Containment DA - Michigan7 2016

Containment Disad
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China is pursuing a revisionist foreign policy risking war
Davidson, senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, 16
(John Daniel, http://thefederalist.com/2016/04/12/china-expansionist-foreign-policy/ 4-12)
For months, Americans
have been riveted by headlines about Islamic State terrorist attacks across the
a far greater threat to global stability is
brewing in the South China Sea, where China has been building military bases on man-made islands and asserting maritime rights to
some of the busiest global trade routes. Meanwhile, here in the United States, Chinese intelligence services have
deployed an ever-widening network of spies. Although not directly connected, both of these developments
are manifestations of Chinas new, expansionist foreign policy in the Pacific. If China and the
United States dont alter their trajectory, we could be slow-walking into another cold waror
setting the stage for a hot one. Naval Officer Charged With Espionage News broke over the weekend that a Taiwanglobe. From Brussels to Lahore, it seems ISIS is the biggest thing going on overseas. Yet
born Navy officer, Lt. Cmdr. Edward C. Lin, has been charged with passing military secrets to China. On its own, the discovery of a
Chinese human intelligence operation in the United States is perhaps not all that remarkable, since by some estimates there are
scores of Chinese spies in America, most of them engaged in corporate espionage. If China and the U.S. dont alter their trajectory,
we could be slow-walking into another cold war. But Lins case is different because he had access to sensitive military intelligence.
Lin, who became a naturalized citizen in 2008 and speaks fluent Mandarin, served as a signals intelligence specialist for naval spy
planes. Signals intelligence is how the U.S. military identifies the whereabouts of foreign military units, like submarines, and the
methodology behind this work ranks among the U.S. armed forces most closely guarded secrets. Although corporate spying by the
Chinese might be common, the last time an active-duty member of the Navy was caught spying was in 1985, when John Walker, a
Navy officer and submariner, was caught passing secrets to the Soviet Union as part of an elaborate spy ring that operated for 18
years. That was during the Cold War, when spying between America and the Soviet Union was an open secret. The incident with Lin
is the latest sign that a cold war with China could be on the horizon, especially as evidence mounts that China might be willing to risk
a military conflict with Americas allies in Asia, and perhaps with America itself. Chinese Spies Are Everywhere News of Lins alleged
espionage comes on the heels of recent remarks by the former head of the House Intelligence Committee that there are more foreign
spies operating the United States than at any point in our history. In a recent speech at the Heritage Foundation, former Rep. Mike
Rogers said foreign agents in the United States outnumber those of any previous period, including the Cold War. Theyre stealing
everything. If its not bolted down, its gone, Rogers said. And if its bolted down, give them about an hourtheyll figure out how
to get that, too. There are more foreign spies operating the U.S. than at any point in our history. In his remarks, Rogers noted the
difference between Russian and Chinese operatives. The former tend to be trained professionals, he said, while the latter are often
recruits with a very specific goal of stealing a very specific piece of intellectual property, making them harder to detectand also
more numerous. Rogers isnt the first to raise concerns about espionage in the United States. In 2012, former top CIA covert officer
Hank Crumpton told CBS News there are more spies in America than during the peak of the Cold War. Crumpton, who ran
counterintelligence inside the U.S. as chief of the CIAs National Resources Division and served as deputy director of the CIAs
Counter-Terrorism Center, claimed major world powers, particularly China, have very sophisticated intelligence operations, very
aggressive operations against the U.S. Chinas Military Outposts in the South China Sea But espionage is just one aspect of Chinas
broader strategy to establish hegemony in the Pacific. A more visible sign of this strategy is the construction of artificial islands in
the South China Sea on a string of disputed reefs and islets called the Spratley Islands. The man-made islands, which are more than
500 hundred miles from mainland China and now feature military-length runways and radar stations, are the main source of
growing tension between China and its neighbors. Chinas man-made islands in the South China Sea now feature military-length
runways and radar stations. Over the past year, ongoing construction of the islands has prompted U.S. freedom-of-navigation
patrols, designed to challenge Chinas claim to them. Last month, the United States sent a carrier strike group, and the Navy has said
its planning a third patrol near the artificial islands this month. In an effort to mollify anxious Pacific allies, weve also increased
military aide to the Philippines and struck an agreement that would allow the Pentagon to use some military bases there to deploy
U.S. troops for the first time in decades. This issue isnt going away. At a recent meeting of the G7, foreign ministers expressed
concerns about territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas. Although not named outright, Chinas artificial islands were
clearly what the foreign ministers were referring to in a joint statement at the end of a meeting held in Hiroshima, Japan. The
statement expressed strong opposition to any intimidating, coercive or provocative unilateral actions that could alter the status quo
and increase tensions, and urged states to refrain from land reclamations, including large scale ones, and building out outposts.
Why such a strong statement? More than half of the worlds merchant fleet tonnage passes through the choke points surrounding
the South China Sea. Robert Kaplan calls it the throat of the Western Pacific and Indian oceansthe mass of connective economic
tissue where global sea routes coalesce.I spoke with Dr. Arthur Waldron, a professor of international relations at the
University of Pennsylvania and
a member of the highly classified Tilelli Commission, which evaluated

the China operations of the CIA from 2000 to 2001. He told me Chinas foreign policy shifted
sharply in 2008. It is now aggressive and expansionist , he said, and if it doesnt change,
its going to lead to war. Waldron believes our inability to respond to Chinas new posture has been a long time in
the making. Under President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, it was thought that the United
States would partner with China as a strategic ally against the Soviet Union. For decades, we treated China as our most
important Asian partner. But in recent years, the U.S. intelligence community has been astonished at
the kind of aggressive intelligence operations China has launched at the United States, the
vast number of people involved, and the sensitive targets they have chosen. We havent figured out how
to react, Waldron said. One reason is that the administration is completely divided between people who are
still holding the torch for a partnership and people who have had the scales fall from their
eyes, and have realized that what we have now is something else. We cant change their policy, but we can
change ours.
Engagement is over- Pivot represents shift to containment strategy

Mearsheimer, PhD, 16
(John, R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor University of Chicago Co-director,
Program on International Security Policy University of Chicago,
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-navarro-and-greg-autry/mearsheimer-onstrangling_b_9417476.html 3-10)
Now, in the 1990s, the Clinton administration did pursue engagement. There was little evidence of
containment: and you could do that in the 1990s because China was then weak enough that it didnt matter.
So I believe in the 1990s that the Clinton administration really did believe in engagement and thought that containment was a bad
idea and pursued this policy of engagement. But were now reaching the point where China is growing
economically to the point where its going to have a lot of military capability, and people are
getting increasingly nervous. So what you see is were beginning to transition from
engagement to containment ; and this, of course, is what the pivot to Asia is all
about. Hilary Clinton, who is married to Bill Clinton and pursued engagement in the 1990s, is now the principle
proponent of the pivot to Asia; and she fully understands that it is all about containment .
Of course, whats going to happen here given that we live in the United States is that were
going to use liberal rhetoric to disguise our realist behavior . So we will go to great
lengths not to talk in terms of containment even though were engaged in containment and even
though the Chinese know full well that were trying to contain them. But for our own sake and
for our public we will talk in much more liberal terms. So its liberal ideology disguising realist
behavior.
Engagement is appeasement- encourages Chinese aggression, HR violations,
wrecks hegemony and ruins alliances
Newsham, JD, 14
(Grant, Senior Research Fellow @ Japan Forum for Strategic Studies, Exec. Director Corporate
Security @ Morgan Stanley Japan, Retired Marine Colonel,
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/china-america-the-appeasement-question-11226, 98)
In February 2014, Philippine President Benigno Aquino warned that failure to challenge the Peoples Republic
of Chinas (PRC) territorial seizures in the South China Sea would be repeating the 1930s era
appeasement of Hitlers Germany. The Chinese were predictably outraged while the rest of the world mostly ignored
President Aquino. Appeasement is still a dirty word. But in the 1930s , until the Nazis invaded Poland in
September, 1939, European and American elites considered appeasement to be a sophisticated,
nuanced approach to dealing with increasingly powerful authoritarian regimes. To these elites, appeasement was more than
simply disarming and letting unpleasant people have their way. Appeasement actually had a coherent logic. The elites believed
that aggressive, authoritarian regimes act the way they do out of fear, insecurity, and at least partly legitimate
grievances such as German resentment of the harsh Treaty of Versailles. Understand and address these issue,
remove their fears, and the regimes will become less aggressive and transform into responsible
members of the international community and operate under international norms. Or so the elites argued.
Challenging these regimes could dangerously isolate them and even needlessly provoke them into
miscalculations. The elites thought engagement and transparency were beneficial in their
own right, as only good things could come from familiarity with one another. In the 1930s, the major Western powers all
attended each others war games. The US Marine Corps even took the German World War I fighter ace, Ernst Udet on a ride in a
USMC dive bomber. This engagement and transparency did not make the Nazis nicer , but perhaps gave them
some ideas about dive bombing and Blitzkreig. Even the Soviets and Germans had close ties with joint training, military
technology development, and raw material shipments to Germany. There was also extensive political and
diplomatic interaction. Close economic ties were believed to be a further hedge against conflict
breaking out, and companies such as Ford, IBM, and many others did profitable business in Germany. The elites believed anything
was better than war. Preserving peace, even if sacrificing principles and certain small nations was
considered wise and statesmanlike. People who criticized appeasement policy in the 1930s, most notably
Winston Churchill, were ridiculed as dolts and war mongers . We know how this turned
out . Curiously, appeasement (by another name) reappeared even before the end of the war in calls to address Stalins fears and
allow him to dominate Eastern Europe. And throughout the Cold War, in Western academic and government circles it was argued
that Soviet behavior was simply a reaction to fears of Western containment. The appeasers protested the peacetime draft as
threatening the Russians. They also pushed for unilateral nuclear disarmament, and opposed the Pershing missile deployment and
the neutron bomb well into the 1980s. Even President Jimmy Carter, once he overcame his inordinate fear of communism, tried
something akin to appeasement as national policy. It was not until the Soviets invaded Afghanistan that Carter learned his lesson. It
perhaps will take another case of an authoritarian regime rearranging its neighborhood to understand the cost of modern
appeasement. US policy towards China over the last 30 years, and particularly in recent times, seems familiar. The
United States does its best to understand the PRCs concerns and its resentments going back to
the Opium Wars and the century of humiliation, to accommodate these resentments, and to
ensure China does not feel threatened. Defense and State Department officials enthusiastically
seek greater transparency and openness especially in the military realm as such openness is perceived as
inherently good. In return, the PRC is expected to change, to show more respect for human rights
and international law and to become a responsible stakeholder in the international
community. We now have several decades of empirical evidence to assess this
concessionary approach . It has not resulted in improved, less aggressive PRC
behavior in the South China Sea or the East China Sea, or even in outer space .
Indeed , it seems to have encouraged Chinese assertiveness as manifest in
threatening language and behavior towards its neighbors. Nor has the PRC regime
shown more respect for human rights, rule of law, consensual government or freedom of
expression for its citizens. Serial intellectual property theft continues unabated, as does support for unsavory dictators.
Nonetheless, we invite the PRC to military exercises [4] and repeat the engagement mantra
expecting that one day things will magically improve. Some argue that letting the PRC see US
military power will dissuade it from challenging us. Perhaps, but we are just as likely to be seen as nave or weak .
From the Chinese perspective, there is no reason to change since they have done
very well without transforming and the PRC has never been stronger . Indeed, the PRC
frequently claims that human rights, democracy, and the like are outmoded Western values
having nothing to do with China. This is also demoralizing our allies, who at some point
may wonder if they should cut their own deals with the PRC. Some revisionist historians argue that Neville
Chamberlains 1930s era appeasement was in fact a wise stratagem to buy time to rearm. This overlooks that even as late as 1939
when Hitler seized all of Czechoslovakia, the Western democracies still had the military advantage. One can appease oneself into a
corner. And the beneficiary of the appeasement usually strengthens to the point it is too hard to restrain without great sacrifice. One
worries that the Chinese seizure of Philippine territory at Scarborough Shoal in 2012 [5] and the US Governments
might turn out to be this generations Rhineland .

Had the West resisted Hitler in 1936 when he made this first major demand, there would have
been no World War II, no Holocaust, and no Cold War . Our choice about how to deal with the PRC
unwillingness to even verbally challenge the PRC -
is not simply between either appeasement or treating China as an enemy. Our policy must accommodate options ranging from
engagement to forceful confrontation. Who would not be delighted with a China that stopped threatening its neighbors and followed
the civilized worlds rules? While ensuring we and our allies have a resolute defense both in terms of military capability and the
willingness to employ it it is important to maintain ties and dialogue with the PRC and to provide encouragement and support
when it shows clear signs of transforming to a freer, less repressive society. We should constantly stress that China is welcome as a
key player in the international order but only under certain conditions. The US and other democratic nations have not done
enough to require China to adhere to established standards of behavior in exchange for the benefits of joining the global system that
has allowed the PRC to prosper.
Human nature and history are a useful guide to where
appeasement (by whatever name) leads. And they also show that a strong defense and
resolutely standing up for ones principles is more likely to preserve peace.
Loss of super power competition with China causes global war
Cohen, PhD Harvard, 13
(Eliot, Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and the
Carey Business School, both at the Johns Hopkins University,
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887324196204578300262454939952 3-19)
In Mr. Obama's second term the limits of such withdrawal from conventional military commitments abroad will be tested. In East
Asia, an assertive China has bullied the Philippines (with which the U.S. has a 61-year-old defense pact) over the
Spratly islands, and China has pressed
its claims on Japan (a 53-year-old defense pact) over the Senkaku Islands. At
stake are territorial waters and mineral resources symbols of China's drive for
hegemony and an outburst of national egotism . Yet when Shinzo Abe, the new prime minister of an
understandably anxious Japan, traveled to Washington in February, he didn't get the unambiguous White House backing of Japan's
sovereignty that an ally of long standing deserves and needs. In Europe, an oil-rich Russia is rebuilding its
conventional arsenal while modernizing (as have China and Pakistan) its nuclear arsenal . Russia has been
menacing its East European neighbors, including those, like Poland, that have offered to host elements of a NATO
missile-defense system to protect Europe. In 2012, Russia's then-chief of general staff, Gen. Nikolai Makarov, declared: "A decision
to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens." This would be the same Russia that has attempted
to dismember its neighbor Georgia and now has a docile Russophile billionaire, Prime Minister Bidzina Ivanishvili, to
supplant the balky, independence-minded government loyal to President Mikhail Saakashvili. In the Persian Gulf, American policy
was laid down by Jimmy Carter in his 1980 State of the Union address with what became the Carter Doctrine: "An attempt by any
outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of
America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force ." America's Gulf allies may
not have treaties to rely uponbut they do have decades of promises and the evidence of two wars that the
U.S. would stand by them. Today they wait for the long-promised (by Presidents Obama and George W. Bush) nuclear
disarmament of a revolutionary Iranian government that has been relentless in its efforts to intimidate and subvert Iran's neighbors.
They may wait in vain. Americans take for granted the world in which they grew upa world in which, for better or
the U.S. was the ultimate security guarantor of scores of states, and in many
ways the entire international system . Today we are informed by many politicians and commentators that we
worse,
are weary of those burdensthough what we should be weary of, given that our children aren't conscripted and our taxes aren't
being raised in order to pay for those wars, is unclear. The truth is that defense spending at the rate of 4% of gross domestic product
(less than that sustained with ease by Singapore) is eminently affordable. The arguments against far-flung American
strategic commitments take many forms. So-called foreign policy realists, particularly in the academic world,
believe that the competing interests of states tend automatically toward balance and require no
statesmanlike action by the U.S. To them, the old language of force in international politics has become as obsolete as that of
the "code duello," which regulated individual honor fights through the early 19th century. We hear that international
institutions and agreements can replace national strength . It is also saidcovertly but significantlythat the
U.S. is too dumb and inept to play the role of security guarantor. Perhaps the clever political scientists, complacent humanists,
Spenglerian declinists, right and left neo-isolationists, and simple doubters that the U.S. can do anything right are correct. Perhaps
the president should concentrate on nation-building at home while pressing abroad only for climate-change agreements, nuclear
disarmament and an unfettered right to pick off bad guys (including Americans) as he sees fit. But if history is any guide,
foreign policy as a political-science field experiment or what-me-worryism will yield some ugly
results. Syria is a harbinger of things to come . In that case, the dislocation, torture and
death have first afflicted the locals. But it will not end there, as incidents on Syria's borders and rumors of the
movement of chemical weapons suggest. A world in which the U.S. abnegates its leadership will be a world
of unrestricted self-help in which China sets the rules of politics and trade in Asia,
mayhem and chaos is the order of the day in the Middle East , and timidity and
appeasement paralyze the free European states. A world, in short, where the strong do what they
will, the weak suffer what they must, and those with an option hurry up and get nuclear
weapons.
Uniqueness
U-Containment Now
Pivot marks transition to containment strategy
Krepinevich, PhD Harvard, 15
(Andrew F, currently serves as President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-02-16/how-deter-china March/April)
In the U.S. military, at least, the pivot to Asia has begun. By 2020, the navy
and the air force plan

to base 60 percent of their forces in the Asia-Pacific region. The Pentagon, meanwhile, is investing a growing
share of its shrinking resources in new long-range bombers and nuclear-powered submarines designed to operate in high-threat
environments. These
changes are clearly meant to check an increasingly assertive China . And with
good reason : Beijings expanding territorial claims threaten virtually every country along what
is commonly known as the first island chain, encompassing parts of Japan, the Philippines,
and Taiwanall of which Washington is obligated to protect . But to reliably deter Chinese aggression,
the Pentagon will have to go even further. Emerging Chinese capabilities are intended to blunt
Washingtons ability to provide military support to its allies and partners. Although deterrence
through the prospect of punishment, in the form of air strikes and naval blockades, has a role to play in
discouraging Chinese adventurism, Washingtons goal, and that of its allies and partners, should
be to achieve deterrence through denialto convince Beijing that it simply cannot achieve its
objectives with force.
U- Engagement Collapsing
Engagement era coming to an end- containment now
Shambaugh, PhD Michigan, 15
(David, professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington
University in Washington DC,[1] as well as a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/1819980/fundamentalshift-china-and-us-are-now-engaged-all-out?page=all , 6-12)
The relationship between the United States and China has rightly been described as the most
important relationship in world affairs. It is also the most complex and fraught one. These two titans are the world's
two leading powers and are interconnected in numerous ways bilaterally, regionally, and globally. It is therefore of vital
importance to understand the dynamics that underlie and drive this relationship at present,
which are shifting. While Washington and Beijing cooperate where they can, there has also been steadily
rising competition in the relationship. This balance has now shifted, with competition being
the dominant factor. There are several reasons for it - but one is that security now trumps
economics in the relationship . The competition is not only strategic competition, it is
actually comprehensive competition: commercial, ideological, political, diplomatic,
technological , even in the academic world where China has banned a number of American
scholars and is beginning to bring pressure to bear on university joint ventures in China. Mutual
distrust is pervasive in both governments, and is also evident at the popular level. The last Pew global
attitudes data on this, in 2013, found distrust rising in both countries. Roughly two-thirds of both publics view USChina relations as "competitive" and "untrustworthy" - a significant change since 2010 when a majority of
people in both nations still had positive views of the other. One senses that the sands are fundamentally
shifting in the relationship . Viewed from Washington, it is increasingly difficult to find a
positive narrative and trajectory into the future. The "engagement coalition" is crumbling
and a "competition coalition" is rising . In my view, the relationship has been fundamentally troubled for
many years and has failed to find extensive common ground to forge a real and enduring partnership. The "glue" that seems
to keep it together is the fear of it falling apart. But that is far from a solid basis for an enduring
partnership between the world's two leading powers.
Engagement consensus has broken
Browne, Senior Correspondent, 15
(Andrew, http://www.wsj.com/articles/can-china-be-contained-1434118534 6-12)
For many Americans today, watching the administration of President Xi Jinping crack down hard on internal
dissent while challenging the U.S. for leadership in Asia, that promise seems more remote than
ever before. In his recently published book The Hundred-Year Marathon, Michael Pillsburyan Asia specialist and
Pentagon official under Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush writes that China has failed to meet
nearly all of our rosy expectations . U.S. foreign policy has reached a turning point , as
analysts from across the political spectrum have started to dust off Cold War-era
arguments and to speak of the need for a policy of containment against China. The once
solid Washington consensus behind the benefits of constructive engagement with
Beijing has fallen apart.
U: Hostile Rise
Chinas rise is immanent and hostile- US must confront
Bosco, JD LLM Harvard, 16
(Joseph, senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. He served as China country desk officer in the Office
of the Secretary of Defense and taught a graduate seminar on US-China-Taiwan relations at Georgetown's School of Foreign Service
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/china-expects-the-us-roll-over-15688 4-6)
Former Pacific Commander and former Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair has rendered yet
another valuable public service, this time as head of Sasakawa Peace Foundation USA (SPF). The organization has
produced a comprehensive report assessing Chinas evolving strategic posture and presenting alternative scenarios
for the U.S.-Japan alliance response to the ensuing threats and opportunities. While the paper is dispassionate and
clear-eyed about the risks and openings presented by China's rise, the implications are
ominous. The paper posits four possible outcomes for a future China: a powerful and benevolent state;
a powerful and aggressive state; a weak and inward-looking state, or a weak and aggressive state. The study offers a caveat, however:
It is dangerous to base an Alliance strategy on a single future for the China of 2030 . . . [It] . . . will not fall neatly into any of the four
alternatives . . . The most likely scenario is elements of different futures. Theoretical neatness aside, the report also
states that "current trends project a somewhat more powerful and aggressive China
than the United States and Japan have dealt with in the past." Indeed, on its own terms the report already
identifies China's present course as increasingly threatening. We don't need another
ten to fifteen years to know from the preponderance of evidence that we already face the worstcase scenario: a powerful and aggressive China that is on course to become even
more powerful and more aggressive . The even more powerful nature of this "future" China, the report
prognosticates, would consist of a predominantly market-based economy with growth of five to seven percent; increased restrictions
on foreign businesses in China; strongly mercantilist policies overseas; and high defense spending approaching that of the United
States. Most of these characteristics are already true of today's China or are rapidly becoming the status quo. As for the aggressive
part of the picture, this "future China" would use its "economic and military advantage . . . to support
its current core interestsprimacy of the CCP, reunification with Taiwan, secure administration
of Tibet and Xinjiang, and success in pursuing its claims in the East and South China Seas" again,
all of which China is now doing. (An additional area would be expansionist claims vis a vis India and the Indian
Ocean which China is not yet pursuing vigorously.) Support for the near-certainty of an increasingly powerful and aggressive China
can also be found in other sections of the text. For example, Xi Jinping is said to see his new model of great power
relations as the key to a stable U.S.-China relationship. The report offers two alternatives to understand
Beijings calculus for achieving this stability. In a best-case scenario, the Chinese seek to ensure that competitive elements in the
U.S.-China relationship remain firmly under control roughly analogous to the period of U.S.-Soviet dtente during the Cold War.
During that earlier period of dtente, the Soviet Union cracked down on internal dissent, conducted an increasingly interventionist
foreign policy in Latin America and Africa, and invaded Afghanistanhardly a posture the West would want China to emulate.
Additionally, there is the report's less benign assessment of China's new model. China is using the framework of
great power relations to seek U.S. acquiescence to Chinas definition of core interests , which
include maintaining Chinas political system, territorial claims, and way of shaping and applying international rules and regimes. In
the United States would accept Chinas regional, and quite possibly global
hegemony. Under both the best case and less benign scenarios, the U.S.
response must be either capitulation or confrontation.
other words,
U: Chinese Revisionism
Overwhelming evidence points to Chinese revisionism- only US strength can deter

Krepinevich, PhD Harvard, 15
(Andrew F, currently serves as President of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments,
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-02-16/how-deter-china March/April)
China claims that its rise is intended to be peaceful, but its actions tell a different story : that of a
revisionist power seeking to dominate the western Pacific. Beijing has claimed sovereignty over not only
Taiwan but also Japans Senkaku Islands (known in China as the Diaoyu Islands) and most of the 1.7 million square miles that make
up the East China and South China Seas, where six other countries maintain various territorial and maritime claims. And it has been
unapologetic about pursuing those goals. In 2010, for example, Chinas then foreign minister, Yang Jiechi, dismissed
concerns over Beijings expansionism in a single breath, saying, China is a big country, and
other countries are small countries, and that is just a fact. Consider Beijings recent bullying in the South
China Sea. In March 2014, Chinese coast guard boats blocked the Philippines from accessing its outposts on the Spratly Islands. Two
months later, China moved an oil rig into Vietnams exclusive economic zone, clashing with Vietnamese fishing boats. The moves
echoed earlier incidents in the East China Sea. In September 2010, as punishment for detaining a Chinese fishing boat captain who
had rammed two Japanese coast guard vessels, China temporarily cut off its exports to Japan of rare-earth elements, which are
essential for manufacturing cell phones and computers. And in November 2013, China unilaterally declared an air defense
identification zone, subject to its own air traffic regulations, over the disputed Senkaku Islands and other areas of the East China
Sea, warning that it would take military action against aircraft that refused to comply. Some have suggested that as its
military grows stronger and its leaders feel more secure, China will moderate such behavior. But
the opposite seems far more likely . Indeed, Beijings provocations have coincided with the
dramatic growth of its military muscle. China is now investing in a number of new capabilities that pose a direct
challenge to regional stability. For example, Chinas Peoples Liberation Army is bolstering its so-called anti-access/area-denial
capabilities, which aim to prevent other militaries from occupying or crossing vast stretches of territory, with the express goal of
making the western Pacific a no-go zone for the U.S. military. That includes developing the means to target the Pentagons
command-and-control systems, which rely heavily on satellites and the Internet to coordinate operations and logistics. The PLA has
made substantial progress on this front in recent years, testing an antisatellite missile, using lasers to blind U.S. satellites, and
waging sophisticated cyberattacks on U.S. defense networks. China is also enhancing its capacity to target critical
U.S. military assets and limit the U.S. Navys ability to maneuver in international waters. The PLA
already has conventional ballistic and cruise missiles that can strike major U.S. facilities in the region, such as the Kadena Air Base,
in Okinawa, Japan, and is developing stealth combat aircraft capable of striking many targets along the first island chain. To detect
and target naval vessels at greater distances, the PLA has deployed powerful radars and reconnaissance satellites, along with
unmanned aerial vehicles that can conduct long-range scouting missions. And to stalk U.S. aircraft carriers, as well as the surface
warships that protect them, the Chinese navy is acquiring submarines armed with advanced torpedoes and high-speed cruise
missiles designed to strike ships at long distances. Beijings actions cannot be explained away as a response to
a U.S. arms buildup. For the last decade, Washington has focused its energy and resources
primarily on supporting its ground troops in Afghanistan and Iraq . The U.S. defense budget, which
until recently stood at above four percent of the countrys GDP, is projected to decline to less than three percent by the
end of the decade. Simply put, the Pentagon is shedding military capabilities while the
PLA is amassing them. Yet if the past is prologue, China will not seek to resolve its expansionist aims through overt
aggression. Consistent with its strategic culture, it wants to slowly but inexorably shift the regional military balance in its favor,
leaving the rest of the region with little choice but to submit to Chinese coercion. For the most part, Chinas maritime
neighbors are convinced that diplomatic and economic engagement will do little to alter this
basic fact. Several of them, including Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam, are increasingly
focusing their militaries on the task of resisting Chinese ambitions . They know full well, however,
that individual action will be insufficient to prevent Beijing from carrying its
vision forward. Only with U.S. material support can they form a collective front
that deters China from acts of aggression or coercion.
U-Conflict Inevitable
Conflict inevitable as China pursues regional hegemony
So one of the really interesting questions here is what is the competition between China and the United States
going to look like? First of all, I think theres going to be a serious arms race. I think that the Chinese will spend
increasing amounts of money on defense and they will build more and better military capability. At the same time, the United States
is going to increase defense spending, and its going to send more and more of its military assessments to Asia than it has in the past
because the United States is going to be bent on containing China, and this will lead to an arms race. The Chinese will try and best
us, and we will try and best them, much the way the United States and the Soviet Union did during the Cold War. I think its almost
for sure youll have crises. Youll have crises in the South China Sea and the East China Sea. I wouldnt be
surprised if you had a crisis on
the Korean peninsula that threatened to bring the United States and China into the fray.
youll
have the ever-present danger that those crises will escalate to wars. And given the geography of
Asia, it is possibly that you could have a war between the United States and China . Just to give you
one example: If a conflict were to break out between Japan and China over the Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands,
the United States would almost certainly come in on the side of Japan; and its possible to imagine shooting
That would be a very dangerous situation. So I think, in addition to arms races, youll have crises. And then, of course,
starting in that situation because youre talking about a war that would be fought at sea, and where there would be no need to use
nuclear weapons. This is not like a war on the central front during the Cold War where the United States and the Soviet Union, were
they to fight, would end up fighting World War III with nuclear weapons; and because that possible scenario was so horrific, it was
extremely unlikely. Were talking about fighting a war over a series of rocks out in the East China Sea. Its easy to imagine such a war
starting. Its easy to imagine North Korea collapsing and a conflict breaking out between North and South Korea that pulls the
United States and the Chinese in. Its easy to imagine a war being fought over Taiwan and the United
States coming in on the side of Taiwan, presenting a situation where the United States and China are fighting each
other. Where the Chinese have gone wrong, in my opinion, is they have overreacted in almost
every case; and, as a consequence, they have scared their neighbors, and they have scared the
United States. The Chinese argue that its imperative in these crises to lay down markers and to
make it clear where China stands on the conflict or the dispute in question; and I understand that, but they do it
in ways that seem very aggressive in tone and or aggressive in nature, and they end up scaring
people. And thats not smart. Now, some people might say, a lot of countries have pursued hegemony in the past and they have
ended up destroying themselves. Look at what happened to imperial Germany, look at what happened to imperial Japan, look at
what happened to Nazi Germany. Look at what happened to the Athenians. Now, theres no question that, in the past, countries have
pursued hegemony and have ended up getting destroyed in the process. What subsequent countries do, looking back, is say to
themselves: Were going to be much smarter the next time. Were going to pull it off. Were going to be like the United States. Just
take China for example. The Chinese understand full well what happened to Imperial Germany, what
happened to the Soviet Union; and the Chinese do not want to end up committing suicide. So
what the Chinese are doing is thinking about how to maximize their power in smart and
sophisticated ways. So my argument would be that, given the tragedy of great power politics, they will
pursue regional hegemony. They will try to push the Americans out of Asia, they will try to
dominate Asia, and they will try to do it smartly. Whether theyre successful or not is another
matter.
China is a revisionist power
I think its
very clear that China is a revision of state. The Chinese have made it clear that they
think that Taiwan should be made part of China. They believe that the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands, in the East
China Sea, should become Chinese. The Japanese, of course, now control them. And they believe that they should
dominate the South China Sea in ways that they dont at the moment. And what the Chinese would like to
do, is theyd like to push the United States back towards the United States. And the first step
would be to push them beyond the First Island Chain, which would allow them to control all of
the waters in between that First Island Chain and the Chinese mainland. And then, of course, if
they push the Americans out beyond the Second Island Chain, theyd control most of the West
Pacific. Theyd control the waters off their coastline.
U- Grand Strategy
Coalition of engagement proponents breaking down now
Eisenmen, PhD, 16
(Joshua, assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin's Lyndon Baines Johnson
School of Public Affairs and senior fellow for China studies at the American Foreign Policy
Council in Washington, DC,
https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/articles_papers_reports/756 1-21)
Now, however, a growing contingent in Washington and beyond is arguing that extensive U.S. engagement
has failed to prevent China from threatening other countries. One longtime
proponent of engagement with China, David M. Lampton, gave a speech in May 2015 entitled "A Tipping Point in
U.S.-China Relations is Upon Us," in which he noted that, despite the remarkable "policy continuity" of
"constructive engagement" through eight U.S. and five Chinese administrations, "today important components
of the American policy elite increasingly are coming to see China as a threat." 11 Former
Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd summarized this view: Beijing's long-term policy is aimed at
pushing the U.S. out of Asia altogether and establishing a Chinese sphere of influence spanning the
region.12 Similarly, in June, former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on PBS Newshour: "The longstanding consensus that
China's rise is good for the U.S. is beginning to break down.13 In response to these misgivings about Beijing's intentions, there
have been calls for Washington to actively shape China's strategic choices by enhancing U.S.
military capabilities and strengthening alliances to counterbalance against its growing strength. Recent
publications reflect increasing apprehension; most argue that policymakers must avoid an
enduring " structural problem" in international relations that causes rising powers
to become aggressive . Some experts, like Princeton's Aaron Friedberg, contend that the U.S.
should "maintain a margin of military advantage sufficient to deter attempts at coercion or
aggression.14 Thomas Christensen, former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asia,
noted in June, that there are two primary questions for U.S. security vis--vis China: How to dissuade China from using force in
East Asia? How can we get China to actively contribute to stabilizing global governance? These initiatives, Christensen noted, are
based on the assumption that "whenever a country becomes a rising power, tensions with neighbors
arise.15 Christensen agrees with Bader that the U.S.' "strategic goal" vis--vis China is to "shape Beijing's choices so as to channel
China's nationalist ambitions into cooperation rather than coercion." 16 To elicit Beijing's participation U.S.
policymakers should persuade China that bullying its neighbors will backfire, while proactive
cooperation with those neighbors and the world's other great powers will accelerate China's
return to great power status.17 The U.S. should build a robust deterrence architecture
to counter-balance China's rise and push Beijing towards meaningful engagement ,
Christensen argues. The U.S. and its allies "need to maintain sufficient power and resolve in East
Asia to deter Beijing from choosing a path of coercion or aggression. 18 " Chinese anxiety
about a U.S. containment effort could carry some benefits for the United States:
the potential for encirclement may encourage Chinese strategists to become more
accommodating," resulting in more "moderate policies ." Both engagement supporters and
deterrence supporters agree that the U.S. should change China's strategic calculus in ways that increase the benefits of cooperation
and the costs of aggression; where they disagree is on how to achieve this.
AT: No Chinese Grand Strategy

Chinas grand strategy is to supplant the US
Blackwill, Senior fellow @ CFR, 16
(Robert, Former Ambassador to India, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/chinas-strategy-asiamaximize-power-replace-america-16359 5-26)
Chinas primary strategic goal in contemporary times has been the accumulation of comprehensive
national power. This pursuit of power in all its dimensionseconomic, military, technological and diplomatic
is driven by the conviction that China, a great civilization undone by the hostility of others,
could never attain its destiny unless it amassed the power necessary to ward off the hostility of
those opposed to this quest. This vision of strengthening the Chinese state while recovering Chinas centrality in
international politicsboth objectives requiring the accumulation of comprehensive national power suggests that the
aims of Beijings grand strategy both implicate and transcend the United States and Chinas
other Asian rivals, to replace U.S. primacy in Asia writ large . For China, which is
simultaneously an ancient civilization and a modern polity, grand strategic objectives are not simply about
desirable rank orderings in international politics but rather about fundamental conceptions
of order.
Chinese grand strategy is explicitly to counter US influence
Blackwill, Senior Fellow @ CFR, and Tellis, PhD, 15
(Robert, Former Ambassador to India, Ashley, senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace specializing in
international security, defense, and Asian strategic issues. Revising U.S. Grand Strategy Toward China March)
The profound test that the rise of Chinese power represents for the United States is likely to last for decades. It is unrealistic to
imagine that Chinas grand strategy toward the United States will evolve in a wayat least in the
next ten yearsthat accepts American power and influence as linchpins of Asian peace and
security, rather than seeks to systematically diminish them. Thus, the central question
concerning the future of Asia is whether the United States will have the political will; the
geoeconomic, military, and diplomatic capabilities; and, crucially, the right grand strategy to
deal with China to protect vital U.S. national interests .(39)
We must take Chinese leaders at their word- otherwise analysis is impossible

Policy experts critical of the grand strategy toward China proposed in this report will likely fall into at least six categories. First,
some will argue that China has no grand strategy. Although there may be those in Beijing who disagree with Chinas
current strategic approach, its
dominating elements are not a mystery. Chinese officials insistently

argue that the U.S. alliance system in Asia is a product of the Cold War and should be
dismantled; that the United States Asian allies and friends should loosen their U.S. ties and that
failure to do so will inevitably produce a negative PRC reaction; that U.S. efforts to maintain its
current presence and power in Asia are dimensions of an American attempt to contain China
and therefore must be condemned and resisted; that U.S. military power projection in the region is dangerous and
should be reduced (even as the PLA continues to build up its military capabilities with the clear objective of reducing U.S. military
options in the context of a U.S.-China confrontation); and that the U.S. economic model is fundamentally exploitative and should
To not take seriously official Chinese government statements

along these lines is to not take China seriously . That Beijing does not hope to realize
these policy goals in the short term does not reduce their potential undermining effect in the
decades ahead. In short, if China were to achieve the policy objectives contained in these official
have no application in Asia.
statements, it would clearly replace the United States as Asias leading power. If that does not
represent a PRC grand strategy, what would? (34)
China Rise goes neg- they will never accepts bounds of engagement
Friedberg, PhD Harvard, 15
(Aaron L, Prof of Politics and international affairs @Princeton, The Debate Over US China
Strategy Survival | vol. 57 no. 3 | JuneJuly 2015 | pp. 89110)
The belief in Beijing that, whatever its current challenges, Chinas relative power
will continue to grow

while Americas declines does not augur well for attempts to forge a grand bargain . For as
long as they see the tides of history flowing in their favour, Chinas leaders are unlikely to accept
a spheres-of-influence arrangement based on the current distribution of power, even if it is in some
respects an improvement on the status quo. In the past, Beijing had little choice but to accept Americas dominant regional presence
and its alliances, albeit with the caveat that they were relics of the Cold War. Why should it ratify their existence now, when it has
more means at its disposal than ever before with which to try and weaken them, and when (especially insofar as Japan is concerned)
they no longer seem to be acting as a restraint on the military programmes of other regional powers? The idea that Chinas
leaders believe they can subsist comfortably as a continental power, leaving control of the
maritime domain to the United States, also appears increasingly implausible and at odds with
the facts. Even if China succeeds in marching West, building transport and communication links through Central and South
Asia, it will continue to be heavily reliant on seaborne imports of energy, food and raw materials.46 The presence of US forces and
bases around Chinas maritime periphery, and its leadership of a maritime coalition that extends from Northeast Asia into the
Indian Ocean, will likely be perceived as posing an even greater threat in the future than it does today. (104-5)
China has a plan to overtake the US- its official doctrine if unwritten
Pillsbury, PhD, 15
(Michael, director of the Hudson Institutes Center for Chinese Strategy,
http://www.businessinsider.com/the-hundred-year-marathon-excerpt-2015-2 2-9)
In the late 1990s, during the Clinton administration, I was tasked by the Department of Defense and the
CIA to conduct an unprecedented examination of Chinas capacity to deceive the United States
and its actions to date along those lines. Over time , I discovered proposals by Chinese hawks (ying pai) to the
Chinese leadership to mislead and manipulate American policymakers to obtain intelligence and
military, technological, and economic assistance. I learned that these hawks had been advising
Chinese leaders, beginning with Mao Zedong, to avenge a century of humiliation and aspired to replace
the United States as the economic, military, and political leader of the world by the year 2049 (the
one hundredth anniversary of the Communist Revolution). This plan became known as the Hundred-Year
Marathon. It is a plan that has been implemented by the Communist Party leadership from the beginning of its relationship
with the United States. When I presented my findings on the Chinese hawks recommendations about Chinas ambitions
and deception strategy, many U.S. intelligence analysts and officials greeted them initially with
disbelief. Chinese leaders routinely reassure other nations that China will never become a hegemon. In other words, China will
be the most powerful nation, but not dominate anyone or try to change anything. The strength of the Hundred-Year
Marathon, however, is that it operates through stealth . To borrow from the movie Fight Club, the first
rule of the Marathon is that you do not talk about the Marathon. Indeed, there is almost certainly no single
master plan locked away in a vault in Beijing that outlines the Marathon in detail. The Marathon is so well known to Chinas leaders
that there is no need to risk exposure by writing it down. But the Chinese are beginning to talk about the notion
more openly perhaps because they realize it may already be too late for America to keep pace.
I observed a shift in Chinese attitudes during three visits to the country in 2012 , 2013, and 2014. As
was my usual custom, I met with scholars at the countrys major think tanks , whom Id come to know well over
decades. I directly asked them about a Chinese-led world order a term that only a few years earlier they
would have dismissed, or at least would not have dared to say aloud. However, this time many said openly that the
new order, or rejuvenation, is coming, even faster than anticipated. When the U.S. economy was battered
during the global financial crisis of 2008, the Chinese believed Americas long-anticipated and unrecoverable decline was beginning.
I was told by the same people who had long assured me of Chinas interest in only a modest
leadership role within an emerging multipolar world that the Communist Party is realizing its
long-term goal of restoring China to its proper place in the world . In effect, they were telling me that they
had deceived me and the American government. With perhaps a hint of understated pride, they were
revealing the most systematic, significant, and dangerous intelligence failure in
American history. And because we have no idea the Marathon is even under way,
America is losing.
U CP- Cyber Crime

For the past decade, the United States has tolerated incessant cyberattacks by China on the U.S. government, critical infrastructure,
and businesses. Virtually nothing has been done to stop this cyber assault, and the name and shame approach toward China has
clearly failed. (The U.S. indictment of five PLA officers, of course, had no impact on Chinas cyber espionage.) The Department of
Defense cyber strategy published in 2011 announced a new doctrine, arguing that harmful action within the cyber domain can be
met with a parallel response in another domain, known as equivalence.48 No such equivalence has been exacted on China. Such
passivity on the part of the United States should end, especially since there is no way to reach a verifiable cybersecurity agreement
with China. The United States should implement the following cyber policies: Impose costs on China that are in excess of the
benefits it receives from its violations in cyberspace. A good starting point is the recommendation of the Blair-Huntsman
Commission of an across-theboard tariff on Chinese goods.49 Increase U.S. offensive cyber capabilities to dissuade Chinas leaders
from using cyberattacks against the United States and its partners in the region. Continue to improve U.S. cyber defenses.
Securing cyberspace will require congressional action, including a law regulating information sharing between intelligence agencies
and the corporate world. Pass relevant legislation in Congress, such as the Cyber Information Security Protection Act, allowing
businesses to rapidly share intelligence on cyber threats with each other and the government without fear of lawsuits. (26-7)
Links
L: Chinese Growth
Stopping Chinese growth k2 forestall military conflict
Theres no question that preventive war makes no sense at all, but a much more attractive strategy
would be to do whatever we could to slow down Chinas economic growth . Because
if it doesnt grow economically, it cant turn that wealth into military might and
become a potential hegemon in Asia . I mean, what really makes China so scary today is the
fact that it has so many people and its also becoming an incredibly wealthy country. Our great
fear is that China will turn into a giant Hong Kong. And if it has a per capita GNP thats
anywhere near Hong Kongs GNP, it will be one formidable military power . So the question is, Can you
prevent it from becoming a giant Hong Kong? My great hope is that Chinas economy will slow down on its
own. I think its in Americas interest, and its in the interest of Chinas neighbors to see the
Chinese economy slow down in terms of its growth rate in really significant ways in the future
because if that happens, it then cant become a formidable military power.
AT: China Growth Good

Growth wont moderate China- encourages aggression
Interestingly, developments under Xis leadership portrayed as good news for the West are
things that make the Communist regime internally stronger and more efficienteconomic
reforms eliminating excessive regulation and local protectionism [that] have made the market
inefficient. To the extent those reforms produce benefits for the Chinese people, they
presumably increase the regimes legitimacy, both domestically and internationally .
One may very well hope that such news of increasing influence would induce a more relaxed
attitude among Chinese leaders regarding their place in the world. More realistically, however,
given the Communist Party of Chinas implacable view of the United States and its allies as the
enemydespite more than four decades of Western engagement and its expectation that it can
achieve U.S. acquiescence to the dominance Xi seeks, China will almost certainly
become even more ambitious and aggressive.
Growth is crucial to CCP control- weakens US fopo and stops regional allies from
challenging the PRC
Preserving internal control remains the foremost objective of the CCP today. But the goal of ensuring continued and
unchallenged Communist rule leads to the second operational aspiration: sustaining the high
levels of economic growth necessary to preserve social order . Since the founding of the Communist state,
transforming the Chinese economy has remained an important political aim. After all, Mao Zedong had no doubts that political
power grew out of not only a monopoly of force, but, more fundamentally, material foundations. Unfortunately for China, however,
Maos collectivist strategies failed to achieve the high levels of growth chalked up by its neighbors, and his capricious political actions
only further stunted Chinas development. Yet so long as Mao remained alive, his towering personality and his ruthless politics
especially the extreme and effective brutality of the PLA and the Red Guardsensured that the CCPs hold on power did not suffer
because of economic underperformance.17 Since the beginning of the reform period under Deng Xiaoping, however, high levels of
economic growth have become indispensable. In
the absence of charismatic leaders such as Mao and Deng ,

economic growth has become important for sustaining the legitimacy of the CCP
even for Chinas current imperial president, Xi Jinping.18With the shift to market reforms beginning in 1978, the imperative
for high growth has only intensified as the distinctiveness of the CCP as the vanguard of socialism has progressively eroded. There is
nothing particularly unique about the party anymore, except that it remains the sole holder of political power in China. Why this
should be the case in perpetuity remains difficult to answerand the party has sought to deflect this question by, in effect, promising
high levels of sustained economic growth as its newest justification for continued rule. This strategy of mitigating a fraying political
legitimacy through impressive economic performance has come to embody the essence of the new social contract in China: through
its economic policies, the party promises rising standards of living for Chinas population and an increase in personal (but not
political) freedoms in exchange for an unchallenged acceptance of continued Communist rule. For the moment at least, this strategy
appears to be successful. For whatever its discontent may be, the Chinese population ultimately ends up
supporting the regime because it views order and control as essential for maintaining the high
rates of economic growth that generate the prosperity demanded by the citizenry. The populace and
the party are thus locked into an uncertain symbiosis that provides the regime with strength and the polity with a modicum of
stabilitya relationship that compels Chinas leaders to maintain strong economic ties with the outside world while protecting the
countrys claims and prerogatives internationally as the price of political success at home. The aim of sustaining high levels of
economic growth, therefore, is colored by both economic and political imperatives. The former speak to the development agenda of
the Chinese statethe importance of lifting vast numbers of people out of poverty and enriching the population at the fastest rate
possiblewhile the latter are advanced by the fact that rapid economic expansion contributes to the CCPs political legitimacy,
increases its available resources for domestic and international (including military) ends, and underwrites its status and material
claims in the international arena. Chinas means of producing high economic growth have also been distinctive. By liberalizing
commodity and labor prices but not the prices of other elements such as land, capital, and energy, Beijing created limited free
markets in China that operated under the supervision of a strong and controlling state. Because many foreign firms invested in
China under this scheme, manufacturing consumer and industrial goods intended primarily for export, China has become the new
workshop of the world.19 This economic model of production for overseas markets is slowly changing: it is now supplemented by
increasing attention to domestic consumers and by the rise of new private enterprises, but it was controlled capitalism that elevated
Chinas growth to unprecedented levels, thus permitting Beijing to portray its older approachwhich consisted of incremental
reforms, innovation and experimentation, export-led growth, state-dominated capitalism, and authoritarian politicsas the superior
alternative to the American framework of free markets overseen by democratic regimes. The global financial crisis of 20072008
raised doubts about the wisdom of Washingtons methods of economic management, giving new life to Chinas critique of liberal
democracy and free markets. Although the attractiveness, endurance, and exportability of this so-called Beijing model are suspect on
multiple grounds, the fact remains that it has more or less served China well until now.20 This model has bequeathed Beijing with
huge investible surpluses (in the form of vast foreign exchange reserves), substantially increased its technological capabilities
(thanks to both legitimate and illegitimate acquisitions of proprietary knowledge), andmost importanthas tied the wider global
economy ever more tightly to China. Although this last development has generated wealth and welfare gains globally, it has also
produced several unnerving strategic consequences. It has made many of Chinas trading
partners, especially its smaller neighbors, asymmetrically dependent on China
and thus reluctant to voice opposition even when Chinas policies leave them
disadvantaged .21 Chinas economic integration has also produced higher relative gains for
itself, even with its larger trading partners, such as the United Statesnot in the narrow sense pertaining
to the bilateral terms of trade, but in the larger strategic sense that its overall growth has risen far faster
than it might have had China remained locked into the autarkic policies of the pre-reform
period. U.S. support for Chinas entry into the global trading system has thus created the
awkward situation in which Washington has contributed toward hastening Beijings
economic growth and, by extension, accelerated its rise as a geopolitical rival .
Furthermore, Chinas growing economic ties have nurtured and encouraged various internal
constituencies within Chinas trading partners to pursue parochial interests that often diverge
from their countries larger national interests with regard to China .22 Finally, economic integration
has shaped the leadership perceptions of many of Chinas trading partners in ways that lead
them to worry about their dependence on and vulnerability to China . Even if such worry is sometimes
exaggerated , it weakens their resistance to both Chinese blandishments and
coercion. 23 Given these outcomes, it should not be surprising that Beijing has consciously
sought to use Chinas growing economic power in a choking embrace designed to prevent its
Asian neighbors from challenging its geopolitical interests , including weakening the U.S.
alliance system in Asia. Beijings commitment to sustaining high economic growth through
deepened international interdependence, therefore, provides it not only with internal gains a
more pliant populace and a more powerful state but consequential external benefits as well, in the
form of a growing military and deferential neighbors who fear the economic losses
that might arise from any political opposition to China. These gains are likely to persist even as
Chinas economic growth slows down over timeas it inevitably willso long as Beijings overall material power and its relative
growth rates remain superior to those of its neighbors.24 (10-13)
L: Isolationism/Off Shore Balancing

If the US pulls back China will expand into our sphere of influence
One might argue that what the United States should do if China continues to rise is that we
should retreat to Hawaii or retreat to the continental United States; and we should pursue an isolationist strategy.
And the argument here would be that it doesnt really matter whether China dominates Asia because it cant get at the United States
anyway. This is actually a very powerful argument. If you think about it, were separated from China as we separated from Europe by
two giant moats. The Chinese would have to come 6,000 miles across the Pacific Ocean to get to California. Theres not going to be
an amphibious operation thats 6,000 miles long across the Pacific Ocean. So not only do we have these oceans, we also have
thousands of nuclear warheads, which are the ultimate deterrent. Furthermore, we dominate the Western Hemisphere. So the
United States is an incredibly secure country; and one can make a quite persuasive argument
that, even if China dominates Asia, its not going to affect the United States in any meaningful
way. My view is that theres one powerful counter to that argument; and its the main argument again
isolationism; and it says that if China dominates all of Asia, if its a regional hegemon, it is then free to
roam around the world much the way the United States, as a regional hegemon, is free to roam
around the world. Most Americans dont think about this, but the reason that the United States
is wandering all over Gods little green acre, sticking its nose in everybodys business, is because
we are free to roam. We have no threats in the Western Hemisphere that pin us down. Now if
China is free to roam because its a potential hegemon, it can roam into the Western
Hemisphere. It can develop friendly relations with a country like Brazil or country like Mexico . It
could put a naval base in Brazil much the way the Soviets were putting troops in Cuba, right? So what the United States
fears about China dominating Asia is the possibility that it will not invade the United States, but
that it will move into the Western Hemisphere, form a close alliance with a country like Brazil or
Cuba or Mexico, and become a threat to the United States from inside the Hemisphere.
Offshore balancing encourages Chinese aggression- new alliances wont work to

balance
An explicit American shift towards offshore balancing would greatly exacerbate these risks .
While it is possible that the prospect of being forced to provide for their own security would
shock at least some current US allies into more vigorous defence programmes, it would likely
demoralise others, creating new opportunities for Beijing to pursue divide-andconquer strategems. The advocates of this approach assume that, even if they cannot balance
China alone, in the absence of full US support other Asian countries will be impelled to
cooperate more closely with one another. Again, this may be easier in theory than it turns
out to be in practice. Some of the states that would have to join in a countervailing coalition
(most notably Japan and South Korea) have long histories of suspicion and animosity. Others (such as Japan
and India) do not, but they also have little experience of close strategic cooperation of the kind that
would be needed to counter a fastgrowing challenge. (105-6)
L: Taiwan Support
Reduced support for Taiwan encourages Chinese aggression and weakens
alliances
Attempting to implement a spheres-of-influence strategy would also carry significant risks. In addition to the harmful implications
for its people, backing away from Taiwan could unleash a cascade of damaging consequences for
the United States. Finally succeeding in its decades-long campaign to reunify with Taiwan seems
more likely to feed Beijings appetite for further gains than to satisfy it. Aside from its
impact on Chinas intentions, gaining access to the island would increase its capabilities, enhancing its
ability to project power into the Western Pacific and potentially threatening the sea lines of
communication of Japan and South Korea.47 Regardless of the way in which it was
framed , a decision to abandon its ambiguous but long-standing commitment to Taiwan would
inevitably raise doubts in the minds of Americas other friends and allies. If they
conclude that continued balancing is no longer a viable option, some may choose instead to
bandwagon with China . (105)
L Magnifier- Allies
Any perception of change in US commitment sparks allied prolif
Swaine, PhD Harvard, 15
(Michael D, expert in China and East Asian security studies and a Senior Associate in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, http://carnegieendowment.org/2015/04/20/beyond-american-predominance-in-western-pacific-need-forstable-u.s.-china-balance-of-power/i7gi, 4-20)
Second, and closely related to the prior point, U.S.
decisionmakers are extremely loath to contemplate

significant adjustments in the current status of the Korean Peninsula and Taiwan. From the U.S. perspective, any
movement toward a reduction in or even a significant modification of the U.S. security
commitment to these two actors (a U.S military ally and a de facto U.S. protectorate, respectively) could result in
either moving to acquire nuclear arms, and/or threats or attacks from North
Korea or China . In addition, Japan might react to such movement by questioning Washingtons
basic security commitment to Tokyo, which could result in a break in the U.S.Japan alliance
and/or Japanese acquisition of nuclear arms. These concerns are real , if no doubt exaggerated by
some in Tokyo or Taipei in order to justify maintenance of the existing U.S. relationship, and in some cases to avoid undertaking
costly defense improvements of their own.
L Magnifier- Perception
Perception is all that matters- the world watches US China policy closely
Krauthammer, MD Harvard, 16
(Charles, Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist, author, political commentator, and physician,
http://www.heraldnet.com/article/20160108/OPINION04/160109282 1-8)
For the United States, that would be the greatest geopolitical setback since China fell to communism in 1949. Yet
Obama seems
inert in the face of the three great challenges to the post-Cold War
American order. Iran is only the most glaring. China is challenging the status quo in the South China
Sea, just last week landing its first aircraft on an artificial island hundreds of miles beyond the Chinese coast. We deny
China's claim and declare these to be international waters, yet last month we meekly apologized
when a B-52 overflew one of the islands. We said it was inadvertent. The world sees and takes note .
oblivious. Worse, he appears
As it does our response to the other great U.S. adversary Russia. What's happened to Obama's vaunted isolation of Russia for its
annexation of Crimea and assault on the post-Cold War European settlement? Gone. Evaporated. Kerry plays lapdog to Sergei
Lavrov. Obama meets openly with Vladimir Putin in Turkey, then in Paris. And is now practically begging him to join our side in
Syria. There is no price for defying Pax Americana not even trivial sanctions on Iranian missile-
enablers. Our enemies know it. Our allies see it and sense they're on their own, and
may not survive.
Impacts
AT: Allied Prolif Good

Allied prolif produces asymmetries inviting conflict
If it were to happen overnight, the acquisition of nuclear weapons b y current US security partners
in East Asia (perhaps including Taiwan, as well as Japan and South Korea) might improve their prospects for
balancing against Chinese power. But here again, there is likely to be a significant gap between theory
and reality. Assuming that Washington did not actively assist them, and that they could not
produce weapons overnight or in total secrecy, the interval during which its former allies
lost the protection of the American nuclear umbrella and the point at which they
acquired their own would be one in which they would be exposed to coercive
threats and possibly pre-emptive attack . Because it contains a large number of tense
and mistrustful dyads (including North Korea and South Korea, Japan and China, China and Taiwan, Japan and North
Korea and possibly South Korea and Japan ), a multipolar nuclear order in East Asia might be
especially prone to instability .48(106)
I: Hegemony
China is the biggest threat to US global leadership- new, smarter containment
strategies are crucial to prevent hostile challengers
In the aftermath of the American victory in the Cold War and the dissolution of containment, U.S.
policymakers have struggled to conceptualize a grand strategy t hat would prove

adequate to the nations new circumstances beyond the generic desire to protect the liberal
international order underwritten by American power in the postwar era. Though the Department of Defense during the
George H.W. Bush administration presciently contended that its strategy must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any
potential future global competitorthereby consciously pursuing the strategy of primacy that the United States successfully
employed to outlast the Soviet Union there was some doubt at the time whether that document reflected Bush 41 policy.5 In any
case, no administration in Washington has either consciously or consistently pursued such an approach. To the contrary, a series
of administrations have continued to implement policies that have actually enabled the rise of
new competitors, such as China, despite the fact that the original impulse for these policiesthe successful containment
of the Soviet Unionlost their justification with the demise of Soviet power. Because the American effort to
integrate China into the liberal international order has now generated new threats to
U.S. primacy in Asia and could eventually result in a consequential challenge to
American power globally Washington needs a new grand strategy toward China that
centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its
ascendancy . This strategy cannot be built on a bedrock of containment, as the earlier effort to
limit Soviet power was, because of the current realities of globalization. Nor can it involve simply jettisoning the prevailing
policy of integration. Rather, it must involve crucial changes to the current policy in order to limit the
dangers that Chinas economic and military expansion pose to U.S. interests in Asia and
globally. These changes, which constitute the heart of an alternative balancing
strategy, must derive from the clear recognition that preserving U.S. primacy in
the global system ought to remain the central objective of U.S. grand strategy in
the twenty-first century . Sustaining this status in the face of rising Chinese power requires ,
among other things, revitalizing the U.S. economy to nurture those disruptive innovations that bestow on the United States
asymmetric economic advantages over others; creating new preferential trading arrangements among U.S.
friends and allies to increase their mutual gains through instruments that consciously
exclude Chin a; recreating a technology-control regime involving U.S. allies that prevents
China from acquiring military and strategic capabilities enabling it to inflict high-leverage
strategic harm on the United States and its partners; concertedly building up the powerpolitical capacities of U.S. friends and allies on Chinas periphery; and improving the capability
of U.S. military forces to effectively project power along the Asian rimlands despite any Chinese
oppositionall while continuing to work with China in the diverse ways that befit its importance
to U.S. national interests. The necessity for such a balancing strategy that deliberately incorporates
elements that limit Chinas capacity to misuse its growing power, even as the United States and its allies continue to interact with
China diplomatically and economically ,
is driven by the likelihood that a long-term strategic

rivalry between Beijing and Washington is high . Chinas sustained economic success over
the past thirty-odd years has enabled it to aggregate formidable power, making it the nation most
capable of dominating the Asian continent and thus undermining the traditional U.S.
geopolitical objective of ensuring that this arena remains free of hegemonic control. The meteoric
growth of the Chinese economy, even as Chinas per capita income remains behind that of the United States in the near future, has
already provided Beijing with the resources necessary to challenge the security of both its Asian neighbors and Washingtons
influence in Asia, with dangerous consequences. Even as Chinas overall gross domestic product (GDP) growth slows considerably in
the future, its relative growth rates are likely to be higher than those of the United States for the foreseeable future, thus making the
need to balance its rising power important. Only a fundamental collapse of the Chinese state would free
Washington from the obligation of systematically balancing Beijing , because even the
alternative of a modest Chinese stumble would not eliminate the dangers
presented to the United States in Asia and beyond . Of all nationsand in most conceivable
scenarios China is and will remain the most significant competitor to the United
States for decades to come . 6 Chinas rise thus far has already bred geopolitical,
military, economic, and ideological challenges to U.S. power, U.S allies, and the
U.S.-dominated international order . Its continued, even if uneven, success in the future would
further undermine U.S. national interests. Washingtons current approach toward Beijing, one that
values Chinas economic and political integration in the liberal international order
at the expense of the United States global preeminence and long-term strategic
interests, hardly amounts to a grand strategy, much less an effective one . The need
for a more coherent U.S. response to increasing Chinese power is long overdue. (4-6)
I: Hegemony Good
Hegemony solves a laundry list of impacts regional war, economic collapse, prolif
Brooks and Wohlforth, PhDs, 16
(Stephen G, Associate Professor of Government @Dartmouth, William C, Daniel Webster Prof of Government @Dartmouth,
May/June, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2016-04-13/once-and-future-superpower?cid=nlc-fatoday20160520&sp_mid=51424540&sp_rid=c2NvdHR5cDQzMUBnbWFpbC5jb20S1&spMailingID=51424540&spUserID=MTg3NTEzO
TE5Njk2S0&spJobID=922513469&spReportId=OTIyNTEzNDY5S0)
Given the barriers thwarting Chinas path to superpower status, as well as the low incentives for trying to overcome them, the future
of the international system hinges most on whether the United States continues to bear the much lower burden of sustaining what
we and others have called deep engagement, the globe-girdling grand strategy it has followed for some 70 years. And barring
some odd change of heart that results in a true abnegation of its global role (as opposed to overwrought,
politicized charges sometimes made about its already having done so), Washington will be well positioned for
decades to maintain the core military capabilities, alliances, and commitments that secure key
regions, backstop the global economy, and foster cooperation on transnational
problems. The benefits of this grand strategy can be difficult to discern, especially in light of the United
States foreign misadventures in recent years. Fiascos such as the invasion of Iraq stand as stark reminders of the
difficulty of using force to alter domestic politics abroad. But power is as much about preventing unfavorable
outcomes as it is about causing favorable ones, and here Washington has done a much better
job than most Americans appreciate. For a largely satisfied power leading the
international system, having enough strength to deter or block challengers is in fact more
valuable than having the ability to improve ones position further on the margins. A crucial
objective of U.S. grand strategy over the decades has been to prevent a much more dangerous
world from emerging , and its success in this endeavor can be measured largely by the
absence of outcomes common to history: important regions destabilized by severe
security dilemmas, tattered alliances unable to contain breakout challengers,
rapid weapons proliferation, great-power arms races, and a descent into
competitive economic or military blocs. Were Washington to truly pull back from the
world , more of these challenges would emerge, and transnational threats would
likely loom even larger than they do today. Even if such threats did not grow, the task of
addressing them would become immeasurably harder if the United States had to grapple with a
much less stable global order at the same time. And as difficult as it sometimes is today for the
United States to pull together coalitions to address transnational challenges, it would be even
harder to do so if the country abdicated its leadership role and retreated to tend its garden, as a growing
number of analysts and policymakersand a large swath of the publicare now calling for.
Hegemony solves war, terrorism, climate

Lasting preeminence will help the United States ward off the greatest traditional international
danger, war between the worlds major powers . And it will give Washington options for
dealing with nonstate threats such as terrorism and transnational challenges such as climate
change. But it will also impose burdens of leadership and force choices among competing priorities, particularly as finances grow
more straitened. With great power comes great responsibility, as the saying goes, and playing its leading role successfully will
require Washington to display a maturity that U.S. foreign policy has all too often lacked.
Push For Hegemony Inevitable

Policy makers wont give up the drive for Asian hegemony
On the U.S. side, first and foremost is the general refusal of most if not all U.S. decisionmakers and
to contemplate an alternative to U.S. military predominance in this vital

region. Such maritime predominance has arguably served Washington and most of the region
well for many decades, and it accords with the deepseated notion of American
exceptionalism, which prescribes a dominant U.S. leadership role throughout the world. In
addition, the shortterm perspective, natural inertia, and risk avoidance of
bureaucrats and policy communities in Washington (and elsewhere) militate against major
shifts in policy and approach, especially in the absence of an urgent and palpable
need for change. Indeed, it is extremely difficult for any major power, much less a superpower,
to begin a fundamental strategic shift in anticipation of diminished relative capabilities before
that diminishment fully reveals itself. In the Western Pacific in particular, with regard to both U.S. ISR
activities along the Chinese coast and the larger U.S. military presence within the first island chain, the United States Navy
and many U.S. decisionmakers are wedded to the notion that American power (and in particular naval
power) must brook no limitation in areas beyond a nations 12nauticalmile territorial
waters and airspace . This derives in part from the belief that any constraints on U.S. naval
operations will lead to a cascade of coastal states challenging the principle of U.S. maritime
freedom of action and to possible reductions in the level of resources and the scope of operations
available to support U.S. naval power. Moreover, the specific U.S. desire to maintain a strong naval
presence along Chinas maritime periphery reflects a perceived need to acquire more accurate
intelligence regarding Beijings growing offshore air and naval capabilities. Such a presence is also
officials
viewed as essential to sustaining U.S. credibility with Asian allies such as Japan and the Philippines, and to the maintenance of
deterrent capabilities against a possible Chinese attack on Taiwan. This combination of service interests, intelligence needs, and
perceived security requirements reinforces the general U.S. bias in favor of continued maritime predominance. However, an
inevitable Chinese refusal to accept that predominance over the long term will be expressed first and foremost in opposition to the
past level of U.S. naval activities along the Chinese coastline, that is, within Chinas EEZ at the very least, and possibly within the
entire first island chain.
AT: Normal Rising Power

Even if China is a normal rising power, they still undermine US interests
Other policymakers might argue that Chinas international behavior is normal for a rising
power, that China is gradually being socialized into the international system and it is far too early for Washington
to give up on comprehensive cooperation and strategic reassurance toward Beijing. The issue here is how
long the United States should pursue a policy toward China that is clearly not sufficiently
protecting U.S. vital national interests. Although Beijing has in general acted responsibly in the international lending
institutions and may be slowly moving toward progress on difficult issues (such as climate change), Kurt Campbell, former
State Department assistant secretary for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama
administration, recently stressed, We were always looking for deeper cooperation with China
and attempts to have on-the-ground cooperationfor example, on aid or humanitarian support
operations, we werent able to bring about; in military-to-military relations, on the diplomatic
agenda, on aid, we found it very difficult to get meaningful results .58 Meaningful
results have been so difficult to achieve in the U.S.- China relationship precisely because China seeks to
replace the United States as the leading power in Asia. And although Chinese behavior may be
normal for a rising nation, that does not diminish Chinas overall negative impact on the
balance of power in the vast Indo-Pacific region; nor does it reduce the crucial requirement for
Washington to develop policies that meet this challenge of the rise of Chinese power and thwart
Beijings objective to systematically undermine American strategic primacy in Asia . (35)
Yes China Threat

Diplomatic and military policy show China is a threat- countering the US is an
explicit policy goal
Facing this new environment, Beijing has advanced a variety of policies aimed toward pacifying its
periphery. First, it has used its deep economic ties with its Asian neighbors to reduce regional
anxieties about the rise of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) while creating mechanisms for Beijing to
increase its influence with these regional neighbors.25 Second, it has sought to make common
cause with some states, such as Russia, which, despite their own suspicions of Beijing, have reasonsthe
Ukraine crisis and Western economic sanctions in the case of Moscow to resist joining the larger balancing against
China now under way in Asia.26 Third, Beijing has embarked on a concerted modernization of the
PLA with the intention to amass military power capable of both defeating local adversaries and
deterring the United States from coming to their defense in a crisis .27 Fourth, it has now renewed
older efforts to delegitimize the U.S. alliance system in Asia, acting on its recognition that
Washington remains the critical obstacle in Beijings quest for a neutralized periphery . Accordingly,
China has actively promoted a new security concept that rejects U.S. alliances as
anachronisms; demands that Asian security be managed by Asians alone; and privileges China
as the regional security provider of choice in a situation where, as Xi Jinping recently put it, development is the
greatest form of security.28(14)
China = Realist
First things first, Chinas the realist
Rudd, Former Aussie PM, 2015
(Kevin, PhD Focus in Chinese/China History, U.S.-China 21 The Future of U.S.-China Relations
Under Xi Jinping Toward a new Framework of Constructive Realism for a Common Purpose
http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/Summary%20Report%20US-China%2021.pdf April)
Both Chinese and American foreign and security policy practitioners pride themselves on their
hard-nosed realism . In the case of the Chinese, inspiration is drawn from the writings of
Sun Tze () and other authors of the so-called Seven Military Classics (wujing qishu,
). For Americans, it is a cocktail of Von Clausewitz, E. H. Carr, and Hans Morgenthau.
There is no great Chinese philosophical school to draw upon that is remotely the
equivalent of either the idealists or the liberal internationalists in Western international
relations theory. For these reasons, for any strategic framework to be regarded as credible in
either Chinese or American eyes, despite their radically different historical experience, a
realist recognition of the fundamentally different, and in some cases actively
conflicting, national interests is essential.
Culture and historical wounds make Chinese fopo strictly realist

Following the Communist Revolution in 1949, China has pursued the objective of maximizing its
national power in order to recover the geopolitical primacy it enjoyed in East Asia prior
to the Columbian era. The arrival of modernity proved unkind to Chinas regional predominance
and, in an economic sense, its global standing embittering its Maoist founders, who were determined, through their
communist uprising, to retrieve the greatness last witnessed during the mid-Qing Dynasty, which had been lost due to technological
atrophy, domestic conflict, and external intervention. Given this painful history, it is not surprising that
Chinas primary strategic goal in contemporary times has been the accumulation of
comprehensive national power.7 This pursuit of power in all its dimensionseconomic,
military, technological, and diplomatic is driven by the conviction that China, a great civilization undone
by the hostility of others, could never attain its destiny unless it amassed the power necessary to
ward off the hostility of those opposed to this quest. This conception, shared by all Chinese
leaders since 1949, reflects a vision of politics that views conflict as intrinsic to the
human condition. In this parabellum paradigm, superior power alone creates
order. Chinas success as a state requires its leaders to possess greater capabilities than any other entity inside or outside its
borders.8 (7)
AT: China Threat K

Alt fails- security dynamic worsened since initial China threat criticism
In 2011, I argued in a book entitled Americas Challenge: Engaging a Rising China in the TwentyFirst Century, that, while
Washington and Beijing are by no means fated to enter into a hot or even a cold war, the
competing assumptions they hold regarding the necessary conditions for longterm stability and prosperity in Asia, if
not moderated through a process of mutual accommodation, would likely result in steady movement toward a
zerosum, adversarial mindset. I wrote that this dynamic could eventually polarize the region and undermine the goals of
continued peace and prosperity toward which all sides strive. Unfortunately, in the past three years, this type of
mindset has deepened, in and out of both governments and across much of Asia .
Indeed, the international media, along with a coterie of regional and international relations
specialists, increasingly seem to interpret every action taken by one government , no matter how small,
as being by necessity designed to diminish the position of the other. Even more worrisome, this
deepening mindset is driving policy statements and recommendations in Beijing and
Washington that serve to reinforce and strengthen, rather than moderate, the differences
between the two sides. While Chinas leader, Xi Jinping, speaks of the need to develop an Asia for Asians and to create a
new regional security architecture as an alternative to the Cold War era U.S.led bilateral alliance structure, American policymakers
and analysts criticize Beijing for establishing an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea of the sort long
possessed by Washington and Tokyo and encourage other Asian states to resist joining Chineseinitiated economic institutions, such
as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
Our assessment isnt demonization- its based on specific cultural and historical
assessments
This should not be surprising to anyone who understands modern Chinese history
and great power transitions . Beijing has an ongoing and likely longterm and deep incentive to
work with the United States and the West to sustain continued, mutually beneficial economic growth and to address a
growing array of common global and regional concerns, from pandemics to climate change and terrorism . At the same time,
it understandably wishes to reduce its vulnerability to potential future threats from the United
States and other politically and militarily strong nations, while increasing its overall influence along its
strategically important maritime periphery. As Beijings overseas power and influence grow, its foreign
interests expand, and its domestic nationalist backers become more assertive, it will naturally
become less willing to accept or acquiesce in international political and economic relationships,
norms, and power structures that it believes disproportionately and unjustly favor Western
powers; put China at a strategic, political, or economic disadvantage; or generally fail to reflect movement toward a more
multipolar global and regional power structure. It will also likely become more fearful that a declining (in
relative terms) Washington will regard an increasingly influential China as a threat to be countered
through ever more forceful or deliberate measures. Indeed, this view is already widespread among many Chinese
observers. One does not need to cast Beijing as an evil or predatory entity to
understand the forces driving such beliefs . They stem from national selfinterest,
historical insecurity (and nationalist pride), suspicion, fear, and uncertainty. To some degree, they also
stem from a level of opportunism, driven in part by fear, but also in part by the understandable
desire to take advantage of Chinas growing regional and global influence and Americas
apparent relative decline in order to strengthen Chinese leverage in possible future disputes.
Threat perceptions locked in
For its part, China is utterly convinced that the U.S. is pursuing a policy of
containment. Kevin Rudd, the former Australian prime minister (and himself a China expert), summarized Beijings
perception of U.S. goals in five bullet points in a recent Harvard study: to isolate China, contain it, diminish it, internally divide it
and sabotage its political leadership. To be sure, the new tension in U.S.-China relations is not anything like the Cold War staredown that preoccupied Europe for decades, when NATO and Warsaw Pact tanks faced each other across lines that neither side dared
to cross. But in one important respect, history is repeating itself: Both China and the U.S. have started to
view each other not as partners, competitors or rivals but as adversaries. Chinas missile
and naval buildup, as well as its development of new cyber- and space-warfare capabilities, are aimed squarely
at deterring the U.S. military from intervening in any conflict in Asia. Meanwhile, many
of the Pentagons pet projectsStar Wars technologies such as lasers and advanced weapons systems such as a longrange bomberare being developed with China in mind.
AT: Threat Inflation

Our scenarios arent wild predictions, they represent reasonable extensions of the
SQ
Second, some
may say that the analysis and policy recommendations in this report are too pessimistic ,
based on a worst-case appraisal of Chinese behavior. To the contrary, we draw our conclusions
from Chinas current actions regarding its internal and external security, its neighbors, and U.S.
presence in Asia. We project nothing that is not already apparent in Chinas present
policies and strategic intentions . Nevertheless, this hardly represents the worst case if China
began to behave like the Soviet Union, necessitating something far more costly than balancing. The word
containment comes to mind, and we certainly do not recommend that vis--vis China in current circumstances, not least because
no Asian nation would join in such an endeavor. (34-5)
AT: Western Threat Perception

Asians as alarmed as westerners
A similar anxiety about Chinas actions and intentions has now taken hold among many
Asians . U.S. friends and allies in the region are flocking to Americas side to seek protection as
Mr. Xis China builds up its navy, pushes its fleets farther into the blue ocean and presses its
territorial claims. In what is just the latest assertive move to alarm the region, China is now dredging tiny coral
reefs in the South China Sea to create runways, apparently for military jets.
2NC Blocks/Answers To
AT: Allies Wont Support

Allies demand US confrontation with China
Fifth, critics may also say that the United States Asian allies and friends will never go along with the grand
strategy outlined in this document. This concern seems to concentrate not on the merits of our strategic approach, but rather on
its reception in the region. In any case, what the allies want is not to cut ties with China, but rather
increased U.S. capabilities in the region, increased reassurance of American protection, and
increased U.S. support for their own economic growth and security . The grand strategy outlined in
this report advances all of these objectives . Moreover, it is difficult to exaggerate the current
anxiety among virtually all Asian nations about the strategic implications of the rise of Chinese
power, recent examples of PRC aggressiveness in the East and South China Seas, and the
conviction that only the United States can successfully deter Beijings corrosive
strategic ambitions . Because of PRC behavior, Asian states have already begun to balance
against China through greater intra-Asian cooperationactions that are entirely consistent with and only
reinforce our U.S. grand strategy. Indeed, the worry across Asia today is not that the United States
will pursue overly robust policies toward China; rather, it is that Washington is insufficiently
aware of Beijings ultimate disruptive strategic goals in Asia , is periodically attracted to a G2
formula, and may not be up to the challenge of effectively dealing with the rise of China
over the long term. These deeply worried views across Asian governments are fertile ground on which to plant a revised U.S.
grand strategy toward China. Moreover, a close examination of the specific policy prescriptions in this study reveal few that would
not be welcomed by the individual nations of Asia to which they apply. Although this major course correction by the
United States toward China would not gain allied endorsement overnight, with sustained and
resolute U.S. presidential leadership and the immense leverage the United States has with its
Asian allies and friends , this is not too steep a strategic hill to climb , especially given the
profound U.S. national interests at stake across Asia. Finally, nothing in this grand strategy requires the United
States and its allies to diminish their current economic and political cooperation with China. Rather, the emphasis is on developing
those U.S. and allied components that are ultimately necessary to make this cooperation sustainable. In other words, if the balance
of power alters fundamentally, U.S. and Asian economic cooperation with China could not be maintained. (36-7)
Regional players like Vietnam fear China enough to cooperate

Perlez, Award Winning Journalist, 16
(Jane, chief diplomatic correspondent in the Beijing bureau ,
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/20/world/asia/access-to-bay-adds-enticement-as-usweighs-lifting-vietnam-embargo.html?
utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits&_r=0 )
Vietnams government, pressed by an ever more powerful China, knows it cannot stand up to
Beijing alone and is cautiously moving toward increased ties with the United States . Despite their
shared Communist ideology, Vietnam and China fought over islands in the South China Sea in
the 1970s and 80s. Two years ago, China sent an oil rig into disputed waters close to the Paracel
Islands, which are claimed by both countries, leading to clashes at sea and anti-Chinese riots in Vietnamese cities.
More recently, China has built artificial islands with military runways in the South China Sea just
300 miles from the Vietnamese coast. Vietnams needs dovetail with those of the United States,
which has been encouraging maritime states in Southeast Asia to better defend themselves , an
effort partly aimed at keeping the United States from being dragged into a direct naval conflict with China. The prospect of access to
Cam Ranh Bay, where the Vietnamese have built a new international port, provides another enticement for lifting the ban. An
American presence there would allow United States forces to use the port on the western edge of the
South China Sea, complementing American facilities in the Philippines on the seas eastern
edge. If the United States can get regular access to Cam Ranh Bay, it would be very
advantageous to maintaining the balance of power with China , said Alexander L. Vuving, a
Vietnam specialist at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu. If something happens in the South China Sea, it takes
a while for the U.S. to get there. China can get there more quickly.
AT: Chinese Backlash

Chinese backlash would be limited, and would reinforce US alliances in the region
Finally, the question arises regarding how China will respond to the U.S. grand strategy recommended
here. Are not the risks of pursuing this grand strategy too great? One
could certainly expect a strong Chinese

reaction and a sustained chill in the bilateral relationship, including fewer meetings among senior officials,
little progress on bilateral economic issues, less opportunities for American business in China, reduced military-to-military
interaction, a reduction in societal interchange, and perhaps fewer Chinese students in American universities. (We dismiss the
likelihood that China would respond to the measures recommended in this report by selling off its U.S. bond holdings because of the
consequential reduction in their value.) These
steps by Beijing would not be trivial but also would not

threaten vital U.S. national interests. If China went further in its policy as opposed to reacting rhetorically,
the more aggressive Beijings policy response and the more coercive its actions, the more likely
that Americas friends and allies in Asia would move even closer to Washington . We do
not think that China will find an easy solution to this dilemma. Moreover, it is likely that Beijing
would continue to cooperate with the United States in areas that it thinks serve Chinas national
interestson the global economy, international trade, climate change, counterterrorism, the
Iranian nuclear weapons program, North Korea, and post-2016 Afghanistan . Put differently, we do
not think the Chinese leadership in a fit of pique hardly in Chinas strategic tradition would
act in ways that damage its policy purposes and its reputation around Asia . In short,
this strategic course correction in U.S. policy toward China would certainly trigger a torrent of
criticism from Beijing because it would begin to systemically address Chinas goal of dominating
Asia and produce a more cantankerous PRC in the UN Security Council, but it would not end
many aspects of U.S.-China international collaboration based on compatible
national interests . Although there are risks in following the course proposed here, as with most fundamental policy
departures, such risks are substantially smaller than those that are increasing because
of an inadequate U.S. strategic response to the rise of Chinese power In any case, there
is no reason why a China that did not seek to overturn the balance of power in Asia
should object to the policy prescriptions contained in this report. And which of the policy
prescriptions would those who wish to continue the current prevailing U.S. approach to Chinathat is, cooperationreject? In
these measures do not treat China as an enem y as some American analysts rightfully warn
against; rather, they seek to protect vital U.S. and allied national interests, a reasonable and
responsible objective. Washington simply cannot have it both waysto accommodate Chinese
concerns regarding U.S. power projection into Asia through strategic reassurance and at the
same time to promote and defend U.S. vital national interests in this vast region . It is, of course, the
short,
second that must be at the core of a successful U.S. grand strategy toward China. (37-8)
AT: China Collapse
China spreads fear of collapse to reduce international resistance

Pillsbury, PhD, 15
In 1996, I was part of a U.S. delegation to China that included Robert Ellsworth, the top foreign policy adviser to
the Republican presidential nominee, Robert Dole. In what appeared to be a forthright exchange of views with Chinese scholars, we
were told that China was in serious economic and political peril and that the potential for
collapse loomed large. These distinguished scholars pointed to Chinas serious environmental problems, restless ethnic
minorities, and incompetent and corrupt government leaders as well as to those leaders inability to carry out necessary reforms. I
later learned that the Chinese were escorting other groups of American academics, business
leaders, and policy experts on these purportedly exclusive visits, where they too received an
identical message about Chinas coming decline. Many of them then repeated these
revelations in articles, books, and commentaries back in the United States. Yet
the hard fact is that Chinas already robust GDP is predicted to continue to grow by at least 7 or
8 percent, thereby surpassing that of the United States by 2018 at the earliest, according to economists
from the International Monetary Fund, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and the United Nations.
Unfortunately, China policy experts like me were so wedded to the idea of the
coming collapse of China that few of us believed these forecasts. While we
worried about Chinas woes, its economy more than doubled .
2NC Congagement
Engagement with balancing isnt enough- failed for 20 years
(Aaron L, Prof of Politics and international affairs @Princeton, https://www.iiss.org/en/politics%20and
%20strategy/blogsections/2015-932e/may-7114/debate-over-us-china-strategy-f18a)
AF: My starting position for this is to observe that over the last 20 years or so the United States, across
Republican
and Democratic administrations, has had a pretty consistent strategy for dealing with China. There have been
variations, but the basic strategy has combined two elements: the need to engage in diplomacy, trade, scientific
educational cooperation and so on; and balancing efforts to maintain a balance of military power in the Asia-Pacific
region that favours the interests of the United States and its allies. Where there has been variation it has been a
matter of emphasis and degree , rather than a fundamental shift. What has happened over the last five
or six years, I think, is that that mixed strategy has begun to be called increasingly into question , from a
variety of different angles. Chinas capabilities are growing. It is wealthier than ever, it is more powerful
militarily than it has ever been, and it is starting to assert itself more in its neighbourhood and on the
global stage , including in ways which are perceived by many people in the region, as well as in the United
States and elsewhere, as potentially threatening to stability . The engagement side of US strategy, I
think, was ultimately intended to encourage Chinas leaders to see their interests as lying in
upholding the existing international system, rather than challenging it. It was also intended, at least
originally we havent talked about this so much in recent years to encourage political liberalisation in
China. What has happened is that people have begun to realise that, at least for the moment, China is not
liberalising . To some extent, under the new leadership China has gotten tougher and more
ideological than it was a few years ago . In part because of these more assertive behaviours, it has
become increasingly difficult to sustain the view that China just wants to become a member in
good standing of the international system. It wants to change some things, starting with its own neighbourhood in
particular maritime disputes, but also US alliances.
2NC AT: Confucian Pacifism

China is realist- no Confucian pacifism
Many Chinese believe that there will not be trouble in Asia because China is a Confucian culture .
This is what I called the Confucian Pacifism argument; and the argument is that China has historically not
behaved in an aggressive way towards its neighbors. Its behaved in a Confucian way , which is to say
that it has behaved very defensively. Its not been aggressive at all; and to the extent that China has been involved in wars, its
due to aggression on the part of its neighbors. In other words, China is always the good guy, and its adversaries in wars are always
This is a lot like American Exceptionalism , right? Americans believe that theyre almost
always the good guy, and its the other side that is the bad guy. We tend to see the world in very black and white
terms, where were the white hats and the other side is the black hats. The same thing is true with Confucian
Pacifism. Its basically a story that says, you know, the Chinese are the white hats. The fact is if you
look at Chinese history, what you see is that the Chinese have behaved, over time, much like the
European great powers, the United States, and the Japanese. They have behaved very
aggressively whenever they can; and when they have not behaved aggressively, its
largely because they didnt have the military capability to behave aggressively. But
the idea that China is a country that has not acted according to the dictates of
realpolitik and has always been the victim, not the victimizer, is clearly
contradicted by the historical record. China is like everybody else.
the bad guys.
AT: Democratization
Engagement not democratizing China
Pillsbury, PhD, 15
China has certainly changed in the past thirty years, but its political system has not evolved in the ways
that we advocates of engagement had hoped and predicted . The idea that the seeds of
democracy have been sown at the village level became the conventional wisdom among many
China watchers in America. My faith was first shaken in 1997, when I was among those
encouraged to visit China to witness the emergence of democratic elections in a village near the
industrial town of Dongguan. While visiting, I had a chance to talk in Mandarin with the candidates and see how the elections
actually worked. The unwritten rules of the game soon became clear: the candidates were allowed
no
pubic assemblies, no television ads, and no campaign posters. They were not allowed to criticize any policy
implemented by the Communist Party, nor were they free to criticize their opponents on any issue. There would be no Americanstyle debates over taxes or spending or the countrys future. The only thing a candidate could do was to compare
his personal qualities to those of his opponent. Violations of these rules were treated as crimes .
2NC AT: Deterrence Checks

Nuclear weapons dont make war impossible, they funnel it into proxy wars
The existence of nuclear weapons makes it virtually impossible for the United States and China to
end up fighting World War III, in other words, a large conventional war. I think that the presence of nuclear weapons
makes that one scenario impossible; but I do think its possible that the United States and China could end
up in a limited war over, lets say, Taiwan, over Korea, over the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea,
or over a series of islands in the South China Sea. These are more limited conflicts, and I think
that nuclear weapons do not make them impossible . So I think that nuclear weapons are a force for
peace between the United States and China in the sense that they rule out World War III; but there are all sorts of other
kinds of war, more limited in nature, that I believe are not ruled out by the presence of nuclear
weapons. And I would note to support this that during the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet
Union both had thousands of nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, they maintained large
conventional forces, and they even thought about fighting a conventional war in the heart of
Europe.
AT: Deterrence Fails

SQ Is reverse goldilocks- we make deterrent threats but dont follow through
which encourages Chinese aggression
http://nationalinterest.org/feature/deterrence-delayed-time-get-tough-china-13543?page=2 8-11)
Deferred deterrence is a lot like deferred maintenancewhen we finally get around to doing
what needs to be done, the cost is almost always higher than it would have been with
timelier action. That is happening now with U.S.-China relations , which under the best of
circumstances require constant vigilance. The first issue is China's stunningly lawless claim of sovereignty
over virtually the entire South China Sea. When the claim was limited to the rhetorical and diplomatic realm,
Washington responded in an appropriately measured manner. It noted the invalidity of Chinese overreach under international law,
the need for multilateral negotiations and peaceful mechanisms for dispute resolution, and the inviolability of rights of navigation
and overflight. But when Beijing ignored those diplomatic and legalistic appeals and proceeded to
implement its territorial ambitions over a year ago by building artificial islandscreating not only facts on the ground
but actual new groundit became necessary to push back by peacefully but firmly exercising
navigational and overflight rights. This summer, the United States did send a reconnaissance flight over the area and
wisely invited CNN to record the public and transparent challenge in accordance with international norms. But nothing was done to
assert navigational freedom, which is the most relevant mode of trade access for countries in the region. That passivity unfortunately
continues months later. If the U.S. Navy has made some secret passage through those waters, it would be an ineffective gesture; lack
of transparency defeats the international law and public diplomacy purposes of the Freedom of Navigation (FON) program. With
each day that passes without U.S. ships steaming within twelve miles of China's man-made islands, and declaring the transits, the
perception grows that Chinese claims are being grudgingly accepted by the international
communitythat is, by the United States, it's most important member. Beijing can only be satisfied with the current state of
play. If and when the United States does make its FON challenge, it will carry more confrontational baggage than would have been
the case had it occurred at or around the same time as the overflight. (An alternative scenario would be a Beijing-Washington
arrangement whereby China "allows" the United States to make its symbolic transit in exchange for some diplomatic or other
concession in the relationship, such as a reduction in reconnaissance flights near China, a muting of criticism on human rights, or
some deliverable for Xi Jinping's September visit to Washington. That would be an unacceptable accession to China's aggressive
behaviorsome will call it appeasementthat would reward bad behavior and portend even more dire consequences for overall
U.S.-China relations.) The other potentially explosive issue is the need for an effective response to the massive
hacking of U.S. government personnel files that has been widely, but unofficially, attributed to China. In fact, David Sanger of the
New York Times reports that administration officials are under strict instructions to avoid naming China as the source of the
attack." Doing so would require a U.S. response that then "could lead to an escalation of the hacking conflict between the two
countries . . . [and] the downsides of any meaningful, yet proportionate, retaliation [might] outweigh the benefits." As the
president's staff struggles to meet his request for "a creative set of responses," one senior official
said "we need to be a bit more public about our responses, and one reason is deterrence ." James
Clapper, the director of national intelligence, affirmed the urgency of the challenge, telling
Congress the hacking problem would only get worse until such time as we create both the
substance and psychology of deterrence. At present, the deterrence dynamic in
both the South China Sea and cyber warfare situations is actually working against
the United States because of fears over how China would respond. The psychology
is working in a perverse, but not historically unfamiliar, way . The transgressing state,
in this case China , by definition does not respect international norms. The aggrieved
international community, represented here by the United States, is genetically programmed to
emphasize peaceful, diplomatic solutions to challengesand, at the same time, it fears that the
offending party will react to sanctions or other retaliatory action by further lashing out. This is
often described in the West as "irrational" behavior, but it is actually quite rational as long
as there is no real price to be paid . As Director Clapper said about China's hacking feat, You have to kind of
salute the Chinese for what they did." Unless Washington finally breaks the counter-deterrence cycle by
taking decisive action in both the South China Sea and the hacking episode, there will be a lot more
saluting of China for what it is getting away with.
2NC AT: Economic Interdependence

Empirics show interdependence doesnt prevent war
Many people find it hard to believe that countries that engage in security competition also continue
to trade with each other economically. But if you look at Europe before World War I and, indeed, if you look
at Europe before World War II, what you see is that there was a great deal of economic interdependence on the
continent and with Britain before both world wars. So I believe that if China continues to grow economically,
there will still be much economic intercourse between China and its neighbors and China and
the United States. And I still think that you will have a lot of potential for trouble between these
two countries. And dont forget, even though you had all this economic intercourse between World
War I and World War II, you still got World War I and you still got World War II. If you look at
Europe before World War I, there were extremely high levels of economic interdependence between Germany and virtually all of its
neighbors, certainly between Germany and Russia, Germany and France, and Germany and Britain, these were the main players.
And despite this economic interdependence, these high levels of economic interdependence, you still got World War I. Another
example would be the period before World War II. The Germans invaded the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941. And for the previous
two years, Germany and the Soviet Union this is Nazi Germany and Stalins Soviet Union had been close allies in Europe. In fact,
in September 1939 they had invaded Poland together and divided it up. So there was a great deal of economic
intercourse between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union between 1939 and 22 June, 1941.
Nevertheless, that economic interdependence did not prevent World War II from escalating into
a major war between Moscow and Berlin. And, in fact, there are all sorts of stories about the
German forces invading the Soviet Union and passing trains that were going into the Soviet
Union that were carrying German goods, and trains coming from the Soviet Union towards
Germany that were carrying Soviet raw materials and some Soviet goods as well. So there was
economic interdependence between Germany and the Soviet Union and yet you still got a war .
Politics Trump economics- especially for China
Ive talked about the fact that I think China cannot rise peacefully, probably a hundred times; and the argument that is used against
me most often is clearly the economic interdependence argument, and it goes like this: The United States
and China, and China and its neighbors are all hooked on capitalism and everybody is getting
rich in this world of great economic interdependence; and nobody in their right mind would
start a war because you would, in effect, be killing the goose that lays the golden egg. So that what is happening here is that
economic interdependence has created a situation where its a firm basis for peace. I think this is wrong . Let me explain. I
think theres no doubt that there are going to be certain circumstances where economic
interdependence will be enough to tip the balance in favor of peace; but I think as a firm basis for
peace, it wont work because there will be all sorts of other situations where politics
trumps economics. People who are making the economic interdependence argument are
basically saying that economics trumps politics. There are no political differences that are salient enough, right, to
override those economic considerations? Again, there will be cases where thats true. But there will be many
more cases, in my opinion, where political considerations are so powerful, so intense, that they will
trump economic considerations. And just to give you an example or two. Taiwan: The Chinese have made it
clear that if Taiwan were to declare its independence now, they would go to war against Taiwan, even
though they fully understand that that would have major negative economic
consequences for Beijing . They understand that, but they would go to war anyway. Why?
Because from a political point of view, it is so important to make Taiwan a part of
China, that they could not tolerate Taiwan declaring its independence. Another
example is the conflict in the East China Sea between Japan and China, over the Diaoyu or Senkaku Islands. It is
possible to imagine those two countries, China and Japan, actually ending up in a shooting match over a bunch
of rocks in the East China Sea. How can this possibly be because it would threaten the economic prosperity of both countries? It
would have all sorts of negative economic consequences. But the fact is, from the Chinese point
of view and the Japanese point of view, these rocks are sacred territory . The politics of the
situation are such that it is conceivable that should a conflict arise, it will escalate into a war
because politics will trump economics.
2NC AT: Engagement Modifies Chinese

Behavior/Liberalizes
Engagement wont moderate China their government uses it for asymmetric
information warfare
Eisenmen, PhD, 16
American policymakers' beliefs about China are rooted in their own preconceived views and
experiences in China. Since Americans began visiting the PRC in the early 1970s, rosy
assessments have become commonplace. As the Sinologist Robert Scalapino observed after his 1973 visit: There is
serious risk that one may be badly misled by what one sees, hears, and instinctively feels [in China]. This is partly due to the
tendency within all of us to superimpose our own values and cultural perspectives on another environment. Such tendency surely
exists, and for some, it represents an ever-present bias. Their writings consequently reveal far more about their own views of their
own social order than about China. Each individual, in any case, carries his prejudices with him in some measure, and he may well
reinforce them as he goes.21 "Because China is so vast," James Palmer recently observed in the Washington Post, "its successes can
be attributed to whatever your pet cause is.22 In short, Americans see what we want to see in China, and
what we want to see most, argues Michael Pillsbury, is ourselves: "In our hubris, Americans love to
believe that the aspirations of every other country is to be just like the United States. In recent
years, this has governed our approach to Iraq and Afghanistan. We cling to the same mentality
with China."23 American misunderstanding has been facilitated by Beijing's courting of
influential Americans. China has done a better job at using engagement to improve
American perceptions of China than America has done in changing Chinese
perceptions of U.S. intentions . The Communist Party of China ( CPC) uses bilateral
engagement to assess U.S. capabilities, collect intelligence, and manipulate their
American counterparts. Extensive economic, educational, scientific, cultural, and personal
ties allow the CPC to build a large, loose coalition of Americans to carry the message that Beijing
is Washington's indispensable partner.24 U.S. officials, however, are generally ignorant of CPC objectives and tactics
toward them, collectively known as the United Front Doctrine. Americans interact with only a "thin outer crust" of Chinese
policymakers.25 Each institution has an office that deals specifically with foreign visitors, and the party maintains dozens of front
groups that conduct hundreds of interactions and conferences every year with Americans. The CPC's International Department's
front organization is the China Center for Contemporary World Studies; the Chinese People's Institute of Foreign Affairs and the
China Institute of International Relations are the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' front groups; the Ministry of State Security's is the
China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, and so on. The CPC has also created entities specifically to conduct "host
diplomacy" with Americans, including the Hong Kongbased ChinaUnited States Exchange Foundation, which "promotes the
positions of the Chinese government through the research grants it gives to American institutions.26 These groups both observe
Americans and work to influence their views through dialogues and the distribution of English-language propaganda with titles such
as The Strength of Democracy: How Will the CPC March Ahead.27 Information asymmetry is a longstanding
aspect of U.S.-China relations, but has become increasingly problematic since President Xi Jinping
took power in 2011. In July 2015, China enacted new laws regulating all aspects of Chinese
interaction with foreigners, including a national security law that covers every domain of public
life in Chinapolitics, military, education, finance, religion, cyberspace, ideology and religion. These initiatives are
"aimed at exhorting all Chinese citizens and agencies to be vigilant about threats to the party .28
They help explain why Washington's engagement strategy has been unable to
change party leaders' perceptions or successfully support moderates over hawks.
The consequence of Americans knowing so little about the CPC and its strategies and tactics
towards them is that many Americans continue to be badly misled by what they hear and
see in China . The extensive U.S.-China engagement architecture has produced
analytical limitations, or blind spots, within the U.S. policy community that if
remain unaddressed are likely to produce the same types of intelligence failures
that have occurred repeatedly in U.S.-China relations since 1911. The only way to
redress these systemic deficiencies is to move beyond engagement and containment and adopt a
nuanced strategy that prioritizes high quality human intelligence about Chinese leaders and policymaking and incorporates
them effectively into U.S. policymaking towards China.
*this is a key piece of 2NC evidence you will want to read in just about every debate because it makes an epistemology argument to
set up evidence comparison- aff engagement defenders are wrong/have blindspots about Chinese behavior
China wont change through engagement- it gives them all the leverage
Because these twin expectations have not materialized, Chinas rise as a new great power promises to be a troubling prospect for the
United States for many years to come. Chinas economic growth derives considerably from its participation in
the multilateral
trading system and the larger liberal international order more generally, but its resulting
military expansion has placed Beijings economic strategy at odds with its political
objective of threatening the guarantor of global interdependence, the United
States . At the moment, China displays no urgency in addressing this conundrum, aware that its
trading partners hesitate to pressure Beijing because of the potential for economic
losses that might ensue . Given this calculation, Chinese leaders conclude that their country
can continue to benefit from international trade without having to make any
fundamental compromises in their existing disputes with other Asian states or their efforts
to weaken U.S. power projection in Asia. (17)
Benefits from engagement will fuel military modernization and authoritarianismnot liberalization
The long-term U.S. effort to protect its vital national interests by integrating China into the international
system is at serious risk today because Beijing has acquired the capacity, and increasingly
displays the willingness , to pursue threatening policies against which American
administrations have asserted they were hedging. Nevertheless, these same U.S. policymakers have
continued to interact with China as if these dangerous Chinese policies were only
theoretical and consigned to the distant future . In short, successive administrations have
done much more cooperating with China than hedging, hoping that Beijing would gradually
come to accept the United States leading role in Asia despite all the evidence to the contrary, not least because
cooperation was so much less costly in the short term than military, geoeconomic, and diplomatic hedging. China
has indeed become a rapidly growing economy, providing wealth and welfare gains both for
itself and for American citizens, but it has acquired the wherewithal to challenge the
United States, endangering the security of its allies and others in Asia, and to
slowly chip away at the foundations of the liberal international order globally . In
other words, China has not evolved into a responsible stakeholder as then Deputy Secretary of State Robert
B. Zoellick called on it to become.37 Instead, in recent decades Beijing has used the benign U.S.
approach to the rise of Chinese power to strengthen its domestic economy, and
thus the CCPs hold on power, to enhance its military capabilities and increase its
diplomatic and geoeconomic sway in Asia and beyond, all while free-riding on the
international order and public goods provided by the United States and its allies.
(20)
Decades of engagement have failed to liberalize China- theyve moved in the

opposite direction
The goals of this mixed strategy have been to tame and ultimately to transform the Peoples
Republic of China (PRC). Through balancing, the United States aims to uphold its alliances and to preserve peace and stability by
deterring aggression or attempts at coercion. At the same time, through engagement, Washington has sought to
encourage Chinas full incorporation into the existing international system, in the anticipation that its
leaders will come to see their interests as lying in preserving and strengthening that system rather than seeking to challenge or
overthrow it. Although, in recent years, they have become somewhat more circumspect in stating this goal directly, since the early
1990s US policymakers have also continued to hope that , in time, Chinas domestic political
institutions would evolve toward something more closely resembling those of a liberal
democracy. This is not a process to which the United States has sought to contribute directly, but rather one that it has
attempted to encourage by indirect means, including the promulgation of ideas and, above all, the promotion of trade. Thus, since
the early 1990s, one of the primary justifications for deepening economic engagement has been the claim that expanding trade and
investment would accelerate growth, thereby hastening the emergence of a reform-minded Chinese middle class. Albeit with
occasional shifts in rhetorical tone and emphasis, and comparatively minor adjustments in the blend of engagement and balancing,
for the past quarter-century successive US administrations have continued to adhere to the
same basic approach. In the last several years, however, questions have emerged about the
adequacy and long-term durability of this strategy. While China is obviously far richer
today than it was in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, it is no more democratic . Indeed, to
the contrary, the elevation of Xi Jinping to the status of Chinas paramount leader in 2012 has been
accompanied by a wide-ranging crackdown on dissent, a further tightening of controls over
access to the internet, and new restrictions on the activities of non-governmental organisations ,
especially those suspected of trying to strengthen civil society in order to promote
human rights and social justice . Despite decades of deepening engagement , China
appears, if anything, to have moved further away from meaningful political reform .
Meanwhile, fuelled by rapid economic expansion, the nations military capabilities have grown
to impressive dimensions . Among other developments, the deployment by China of so-called antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) forces has raised serious questions about the future willingness and,
perhaps, the ability of the United States to project power into the Western Pacific. Especially in
light of the fiscal constraints under which it now labours, it is not obvious that the United States
can continue to play its accustomed role in preserving a favourable balance of power in East
Asia. Finally, Chinas recent behaviour, especially in disputes with several of its maritime
neighbours, has caused some observers to re-examine the pleasing assumption that the country
is fast on its way to becoming a status quo power. To the contrary, Chinas assertion of the right
to control most of the water, islands and resources off its coasts, and its new-found ability to use
displays of power and threats of force to advance those claims, have shattered the illusion
that it wants nothing more than to become a responsible stakeholder in the existing
international order. In light of all these developments, analysts have begun to consider whether
and, if so, how the prevailing approach should be adapted to meet changing circumstances. A survey of recent
writing suggests that there are six possibilities presently on offer in public discussion, each involving a different mixture of the
familiar elements that make up current strategy. As described more fully below, these can be arrayed along a spectrum ranging from
renewed and redoubled efforts at engagement, to a virtually exclusive emphasis on balancing. (89-91)
2NC AT: Integration

China supports the liberal order for personal benefit only
The character of Beijings international involvement, therefore, suggests that its commitment to the
current order is considerably instrumental . China is content to operate within that order to
the degree that it receives material or status benefits , but it has no fundamental
commitment to protecting that system beyond the gains incurred . At one level, this should not be
surprising because, as Kissinger astutely noted, China is still adjusting [itself] to membership in an
international system designed in its absence on the basis of programs it did not participate in developing.30 But,
when all is considered, this ambivalence ultimately undermines American national interests and, most
important, the premise on which the current U.S. strategy of integration is based :
that Chinas entry into the liberal order will result over time in securing its support for that
regime, to include the avoidance of threats levied against its principal guardian, the United States.31 (16)
PRC Benefits O/W benefits to the US
Fourth, some may assert that Chinas integration into the international system broadly serves
important U.S. purposes, binds Beijing to a rules-based system and increases the costs to the
PRC of going against it, and thus should trump other U.S. concerns about Chinas internal and external behavior. We accept
that integrating China into international institutions will continue and that the United States will accrue some benefits from that
basing U.S. grand strategy primarily on such Chinese global

integration ignores the strategic reality that China has made far greater relative
gains through such processes than the United States has over the past three
decades, that China has accordingly increased its national power in ways that potentially
deeply threaten U.S. national interests in the long term, and that therefore the United States
needs to understand and internalize this disturbing fact and respond to such PRC international
assimilation with much more robust American policies and power projection into Asia. (35-6)
activity. Our argument is that
AT: Reassurance
Chinese demands for reassurance are a smokescreen- engagement signals US
weakness and invites Chinese aggression
The claim that the United States needs to find ways to reassure China reflects a questionable
reading of the dynamics of the current strategic competition , as well as what appears to be
an overly benign interpretation of Beijings motivations and intentions. While it may
be true that Chinas leaders see their ongoing military build-up as in some sense defensive, this does
not make it any less threatening to their neighbours or to the interests of the U nited States.
Proposals for restraint rest on the belief that the United States and China are on the verge of an
arms race. In fact, a competition is already well under way. As during the Cold War, the mechanical action
reaction image grossly oversimplifies the character of the interactions between the two sides
and points towards prescriptions that are likely to be unhelpful, and possibly dangerous .
Chinas leaders feel constrained and potentially threatened, not by any particular US weapons
programme or operational concept, but by the presence of its forward-deployed forces, the
persistence of its alliances and its continuing commitment to intervene on behalf of its friends if
they are threatened or attacked. Beijing has had to live with these facts because, for many years, it lacked the means to
challenge or change them. Today that is no longer the case. China now has the resources, as well as the resolve,
to push back against American power, and it has started to do so. Many of its militarymodernisation programmes appear to be aimed precisely at making it more difficult, costly and
dangerous for the United States to continue to project power into the Western Pacific .
Unfortunately, at this point in the sequence of strategic interaction, Chinas leaders are likely to interpret
gestures of restraint not as an indication that a more aggressive approach is
unnecessary, but rather as a sign that it is succeeding . Advocates of reassurance also
likely overestimate the degree to which the leadership of the Communist Party of China is
motivated by fear and insecurity about external, as opposed to possible internal, threats. The
current cycle of Chinese assertiveness did not begin when the United States was building up its
forces in the Western Pacific, but rather when it seemed to be weak, preoccupied and in
decline .43 While the initial announcement of the pivot gave Beijing pause, the
subsequent lack of follow-through has reinforced the view that the United States is
constrained, at least for the time being. Despite their protestations about encirclement, Chinas
leaders evidently believe that their more assertive stance is succeeding, rather than provoking an
effective countervailing response from the United States and its allies .44 (103-4)
AT: Rudd- Unique Moment

Rudd lacks evidence that we have a unique moment for a China grand bargain
Economy, PhD @Umich, 15
(Elizabeth, senior fellow and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/the-debate-on-u-s-china-relations-make-room-make-way-ormake-hay/ 5-23)
Rudds argument is premised on his belief that Chinese President Xi Jinping is someone with whom the
United States can work, that he is prepared to take calculated risks, and that there is now a window in China for
Washington and Beijing to strike a grand bargain. According to Rudd, it is up to the United States to use this
space as creatively as possible, while it lasts. While this is an appealing narrative, the
report does not make clear why Rudd believes this . Rudd also leaves the reader hanging
when he asserts that China will become a more active participant in the reform of the global
rules-based order and that it will bring a new, forthright Chinese voice in the world. It would
have been helpful had the prime minister explained whether this voice will mean more Air
Defense Identification Zones or more Asian Infrastructure Investment Banks or both. The
implications for the region are vastly different . There are also some off-putting notes.
Rudd begins by announcing that the Chinese economy will continue to thrive, noting: Sorry, but on
balance, the Chinese economic model is probably sustainable . It is an awkward pronouncement that assumes
that Americans want the Chinese economy to failsomething very few Americans, in fact,
desire. (What Americans do want is a thriving Chinese economy that offers a fair and open trade and investment environment.)
While bold and fun to read, Rudds analysis of Xis presidency and the potential for significant
new cooperation with the United Statesshould only the United States seize the moment ultimately falls
short because it is difficult to find the evidence to support it. Xi may well have the
political capital to strike a grand bargain, but Rudds faith in him notwithstanding, it remains
unclear that he wants one.
2NC AT: Self-fulfilling Prophecy

China exploits western fears of self-fulfilling prophecy- must send clear signals to
stop aggression in the short term
There is the risk of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy. If the United States and Japan base their policies on the
expectation of a powerful and aggressive China, and take preparatory measures that Beijing interprets as a containment strategy,
China might decide to adopt aggressive policies to defend itself, leading to a cycle of armament and tension that neither side desired.
China's leaders clearly understand this Western reticence and consistently exploit it to
their advantage, pressing at each incrementally assertive point and expecting the West
to exercise the necessary prudence to avoid confrontation and escalation. In the military and
security areas, China has been deterred from direct aggression, but has advanced its interests using
sophisticated forms of military coercion and simple gunboat diplomacy, as well as a wide
range of nonmilitary activities. The paper repeats the conventional wisdom that China sees "the
need for a peaceful international environment" in order to pursue its domestic economic development. But
Beijing relies on an acquiescent and somewhat intimidated neighborhood to
ensure the peace while it pursues its ambitious goals by means just short of
outright war . The ink was hardly dry on the SPF report when fresh news arrived of an even
more threatening move by China on its islands: the installation of anti-ship missiles that will constrain activities of
the U.S. and Japanese navies among others. As the Obama and Abe administrations digest this important SPF report, they will
the more powerful and aggressive China is already here . The future
is now, and it is dire unless U.S. and Japanese policymakers send some strong deterrence
and dissuasion messages to China, backed up by meaningful actions . At the very least, that
hopefully recognize that
means regular freedom of navigation and overflight operations in the East and South China Seas that actually challenge China's
unlawful sovereignty claimsnot merely innocent passages which effectively reinforce them.
AT: US-China Relations Good

Relationship cant be revitalized- macro trends doom engagement
The macro trajectory for the last decade has been steadily downward - punctuated only by
high-level summits between the two presidents, which temporarily arrest the downward trajectory. This
has been the case with the last four presidential summits. Occasionally, bilateral meetings like the Strategic and Economic Dialogue,
which will convene in Washington in two weeks' time, provide similar stabilisation and impetus for movement in specific policy
sectors. But their effects are short-lived, with only a matter of months passing before the two
countries encounter new shocks and the deterioration of ties resumes. The most recent jolts to
the relationship, just a few months since Xi Jinping and Barack Obama took their stroll in the Zhongnanhai (the so-called
Yingtai Summit), have been the escalating rhetoric and tensions around China's island-building in
the South China Sea. Behind this imbroglio lies rising concerns about Chinese military
capabilities, US military operations near China, and the broader balance of power in Asia. But
there have been a number of other lesser, but not unimportant, issues that have recently
buffeted the relationship in different realms - in law enforcement (arrests of Chinese for technology theft
and falsification of applications to US universities), legal (China's draft NGO and national security laws), human rights
(convictions of rights lawyers and the general repression in China since 2009), cyber-hacking (of the US Office of Personnel
Management most recently) and problems in trade and investment. Hardly a day passes when one does
not open the newspaper to read of more - and serious - friction. This is the "new normal"
and both sides had better get used to it - rather than naively professing a
harmonious relationship that is not achievable .
Relations are a farce- China only cooperates when it is in their interestengagement builds them up for future confrontation
So long as the United States does not alter the intense global codependency that currently defines U.S.-China economic relations,
China is content to maintain the current arrangement.32 China still seeks to cooperate with the United States
whenever possible , but only when such collaboration is not unduly burdensome in
the face of common interests, does not undercut its geopolitical ambitions to
undermine U.S. primacy, and does not foreclose future options that might one day
prove advantageous to China . Because China recognizes that its quest for comprehensive national power is still
incomplete, it seeks to avoid any confrontation with the United States or the international system
in the near term. Rather, Beijing aims to deepen ties with all its global partnersand especially
with Washington in the hope that its accelerated rise and centrality to international trade
and politics will compel others to become increasingly deferential to Chinas
preferences . Should such obeisance not emerge once China has successfully risen, Beijing
would then be properly equipped to protect its equities by force and at a lower cost
than it could today , given that it is still relatively weak and remains reliant on the benefits of
trade and global interdependence. The fundamental conclusion for the United States, therefore, is that
China does not see its interests served by becoming just another trading state, no matter how
constructive an outcome that might be for resolving the larger tensions between its economic
and geopolitical strategies. Instead, China will continue along the path to becoming a
conventional great power with the full panoply of political and military capabilities, all oriented
toward realizing the goal of recovering from the United States the primacy it once enjoyed in
Asia as a prelude to exerting global influence in the future .(17)
Competition structures US-China relations- no cooperative era possible
In this same sense, there is no real prospect of building fundamental trust, peaceful coexistence,
mutual understanding, a strategic partnership, or a new type of major country relations

between the United States and China. Rather, the most that can be hoped for is caution and
restrained predictability by the two sides as intense U.S.-China strategic competition becomes
the new normal, and even that will be no easy task to achieve in the period ahead. The purpose of U.S. diplomacy
in these dangerous circumstances is to mitigate and manage the severe inherent tensions
between these two conflicting strategic paradigms, but it cannot hope to eliminate them . Former
Australian Prime Minister and distinguished sinologist Kevin Rudd believes the Chinese may have come to the
same conclusion: There is emerging evidence to suggest that President Xi, now two years into
his term, has begun to conclude that the long-term strategic divergences between U.S. and
Chinese interests make it impossible to bring about any fundamental change in the
relationship.59 The Obama administration has clearly pursued a policy approach far different than the one recommended in
this report. To be clear, this involves a more fundamental issue than policy implementation. All signs suggest that President Obama
and his senior colleagues have a profoundly different and much more benign diagnosis of Chinas strategic objectives in Asia than do
we. Like some of its predecessors, the Obama administration has not appeared to understand and digest the reality that Chinas
grand strategy in Asia in this era is designed to undermine U.S. vital national interests and that it has been somewhat successful in
that regard. It is for this overriding reason that the Obama team has continued the cooperate-but-hedge policy of its predecessors,
but with much greater emphasis on cooperating than on hedging. Many of these omissions in U.S. policy would
seem to stem from an administration worried that such actions would offend Beijing and
therefore damage the possibility of enduring strategic cooperation between the two nations, thus
the dominating emphasis on cooperation. That self-defeating preoccupation by the United
States based on a long-term goal of U.S.-China strategic partnership that cannot be
accomplished in the foreseeable future should end. (38-9)
AT: Spillover
Engagement doesnt facilitate cooperation- empirics
Pillsbury, PhD, 15
For four decades now, my colleagues and I believed that engagement with the Chinese would
induce China to cooperate with the West on a wide range of policy problems . It
hasnt. Trade and technology were supposed to lead to a convergence of Chinese and Western
views on questions of regional and global order. They havent. In short, China has failed to meet
nearly all of our rosy expectations. Take, for example, weapons of mass destruction. No security
threat poses a greater danger to the United States and our allies than their proliferation. But China
has been less than helpful to put it mildly in checking the nuclear ambitions of North Korea and
Iran. In the aftermath of 9/11, some commentators expressed the belief that America and China
would henceforth be united by the threat of terrorism, much as they had once been drawn together by the
specter of the Soviet Union. These high hopes of cooperating to confront the common danger of terrorism, as President
George W. Bush described it in his January 2002 State of the Union address, by speaking of erasing old rivalries, did not
change Chinas attitude. Sino-American collaboration on this issue has turned out to be quite
limited in scope and significance.
AT: Swaine
Swaines vision isnt feasible, and ignores empirics
So what, specifically, should America do? In one of the most hawkish of the recent think-tank reports, Robert D . Blackwill, a
former U.S. deputy national security adviser and ambassador to India under President George W. Bush, and Ashley J. Tellis, a
senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace who also served on the National Security Council staff under
President Bush, write that engagement with China has served to strengthen a competitor. It is time,
they declare, for a new grand strategy: less engagement and more balancing to ensure the central
objective of continued U.S. global primacy. Among other things, America should beef up its military in Asia, choke off Chinas
access to military technology, accelerate missile-defense deployments and increase U.S. offensive cyber capabilities. For Michael D.
Swaine, also of the Carnegie Endowment, this is a certain recipe for another Cold War, or worse. He outlines
a sweeping settlement under which America would concede its primacy in East Asia, turning
much of the region into a buffer zone policed by a balance of forces, including those from a
strengthened Japan. All foreign forces would withdraw from Korea. And China would offer assurances that it wouldnt
launch hostilities against Taiwan, which it regards as a renegade province. Such arrangements, even if
possible, would take decades to sort out . Meanwhile, warns David M. Lampton, a professor
at the Johns Hopkins Universitys School of Advanced International Studies, U.S.-China ties have reached a
tipping point. Our respective fears are nearer to outweighing our hopes than at any time since
normalization, he said in a recent speech. The West has been in this position before. Optimism
about the prospects of transforming an ancient civilization through engagement, followed by
deep disillusion, has been the pattern ever since early Jesuit missionaries sought to convert the
Chinese to Christianity. Those envoys adopted the gowns of the Mandarin class, grew long beards and even couched their
gospel message in Confucian terms to make it more palatable. The 17th-century German priest Adam Schall got as far as becoming
the chief astronomer of the Qing dynasty. But he fell from favor, and the Jesuits were later expelled.
2NC AT: US Imperialism

Past US action has already locked in Chinese threat perception
Many Americans think that because the United States is a democracy and it is a hegemon, that it
is a benign hegemon. And those same Americans think that the rest of the world should view the
Americans in those terms. They should see us as a benign hegemon. But thats not the way most other
countries around the world see us, and its certainly not the way the Chinese see us. The United
States has fought six separate wars since the Cold War ended in 1989, the first of which was against Saddam
Husseins Iraq in 1991. Then we fought against Serbia over Bosnia in 1995, and again, in 1999 against Serbia, but this time over
Kosovo. And then we went to war against Afghanistan in the wake of September 11th, and then in 2003, March 2003, we invaded
Iraq. And in 2011 we went to war against Libya. So anyone who makes the argument that the United States is
a
peaceful country because its democratic, right, is confronted immediately with evidence that
contradicts that basic claim. Its not an exaggeration to say that the United States is addicted to war. We are
not reluctant at all to reach for our six-shooter. And countries like China understand this. And when
countries like China see the United States pivoting to Asia, and they see what our record looks
like in terms of using military force since 1989. And when they think about the history of USChinese relations, when they think about the Open Door policy and how we exploited China in the early part of the 20th
century. And when they think about the Korean War - most Americans dont realize this, but we were not fighting the North Koreans
during the Korean War, we were fighting the Chinese from 1950 to 1953. We had a major war, not with the Soviet Union during the
Cold War, but with China. China remembers all these things. So they do not view the United States as a
benign hegemon. They view the United States as a very dangerous foe that is moving more and
more forces to Asia and is forming close alliances with Chinas neighbors. From Beijings point
of view, this is a terrible situation.
2NC Epistemology
Aff engagement literature makes crucial mistaken assumptions about Chinese
goals and behavior- you should heavily discount it
The six strategies discussed here reflect differing assumptions about the sources
of Chinese conduct
and the likely impact of US behaviour upon it, as well as on the actions of other Asian nations. The first three
options rest on what appear increasingly to be overly optimistic assessments of the
likely extent of the ambitions of the current Communist regime and the degree to
which it can be placated or appeased . As regards enhanced engagement, the notion that the
regime wants nothing more than to be accepted as a full-fledged member of the prevailing
American-led order does not comport well with the evidence of recent Chinese
behaviour; it also reflects a certain lack of imagination and historical perspective .
Rising powers typically want to change things for reasons of pride and prestige, as well as
rational material calculation. Their leaders believe that prevailing structures, put into place when they
were relatively weak, are inherently unfair and disadvantageous. But they also chafe against having to
accept rules and roles that were designed by others; they want to make their own mark and to receive the
deference to which they believe themselves entitled.41 In intensifying its claims to offshore waters and
resources, Beijing has already made clear its desire to alter certain aspects of the status quo in
Asia. The fact that it has not yet put forward a full-fledged alternative vision for global order is hardly surprising, and should not be
mistaken for acceptance of the one that currently exists. The growth of Chinas power has been so rapid in
recent years that the nations strategists have only just begun to lift their eyes from their
immediate neighbourhood and to think about how they might like the wider world to look someday.42 Instead of
allowing themselves simply to be absorbed and transformed by the existing global system , as
optimistic Western observers believe, Chinas leaders seem to have chosen to play within its rules for the
time being, exploiting them to their advantage and pushing for marginal
modifications wherever they can , while continuing to accumulate the wealth and power
that will be needed to implement more far-reaching changes. Meanwhile, in its own
neighbourhood, Beijing is already seeking to establish alternative structures, including regional
trade agreements and new political mechanisms that serve its interests and enhance its
influence, while marginalising the United States. An American strategy that continues to bank on the transformative
potential of engagement may yet bear fruit, but only if it is accompanied by a programme of balancing sufficiently vigorous to defend
the existing order and to compel China to continue to operate within its boundaries. (101-2)
Affirmative arguments rely on decades old, disprove ideas about China

Mann, award winning journalist, 15
(James, fellow at the Johns Hopkins School of International Studies and the author of three
books about America and China https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/changing-therules-of-engagement/2015/09/17/d96c955a-5bd2-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html 9-17)
This summer, President Obama offered a pithy description of the way that inertia sometimes prevents the United States
from discarding old ideas that no longer fit current circumstances. Sometimes we allow ourselves to be trapped
by a certain way of doing things, he said. We dont have to be imprisoned by the past. When something isnt working, we can
he should also apply these words with

equal force to U.S. policy toward China. As Washington prepares for a visit from Chinese President Xi
Jinping next week, American thinking about China seems stuck on concepts developed in the 1970s,
80s and 90s. Since that time, however, China has evolved in ways that few, if any, in Washington saw coming. It
and will change. The president was talking about Cuba. But
has become more assertive overseas, more repressive at home and more
mercantilist in its trade practices than was anticipated two decades ago. Back then, American leaders
regularly predicted that trade and prosperity would produce a more open China, one that would ease
into the existing international system created under U.S. leadership. Yet even as China moves in new directions, we use the mindset
of the past when we talk about it. We continue to draw on ideas dating to Richard Nixons opening even
though it seems likely that Nixon himself, were he alive today, would take a much tougher
stance toward China than he did in 1972. Several intellectual traps stand in the way of
developing new approaches. The first is the notion of engagement. This concept dates to the
period after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, when President George H.W. Bush resisted proposals to cut off all
contact with Chinese leaders. Instead, he laid down a policy of engagement meaning that his administration would meet with
Chinese leaders in hopes of changing them. President Bill Clinton perpetuated the use of engagement, and it has become
a
catchphrase for conciliatory, non-punitive approaches to our differences . But it was never really
clear what engagement sought, other than meetings and talk. And now, a quarter century after Tiananmen,
when no one suggests cutting off contact, engagement has lost whatever slight meaning it once
held. Likewise, those who resist any policy change frequently argue that , beginning with Nixon, eight
presidents in a row have come around to roughly the same China policies and that therefore these
policies should not be altered. This idea also has a history. Since the Nixon era, several presidents most notably
Ronald Reagan and Clinton have campaigned promising to change U.S. policy toward China, only to
do an about-face in office. Yet the history isnt so simple. Obama, for example, actually did a reverse aboutface: He set out to avoid conflict, then toughened his approach after his first year in office . More
fundamentally, as Obamas words on Cuba recognize, what a series of predecessors have done does not answer what the United
States should do when circumstances change. Nixon himself inherited a China policy carried out by his four immediate
predecessors, but rightly reversed the policy. Then there are the recurrent calls for a G-2. It is sometimes proposed that China and
the United States should reach a broad strategic accommodation allowing them, together, to guide the affairs of the world. This idea
gained strength during the financial crisis, when China appeared to be the economically strongest partner for the United States.
More recently, Xis repeated proposal for a new type of major-power relationship seems a variant of the old calls for a Group of 2.
But such
formulations overlook larger realities. They implicitly downgrade the interests of

U.S. allies and friends (Japan, India, South Korea and the European Union, for starters) who would naturally
feel threatened by the notion of the United States and China teaming up without them . They
also ignore fundamental differences in values and political systems . Do advocates expect the United States
to stay silent on issues such as Chinas severe repression of dissent? The underlying reality is that the congruence
of strategic interests that held the United States and China together in the late Cold War
no longer exists . And the desire of the U.S. business community for trade and investment
in China, which drove U.S. policy in the 1990s, has also been transformed: These days, U.S.
businesses tend to come to the White House not to get help in expanding trade but looking for a
tougher line on issues such as intellectual property and cybertheft. In this climate, efforts to
perpetuate the old U.S.-China relationship seem increasingly out of touch. The
truth is, the United States China policy is already changing at the working levels of government
and at the grass-roots level, but our overriding ideas about this relationship have not
kept pace. Over the next few years, a new U.S. policy toward China is sure to emerge, but it
may do so gradually, from the bottom up. As it does, some simple concepts could be brought back into play. One
is the idea that China should be treated by the same rules as other countries. Another is the notion of reciprocity: When China
penalizes U.S. businesses or media, the United States should respond with similar limits on Chinese entities. We should develop a
more businesslike approach, forsaking the dream that some personalized diplomacy or dramatic communiqu can bring back the
Its time to develop policies and

ideas that dont try fruitlessly to replicate the past.
special relationship of the past. The United States and China are in a new era.
Chinese strategic culture favors deception

Pillsbury, PhD, 15

In our hubris, Americans love to believe that the aspiration of every other country is to be just
like the United States. In recent years, this has governed our approach to Iraq and Afghanistan. We cling to the same
mentality with China. In the 1940s, an effort was funded by the U.S. government to understand
the Chinese mind-set. One conclusion that emerged was that the Chinese did not view strategy
the same way Americans did. Whereas Americans tended to favor direct action, those of Chinese
ethnic origin were found to favor the indirect over the direct, ambiguity and deception over
clarity and transparency. Another conclusion was that Chinese literature and writings on
strategy prized deception. Two decades later, Nathan Leites, who was renowned for his
psychoanalytical cultural studies, observed: Chinese literature on strategy from Sun Tzu
through Mao Tse-tung has emphasized deception more than many military
doctrines . Chinese deception is oriented mainly toward inducing the enemy to act
in expediently and less toward protecting the integrity of ones own plans.
2NC Prodict
Best scholarship concludes engagement is doomed
A qualitative shift in American thinking about China is occurring. In essence, the
"engagement" strategy pursued since Nixon across eight administrations, that was premised on three pillars, is
unravelling . The American expectation has been, first, as China modernised economically, it
would liberalise politically; second, as China's role in the world grew, it would become a
"responsible stakeholder" - in Robert Zoellick's words - in upholding the global liberal order; and third, that China would
not challenge the American-dominant security architecture and order in East Asia. The first premise
is clearly not occurring - quite to the contrary, as China grows stronger economically , it is
becoming more, not less, repressive politically . There are any number of examples, but political
repression in China today is the worst it has been in the 25 years since Tiananmen . With respect
to the other two, we are not witnessing frontal assaults by China on these regional and global institutional architectures. But we are
witnessing Beijing establishing a range of alternative institutions that clearly signal China's
discomfort with the US-led postwar order. Make no mistake: China is methodically
trying to construct an alternative international order.
2NC Turn Shield

No turns- China spins all US policy as containment- collapse of engagement
inevitable
Kyung-Hoon, Beijing SW, 15
(Kim, http://theconversation.com/challenging-the-chinese-containment-myth-42463 6-1)
The United States is not trying to contain Chinas rise. But you would never know it from reading
Chinese domestic media, which overwhelmingly embraces this theor y to explain Americas
resistance to Chinas military and territorial expansion in Asia. To regular readers of Chinese discourse, this containment narrative
isnt new. What is new is that it is spilling over into the English language information space , in places
such as this article by Australia-based scholar Xu Qinduo. Its a positive sign that the two sides are talking more directly about their
the irony is that this popular misattribution of Americas motives may

soon lead Washington to reconsider its engagement policy to Chinas detriment.
Containment everywhere As part of an ongoing effort to understand how the Chinese frame matters of
strategy, I recently analyzed over 500 translated documents reflecting Chinese internal discourse on regional
conflict. The single unifying narrative across all areas was the idea that the US is
working to prevent Chinas prosperity or contain Chinas rise. Criticism of Chinas cyber
strategic fears. But
operations? Containment. US rebalance? Containment. Pushback on land reclamation in the South China Sea? Containment.
But to American strategists, containment has a very specific meaning: a comprehensive

political, economic, and military strategy to deny an enemy nation freedom of access to the
international system. Containment, when successful, leads to isolation and even political collapse. The simplest way to show
that there is no US containment policy toward the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) is to remember when there was. When youre
being contained, you know it During the 1950s and 1960s, Washington blocked PRC access to development loans, armed and trained
ethnic insurgencies to destabilize its government, conducted intelligence overflights from Taiwan, and prevented Beijing from
claiming a seat at the United Nations. Its partners and allies denied the PRC diplomatic recognition and sharply limited
opportunities for trade, dialogue or cultural exchange. China remained a poor, isolated country with little political significance
much like North Korea or Cuba today. Chinese commentators like to remind their readers that todays China is not the weak China
of 40 years ago. Indeed it isnt neither Chinas situation, nor US policy, bears any resemblance to that past. Last year alone, the
United States imported US$466 billion in Chinese goods and welcomed more than 274,000 Chinese students to US universities. One
out of every three foreign students now holds a Chinese passport. If training an entire generation of engineers, scientists and
The
containment narrative confuses a policy of preventing Chinas prosperity with a
policy of influencing Chinas strategic choices . The US is not selfless, but for the past 40 years it has been
pursuing a policy of enlightened self-interest. Through engagement, the US seeks to shape Chinas strategic
culture away from conspiratorial, zero-sum thinking and toward shared responsibility. It
programmers is containment, its possibly the worst containment policy ever. Americas true motives revealed
puts constraints on the exercise of Chinese power because those constraints are the cost of admission to the system it created. It may
criticize Chinese policies, but criticism is not containment. The worst that can be said is that the US has attempted to create
structures (like the TransPacific Partnership) that are difficult for China to join, or infrastructure (like military bases in the Pacific)
that would constrain Chinese options in a conflict. These may complicate Chinas strategic calculations, but fundamentally dont
prevent it from pursuing its interests or achieving prosperity. A turn away from engagement? If the US isnt attempting to
contain China, why popularize the idea that it is? One reason is that it may be useful inside
China to cultivate an enduring sense of victimhood. If you promote the idea that the US is
set on thwarting Chinas rise, then any pushback on Chinas actions becomes proof
of a covert hostilit y. But accommodating Chinas expanding claims would hardly demonstrate US sincerity only that it
was forced recognize Chinas legitimate interests in the face of hard power. Inside the structure of this
narrative, either confrontation or accommodation justifies further expansion and
military capability. Faced with this dilemma, the danger for China is that US policymakers
start to reexamine whether the logic of engagement still holds. For the first time in
decades, American analysts are questioning Americas basic policy. Washington is giving
up on Beijing becoming a stakeholder in the present global order, writes the Financial Times. Washington needs a new grand
strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy, say
Robert Blackwill and Ashley J Tellis in a recent report for the Council on Foreign Relations. Even now, no one is seriously talking
about containment. But a US decision to reconsider engagement as the foundation for future relations
may be difficult to reverse, and could have a significant impact on Chinas interests down the
road. Tragically, Chinas cultivated conspiracy could end up producing a much more
hostile policy than the one that actually exists now.
Engagement cant produce benefits fast enough to matter- even if they win their
turns, our link outweighs on timeframe
Chinas worldview, as for all nation-states, is deeply shaped by its past . In Chinas case, this means one of
the worlds oldest continuing civilizations, with a continuing written language and literary tradition over several thousand years. For
China, the mark of history is profound, as are the scars of collective memory. This applies to Chinas philosophical
tradition; its core, continuing values; its historical experience of its neighbors and those which invaded
it; and its cumulative perceptions over time of the United Kingdom, the United States and the collective,
colonizing West. China also takes great pride in its civilizational achievements; the glories of its imperial past; and the resilience of
its people across the millennia, celebrating the material and cultural achievements of the Han () people. Within those
achievements, China has also generated a self-referential body of philosophical thought and way of thinking (siwei ) that does
not readily yield to the epistemological demands and intellectual taxonomies of the Western academy. And within this philosophical
system, Confucianism in its various forms lies at the core. Westerners may find Chinese public formulations arcane. But that is the
way the Chinese system conducts its official discourse, in which case we have some responsibility to understand what these
formulations really mean, rather than once again simply dismissing them as propaganda. Chinese intentions are shaped
not simply by the deep value structures alive in Chinese tradition and in Chinas modern
political mind-set. They are also shaped by Chinas national historiography its narrative about
its own place in history, as well as its historical account of its dealing with its neighbors, the phalanx
of Western colonial powers eager to carve up its territory , and the United States. Chinas lived experience of the
outside world, as well as how it recalls that experience in the current period, exercises a profound impact on how China now views
the world. The main thematics that emerge in Chinas own account of its historical engagement with the world are as
follows: First, China, at least over the last 500 years, has been the innocent party and did nothing
by way of its own offensive actions against the West or Japan to provoke the imperial carve-up of its territory and
its people in the modern period; Second, China has therefore been the victim of international aggression ,
rather than a perpetrator, particularly during the so-called century of foreign humiliation from the First Opium War to the
proclamation of the Peoples Republic; Third, Chinese national losses during the Japanese invasion and occupation were of
staggering proportions even by global standards, explaining Beijings unique and continuing neuralgia toward Tokyo, both in terms
of the official Japanese historical record of the war as a basis for any effective long-term reconciliation with Japan, and in terms of
any evidence today of Japanese remilitarization or revanchism; Fourth, Russia too has loomed large in the Chinese national
memory and has been predominantly seen as a strategic adversary through most of its history, rather than as a strategic partner;
Fifth, throughout its past, right through to the present period, Chinas national pre-occupations have been primarily, although not
exclusively domestic: governing a quarter of humanity rather than dreaming of carving out even more territory for itself; Sixth,
China, after 150 years, has now regained its proper place in the community of nations, as a product of its own efforts to build
national power, rather than depending on anybody else; and Finally, Chinese leaders have a profound sense that
Chinas time has now come for China to have its own impact on the region and the world; but
they are concerned that others (principally the United States) will now prevent it from doing so
because this will challenge U.S. global dominance. The current relationship between the United
States and China has been characterized privately by one Chinese interlocutor as one
condemned to a future of " Mutually Assured Misperception. The report argues that there is
considerable truth to this, as each side engages in various forms of mirror imaging of the other. As another senior Chinese
interlocutor said during the preparation of this report: The problem is the United States believes that China
simply adopt the same hegemonic thinking that the United States has done historically , as seen
will
under the Monroe Doctrine and the multiple invasions of neighboring states in the Western Hemisphere that followed. Since the
Second World War, there has barely been a day when the United States has not been engaged in a foreign war. As a result, the
United States believes that China will behave in the same way. And this conclusion forms the basis of a series of recent policies
towards China. Americans offer their own variations on the same theme concerning Chinese mirror imaging. Nonetheless, the report
argues that Chinese
leaders have begun to form a worrying consensus on what they believe to be the
core elements of U.S. strategy towards China, despite Washingtons protestations to the
contrary. These are reflected in the following five-point consensus circulated among the Chinese leadership during 2014,
summarizing internal conclusions about U.S. strategic intentions: To isolate China; To contain China ; To diminish
China; To internally divide China; and To sabotage Chinas leadership. While these conclusions sound strange to
a Western audience, they nonetheless derive from a Chinese conclusion that the United
States has not, and never will, accept the fundamental political legitimacy of the
Chinese administration because it is not a liberal democracy . They are also based on a
deeply held, deeply realist Chinese conclusion that the U.S. will never willingly concede
its status as the pre-eminent regional and global power, and will do everything within its power
to retain that position. In Beijing, this assumption permeates perceptions of nearly all
aspects of U.S. policy , from campaigns on human rights, political activism in Hong Kong,
arms sales to Taiwan, and Americas failure to condemn terrorist attacks by Xinjiang separatists,
to support for Falungong and the Dalai Lama. As a result, senior Chinese interlocutors conclude
that the U.S. is effectively engaged in a dual strategy of undermining China from within, while
also containing China from without. American arguments that U.S. policy toward China bears
no comparison with the Cold War-era containment of the Soviet Union are
dismissed by Chinese analysts . China points to the U.S. strategic decision to pivot or
rebalance to Asia as unequivocal evidence of this . Beijing also points to Washingtons de facto support for
Japanese territorial claims in the East China Sea, and its alleged abandonment of neutrality on competing territorial claims in the
South China Sea in support of the Philippines, Vietnam and other South-East Asian states at the expense of China, as further
evidence of containment. Finally, China adds the most recent examples of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) (which excludes
China) and failed American efforts to dissuade its allies from joining the AIIB. All the above, as seen from Beijing, are designed to
deny international space to China in policy domains ranging from hard security, to economics and trade diplomacy. The report notes
that the U.S. disputes each of the above, and instead argues that Chinese foreign policy appears geared for an attempt to push the
United States strategically out of Asia. It is against this unhappy background that, in 2013, Xi Jinping elevated the concept of a new
type of great power relationship as a centerpiece of his diplomacy towards the U.S. Xi argued it was time to liberate the bilateral
relationship from a cold war mentality (lengzhan siwei ) and the politics of a zero sum game (linghe youxi ).
While disagreements inevitably arose over the definition of Chinese and American core interests (hexin liyi ). the U.S.
administration initially welcomed the proposal. But this concept soon fell victim to a deeply partisan debate within the United States
on the administration conceding strategic and moral parity to China and has since disappeared from the public language of the
administration. The report argues that mutual strategic misperceptions between the U.S. and China,
informed both by history and recent experience, are likely to endure . I argue that the only real
prospect of altering the present reality in a substantive and durable way lies not in discovering some magical declaratory statement.
Instead, the U.S. and China should set out an explicit, agreed road map of cooperative strategic projects (bilateral, regional
and global) to build
mutual trust and reduce deeply rooted strategic perceptions, inch by inch, year after year.
The gains from such an approach will be slow and grueling, the reversals numerous. But it
is the only way to arrest the political and policy dynamics that flow from Chinas conclusion that the U.S. will do whatever it takes to
retain its status as the pre-eminent power. (12-15)
Containment is the best available option- security competition is inevitable,

containment minimizes it by limiting Chinese power
I think that the optimal strategy for the United States for dealing with China is to pursue a
containment strategy similar to the one that we pursued with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. There will be some
people who will argue for preventive war or for a rollback strategy, but it would be remarkably foolish, in my opinion, to pursue that
option. It makes much more sense for the United States just to work with Chinas neighbors to try and contain it
and to prevent it from becoming a regional hegemon. The problem that we face , however, is that as
we move towards a containment strategy now, we almost certainly guarantee that there will be an intense
security competition between the United States and China. One might say to me: John, the argument
youre making for containment now, basically creates a situation where you have a self-fulfilling
prophecy, where it guarantees that China and the United States will compete for security and they will always be a danger of
war. My response to that is its true, but we have no choice because we cannot
afford to let China grow and dominate Asia for fear that it might have malign
intentions. So, therefore, we have to contain it now, and it is a self-fulfilling
prophecy. And my argument is that this is the tragedy of great power politics .
Aff Answers
Uniqueness
AT: China Rise
China cant challenge the US no matter how fast it grows

After two and a half decades, is the United States run as the worlds sole superpower coming to an end? Many say yes, seeing a
rising China ready to catch up to or even surpass the United States in the near future. By many measures, after all,
Chinas economy is on track to become the worlds biggest, and even if its growth slows, it will still outpace that of the United States
for many years. Its coffers overflowing, Beijing has used its new wealth to attract friends, deter enemies, modernize its military, and
aggressively assert sovereignty claims in its periphery. For many, therefore, the question is not whether China will become a
superpower but just how soon. But this is wishful, or fearful, thinking. Economic growth no longer
translates as directly into military power as it did in the past, which means that it is now harder
than ever for rising powers to rise and established ones to fall. And China the only country with the raw
potential to become a true global peer of the United States also faces a more daunting challenge than previous rising
states because of how far it lags behind technologically . Even though the United States
economic dominance has eroded from its peak, the countrys military superiority is not going
anywhere, nor is the globe-spanning alliance structure that constitutes the core of the existing
liberal international order (unless Washington unwisely decides to throw it away). Rather than expecting a
power transition in international politics, everyone should start getting used to a world in which the
United States remains the sole superpower for decades to come.
AT: Rise Fast/Impacts Short Term

No chance of rapid China rise- obstacles too great
In the 1930s alone, Japan escaped the depths of depression and morphed into a rampaging
military machine, Germany transformed from the disarmed loser of World War I into a juggernaut capable of conquering
Europe, and the Soviet Union recovered from war and revolution to become a formidable land power. The next decade saw
the United States own sprint from military also-ran to global superpower, with a nuclear Soviet Union close on
its heels. Today, few seriously anticipate another world war, or even another cold war, but many observers argue that
these past experiences reveal just how quickly countries can become dangerous once they try to extract
military capabilities from their economies. But what is taking place now is not your grandfathers
power transition . One can debate whether China will soon reach the first major milestone on the journey from great
power to superpower: having the requisite economic resources. But a giant economy alone wont make China the
worlds second superpower, nor would overcoming the next big hurdle, attaining the requisite
technological capacity. After that lies the challenge of transforming all this latent power into the
full range of systems needed for global power projection and learning how to use them . Each of
these steps is time consuming and fraught with difficulty . As a result, China will, for a long
time, continue to hover somewhere between a great power and a superpower. You might call it an
emerging potential superpower: thanks to its economic growth, China has broken free from the great-power pack, but it still has a
long way to go before it might gain the economic and technological capacity to become a superpower. Chinas quest for
superpower status is undermined by something else, too: weak incentives to make the sacrifices
required. The United States owes its far-reaching military capabilities to the existential imperatives
of the Cold War. The country would never have borne the burden it did had policymakers not
faced the challenge of balancing the Soviet Union, a superpower with the potential to dominate Eurasia. (Indeed, it is no
surprise that two and a half decades after the Soviet Union collapsed, it is Russia that possesses the second-greatest military
capability in the world.) Today, China faces nothing like the Cold War pressures that led the United
States to invest so much in its military. The United States is a far less threatening superpower than the Soviet Union
was: however aggravating Chinese policymakers find U.S. foreign policy, it is unlikely to engender the level of fear that motivated
Washington during the Cold War. Stacking the odds against China even more, the United States has few
incentives to give up power, thanks to the web of alliances it has long boasted . A list of U.S. allies
reads as a whos who of the worlds most advanced economies, and these partners have lowered
the price of maintaining the United States superpower status . U.S. defense spending stood at around three
percent of GDP at the end of the 1990s, rose to around five percent in the next decade on account of the wars in Afghanistan and
Iraq, and has now fallen back to close to three percent. Washington has been able to sustain a global military capacity with relatively
little effort thanks in part to the bases its allies host and the top-end weapons they help develop. Chinas only steadfast ally
is North Korea, which is often more trouble than it is worth.
AT: China Rise- GDP

GDP is deceptive- overstates Chinas parity with US
Precisely because the Chinese economy is so unlike the U.S. economy , the measure fueling
expectations of a power shift, GDP, greatly underestimates the true economic gap
between the two countries. For one thing, the immense destruction that China is now
wreaking on its environment counts favorably toward its GDP, even though it will reduce
economic capacity over time by shortening life spans and raising cleanup and health-care costs.
For another thing, GDP was originally designed to measure mid-twentieth-century
manufacturing economies, and so the more knowledge-based and globalized a countrys
production is, the more its GDP underestimates its economys true size . A new statistic
developed by the UN suggests the degree to which GDP inflates Chinas relative power.
Called inclusive wealth, this measure represents economists most systematic effort to date to
calculate a states wealth. As a UN report explained, it counts a countrys stock of assets in three
areas: (i) manufactured capital (roads, buildings, machines, and equipment), (ii) human capital
(skills, education, health), and (iii) natural capital (sub-soil resources, ecosystems, the
atmosphere). Added up, the United States inclusive wealth comes to almost $144 trillion4.5
times Chinas $32 trillion.The true size of Chinas economy relative to the United States may lie
somewhere in between the numbers provided by GDP and inclusive wealth, and admittedly, the
latter measure has yet to receive the same level of scrutiny as GDP. The problem with GDP,
however, is that it measures a flow (typically, the value of goods and services produced in a
year), whereas inclusive wealth measures a stock. As The Economist put it, Gauging an
economy by its GDP is like judging a company by its quarterly profits, without ever peeking at its
balance-sheet. Because inclusive wealth measures the pool of resources a government can
conceivably draw on to achieve its strategic objectives , it is the more useful metric when
thinking about geopolitical competition. But no matter how one compares the size of the U.S.
and Chinese economies, it is clear that the United States is far more capable of converting
its resources into military might . In the past, rising states had levels of technological
prowess similar to those of leading ones. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, for example, the United States didnt lag far behind the United Kingdom in terms of
technology, nor did Germany lag far behind the erstwhile Allies during the interwar years, nor
was the Soviet Union backward technologically compared with the United States during the
early Cold War. This meant that when these challengers rose economically, they could soon
mount a serious military challenge to the dominant power. Chinas relative technological
backwardness today, however, means that even if its economy continues to gain ground, it will
not be easy for it to catch up militarily and become a true global strategic peer, as opposed to a
merely a major player in its own neighborhood.
AT: China Rise- Military

No chance China reaches parity with the US
Notwithstanding this gradual shift in the global distribution of economic power, over the course
of the same decade the United States will nonetheless remain the dominant regional and global
military power, and by a massive margin. While Chinas increasing defense spending will
continue to close the gap, there is no serious prospect of it reaching military parity with the U.S.
before mid-century, if at all. China, like the rest of the world, will remain justifiably mindful of Americas overwhelming
military power. This is a core assumption in Chinese strategic thinking. (1)
No China Rise- Tech

Tech gap too large for China Rise
In forecasts of Chinas future power position, much has been made of the countrys pressing domestic challenges: its slowing
economy, polluted environment, widespread corruption, perilous financial markets, nonexistent social safety net, rapidly aging
population, and restive middle class. But as harmful as these problems are, Chinas true Achilles heel on the world
stage is something else: its low level of technological expertise compared with the United States.
Relative to past rising powers, China has a much wider technological gap to close with the
leading power. China may export container after container of high-tech goods, but in a world of globalized production, that
doesnt reveal much. Half of all Chinese exports consist of what economists call processing trade,
meaning that parts are imported into China for assembly and then exported afterward . And the vast
majority of these Chinese exports are directed not by Chinese firms but by corporations from more developed countries. When
looking at measures of technological prowess that better reflect the national origin of the
expertise, Chinas true position becomes clear. World Bank data on payments for the use of
intellectual property, for example, indicate that the United States is far and away the leading source of
innovative technologies, boasting $128 billion in receipts in 2013more than four times as much as the
country in second place, Japan. China, by contrast, imports technologies on a massive scale yet received less than $1 billion
in receipts in 2013 for the use of its intellectual property. Another good indicator of the technological gap is the number of so-called
triadic patents, those registered in the United States, Europe, and Japan. In 2012, nearly 14,000 such patents
originated in the United States, compared with just under 2,000 in China. The distribution of highly
influential articles in science and engineeringthose in the top one percent of citations, as measured by the
National Science Foundationtells the same story, with the United States accounting for almost half of these articles, more
than eight times Chinas share. So does the breakdown of Nobel Prizes in Physics, Chemistry, and
Physiology or Medicine. Since 1990, 114 have gone to U.S.-based researchers. China-based researchers have received two.
Tech gap locks in US military Dominance- China has no hope of catching up

The technological and economic differences between China and the United States wouldnt matter much if all it took to gain
superpower status were the ability to use force locally. But what makes the United States a superpower is its ability
to operate globally, and the bar for that capability is high . It means having what the political
scientist Barry Posen has called command of the commonsthat is, control over the air, space, and the
open sea, along with the necessary infrastructure for managing these domains . When one
measures the 14 categories of systems that create this capability (everything from nuclear attack submarines
to satellites to transport aircraft), what emerges is an overwhelming U.S. advantage in each area, the
result of decades of advances on multiple fronts. It would take a very long time for China
to approach U.S. power on any of these fronts, let alone all of them . For one thing, the
United States has built up a massive scientific and industrial base. China is rapidly enhancing its technological
inputs, increasing its R & D spending and its numbers of graduates with degrees in science and engineering. But there are
limits to how fast any country can leap forward in such matters, and there are various obstacles
in Chinas waysuch as a lack of effective intellectual property protections and inefficient methods of allocating capitalthat
will be extremely hard to change given its rigid political system. Adding to the difficulty, China is chasing a moving target. In
2012, the United States spent $79 billion on military R & D, more than 13 times as much as
Chinas estimated amount, so even rapid Chinese advances might be insufficient to

close the gap . Then there are the decades the United States has spent procuring advanced
weapons systems, which have grown only more complex over time. In the 1960s, aircraft took about five years to develop, but
by the 1990s, as the number of parts and lines of code ballooned, the figure reached ten years. Today, it takes 15 to 20 years
to design and build the most advanced fighter aircraft, and military satellites can take even longer. So
even if another country managed to build the scientific and industrial base to develop the many
types of weapons that give the United States command of the commons, there would be a
lengthy lag before it could actually possess them. Even Chinese defense planners recognize the
scale of the challenge. Command of the commons also requires the ability to supervise a wide
range of giant defense projects. For all the hullabaloo over the evils of the military-industrial complex and the waste,
fraud, and abuse in the Pentagon, in the United States, research labs, contractors, and bureaucrats have
painstakingly acquired this expertise over many decades, and their Chinese counterparts do not
yet have it. This kind of learning by doing experience resides in organizations, not in
individuals. It can be transferred only through demonstration and instruction, so cybertheft or
other forms of espionage are not an effective shortcut for acquiring it. Chinas defense industry
is still in its infancy, and as the scholar Richard Bitzinger and his colleagues have concluded, Aside from a few pockets of
excellence such as ballistic missiles, the Chinese military-industrial complex has appeared to demonstrate
few capacities for designing and producing relatively advanced conventional weapon systems.
For example, China still cannot mass-produce high-performance aircraft engines, despite the
immense resources it has thrown at the effort, and relies instead on second-rate Russian models. In other areas,
Beijing has not even bothered competing. Take undersea warfare. China is poorly equipped for antisubmarine warfare and is doing
very little to improve. And only now is the country capable of producing nuclear-powered attack submarines that are comparable in
quietness to the kinds that the U.S. Navy commissioned in the 1950s. Since then, however, the U.S. government has invested
hundreds of billions of dollars and six decades of effort in its current generation of Virginia-class submarines, which have achieved
absolute levels of silencing. Finally, it takes a very particular set of skills and infrastructure to actually use
all these weapons. Employing them is difficult not just because the weapons themselves tend to
be so complex but also because they typically need to be used in a coordinated manner . It is
an incredibly complicated endeavor, for example, to deploy a carrier battle group; the many associated ships and aircraft must work
together in real time. Even systems that may seem simple require a complex surrounding architecture in order to be truly effective.
Drones, for example, work best when a military has the highly trained personnel to operate them and the technological and
organizational capacity to rapidly gather, process, and act on information collected from them. Developing the necessary
infrastructure to seek command of the commons would take any military a very long time. And
since the task places a high premium on flexibility and delegation, Chinas centralized and
hierarchical forces are particularly ill suited for it.
AT: Chinese Growth Not Sustainable

6% growth is sustainable- doom prophets wrong
On the sustainability of Chinese economic growth as the continuing basis of Chinese national power, on balance
we should assume a Chinese growth rate in the medium to medium-high range (i.e. in excess of 6
percent) as probable for the period under review. This takes into account both official and unofficial
statistics on the recent slowing of the rate. It also takes into account lower levels of global
demand for Chinese exports, high levels of domestic debt, the beginning of a demographically
driven shrinking in the labor force, continued high levels of domestic savings, at best modest
levels of household consumption, an expanding private sector still constrained by state-owned
monoliths, and a growing environmental crisis. But it also takes into account the vast battery of
Chinese policy responses to each of these and does not assume that these are by definition
destined to fail. Furthermore, if Chinas growth rate begins to falter, China has sufficient fiscal and
monetary policy capacity to intervene to ensure the growth rate remains above 6 percent , which
is broadly the number policy makers deem to be necessary to maintain social stability . It is
equally unconvincing to argue that Chinas transformation from an old economic growth model
(based on a combination of high levels of state infrastructure investment and low-wage, labor-intensive manufacturing for export),
to a new model (based on household consumption, the services sector and a strongly innovative private sector) is also
somehow doomed to failure. This is a sophisticated policy blueprint developed over many years
and is necessary to secure Chinas future growth trajectory through different drivers of demand
to those that have powered Chinese growth rates in the past. There is also a high level of political
backing to drive implementation. The process and progress of implementation has so far been
reasonable. Moreover, to assume that Chinas seasoned policy elites will somehow prove to be less
capable in meeting Chinas next set of economic policy challenges than they have been with
previous sets of major policy challenges over the last 35 years is just plain wrong . China does face a
bewildering array of policy challenges and it is possible that any one of these could significantly de-rail the Governments economic
program. But it is equally true that Chinese policy elites are more sophisticated now than at any time since
the current period of reform began back in 1978, and are capable of rapid and flexible policy
responses when necessary. For these reasons, and others concerning the structure of Chinese
politics, the report explicitly rejects the China collapse thesis recently advanced by David
Shambaugh. It would also be imprudent in the extreme for Americas China policy to be based
on an implicit (and sometimes explicit) policy assumption that China will either economically stagnate
or politically implode because of underlying contradictions in its overall political economy.
This would amount to a triumph of hope over cold, hard analysis.
2AC Args
2AC Generic
Non unique and turn- US containment policy is a failure now, engagement k2
peaceful relations
Mendis and Wang, PhDs, 16
(Patrick, Rajawali senior fellow of the Kennedy School of Governments Ash Centre for Democratic Governance and Innovation at
Harvard. He served as a Pentagon professor and US diplomat during the Clinton and Bush administrations, and is currently serving
as a commissioner to the US National Commission for Unesco, an appointment by the Obama administration. Joey, defense analyst
and a graduate of the Naval War College, the National Defense University, and the Harvard Kennedy School. He has written a
number of works on national and international security, and has received two consecutive awards from the Royal United Services
Institute for his essays. http://www.scmp.com/print/comment/insight-opinion/article/1938610/why-us-will-gain-nothing-seekingcontain-china 4-27)
In the midst of escalating tensions between the US and China, particularly in the East and South China seas,
serious questions are being raised about the future of peace , security and prosperity in the region. Reflecting
on these tensions, we need to return to the founding principles that originally brought wealth and
mutual prosperity to both nations. Much has been written about Chinas peaceful rise. And
with this meteoric rise there has been an increase in military modernisation and its assertiveness. This
has raised concerns among Chinas neighbours regarding its intentions. Beijing, for its part, has not helped to clarify these
intentions. Instead, President Xi Jinping () muddled the situation when he declared that China would not pursue
militarisation of the South China Sea, then proceeded to install surface-to-air missile batteries on Woody Island in the Paracels and
conduct exercises to shoot down unmanned aircraft. It has created not only a credibility issue but also elevated concerns about his
ability to command the military. For its part, the US has responded to Chinas rise by blowing the dust off of
the old containment playbook of the former Soviet era and modifying it with an element of economic
engagement. This congagement (containment and engagement) would seek to contain China militarily
while continuing to engage it economically. China wants peace and prosperity in the region. Yet, its actions create
precisely the opposite conditions. Washington claims it welcomes Chinas peaceful rise. Yet, it treats
China like a parvenu that doesnt fit into the American-led world order. Therefore, Beijing
continually needs to be humbled. If Washington really wants peace and prosperity in the region,
words must be matched by deeds. Cold-war mindsets like mutually assured destruction will not work in
the more nuanced Sino-American relationship. The Chinese experience, beginning with colonial
America, has been more a case of economic engagement that worked towards mutually assured
prosperity. Washington should continue to focus on building much needed trust, promoting fair competition and ... paving the
road towards mutually assured prosperity Americas commercial venture with China goes back to the founding of the nation, when
the American revolutionary war privateer, Empress of China, made its maiden voyage from New York harbour in December 1784 to
Canton (now Guangzhou) with a cargo of Spanish dollars, ginseng, furs, lead and wine, returning home the following May with tea,
silk and porcelain. Since the reform and opening up in 1979 under Deng Xiaoping (), Chinas significance to the
world economy has increased significantly. Chinas fixation with the South China Sea, Indian
Ocean and other sea lines of communication is not without cause; its export economy survives
by these trade routes. And any disruption to these routes would have a significant impact not
only on Chinas economy but also the global economy. Recognising this fact and the potential
disruption to the US economy, Washington should not only support Beijing in maintaining a
healthy trade relationship, but continue to focus on building much needed trust, promoting fair
competition and engaging China to join rule-based institutions, and paving the road towards
mutually assured prosperity. Washington and Beijing are currently pursuing over 80 bilateral
dialogues. These initiatives should continue to promote cooperative efforts that serve both
nations, rather than viewing the dynamics of this relationship as zero-sum. It is time to return to the
vision of US Founding Fathers of a commercial nation that is a shining city upon a hill. The rise of China is a fait
accompli. To suggest that the US should contain China and, if necessary, go to war is, in the
words of former secretary of state Henry Kissinger, as dangerous as it is wrong . It makes even
less sense when the US is borrowing money from China, in the form of Treasuries, to finance
that possible conflict. Containment is a policy with numerous contextual elements
that cannot simply be transferred from the Soviet era . The US attempts to contain
China may make it a self-fulfilling prophecy. China is not the new Soviet Union. In time, Chinas peaceful
rise will show its true colours. It is not clear whether its current behaviour is a product of
regional hegemonic aspirations or simply manifesting its internal contradictions, factions and
rivalry in the one-party system. The question of who can contain China is one that only the
Chinese can answer for themselves. In the meantime, the US needs to remain vigilant and
engage. In the end, China has to capitalise on its soft power, with its Confucian ethics and
cultural heritage from which Americas Founding Fathers once sought inspiration. Beijing
should promote peaceful relations with its neighbours, influence potential allies and return to its
official policy of a peaceful rise with clarity in words and consistency in actions. Thats
quintessentially living in harmony with the Tao the Chinese Way.
2AC Allied Support

No allied support for containment
Elsewhere in the world, although concern over China is growing, there is no appetite for a
full-blown rivalry . Aside from bigger defence budgets and less trade and investment, a shift
toward containment would provoke fears of war. All parties would suffer in such a conflict,
but Chinas Asian neighbours have reason to fear that they would suffer more than most. Even if
American strategists concluded that it was necessary, the democratic countries that are its
principal strategic partners in Asia are simply not ready to abandon engagement and
sign on to a policy of containment . (107)
2AC China Threat K

Their depiction of a hostile, rising power misunderstands Chinese actions and
intentions-historically wrong
On the U.S. side, for an arguably growing number of American and some foreign observers, Beijings de facto
challenge to American predominance in the Western Pacific is a mere prelude to a larger effort to eject the
United States from Asia and eventually replace it as the regional (and for some, global) superpower. Chinese
support for a multipolar, balanceofpower system is thus seen as a mere tactical feint designed to undermine U.S. power while Beijing
prepares to become the new hegemon. Indeed, for such observers, Beijings greater assertiveness regarding
constitute
strategic gambits designed to test U.S. and allied resolve and ultimately to create nogo zones essential for
maritime territorial disputes as well as U.S. and Japanese intelligence and surveillance activities along its coastline
the establishment of Chinese control over the Western Pacific. Such an outcome would directly threaten both U.S. and allied
interests in an open, secure, and peaceful AsiaPacific region. Given
this supposedly unambiguous threat, for

these observers, the only logical course of action for the United States is to decisively disabuse Beijing of its
aspirations by enhancing American predominance and thereby increasing, rather than reducing, Chinese vulnerability in the
Western Pacific. This view is held not only by scholars and policy analysts outside Washington. It is also
fairly common among U.S. government officials, both civilian and military. It offers a
blackandwhite, Manicheantype solution to a supposedly clearcut threat , and one that
is extremely appealing to those many U.S. policymakers and analysts convinced of the huge merits
(and necessity) of continued American predominance in maritime Asia. In fact, even for those who reject the notion
that Beijing is working to dislodge the United States from the region, predominance remains the best insurance against an uncertain
future, for the reasons outlined above. While the type of U.S. predominance in Asia espoused by most U.S. observers can vary
somewhat, depending in part on how one views Chinas capabilities and intentions, the bottom line for virtually all such individuals
is the need for a clear U.S. ability to prevail in any important militarypolitical contingency involving China. Moreover, this view
is reinforced, in their minds, by the notion that Americas allies and friends also
supposedly desire and require continued U.S. maritime predominance. The
problem with this outlook is that it is based on an inaccurate, increasingly unrealistic, and
dangerous assessment of both the threat the United States confronts in Asia and the likely consequences of the remedy
proposed. Beijings de facto attempts to limit or end U.S. predominance along its maritime periphery are motivated
almost entirely by uncertainties, fears, insecurities, and a certain level of opportunism, not a
grand strategic vision of Chinese predominance , despite the arguably growing expression of
ultranationalist views within China. Those who view China as an aspiring hegemon s eeking Americas
subordination and ultimate ejection from Asia almost without exception base their argument on
shaky theoretical postulates and faulty historical analogies or on the decidedly
nonauthoritative views of a few Chinese analysts, not current, hard evidence regarding either
Chinese strategies and doctrines or Chinese behavior, past and present . Such observers argue that
all rising powers seek hardpower dominance in an anarchic interstate system and that China is a power that always
sought to dominate its world. However, such absolutist beliefs run counter to the very mixed record
of power grabbing and power balancing, aggression and restraint, deterrence and reassurance that has
characterized great power relations historically. They also ignore the fact that, in the premodern era,
Chinese predominance within its part of Asia most often consisted of pragmatic and mutually
beneficial exchanges of ritualistic deference for material gains, not Chinese hard power control.
While implying a preference for symbolically hierarchical relationships with smaller neighbors, Chinas premodern approach did not
amount to a demand for clearcut dominance and subordination. Moreover, the advent of modern, independent, and
in most cases strong nationstates along Chinas borders; the forces of economic globalization;
and the existence of nuclear weapons have enormously reduced, if not eliminated, both the
willingness and the ability of Chinese leaders today to dominate Asia and carve out an
exclusionary sphere of influence, especially in hardpower terms. By necessity, their objective is to
reduce their considerable vulnerability and increase their political, diplomatic, and economic
leverage in their own backyard to a level where Chinese interests must be reflected in those
major political, economic, and security actions undertaken by neighboring states. This is a much less
ambitious and in many ways understandable goal for a continental great power. And it does not necessarily threaten vital U.S. or
allied interests.
2AC Congagement
The affirmative isnt appeasement- it combines engagement with SQ balancingthis is the best approach
What this leaves, then, is a strategy that combines continued attempts at engagement with
expanded and intensified balancing. Unlike containment, which would likely be both
extremely costly and highly controversial , such an approach has the very important
virtue of being feasible in light of current political and economic constraints. Unlike offshore
balancing, it would not rest on unrealistic and potentially dangerous assumptions about the
behaviour of third parties. And, in contrast to enhanced engagement, reassurance or a notional
grand bargain, it is rooted in a realistic appreciation of the likely extent of Chinas ambitions,
given its recent achievements and current momentum. Better balancing is not a perfect strategy,
and arguing about how it should be adjusted at the margins is not as stimulating as debating the
merits of bold new alternatives. But in the real world of practical policymaking, it
remains the best available alternative.(107)
2AC Feasibility
Containment advocates make flawed assumptions about China- effective
containment isnt politically feasible
In contrast to the unduly optimistic assessments of Beijings interests and intentions that underlie most proposed strategies for
dealing with China, the assumptions
underpinning a policy of pure containment are unnecessarily

bleak. While it may eventually become far more tense and polarised than it is today, the relationship between the
United States and China remains mixed, containing important areas of actual or potential
cooperation, as well as intensifying competition . Abandoning attempts at engagement
would create the self-fulfilling prophecy that critics of balancing have long and generally
wrongly warned against; it would be tantamount, as Otto von Bismarck put it in opposing proposals for preventive
war, to committing suicide for fear of death. Even if they wanted to shift towards a policy of pure
containment, barring some major discontinuity, American leaders would find it extremely
difficult to do so. Current budgetary constraints are neither permanent nor insurmountable; the United States
can certainly afford to fund a far more vigorous military competition with China than the one it is
conducting today. Without an obvious breakdown in relations, however, forging a political consensus
to support the required increase in expenditures would likely prove impossible . The fact
that powerful and influential groups and individuals in American society remain deeply
committed to preserving the best possible relations with China and opposed to any measures that, in their
view, might damage them, will make the task of mobilising support even more difficult. (106-7)
2AC First Step

-Plan is a first step to establish trust crucial to transition to post US dominance
BOP in asia collapse of hardline approach inevitable
These obstacles clearly indicate that Washington and Beijing are not about to undertake, much less
reach,
a formal grand bargain type of agreement to establish a new regional security environment
anytime soon.4 Such a fundamental shift in policies and approaches can only occur
gradually, in stages, and over an extended period of time . But it can only begin if elites
in Washington, Beijing, and other Asian capitals seriously examine the enduring trends under
way in Asia and accept the reality of the changing power distribution and the need
for more than just marginal adjustments and assurances. Only then will they undertake a
systematic examination of the requirements of a stable balance of power over the long term, involving a serious consideration of the
more fundamental actions. Such an examination and acceptance must initially occur domestically, then
among allies and protectorates, and finally via a bilateral U.S.China strategic dialogue aimed at
developing understandings about the process and actions required. Such understandings must provide for ample opportunities and
means for both sides to assess and evaluate the credibility and veracity of the actions of the other side. If such
understandings can be reached regarding the overall need for strategic adjustment, then the specific
concessions to minimize potential instabilities and arrangements for meaningful cooperation,
involving Korea, Taiwan, and maritime issues within the first island chain, will become much
more possible . In particular, a strategic understanding designed to achieve a peaceful and stable
transition to a genuine balance of power in the Western Pacific could make Beijing more likely
to pressure or entice North Korea to abandon or place strong limits on its nuclear weapons
program and undertake the kind of opening up and reforms that would almost certainly result
eventually in a unified peninsula. While difficult to envision at present, such a shift in Chinese policy is certainly
possible, given the obvious incentives to do so. While South Korea might also resist movement toward a
nonaligned status in a postunification environment, the obvious benefits that would result from
a stable balance of power, if presented properly, could very likely overcome such resistance .
Regarding Taiwan, if both U.S. and Chinese leaders can convince Taipei of the benefits of the
kind of mutual assurances and restraints necessary to neutralize the crossstrait issue, none of
which require the U.S. abandonment of the island, these possible adverse outcomes of the
proposed or ongoing shift, including any resort to nuclear weapons, would almost certainly be
avoided. As for Japan and the U.S.Japan alliance, in the past, many observers viewed a muchstrengthened alliance and a stronger
Japan as either a major provocation to Beijing not worth the cost or as a largely unfeasible option for Tokyo, given domestic political
and economic constraints. However, as with the Taiwan and Korea cases, if viewed as a requirement for the creation of a bufferlike
arrangement basic to a stable balance of power in the first island chain, and if limited in scope and purpose, such a calibrated
strengthening would almost certainly prove acceptable to Beijing, and eventually necessary for Tokyo, particularly considering the
Unfortunately, there is no magic formula or technique that will

guarantee or facilitate the transition to a new security environment based on a
stable balance of power. It will require courageous and farsighted leadership in all relevant
capitals, some significant risk taking (especially in the domestic political arena), and highly effective diplomacy. But the
alternative, involving current attempts to sustain American predominance in the Western
Pacific while muddling through by managing various frictions with Beijing in a piecemeal and
incremental manner and cooperating where possible, will likely prove disastrous. And a
much delayed attempt to transition to a more stable balance, perhaps as a result of a clear
failure of the existing strategy, will simply make the process more difficult . Ultimately,
the choice facing policymakers in the United States, China, and other Asian powers is whether to deal
unpalatable alternatives.
forthrightly and sensibly with the changing regional power distribution or avoid the hard
decisions that Chinas rise poses until the situation grows ever more polarized and
dangerous. There are no other workable alternatives.
2AC IR Theory
Containment/Engagement is a false dichotomy rooted in flawed realist approach
to IR
Eisenmen, PhD, 16
The time has come, as John Podesta, former chief of staff to President Clinton has said, to "move beyond the
'engage and hedge' framework for China policy an approach openly premised on
mistrust and suspicion to a strategy that maximizes opportunity," while "managing risk.19
The problem is that the U.S. China policy has been captured by the dichotomous
framework of realism, sliding back and forth between engagement and
containment; a policy many call congagement. Yet, given the complexities of the U.S.China relationship, international relations theory is insufficient and produces flawed
comparisons between China and previous rising powers, e.g. Sparta, World War I Germany, or World War
II Japan. To improve U.S. policy towards China to avoid, and yet be prepared for, conflict requires
going beyond simplistic applications of international relations theory. It means opening the
'black box' of China's policymaking process to understand why it makes the decisions it does and
how this process has and is changing. Unfortunately, barriers continue to prevent the U.S. from better understanding
and responding to China. Most importantly, Friedberg identified a "yawning ideological chasm" that inhibits the success of U.S.'
engagement, arguing that: "The very different domestic political regimes of the two pacific powers" make the liberalization of the
Chinese political system essential for "a true trans-Pacific entente." CPC repression inhibits change in China and presents "a
significant additional impetus to rivalry.20
2AC Realism
Realism demands engagement to curb its excesses and avoid conflict
These issues should not be seen as no-go areas in the relationship. Rather, they should be
acknowledged clearly as major difficulties, but they should not be allowed to derail the entire
relationship. Even dire circumstances, such as a major crisis, would warrant direct
communication between the two Presidents, to explain to one another why it is necessary to
imperil the entire relationship. These chokepoints in U.S.-China relations, as difficult as they
are, can be managed through a common strategic framework and with common political will.
However, these deep realist elements of the relationship should be matched by
constructive engagement between the U.S. and China in difficult areas of their bilateral,
regional and global relationship where true progress is possible. Otherwise, there is a danger
that unalloyed strategic realism will suffocate the relationship altogether . Or
worse. Given the generally bleak assumptions about each others ultimate strategic intentions,
there is the perennial risk of hyper-realism becoming a form of self-fulfilling
prophecy, resulting in crisis, conflict or even war. (27)
2AC Spillover
Engagement with China spills over establishing a new collaborative framework for
tackling a host of global problems- it provides the crucial political capital
Both the realist and constructive dimensions of this proposed framework for U.S.-China relations
are designed to be dynamic, not static. As political space begins to open up in the
relationship over time, as a result of progress in any of the collaborative diplomatic and
economic initiatives listed above, accrued political capital should be deployed to deal
with new challenges arising from developments in the international community . It
should also be deployed to deal with some of the older, more realist problems endemic to the
bilateral relationship that had hitherto been seen as too difficult to address. The key ingredient , however, is
the gradual development of a stock of strategic trust based on what the U.S. and
China are able to achieve cooperatively. This brings us to the question of whether an overall common
strategic purpose is to be served by the U.S.-China relationship, and if so, given the vast differences between the two countries and
their different expectations of the international system, what that common purpose or mission might be. De minima, one
common purpose is clear: to avoid conflict and war , and against the benchmark of the cautionary tales of
Thucydides Trap, this would be no small achievement. However, another common ambition might be
the preservation of a functioning global order itself that is capable of effective
global decision-making and dispute resolution . China has a deep philosophical reservation, born of
millennia of historical experience, of chaos under heaven (tianxia daluan ). Whereas historically this has applied to
Chinas domestic arrangements to preserve the unity and good government of the empire, Chinas
now unprecedented
global engagement creates a new imperative for order in the international domain as well.
Chinese interests are now at stake in every region in the world. In some cases, these are not marginal, but, in
fact, are core interests of the Chinese state, such as a functioning global energy supply and distribution system. Try as China
might, it will be in no position to rely on unilateral diplomatic or military effort to guarantee
Chinese energy interests. This therefore points to Chinas broader need for an effectively
functioning global order for the future , given Chinas expanding global interests and its
inability to secure those interests by purely national means. Securing a stable, effective global
order for the future, and avoiding global chaos under heaven of the type offered by the
proliferation of non-state actors such as ISIS, may well constitute the beginnings of a common
strategic purpose for China and the United States for the future. This may be able, over time, to
transcend the considerable ideational divide that at present separates them on the
question of precisely what sort of order that should be . Furthermore, if the preservation
and evolution of a functioning order could become an animating vision for the future of U.S.China relations, not only could it provide a global dividend to the rest of the international
community, it could also provide an even deeper momentum for managing the more basic tasks
confronting the bilateral relationship: i.e. avoiding conflict; managing ideational differences on
democracy, human rights and the rule of law; as well as the range of bilateral, regional and
global problem-solving referred to above. This question on future Chinese and American collaboration in defending
and enhancing the global order is discussed further in the conclusion of this summary report.(34-6)
2AC Unique Moment

Xi Jinping gives the US a unique moment to pursue engagement- hes willing to
make strategic concessions
Three concepts define how Xi Jinpings leadership differs from that of his predecessors: his personal
authority; his deep sense of national mission; and an even deeper sense of urgency . Xis audacious
leadership style sets him apart from the modern Chinese norm. Both in personality and policy, he represents one
part continuity and two parts change. Xi is the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng (Deng
Xiaoping ), and possibly since Mao (Mao Zedong ). Whereas his predecessors believed in, and by and
large practiced, the principle of collective leadership, Xi Jinping is infinitely more primus than he is primus
inter pares. As a Party blue blood, he also exudes a self-confidence that comes from someone utterly
comfortable with the exercise of political power. Xi is driven by a deep sense of personal integrity, personal
destiny and the decisive role that he is to play in bringing about two great historical missions for his
country: first, national rejuvenation, thereby restoring Chinas place as a respected great power in the councils of the
world; and second, saving the Communist Party itself from the cancer of corruption, thereby securing the
partys future as the continuing political vehicle for Chinas future as a great power. Xi is both a Chinese nationalist and a Party
loyalist. He is deeply and widely read in both international and Chinese history, including an encyclopedic knowledge of the history
of the Communist Party itself. His core, animating vision centers on his concept of the China Dream (zhongguomeng )
which in turn has two objectives: to achieve a moderately well-off China (xiaokang shehui ) by 2021 when the Party
celebrates its centenary; and a rich and powerful (fuqiang ) China by 2049 on the centenary of the Peoples Republic.
Realizing the China Dream, according to Xi, requires a second phase of transformative economic
reform. He sees no contradiction in prosecuting deeper market reforms to achieve his national
objectives, while implementing new restrictions on individual political freedom . In fact, he sees
this as the essence of the China Model (zhongguo moshi ) in contrast to the liberal democratic capitalism
of the West which he describes as totally unsuited to China.1 For Xi, China must seize the moment of extended
strategic opportunity, following ten wasted years when necessary reforms were postponed , and
corruption allowed to run rampant. Chinas domestic policy needs are now integrally bound up with the countrys foreign policy
direction. In Xis worldview, an increasingly rich and powerful China must now start playing a much bigger role in the world. No
longer will China hide its strength, bide its time, and never take the lead (taoguang yanghui, juebu dangtou ),
Deng Xiaopings foreign policy mantra for decades. China
must now pursue an activist (fenfa youwei )

foreign policy that maximizes Chinas economic and security interests, and one that begins to
engage in the longer-term reform of the global order. Xi speaks for the first time of Chinas
grand strategy needing to embrace a new great power diplomacy with Chinese characteristics
(you zhongguo tese de xinxing daguo waijiao ), in order to craft a new type of great
power relations (xinxing daguo guanxi ) with the United States.2 Xi, in short, is not a status quo politician.
He is the exact reverse. And in pursuing his sense of national mission and personal destiny, he is
prepared to take calculated risks in a traditionally risk-averse Communist Party culture. Xi
Jinpings sense of personal and national urgency is animated by a formidable, Confucian work ethic, which he also expects of his
Party colleagues and policy advisors. He is results-driven. He is frustrated by the interminable processes
of the Chinese bureaucracy, and its predisposition for formulaic responses to real policy
challenges. He is very much a man in a hurry. For these several reasons, Xi, unlike his predecessor ,
has the personal authority and policy flexibility to be a potentially dynamic interlocutor with
the United States, albeit always within the framework of his nationalist vision for Chinas future, and his definitive conclusions
concerning the continuing role of Chinas one-party state. When, therefore, Xi uses the term win-win (shuangying
) to describe his desired relationship with the U.S., it should not be simply discarded as a
piece of Chinese propaganda . Xi does see potential value in strategic and political
collaboration with the United States. In short, there is still reasonable foreign and security policy
space for the U.S. administration to work within in its dealings with Xi Jinping, although it is an
open question how long it will be before policy directions are set in stone, and the window of
opportunity begins to close . I argue that Xi is capable of bold policy moves, even
including the possibility of grand strategic bargains on intractable questions such
as the denuclearization and peaceful re-unification of the Korean Peninsula. It is
up to America to use this space as creatively as it can while it still lasts . (10-12)
Extensions
XT: Cooperation Spillover

Despite strains cooperation still possible under Xi- alterantive is war
Also high on the agenda at present is the real need to forge practical cooperation on a number of
so-called "global governance" issues, including North Korea, Iran, Islamic State, Afghanistan,
counterterrorism, anti-piracy, climate change, maritime security, economic stability, energy
security, sea-lane security, and setting global rules for cyber activity. To date, China has been
extremely reluctant to collaborate openly with the United States on such global governance issues, but now it
possibly seems more feasible . This is because President Xi has personally endorsed more
"proactive diplomacy" by China in the global governance arena . This won't solve the problems
in US-China relations, but it will help. The upcoming Strategic and Economic Dialogue and Xi's September state visit to Washington
are golden opportunities to discuss these issues, try to forge tangible cooperation, and arrest the negative dynamic in the
relationship. The question is whether it will be temporary again, or a real "floor" can be put beneath the relationship. If the past is
any indicator, we should not expect too much. What worries me is that in this increasingly negative and suspicious atmosphere,
"tests of credibility" will increase. The best we can probably hope for over the next two to three years - as President Obama becomes
a lame duck and the election cycle stimulates more heated rhetoric about China - is tactical management of the relationship, with
sensitivity to each side's "red lines" and "core interests", while hoping that no "wild card" events occur. This could include another
military incident in the air or at sea, or renewed tension over Taiwan. Even the current situation in the South China Sea has real
potential to haemorrhage, as China is not going to stop its island-building activities and hence will not meet American demands that
it do so. Or if China, having fortified the islands, proclaims an air defence identification zone over the South China Sea. What is
Washington to do then? The potential for military confrontation is not insignificant. So , looking to the future, the key
responsibility for both countries is to learn how to manage competition, keep it from edging
towards the conflictual end of the spectrum, while trying to expand the zone of practical
cooperation. Neither country has any playbook to guide such a relationship. Henry Kissinger envisions what he calls "coevolution" between the two powers, but even he concludes that this will require "wisdom and patience". But it is not at all clear to me
that the respective political cultures and existing political systems, national identities, social values, and world views will afford such
these two great nations are likely to find it increasingly

difficult to coexist - yet they must. However fraught, this is a marriage in which
divorce is not an option. Divorce means war.
a strategic grand bargain today. Thus,
Containment Hurts Chinese Economy

Containment strategy wrecks Chinese growth
A full-blown containment strategy would not shrink from measures designed to impede Chinese
economic growth. Following the model of the Cold War, it would also call for restricting Chinas access to
critical technologies and putting pressure on its domestic regime through information and
political warfare designed to challenge its legitimacy, and by supporting dissidents, human-rights advocates and
perhaps even violent separatist groups. In a notable departure from the mixed approach that has prevailed since the end of the Cold
War, a containment strategy would effectively abandon engagement and any hope of taming
China, and would seek instead to hasten its transformation.( 102)
Chinese Growth Good- Diversionary Theory

Financial crisis proves diversionary theory for China
Beijings decision to push harder on maritime issues in 200910 may have been motivated primarily by a
perception of American weakness, but it appears also
to have reflected a concern that the global

economic crisis would have damaging reverberations within China itself . At the
onset of the crisis, the Communist regime had reason to fear that falling exports would lead to
dramatically slower growth, rising unemployment and possible social unrest. Ratcheting up
external tensions may have been seen as one way of deflecting internal frustration and
discontent . In the event, the massive stimulus programme unleashed in 2009 helped to stave off the worst effects of the
global downturn, but it did nothing to address the structural imbalances in Chinas investment- and export-driven model of
economic development. After a brief bump in 2010, growth began to slow, and it has now sunk to its lowest level in a quartercentury.45 The prospect that the regime may not be able to deliver on the promise of never-ending
increases in prosperity seems to be reinforcing its inclination to use nationalism and

international tension to sustain popular support . Given its internal preoccupations, as well as the
external ambitions that are driving its behaviour, efforts to reassure Beijing are unlikely to have the desired effect. (104)
Engagement Good- CBMS

Engagement superior to competition- CBMS and contact reduce chances of conflict
The report argues that the time is ripe to consider alternative institutional approaches that integrate
both China and the U.S. into a common regional arrangement, and with a mandate to tackle both security
and economic challenges. If competing structures are established, these will exacerbate regional
division. Furthermore, the report argues that any explicit attempt to exclude the U.S. from the regional
security architecture is more likely to strengthen existing U.S. military alliances, rather than
weaken them. Rather than playing an institutional tug-of-war, it would be far more constructive
for the U.S. and China to join hands in building pan-regional institutional arrangements. This
will not solve all regional security challenges. But it will help to manage, and reduce, them
over time . Confidence-building measures could cascade into a more transparent
security culture and, in time, a more secure Asia . But this can only happen if both
powers decide to invest common capital into a common regional institution. Otherwise, we
really do find ourselves in the world of the zero sum game.(23)
Aff AT: Blackwill and Tellis

Blackwill and Tellis are too pessimistic
Economy, PhD @Umich, 15
(Elizabeth, senior fellow and director for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.
http://thediplomat.com/2015/05/the-debate-on-u-s-china-relations-make-room-make-way-ormake-hay/ 5-23)
The lack of demonstrable Chinese interest in a more accommodating regional security posture
makes me initially sympathetic to the dominant theme of the Blackwill and Tellis report . As Blackwill
and Tellis note, the current Chinese leadership has offered little indicationeither in words or actionthat it does not have as its
However, the report adopts such an

uncompromising stance on any potential for the United States and China to find
common ground that it loses me along the way. There is a built-in assumption that
China necessarily wants to supplant the United Statesnot simply this regime at this moment in
time. Such a deterministic understanding of Chinese politics and interests ignores
ongoing debates within the country and the potential for new understandings to
emerge The recommendations (as in the Rudd report) run several pages, and for the most part, they represent a coherent
endgame supplanting the United States as the regional hegemon.
strategy for the United States. Blackwill and Tellis have flipped the current hedging strategy from its emphasis on engagement with
limited containment to containment with limited engagement. Much paper is devoted to strengthening military and economic ties
with our allies. Still, it is difficult to understand, at times, how the containment and engagement will
all work togetherfor example, agreeing on enhanced security confidence-building measures

between the two sides while the United States establishes a new technology-control regime and
levies an across-the-board tariff on Chinese economic goods in response to Beijings
cyberattacks. Whatever its weaknesses, however, the report raises appropriate alarm bells concerning the challenge that many
current Chinese economic and security behaviors pose for U.S. interests and the necessity of addressing them directly.
Impact Defense
2AC Asian Hegemony Impact

Asian hegemony is unsustainable, and undesireable
While continued American predominance cannot, at present, be justified on the basis of a Chinese drive for predominance, what of
the widespread argument in U.S. policy circles that such predominance is necessary regardless of Chinese intentions, as the best
possible means of ensuring regional (and global) order? While deeply rooted in both American exceptionalism and beliefs about the
benefits of hegemonic power in the international order , the notion that unequivocal U.S. predominance in the
Western Pacific constitutes
the only basis for longterm stability and prosperity across the AsiaPacific
is a dangerous, increasingly obsolete concept , for several reasons. First, it is inconceivable that
Beijing would accept the unambiguously superior level of American predominance that the many
proponents of this course of action believe is required to ensure longterm regional stability in the face of a rising China, involving
total U.S. freedom of action and a clear ability to prevail militarily without excessive costs in any conceivable contingency
occurring up to Chinas mainland borders. The United States would never tolerate such predominance by any power along its
borders, and why should an increasingly strong China? Given Chinas expanding interests and capabilities, any effort to
sustain an unambiguous, absolute level of American military superiority along Beijings maritime
periphery will virtually guarantee an increasingly destabilizing and economically
draining arms race , much greater levels of regional polarization and friction than at present, and
reduced incentives on the part of both Washington and Beijing to work together to
address a growing array of common global challenges . U.S. efforts to sustain and enhance its
military superiority in Chinas backyard will further stoke Beijings worst fears and beliefs about
American containment, sentiments inevitably reinforced by domestic nationalist pressures, ideologically informed beliefs
about supposed U.S. imperialist motives, and Chinas general commitment to the enhancement of a multipolar order. In fact , by
locking in a clear level of longterm vulnerability and weakness for Beijing that prevents any assured defense of
Chinese territory or any effective wielding of influence over regionalsecurityrelated issues (such as maritime territorial disputes,
Taiwan, or the fate of the Korean Peninsula), absolute U.S. military superiority would virtually guarantee fierce and
sustained domestic
criticism of any Chinese leadership that accepted it. This will be especially true if, as
such conditions, effectively
resisting a U.S. effort to sustain predominance along Chinas maritime periphery would
become a matter of political survival for future Chinese leaders. Second, and equally important, it
is far from clear that American military predominance in the AsiaPacific region can be sustained on a
consistent basis, just as it is virtually impossible that China could establish its own predominance in the region. Two Carnegie
reports on the longterm security environment in Asia, Chinas Military and the U.S.Japan Alliance in 2030 and Conflict and
Cooperation in the AsiaPacific Region,2 concluded that, while the United States will remain the strongest military power on a
global level indefinitely, Washington will almost certainly confront increasingly severe,
economically induced defense spending limitations that will constrain efforts to
decisively keep well ahead of a growing Chinese military and paramilitary presence within
expected, Chinese economic power continues to grow, bolstering Chinese selfconfidence. Under
approximately 1,500 nautical miles of the Chinese coastline, that is, the area covered by the socalled first and second island chains.
This will occur despite Washingtons repeated assertion that the rebalance to Asia will sustain
Americas predominant position in the region. Moreover, such largely economic constraints will almost
certainly be magnified by the persistence of tensions and conflicts in other parts of the world, such as the Middle
East and Central Europe. These events are likely to complicate any U.S. effort to shift forces (and resources) to the AsiaPacific.
No US-China War
Logic of their disad means no major US-China War
The existence of nuclear weapons makes it virtually impossible for the United States and China to
end up fighting World War III, in other words, a large conventional war. I think that the presence of
nuclear weapons makes that one scenario impossible; but I do think its possible that the United States and
China could end up in a limited war over, lets say, Taiwan, over Korea, over the Senkaku or Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea, or
over a series of islands in the South China Sea.
Chances of US-China war remote- even over flashpoints

Xi Jinping is a nationalist. And China, both the U.S. and Chinas neighbors have concluded, is displaying newfound assertiveness in
pursuing its hard security interests in the region. But there
is, nonetheless, a very low risk of any form of

direct conflict involving the armed forces of China and the U.S. over the next
decade. It is not in the national interests of either country for any such conflict to occur; and it
would be disastrous for both, not to mention for the rest of the world. Despite the deep difficulties in the relationship, no
Cold War standoff between them yet exists, only a strategic chill. In fact, there is a high level of
economic inter-dependency in the relationship, which some international relations scholars
think puts a fundamental brake on the possibility of any open hostilities . Although it should be noted the
U.S. is no longer as important to the Chinese economy as it once was. However, armed conflict could feasibly arise through one of
two scenarios: Either an accidental collision between U.S. and Chinese aircraft or naval vessels followed by a badly managed crisis;
or Through a collision (accidental or deliberate) between Chinese military assets and those of a regional U.S. ally, most obviously
Japan or the Philippines. In the case of Japan, the report argues that, after bilateral tensions reached unprecedented heights during
2013-14, Beijing and Tokyo took steps in late 2014 to de-escalate their standoff over the Senkaku/Diaoyu
islands. Hotlines
between the two militaries are now being established, reducing the possibility of
accidental conflict escalation. However, the same cannot be said of the South China Sea, where China continues its largescale land reclamation efforts, where tensions with Vietnam and the Philippines remain high, and where mil-to-mil protocols are
undeveloped. Xi Jinping has neither the interest, room for maneuver or personal predisposition to refrain from an assertive defense
of these territorial claims, or to submit them to any form of external arbitration. More remote contingencies remain for
conflict between the U.S. and China, notably on the Korean Peninsula and over Taiwan. On North
Korea, this is improbable in the extreme given Xi Jinpings dissatisfaction with Kim Jong-Un over
his continuing nuclear program, and his concern that a nuclear crisis on the Peninsula would fundamentally derail
Chinas economic transformation. Under Xi, U.S.-China strategic dialogue on North Korea is deepening, but anything is always
possible on the part of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) regime, as are the consequences for regional stability. As
for Taiwan, the period of six years of political and economic engagement between Beijing and Taipei under Ma Ying-jeou s (Ma
Yingjiu ) administration may be coming to an end. If the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) wins the
Taiwanese Presidential elections in 2016, and if it were to flirt again with the idea of a referendum on independence, Xi would likely
take a harder line than his predecessors. And for the U.S., the provisions of the Taiwan Relations Act have not changed. Of course,
Xi Jinping has no interest in triggering armed conflict with the U.S., a nightmare scenario that
would fundamentally undermine Chinas economic rise. Furthermore, there are few, if any, credible
military scenarios in the immediate period ahead in which China could militarily prevail in a
direct conflict with the U.S. This explains Xis determination to oversee the professionalization and modernization of the
Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) into a credible, war-fighting and war-winning machine. Xi Jinping is an intelligent
consumer of strategic literature and would have concluded that risking any
premature military engagement with the U.S. would be foolish. Traditional Chinese
strategic thinking is unequivocal in its advice not to engage an enemy unless you are in a
position of overwhelming strength. Under Xi, the ultimate purpose of Chinas military expansion and modernization is
not to inflict defeat on the U.S., but to deter the U.S. Navy from intervening in Chinas immediate periphery by creating sufficient
doubt in the minds of American strategists as to their ability to prevail. In the medium term, the report analyzes the vulnerability of
the U.S.-China relationship to the dynamics of Thucydides Trap, whereby rising great powers have
historically ended up at war with established great powers when one has sought to pre-empt the
other at a time of perceived maximum strategic opportunity. According to case studies, such situations have
resulted in war in 12 out of 16 instances over the last 500 years. 6 Xi Jinping is deeply aware of this strategic
literature and potential implications for U.S.-China relations. This has, in part, underpinned his
desire to reframe U.S.-China relations from strategic competition to a new type of great power
relationship. In the longer term, neither Xi Jinping nor his advisors necessarily accept the
proposition of the inevitability of U.S. economic, political and military decline that is often
publicized in the Chinese media and by the academy. More sober minds in Xis administration
are mindful of the capacity of the U.S. political system and economy to rebound and reinvent
itself. Moreover, Xi is also aware of his own countrys date with demographic destiny when the
population begins to shrink, while the populations of the U.S. and those of the North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) economies will continue to increase. For these reasons, the report concludes that the likelihood of
U.S.-China conflict in the medium to long term remains remote . This is why Xi Jinping is
more attracted to the idea of expanding Chinas regional and global footprint by economic and political means. This is where he will
likely direct Chinas diplomatic activism over the decade ahead. (19-21)
Misc
AFF K = AT: Realism Bad

Engagement is the best way to avoid pitfalls of realism- the aff is a crucial middle
path
This report has focused on one such possible scenario for the future (namely the second
scenario), and how it might in practical terms be brought about. If a new approach of
Constructive Realism for a Common Purpose is to have any real chance of success, it will
require a change in the political psychology or the way of thinking of the relationship. As noted
above, the Chinese call this siwei. At present, the siwei between the two is overwhelmingly
realist to the point that it is almost Hobbesian in its fatalism. The Chinese
equivalent would be to run international relations according to the most pessimistic tradition of
the Legalist (fajia ). This permanently assumes the worst of the other party and
over time becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The report does not argue for the
abandonment of skepticism in international relations. In fact, it argues for the retention of a
realist premise concerning the hard security issues that currently separate the U.S. and China
and will continue to do so for a considerable time. However, the report also argues that
we should leaven the realist loaf with a level of constructive cooperation at
multiple levels to build strategic trust over time. This will not require the wholesale
abandonment of traditional strategic thinking or siwei. But it will require an adjustment to
allow for the possibilities of constructive engagement changing deeply grounded strategic
mindsets over time. (39-40)
Prez Key
Presidential involvement k2 solve
No U.S. grand strategy toward China can succeed without the continuous involvement and
leadership of President Barack Obama and his successors. Despite turmoil in the Middle East and tensions
with Russia, the president should concentrate on managing the greatest strategic
challenge to the United States in the coming decadesthe rise of Chinese power .
His hands should be continually seen to be on the wheel of U.S. grand strategy
toward China , and he should hold face-to-face meetings on the subject much more frequently
with Asias leaders and European Union heads of government. Occasional forty-five minute
bilateral talks with his Asian counterparts at the margins of international meetings are
insufficient to the task. (21-2)
Congress Key
The same is true of Congress, which is an indispensable element in dealing with Chinese power
over the long term. Partisan divides and the press of daily events will not excuse Congress if it
largely ignores the effects of Chinas rise on U.S. interests. The congressional role in
sustaining a successful U.S. grand strategy toward China is manifested primarily
in three areas: giving the president trade-promotion authority so that he may quickly
conclude the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) freetrade agreements now being negotiated in
Asia, reforming and providing the defense budgets necessary to maintain U.S. power projection
and a credible Asian alliance system, and continuously holding U.S. administrations accountable
for the implementation of their response to the rise of Chinese power. (22)
Dedev Good- Grand Strategy

Economic decline will reduce intervention and preserve hegemony
Ever since the Soviet Unions demise, the United States dramatic power advantage over other states has
been accompanied by the risk of self-inflicted wounds, as occurred in Iraq. But the slippage in
the United States economic position may have the beneficial effect of forcing U.S. leaders
to focus more on the core mission of the countrys grand strategy rather than being sucked
into messy peripheral conflicts. Indeed, that has been the guiding logic behind President Barack
Obamas foreign policy. Nonetheless, a world of lasting U.S. military preeminence and declining U.S. economic dominance
will continue to test the United States capacity for restraint, in four main ways.

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Containment Disad

a member of the highly classified Tilelli Commission, which evaluated

Engagement is over- Pivot represents shift to containment strategy

might turn out to be this generations Rhineland .

Human nature and history are a useful guide to where

and the air force plan

Overwhelming evidence points to Chinese revisionism- only US strength can deter

AT: No Chinese Grand Strategy

We must take Chinese leaders at their word- otherwise analysis is impossible

dominating elements are not a mystery. Chinese officials insistently

To not take seriously official Chinese government statements

will continue to grow

U CP- Cyber Crime

AT: China Growth Good

the absence of charismatic leaders such as Mao and Deng ,

L: Isolationism/Off Shore Balancing

Offshore balancing encourages Chinese aggression- new alliances wont work to

decisionmakers are extremely loath to contemplate

AT: Allied Prolif Good

policymakers have struggled to conceptualize a grand strategy t hat would prove

is driven by the likelihood that a long-term strategic

Hegemony solves war, terrorism, climate

Push For Hegemony Inevitable

to contemplate an alternative to U.S. military predominance in this vital

AT: Normal Rising Power

Yes China Threat

Culture and historical wounds make Chinese fopo strictly realist

AT: China Threat K

AT: Threat Inflation

AT: Western Threat Perception

AT: Allies Wont Support

Regional players like Vietnam fear China enough to cooperate

AT: Chinese Backlash

could certainly expect a strong Chinese

steps by Beijing would not be trivial but also would not

AT: China Collapse

China spreads fear of collapse to reduce international resistance

2NC AT: Confucian Pacifism

2NC AT: Deterrence Checks

AT: Deterrence Fails

2NC AT: Economic Interdependence

2NC AT: Engagement Modifies Chinese

Decades of engagement have failed to liberalize China- theyve moved in the

2NC AT: Integration

basing U.S. grand strategy primarily on such Chinese global

AT: Rudd- Unique Moment

2NC AT: Self-fulfilling Prophecy

AT: US-China Relations Good

mutual understanding, a strategic partnership, or a new type of major country relations

2NC AT: US Imperialism

Affirmative arguments rely on decades old, disprove ideas about China

he should also apply these words with

formulations overlook larger realities. They implicitly downgrade the interests of

Its time to develop policies and

Chinese strategic culture favors deception

(Michael, director of the Hudson Institutes Center for Chinese Strategy,

2NC Turn Shield

the irony is that this popular misattribution of Americas motives may

But to American strategists, containment has a very specific meaning: a comprehensive

argues that Chinese

Containment is the best available option- security competition is inevitable,

AT: China Rise

China cant challenge the US no matter how fast it grows

AT: Rise Fast/Impacts Short Term