01/26/2006
Back to China
I continue to catch up on some reading involving China. Following are a few thoughts from Professor Robert S. Ross of Boston College, the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University and MIT. Prof. Ross wrote a piece in the Fall 2005 edition of The National Interest titled “Assessing the China Threat.”
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[Excerpts]
“There is no question that countries that are vulnerable to China’s improving ground force and land-based capabilities are realigning toward China. South Korea understands that the United States cannot offset Chinese ground force improvements, given constraints on U.S. military power in mainland theaters, and the ROK has readjusted accordingly. It no longer supports U.S. policy toward North Korea, but rather cooperates with China to undermine U.S. efforts to isolate and coerce North Korea.”
[On Taiwan]
“Although the U.S. defense commitment to Taiwan is stronger today than at any time since the 1960s, the Taiwanese independence movement is dying. Taiwanese polling consistently reveals that less than 10 percent of the population supports a declaration of independence. Eighty percent of the people oppose changing the name of the island from “Republic of China .[Opposition parties have exploited these sentiments in making overtures to Beijing] Meanwhile, Taiwan resists U.S. pressure to purchase advanced American weapons. Fifty- five percent of the respondents in a recent poll believe that U.S. weaponry cannot make Taiwan secure, and only 37 percent support purchasing the weapons .
“China’s soft power has followed the rise of its hard power. More than one million Taiwanese now have residences on the mainland. By the end of 2004 there were more than 250,000 ‘cross-strait marriages,’ and these marriages had grown to over 20 percent of all new Taiwanese marriages. In early 2004 there were 5,000 students from Taiwan enrolled in Chinese universities, even though Chinese degrees are not recognized by Taiwan.”
[On other Southeast Asian nations]
“Singapore and the Philippines have been the most active in cooperation with the U.S. military. In 2001 Singapore completed construction of its Changi port facility, which is explicitly designed to accommodate a U.S. aircraft carrier, and in March 2001 it hosted the first state visit of the USS Kitty Hawk. As Singapore’s defense minister explained, ‘It is no secret that Singapore believes that the presence of the U.S. military contributes to the peace and stability of the region. To that extent, we have facilitated the presence of U.S. military forces.’”
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“The key issue in appraising the Chinese threat to U.S. security, however, is not the ongoing growth of Chinese military and economic power per se, but its effect on the U.S. presence in the western Pacific and maritime Southeast Asia. Chinese military and regional political advances to date reflect its improved ground force and land-based capabilities. But the United States keeps the peace and maintains the balance of power in East Asia through its overwhelming naval presence. This is the source of ongoing local alignment with the United States. For the rise of China to pose a direct threat to U.S. security, China must possess sufficient military capabilities to challenge the United States in the western Pacific, including sufficient capability to risk war. Alternatively, it must have at its disposal sufficient economic or military power to undermine U.S. security guarantees for the region’s maritime countries, compelling them to align with China.”
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“Nowhere is Chinese caution more evident than in the Taiwan Strait. Despite the advances in Chinese capabilities, the mainland has been exceedingly tolerant of Taiwan’s movement toward sovereignty. Over the past five years Chen Shui-bian’s rhetoric has amounted to an informal declaration of independence. Much to the concern of both the Bush Administration and Beijing, Chen has frequently suggested his intention to replace the current constitution with a new constitution that would establish de jure Taiwanese independence. In response, China has fulminated, threatened, deployed its forces and rattled its sabers, but it has refused to use force, despite the leadership’s conviction that Chen is determined to move Taiwan toward formal sovereignty and Chen’s apparent disregard for Chinese resolve. Chinese leaders know that should there be a war in the Taiwan Strait, the U.S. Navy would intervene and the cost to China would be intolerable. Only if Taiwan actually declares de jure independence, thus challenging the Communist Party’s domestic survival and leaving Beijing no choice but to retaliate militarily, would China risk war with the United States over Taiwan.
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“So far, the United States has responded well to the rise of China. It has maintained its deterrent and stabilized the regional order. But the greatest challenge to the status quo and the greatest contribution to the rise of China as a maritime power may well be shortcomings in U.S. defense policy. Recent attention to the Pentagon’s inability to acquire planned numbers of next-generation aircraft carriers and fighter planes, and the escalating costs of these programs, is disturbing. As Secretary Rumsfeld observed, ‘Something’s wrong with the system.’ In addition, deployment of U.S. forces in hostilities in peripheral areas weakens our presence in East Asia.
“If the United States gives China the opportunity to displace the U.S. presence, it will grab it. The United States should be under no illusion that China will be content with the status quo should its relative power increase. But if the United States does what it can and should do – if it strengthens its regional military presence and continues to modernize its forces – it can maintain its maritime dominance, its deterrent capability, the regional balance of power and U.S. security.”
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From an article in the same issue of The National Interest by Chung Min Lee, visiting professor at the National University of Singapore.
[Excerpts]
“The leading Asian states find themselves in three strategic quandaries produced by the rise of China. First, Asia’s relative strategic weight in the global balance of power is once again becoming equated with that of China’s own strategic disposition. While China’s longer-term ascendance as the next superpower is replete with significant hurdles, so long as Asia’s future paths depend increasingly on China’s own trajectory, the blurring of ‘Asia’ and China will accelerate, which in turn is going to pose progressively higher-threshold dilemmas for Asia and the international system.
“Second, rarely (if ever) has the rise of a great power posed such promises and hazards at the same time. The continuing rush to join the Chinese economic bandwagon means that most of China’s major trading partners have tended to downplay sensitive political and military issues. While understandable in the context of substantial economic incentives, it vitiates efforts to counter-balance China’s strategic ambitions.
“Finally, the forging of viable coalitions to deny, delimit or even contain China’s power projection capabilities and potentially irredentist strategies has so far proven illusory. While pressures can be mounted on China from various corners, no Asian country today or in the foreseeable future is likely to contest China directly at the cost of trade ties. As China moves in earnest to build a blue-water navy, only two other regional navies – India’s and Japan’s – would have the wherewithal to constrain China’s maritime forays. None of the Asian powers, with the notable exception of India, has indigenous nuclear forces to match China’s – and whatever nuclear capacity India bears will be constrained by its primary emphasis on deterring Pakistan.”
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[China’s Asian neighbors can ill afford to ignore China’s 21st- century strategic ambitions.]
“The major Asian states, therefore, have seemingly contradictory goals in their policies toward China. They want to exploit the benefits flowing from China’s rapid economic expansion while ensuring that China’s increasingly robust diplomatic and military forays are kept in check or even denied on a case-by-case basis. This dilemma is perhaps most evident in the context of U.S. strategy toward China. Some of America’s allies seem to have chosen accommodation, while Japan and India appear to be pursuing a policy that might be labeled ‘stealth constrainment,’ (sic) rather than overtly attempting to contain China’s enlarged strategic footprints.”
[Conclusion]
“(If) China’s neighbors continue to brush aside, sidestep or even deny the existence of enlarging Chinese footprints through ‘tactical accommodations,’ the longer-term cost will appear in the form of narrowing security options and the real possibility of a significantly retrenched U.S. presence in the region. The message to the world is clear: While Europe’s core security dilemmas are over, Asia’s are just beginning.”
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Hott Spotts will return next week.
Brian Trumbore
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