But such a bloated China would also be more likely to encounter strong external opposition. The previous map makes it evident that in the West, both Russia and India would have good geopolitical reasons to ally in seeking to push back China’s challenge. Cooperation between them would be likely to focus heavily on Central Asia and Pakistan, whence China would threaten their interests the most. In the south, opposition would be strongest from Vietnam and Indonesia (probably backed by Australia). In the east, America, probably backed by Japan, would react adversely to any Chinese efforts to gain predominance in Korea and to incorporate Taiwan by force, actions that would reduce the American political presence in the Far East to a potentially unstable and solitary perch in Japan.
Ultimately, the probability of either scenario sketched out on the maps fully coming to pass depends not only on how China itself develops but also very much on American conduct and presence. A disengaged America would make the second scenario much more likely, but even the comprehensive emergence of the first would require some American accommodation and self-restraint. The Chinese know this, and hence Chinese policy has to be focused primarily on influencing both American conduct and, especially, the critical American-Japanese connection, with China’s other relationships manipulated tactically with that strategic concern in mind.
China’s principal objection to America relates less to what America actually does than to what America currently is and where it is. America is seen by China as the world’s current hegemon, whose very presence in the region, based on its dominant position in Japan, works to contain China’s influence. In the words of a Chinese analyst employed in the research arm of the Chinese Foreign Ministry: “The U.S. strategic aim is to seek hegemony in the whole world and it cannot tolerate the appearance of any big power on the European and Asian continents that will constitute a threat to its leading position.”[5] Hence, simply by being what it is and where it is, America becomes China’s unintentional adversary rather than its natural ally.
Accordingly, the task of Chinese policy—in keeping with Sun Tsu’s ancient strategic wisdom—is to use American power to peacefully defeat American hegemony, but without unleashing any latent Japanese regional aspirations. To that end, China’s geostrategy must pursue two goals simultaneously, as somewhat obliquely defined in August 1994 by Deng Xiaoping: “First, to oppose hegemonism and power politics and safeguard world peace; second, to build up a new international political and economic order.” The first obviously targets the United States and has as its purpose the reduction in American preponderance, while carefully avoiding a military collision that would end China’s drive for economic power; the second seeks to revise the distribution of global power, capitalizing on the resentment in some key states against the current global pecking order, in which the United States is perched at the top, supported by Europe (or Germany) in the extreme west of Eurasia and by Japan in the extreme east.
China’s second objective prompts Beijing to pursue a regional geostrategy that seeks to avoid any serious conflicts with its immediate neighbors, even while continuing its quest for regional preponderance. A tactical improvement in Sino-Russian relations is particularly timely, especially since Russia is now weaker than China. Accordingly, in April 1997, both countries joined in denouncing “hegemonism” and declaring NATO’s expansion “impermissible.” However, it is unlikely that China would seriously consider any long-term and comprehensive Russo-Chinese alliance against America. That would work to deepen and widen the scope of the American-Japanese alliance, which China would like to dilute slowly, and it would also isolate China from critically important sources of modern technology and capital.
As in Sino-Russian relations, it suits China to avoid any direct collision with India, even while continuing to sustain its close military cooperation with Pakistan and Burma. A policy of overt antagonism would have the negative effect of complicating China’s tactically expedient accommodation with Russia, while also pushing India toward a more cooperative relationship with America. To the extent that India also shares an underlying and somewhat anti-Western predisposition against the existing global “hegemony,” a reduction in Sino-Indian tensions is also in keeping with China’s broader geostrategic focus.
The same considerations generally apply to China’s ongoing relations with Southeast Asia. Even while unilaterally asserting their claims to the South China Sea, the Chinese have simultaneously cultivated Southeast Asian leaders (with the exception of the historically hostile Vietnamese), exploiting the more outspoken anti-Western sentiments (particularly on the issue of Western values and human rights) that in recent years have been voiced by the leaders of Malaysia and Singapore. They have especially welcomed the occasionally strident anti-American rhetoric of Prime Minister Datuk Mahathir of Malaysia, who in a May 1996 forum in Tokyo even publicly questioned the need for the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, demanding to know the identity of the enemy the alliance is supposed to defend against and asserting that Malaysia does not need allies. The Chinese clearly calculate that their influence in the region will be automatically enhanced by any diminution of America’s standing.
In a similar vein, patient pressure appears to be the motif of China’s current policy toward Taiwan. While adopting an uncompromising position with regard to Taiwan’s international status—to the point of even being willing to deliberately generate international tensions in order to convey China’s seriousness on this matter (as in March 1996)—the Chinese leaders presumably realize that for the time being they will continue to lack the power to compel a satisfactory solution. They realize that a premature reliance on force would only serve to precipitate a self-defeating clash with America, while strengthening America’s role as the regional guarantor of peace. Moreover, the Chinese themselves acknowledge that how effectively Hong Kong is first absorbed into China will greatly determine the prospects for the emergence of a Greater China.
The accommodation that has been taking place in China’s relations with South Korea is also an integral part of the policy of consolidating its flanks in order to be able to concentrate more effectively on the central goal. Given Korean history and public emotions, a Sino-Korean accommodation of itself contributes to a reduction in Japan’s potential regional role and prepares the ground for the reemergence of the more traditional relationship between China and (either a reunited or a still-divided) Korea.
Most important, the peaceful enhancement of China’s regional standing will facilitate the pursuit of the central objective, which ancient China’s strategist Sun Tsu might have formulated as follows: to dilute American regional power to the point that a diminished America will come to need a regionally dominant China as its ally and eventually even a globally powerful China as its partner. This goal is to be sought and accomplished in a manner that does not precipitate either a defensive expansion in the scope of the American-Japanese alliance or the regional replacement of America’s power by that of Japan.
To attain the central objective, in the short run, China seeks to prevent the consolidation and expansion of American-Japanese security cooperation. China was particularly alarmed at the implied increase in early 1996 in the range of U.S.-Japanese security cooperation from the narrower “Far East” to a wider “Asia-Pacific,” perceiving in it not only an immediate threat to China’s interests but also the point of departure for an American-dominated Asian system of security aimed at containing China (in which Japan would be the vital linchpin,[6] much as Germany was in NATO during the Cold War). The agreement was generally perceived in Beijing as facilitating Japan’s eventual emergence as a major military power, perhaps even capable of relying on force to resolve outstanding economic or maritime disputes on its own. China thus is likely to fan energetically the still strong Asian fears of any significant Japanese military role in the region, in order to restrain America and intimidate Japan.
However, in the longer run, according to China’s strategic calculus, American hegemony cannot last. Although some Chinese, especially among the military, tend to view America as China’s implacable foe, the predominant expectation in Beijing is that America will become regionally more isolated because of its excessive reliance on Japan and that consequently America’s dependence on Japan will grow even further, but so will American-Japanese contradictions and American fears of Japanese militarism. That will then make it possible for China to play off America and Japan against each other, as China did earlier in the case of the United States and the Soviet Union. In Beijing’s view, the time will come when America will realize that—to remain an influential Asia-Pacific power—it has no choice but to turn to its natural partner on the Asian mainland.
JAPAN: NOT REGIONAL BUT INTERNATIONAL
How the American-Japanese relationship evolves is thus a critical dimension in China’s geopolitical future. Since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949, America’s policy in the Far East has been based on Japan. At first only the site for the occupying American military, Japan has since become the basis for America’s political-military presence in the Asia-Pacific region and America’s centrally important global ally, yet also a security protectorate. The emergence of China, however, does pose the question whether—and
