China I: The Coming Conflict with America

Richard Bernstein and Ross H. Munro

From Foreign Affairs, March/ April 1997

Article preview: first 500 of 4,439 words total.

Summary:  Many American policymakers and Sinologists believe that China will inevitably become non-ideological, pragmatic, materialistic, and progressively freer in its culture and politics. Beijing, however, sees the United States not as a strategic partner but as the chief obstacle to its regional and global ambitions. Under cover of its current conciliatory mood, China acquires the wherewithal to back its aspirations regarding Taiwan and beyond with real power. America's number one objective in Asia must be to derail China's quest to become a 21st-century hegemon.

Richard Bernstein is a New York Times book critic and was Time magazine's first Beijing Bureau Chief. Ross H. Munro was Beijing Bureau Chief for the Toronto Globe and Mail and is Director of the Asia program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. This article is drawn from their recent book, ?The Coming Conflict with China.?

THE RISING ASIAN HEGEMON

For a quarter-century -- indeed, almost since Richard Nixon signed the Shanghai Communique in 1972 -- a comforting, even heart-warming notion has prevailed among many policymakers and experts on American policy toward the People's Republic of China. They believe that China will inevitably become more like the West -- non-ideological, pragmatic, materialistic, and progressively freer in its culture and politics. According to them, China is militarily weak and unthreatening; while Beijing tends toward rhetorical excess, its actual behavior has been far more cautious, aimed at the overriding goals of economic growth and regional stability.

While this vision of China, and especially its diplomatic and economic behavior, was largely true until the middle to late 1980s, it is now obsolete, as it ignores many Chinese statements and actions that suggest the country is emerging as a great power rival of the United States in the Pacific. True, China is more open and internationally engaged than at any time since the communist revolution of 1949. Nevertheless, since the late 1980s Beijing's leaders, especially those who have taken over national policy in the wake of Deng Xiaoping's enfeeblement, have set goals that are contrary to American interests. Driven by nationalist sentiment, a yearning to redeem the humiliations of the past, and the simple urge for international power, China is seeking to replace the United States as the dominant power in Asia.

Since the late 1980s, Beijing has come to see the United States not as a strategic partner but as the chief obstacle to its own strategic ambitions. It has, therefore, worked to reduce American influence in Asia, to prevent Japan and the United States from creating a "contain China" front, to build up a military with force projection capability, and to expand its presence in the South China and East China Seas so that it controls the region's essential sea-lanes. China's sheer size and inherent strength, its conception of itself as a center of global civilization, and its eagerness to redeem centuries of humiliating weakness are propelling it toward Asian hegemony. Its goal is to ensure that no country in the region -- whether Japan seeking oil exploration rights in the East China Sea, Taiwan inviting the Dalai Lama for an official visit, or Thailand allowing American naval vessels to dock in its ports -- will act without taking China's interests into prime consideration.

TACTICALLY TACTFUL

China and the United States have, to be sure, been through phases of friendship and tension, with some of the latter unrelated to China's hegemonic goals. At times relations have soured because of inconsistent American policies, especially on human rights and trade matters, that have irritated China's leaders and produced a nationalistic reaction among intellectuals and ordinary Chinese alike. China's current leaders understand the value of stable relations with Washington and under the right terms will accept, as President Jiang Zemin recently did, a resumption of the ceremonies of high-level exchanges.

But China's willingness, even eagerness, to ...

End of preview: first 500 of 4,439 words total.