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China in Your Lifetime Spring 2012 Chinas Challenge vol.2012+

Filip Goc

One of the major challenges for China as it rises and rises to power is going to be the upholding of the Peaceful Rise (Development). According to the related New Security Concept, China vows to primarily tend to internal issues, and to work internationally specifically to promote long term stability and peace. This makes a perfect sense, for, as Womack denotes (36), China has already enjoyed over 30 years of peace, and is acutely mindful of its advantages. There is also the historic awareness of the downsides of cold-war-like establishments. China is a fast-rising and powerful country, but nonetheless a developing one and its internal transformation must be its primary objective in the years to come. Thus, peaceful rise even in a strictly military sense is Chinas best ticket, or at least a viable requisite, to social and economic development. However, places like Taiwan then stand out as concentrated points of abrasion, for Taiwan is largely considered an 'internal issue' by Beijing - a sentiment not shared by Washington or the global general public. The US interventions on Korean peninsula and in South Asia are similarly regarded a potentially destabilizing and thus threatening China's domestic development. China is also necessarily becoming more and more interdependent with foreign economies and international organizational structures as a part of its path towards a responsible world power and predictable international player. Sooner or later, Beijing needs to engage in intensive diplomatic processes to mediate the West Pacific/ East Asian power relations and security structures if it wants to honor its notion of peaceful development. No matter how well scholars and/or diplomats will be able to assess the best possible theoretical approach to the future foreign and domestic strategic and political development of PRC, it all depends on the notions prevalent among masses as well as the beliefs of specific individuals. We can see this if we employ the memetics Richard Dawkins notion that ideas propagate in the way of viral spread. The memes, which are a more abstract equivalent of genes, are the original replicators, and people serve merely as their common carriages. Just as there are many factors that increase the chance of a gene to be replicated, there are many factors revolving around memes. Interestingly, the epistemic content of a meme (the idea) is only one of these factors. The existence of the best solution does not guarantee its prevalence or competitiveness. Minxin Peis article reminded me that even though we treat China mostly as a theoretical model projected into the future, its actual course is naturally plagued with the conflicting personal interests, lobbying, and corruption. Accordingly, the mindset of Chinese and US leaders, but also of other global powers and the general mindset and expectations of the general public, are powerful acting forces in themselves. A specific mindset of the public, for example the mere occurrence of the idea that The Stable Bank may be in trouble, can cause major shifts in the market economy. Clearly, mindsets are a finicky agent in immediate economic shifts, but the same

2 goes for politics. It is clearly visible in the US, where the public opinion as well as personal interests skew politics in the way of popular vote. At first it seems that China does not harbor this problem to the same, but it's not true. Internal struggles, as well as the prevalence of leading ideas, or most viral memes, guide the Beijing policy makers in a less exposed but nonetheless similar fashion. Swaine suggests that the Chinese public sometimes regards the US as arrogant, overbearing and constraining entity (43). This is likely an effect of underlying cultural and political mishaps, and could severely harm the Sino-American partnership. After all, the atmosphere of mutual trust and shared interests are necessary prerequisites for successful and effective cooperation on such large-scale issues as security strategy reformation, climate change, WMD, and economic (re)development. To advance mutual understanding, the US must treat China as a more equal partner, and establish strong diplomatic grounds for the times when China will likely catch up with the US in economic and military might. China's challenge is to resist the primal 'fears' of dealing with a predominant major power, and try not to overreact by struggling simply to overpower and diminish the US presence. If Beijing values internal development, stability and peace, it should undertake the participation in international structures to limit and balance the US influence with lesser risk of appearing openly opposed or hostile. In this sense, Chinese and American foreign policy towards each other would both converge on hedging. The challenge for China to balance the US predominance without simply trying to become the next superpower is not an easy one. The very existence of the current power and security situation in the West Pacific with the US as a central pillar makes it cognitively easiest to change the power relations without altering the underlying structure. Structural changes are always among the most costly ones. At the very basic level, people are just used to this status quo. The problem here is that the American political stature stems to a large extent from its powerful worldwide military presence (and formerly also economic power). Garry Wills in his Bomb Power argues that the stature deep down actually rests on the bomb, or the US ability to deploy nuclear weaponry, which subordinates the US foreign policy to maintain the possibility of such deployment across the globe. It is clear that Beijing has currently no intentions on establishing its international presence in a similar fashion. Even though China does own some nuclear weaponry, its power is not even sufficient to render Chinese comfortable in the discussion about the nuclear counter proliferation with Russia and the US. However, Chinese nuclear program is nothing predictable (viz the accident with Japanese waters of 2004), and China could feel the need to step up its nuclear program if it felt threatened by insensitive US arms sales to Taiwan or by the nuclear reality of Korean Peninsula . At the same time, China has been very active in promoting nuclear-free Korean Peninsula (Swaine 101), and without any major change in military power relations it is not likely to resort to such a desperate measure. Even in a general sense, there is no evidence that Beijing has intentions to directly

3 counterbalance the US military power in Asia. Still, it is a possibility for the US may just not have the political will or economic power to sustain its costly military-backed political stature in the future, and it is uncertain how China would deal with the Korean nuclear program without the US military presence. A more basic hindrance for China resisting to become a replacement superpower is the very aforementioned mindset. Both the US and China need to engage in deep discussion about possible transition to other security frameworks with each other, and with the general public, to deprive the structure of superpowerdominance of its historic advantage over multilateral and more complex structures. For many Asian and Western leaders it is simply unimaginable that multilateral strategy could take over hard security functions (Swaine 342), though there are both hard-liners and moderates (Swaine 44). I argue that it can become imaginable, but the idea it needs to be carefully injected via public discussion, and gain at least bilateral (US and China) support. At least for now, it seems that the Chinese public does not even consider itself a potential superpower (Fallows xvi). There is a chance.

Works Cited Fallows, James M. Postcards from Tomorrow Square: Reports from China. Random House Digital, Inc., 2009. Print. Pei, Minxin. Introduction. Chinas Trapped Transition : the Limits of Developmental Autocracy. 2006. Print. Swaine, Michael D. Americas Challenge: Engaging a Rising China in the Twenty-First Century. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2011. Print. Wills, Garry. Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State. Penguin, 2011. Print. Womack, Brantly. Political Reform and Sustainable Development in China. (1993): n. pag. Print.