China’s rise without sacrificing American interests takes strategic insight and bold thinking in the broadest context.
While actual developments and events are unlikely to fit neatly into any recipe, deeper understanding and debate of the changing dynamics at work may help in better managing a more sustainable Asian Order, underpinned by an evolving U.S.-China relationship, the most important of bilateral relations in the 21st century.
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(1) See “Interpreting the U-shape Line in the South China Sea” dated 15 May, 2012 on China & US Focus, an online platform supported by the China-United States Exchange Foundation based in Hong Kong. A map of the disputed waters is attached here.
Download Map of disputed islands and waters in the South China Sea
(2) Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Combat Systems, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance.
(3) “China’s Dollar Trap”, by Paul Krugman, in the New York Times, 2 April, 2009.
(4)
“The Great Sino-American Divorce” by Mark
Leonard, Reuters Columnist and Co-Founder and Director of the European Council
on Foreign Relations, 23 August 2012, in his Column on Reuter.com.
(5) “China’s Regional Strategy” by Professor Zhang Yuling and Associate Research Fellow Tang Shiping, both of the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, referring to the four core concepts of China’s grand strategy, in “Power Shift, China’s and Asia’s New Dynamics”, David Shambaugh (ed.), University of California Press, 2005.
(6) See Amitai Etzioni’s power classifications in “A Comparative Analysis of Complex Organizations”, revised ed., New York: The Free Press, 1975.
(7) “China’s rise in Asia need not be at America’s expense” by David Lampton, George and Sadie Hyman Professor and Director of China Studies at the John Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, in “Power Shift – China and Asia’s New Dynamics”, David Shambaugh (ed.), University of California Press, 2005.
(8) “Global Trends 2025: A Transformed World”, National Intelligence Council, Washington D.C, 21 November, 2008.
(9)
“The China Choice: A Bold Vision for
U.S.-China Relations”, in The Diplomat, an international current-affairs
online magazine for the Asia-Pacific region, by Hugh White, professor of
strategic studies at Australian National University, visiting fellow at the
Lowy Institute, and author of the new book “The
China Choice: Why America Should Share Power”, Black Inc. 20 August, 2012.
(10) “Balancing the East, Upgrading the West - U.S. Grand Strategy in an Age of Upheaval” in Foreign Affairs (January/February 2012), by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Robert E. Osgood Professor of American Foreign Policy at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, a scholar at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, and United States National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter from 1977 to 1981. The article was adapted from his soon-to-be published book, “Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power.”
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