PAPER: CHINA, UNITED STATES, and the SPECTER OF WAR: Battling for Supremacy Amidst Unprecedented Radical Change, Challenged Ideology, and Global Order
By Colonel Dencio S. Acop (Ret), PhD | Date 01-19-2024
Introduction
‘We live in interesting times’ as the popular saying goes! So much is happening in the world today! This much can be said probably at any time in man’s history. Except that today, the unprecedented dominance of technology in our lives makes this early part of the 21st century perhaps the most that mankind could ever hope for in trying to maintain the global order that has brought relative world peace the past 78 years. This written work will attempt to argue about the ongoing battle for supremacy between rising China and the United States, the world’s dominant leader, amidst a sea of unprecedented changes in the world which include radical technological innovation and the decline of liberal democracy. In its argument, the paper will essentially discuss the grand strategy of China towards asserting itself in a world dominated by liberal democracies led by the United States. Inevitably, the discussion will conclude that in China’s pursuit to challenge the liberal order, it risks conflict with the United States and its allies. Thus, the specter of another global war looms in mankind’s horizon. This work’s first aim is to make people aware about this impending doom unless a miracle happens. And its second goal is to hope that its warning doesn’t go unheeded by a distracted world. That some collective action can be taken to avert a brewing global crisis.
This work tries to accomplish the following: Its first section discusses how the prevailing liberal order in the world today is being challenged by unprecedented changes which favor dictatorships of every kind. These changes include radical technological innovations presenting alternative facts, fake news, and influential algorithms. The second section argues that these profound changes along with China’s economic dominance and believed U.S. decay have encouraged China to assert itself in the world today using its grand strategy before this window of opportunity closes. Finally, its third section discusses how the United States and its allies are responding to China’s challenge in the Asia-Pacific region and the rest of the globe. Unfortunately, this brewing conflict between two opposing ideologies led by the world’s two most powerful nations may plunge the world in yet another global war unseen in almost a century.
Challenges to the Prevailing World Order
Any serious challenge to the prevailing order of democratic peace in the world by China is bound to end up in a regional and then global conflict between adherents of liberal ideology and those of modern era feudalism. If the trend of human aspirations through history is a gage, nations have opted for electoral liberal democracy beginning in the 20th century (Herre, Ospina, & Roser, 2013). Today in 2023, the World Population Review records that there are 74 democracies (45%), 56 authoritarian states (34%), and 34 hybrid states (21%) among the 164 United Nations member countries (World Population Review, 2023). Also, 192 U.N. member states are signatories to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (The Danish Institute for Human Rights, 2023). While some of the signatories are of the position that certain provisions of the Declaration are not binding, they nevertheless signed on to the document. And why not? Universal advocacy and advancement of human rights benefit all peoples of the world regardless of political, economic, or socio-cultural differences. Democratic, authoritarian, or hybrid, the leaders of the nations of the world signed the document for their constituent peoples and citizens. The efficiency and effectiveness rates of assuring respect for human rights to the domestic population are theoretically better in democratic republics where people govern themselves through freely elected representatives who derive their power from the people. But in a world characterized today by blurred liberal values, challenged governance and enforcement practices, globalization impacts, and relativism of almost every value known to man, the global playing field interacting with domestic values and systems has become perfectly ripe for exploitation by powerful national governments and individuals.
While governments and their leaders are presumed to serve the best interests of their countries, there are different ideologies and systems that they use in order to achieve them. These ideologies and systems are the products of each nation’s unique history and culture. There are two main ideologies and systems used by countries toward serving their national interests: liberal democracy and authoritarianism. Some countries use a hybrid of these two. Although it is assumed that both systems pursue the same goal of serving the best interests of the constituent peoples they serve, each system is vastly different from the other. The basic difference lies in who controls the ultimate power in the life of a country. One allows the majority of the domestic population to determine how they live either through direct self-determination or through credible election of representatives who work on their behalf. The other allows power to one individual or a party of individuals who are then presumed to work for the best interests of the country and its citizens.
What is democracy? “Democracy comes from the Greek word, ‘demos’, meaning people. In democracies, it is the people who hold sovereign power over legislator and government. Democracy is government in which power and civic responsibility are exercised by all citizens, directly or through their freely elected representatives. Democracy is a set of principles and practices that protect human freedom; it is the institutionalization of freedom. Democracy rests upon the principles of majority rule, coupled with individual and minority rights. All democracies, while respecting the will of the majority, also zealously protect the fundamental rights of individuals and minority groups. Democracies guard against all-powerful central governments and decentralize government to regional and local levels, understanding that local government must be as accessible and responsive to the people as possible. Democracies understand that one of their prime functions is to protect such basic human rights as freedom of speech and religion; the right to equal protection under the law; and the opportunity to organize and participate fully in the political, economic, and cultural life of society.” (Principles of Democracy, accessed Nov 2023).
“Democracies conduct regular, free, and fair elections open to all citizens. Elections in a democracy cannot be facades that dictators or a single party hide behind, but authentic competitions for the support of the people. Democracy subjects governments to the rule of law and ensures that all citizens receive equal protection under the law and that their rights are protected by the legal system. Democracies are diverse, reflecting each nation’s unique political, social, and cultural life. Democracies rest upon fundamental principles, not uniform practices. Citizens in a democracy not only have rights, they have the responsibility to participate in the political system that, in turn, protects their rights and freedoms. Finally, democratic societies are committed to the values of tolerance, cooperation, and compromise. Democracies recognize that reaching consensus requires compromise and that it may not always be attainable. In the words of Mahatma Gandhi, ‘intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit’.” (Principles of Democracy, accessed Nov 2023).
On the other hand, “Authoritarianism is a political system characterized by a controlling government and the rejection of democracy, human rights, and political plurality. It involves the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in the rule of law, separation of powers, and democratic voting. Authoritarian regimes may be either autocratic or oligarchic and may be based upon the rule of a party or the military. States that have a blurred boundary between democracy and authoritarianism have sometimes been characterized as ‘hybrid regimes’. Authoritarianism has four qualities: (1) Limited political pluralism, which is achieved with constraints on the legislature, political parties, and interest groups. (2) Political legitimacy based on appeals to emotion and identification of the regime as a necessary evil to combat ‘easily recognizable societal problems, such as underdevelopment or insurgency’. (3) Minimal political mobilization, and suppression of anti-regime activities. And (4) Ill-defined executive powers, often vague and shifting, used to extend the power of the executive.” (Wikipedia, accessed Nov 2023).
“An authoritarian government lacks free and competitive direct elections to legislatures, free and competitive direct or indirect elections for executives, or both. Authoritarian states include countries that lack civil liberties such as freedom of religion, or countries in which the government and the opposition do not alternate in power at least once following free elections. Authoritarian states might contain nominally democratic institutions such as political parties, legislatures, and elections which are managed to entrench authoritarian rule and can feature fraudulent, non-competitive elections. In contexts of democratic backsliding, scholars are able to identify authoritarian political leaders based on certain tactics, such as: politicizing independent institutions, spreading disinformation, aggrandizing executive power, quashing dissent, targeting vulnerable communities, stoking violence, and corrupting elections. Since 1946, the share of authoritarian states in the international political system increased until the mid-1970s but declined from then until the year 2000.” (Wikipedia, accessed Nov 2023).
The preceding review of the two dominant political ideologies and systems clearly reveal how absolutely opposed they are. In sum, “freedom to vote, freedom of speech, liberty and justice are not followed in an authoritarian state.” (Brainly, accessed Nov 2023). But while the universal appeal of human rights seems unanimous, how come there is a resurgence of authoritarianism in the last two decades? Psychological science explains that “viewing the world as a dangerous but not necessarily competitive place plants the psychological seeds of authoritarianism” and that “contextual threats to safety and security activate authoritarian predispositions”. Supporting this worrying trend is a recent report citing that “at the end of 2021, just 20.3% of humanity lived in a ‘free’ nation, marking the 16th consecutive annual global decline in citizens’ political rights and civil liberties. The resurgence of authoritarianism implicated in this trend underlies some of the most divisive moments in recent history, including Donald Trump’s successful 2016 US presidential election bid, the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, and the rebirth of far-right political parties in Western Europe. The re-emergence of authoritarianism in the general public weakens democratic institutions and sows societal division by fostering out-group hostility, anti-immigration sentiment, and a general intolerance of out-groups. Thus, authoritarian impulses threaten people’s personal freedoms, as well as the democratic foundations upon which these rights are enshrined.” (Nature Reviews, 2023).
Perhaps the most significant illustration about the decline of democracy on the world map is the case of India. Once touted as the world’s biggest democracy with its 1.4 billion people, India today is considered a “hybrid democracy” at best. “The modality of India’s democratic decline reveals how democracies die today: not through a dramatic coup or midnight arrests of opposition leaders, but through the fully legal harassment of the opposition, intimidation of media, and centralization of executive power. By equating government criticism with disloyalty to the nation, the government of Narendra Modi is diminishing the very idea that opposition is legitimate. India today is no longer the world’s largest democracy.” (Price, 2022).
The polarization of the world appears nothing new based on history. But this author thinks the kind of division that currently exists on the planet is unlike anything the world has ever seen. This polarization has been exacerbated by overly rapid technological advances cutting across every facet of a nation’s life be it political, economic, or socio-cultural. On top of it all, the world is no longer predominantly black and white as it once was. The gray in between has gotten much bigger and it keeps on growing by the day. There was a time when the proximity of information to accuracy and truth better governed the policies and doctrines of countries and multilateral institutions. Not anymore. These days, even certain types of information once held sacred can now be subject to false narratives or outright lies. Learning from the bitter lessons of the Second World War, the United Nations Organization came to be in 1950 to rally the world together and avoid World War III. To better govern the countries of the world for global peace, the U.N. founded the universal principles of human rights for all peoples. But even the U.N today has lost its much of its effectiveness victimized by the same polarization affecting its members.
Global developments over the last five decades have favored China turning it into the world’s largest economy on purchasing power parity basis. The last decade especially has seen how rising China visibly challenged the dominance of the United States in a power struggle reminiscent of the Cold War. But whatever it does, China has been careful to execute short of outright confrontation resorting to alternative forms of diplomacy. Guriev and Treisman in their 2019 study concluded that “authoritarian regimes have over time become less reliant on violence and mass repression to maintain control. That they have increasingly resorted to manipulation of information as a means of control. And that authoritarians increasingly seek to create an appearance of good performance, conceal state repression, and imitate democracy.” (Wikipedia, accessed Nov 2023).
China is the leader of the authoritarian world and is a nuclear power. It is one of nine nuclear states as of 2023. China is currently building up its nuclear arsenal to catch up with the West. It is arguable that nuclear power may act as a deterrent to actual war or its escalation with an adversary. But since nuclear weapons proliferate, their existence does not negate the possibility of war from actually happening. “Because of the broad lethality and destructive potential of nuclear weapons”, all countries had accepted the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty except North Korea which withdrew in 2023. Countries with nuclear weapons are: “the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea. Together, these countries possess approximately 12, 512 nuclear weapons, of which 9,576 are considered potentially operational.” (SIPRI, accessed Nov 2023). According to the Pentagon, China has defied the calculated expansion pace of its nuclear arsenal and is now on its way to quadruple the size of its warheads “to 1,500 by 2035” in its bid to catch-up to the US’ “3,750 active nuclear warheads”. China’s goal under Xi is to “have a world-class military by 2049”, the first century anniversary of the Communist State. (Associated Press, 2023).
How imminent the threat is to the Asia-Pacific region and perhaps the rest of the world if war comes is partly indicated by the timetable the Chinese Communist Party under Xi is trying to follow. Indicators include the fast-tracked development of the People’s Liberation Army to give it the capability to invade Taiwan by 2027, if necessary, and become a “world-class” military by 2049 as well as increased military activity in the region. Leaving behind its previously defensive “asymmetric” stance, the PLA’s further “development” includes both conventional and nuclear components priming it ready for any confrontation, regional and or global. While China’s more than expected pace of nuclear build-up including intercontinental ballistic missiles that could reach as far as Hawaii, Alaska, and the US mainland worries Pentagon, China is likewise expanding its conventional arsenal. As reported by the Associated Press (2023), “China’s military spending for 2023 rose 7.2% to 1.58 trillion yuan ($216 billion), outpacing its economic growth”. Some of the PLA upgrades pursued by China include the Air Force’s 5th-generation J-20 fighters, H-20 and medium to long range stealth bomber developments; (Hadley, 2023); the Navy’s projected five aircraft carrier fleet by 2030 and six by 2040 three of which have already been built (Perrett, 2023); ten nuclear ballistic missile submarines by 2030 (Grady, 2022); among others.
While China expands its military arsenal, it continues to engage the world diplomatically denying any malicious intent. Defending its ongoing nuclear build-up, Beijing “accused the U.S. of ratcheting up tensions and said China was still committed to a ‘no first use’ policy on nuclear weapons”. In reaction, the U.S. said it “does not adhere to a ‘no first use’ policy” and that “nuclear weapons would be used only in ‘extreme’ circumstances”. (Associated Press, 2023). As is the problem with a nuclear arms race, the U.S. recently announced it will develop the B61-13 nuclear gravity bomb whose yield (360 kilotons) will be 24 times more powerful than the uranium bomb it dropped on Hiroshima during World War II. (Anand, 2023). The US DOD announced that “the B61-13 represents a reasonable step to manage the challenges of a highly dynamic security environment”. According to Assistant Defense Secretary John Plumb, “the announcement is reflective of a changing security environment and growing threats from potential adversaries and that the United States has a responsibility to continue to credibly deter and, if necessary, respond to strategic attacks, and assure our allies”. (US DOD, 2023). Meanwhile, on the conventional side of things “China is intensifying military, diplomatic and economic pressure not only on Taiwan but also toward all its regional neighbors to push back against what it sees as US efforts to contain its rise”. To avoid any derails to its avowed timeline, China is using lessons learned from the Russia-Ukraine War towards industrial and economic self-reliance bypassing any potential Western sanctions against it.
China’s expansion at this time in history is now plainly in sight with its actions in the South China Sea, support of Russia against Ukraine (Stent, 2023), and support of Iran which in turn supports Hamas against Israel (Myers & Frenkl, 2023). Russia and China are helping Hamas and Iran against Israel and indirectly against the US, a long-committed Israeli ally. Today’s wars are total wars whose final resort may be military confrontation but first fought economically, politically, and socio-culturally. Myers and Frenkel, investigating for the New York Times, wrote: “Putin, who met with Hamas leaders after the war began, described the wars in Ukraine and Israel as part of the same broad struggle against American global dominance.” The authors further wrote that China was “employing deceptive and coercive methods to sway global opinion behind its worldview”. “Russia and China, which have grown increasingly close in recent years, appear intent to exploit the conflict to undermine the United States as much as Israel and shape the global information environment to their advantage.” More significantly, the strategic efforts of China and Russia in this regard illustrate the extent to which authoritarian states at this point in history assert an alternative world order to the one that has been championed by the free world until recently. As Myers and Frenkel wrote: “The war has heightened concerns that an alliance of authoritarian governments has succeeded in fomenting illiberal, antidemocratic sentiment, especially in Africa, South America, and other parts of the world where accusations of American or Western colonialism or dominance find fertile soil.”
China’s Grand Strategy Towards Dislodging the United States and Instituting a New World Order
In his book “The Long Game”, Rush Doshi (2021) wrote that the grand strategy of China has been to “blunt, build, and expand” at every regional / global level and opportunity until it can match up to the world hegemon United States and dislodge it from its lone superpower status. Referenced from Chinese Communist Party texts, Party lines, guidelines, and policies, The Long Game discusses how China is way past just “hiding its capabilities” and then “building” them. It is now at the point where the Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping is convinced that China can “expand its capabilities” and effectively challenge the supremacy of the United States. China accounts for roughly a fifth of the global economy and has “overtook the United States as the world’s largest economy in 2014 on a purchasing power parity basis”. (Wikipedia, accessed Nov 2023). With great economic might comes great military power. And its priority target is Taiwan. Expansion would not mean anything to China if it fails to get Taiwan, whom it considers a renegade province, back under its wing. So, is war coming to Taiwan? By all indicators, it is only a matter of time. One thing is certain. If China invades Taiwan, it will have considered potential war with Taiwan’s regional allies like the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, the Philippines, and others.
To understand China’s current state, it is first necessary to review its history. Back in 1872, Qing Dynasty general Li Hongzhang “reflected on the groundbreaking geopolitical and technological transformations he had seen in his own life that posed an existential threat to the Qing”. Li advocated for more investment in Chinese shipbuilding and “penned a line since repeated for generations: China was experiencing ‘great changes not seen in three thousand years’”. Doshi further wrote: “that famous, sweeping statement is to many Chinese nationalists a reminder of the country’s own humiliation. Li ultimately failed to modernize China, lost a war to Japan, and signed the embarrassing Treaty of Shimonoseki with Tokyo. China’s decline was the product of the Qing Dynasty’s inability to reckon with transformative geopolitical and technological forces which changed the international balance of power and ushered in China’s ‘Century of Humiliation’. Li’s line has been repurposed by China’s leader Xi Jinping to inaugurate a new phase in China’s post-Cold War grand strategy. Since 2017, Xi has declared that the world is in the midst of ‘great changes unseen in a century’”. (Doshi, 2021, pp. 1-2)
China today sees a milestone opportunity to reverse the mistakes of its past and seize the day. “If Li’s line marks the highpoint of China’s humiliation, then Xi’s marks an occasion for its ‘rejuvenation’. If Li’s evokes tragedy, then Xi’s evokes opportunity. But both capture something essential: the idea that world order is once again at stake because of unprecedented geopolitical and technological shifts, and that this requires adjustment. For Xi, the origin of these shifts is China’s growing power and what it saw as the West’s apparent self-destruction.” (p.2). The global events which supported Xi’s position were the United Kingdom’s leaving the European Union, the populist election of Donald Trump in the United States, disorganized response to the coronavirus pandemic, and storming of the US Capitol. “Beijing believed that the world’s most powerful democracies were withdrawing from the international order they had helped erect abroad and were struggling to govern themselves at home.” (Doshi, 2021, p.2).
Doshi argues that “the core of US-China competition since the Cold War has been over regional and now global order. The argument focuses on the strategies that rising powers like China use to displace an established hegemon like the United States short of war. That a hegemon’s position in regional and global order emerges from three broad ‘forms of control’ that are used to regulate the behavior of other states: coercive capability (to force compliance), consensual inducements (to incentivize it), and legitimacy (to rightfully command it). For rising states, the act of peacefully displacing the hegemon consists of two broad strategies generally pursued in sequence. The first strategy is to blunt the hegemon’s exercise of those forms of control, particularly those extended over the rising state. The second is to build forms of control over others. Unless a rising power has first blunted the hegemon, efforts to build order are likely to be futile and easily opposed. And until a rising power has successfully conducted a good degree of blunting and building in its home region, it remains too vulnerable to the hegemon’s influence to confidently turn to a third strategy, global expansion, which pursues both blunting and building at the global level to displace the hegemon from international leadership. Together, these strategies at the regional and then global levels provide a rough means of ascent for the Chinese Communist Party’s nationalist elites, who seek to restore China to its due place and roll back the historical aberration of the West’s overwhelming global influence.” (Doshi, 2021, pp.3-4).
To better appreciate China’s ways and means, a look at the ends of Chinese regional and global order should be enlightening. The Chinese Communist Party under Xi Jinping aims to achieve what it calls its goal of “’national rejuvenation’ by the centennial of the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 2049. At the regional level, China already accounts for more than half of Asian GDP and half of all Asian military spending, which is pushing the region out of balance and toward a Chinese sphere of influence. A fully realized Chinese order might eventually involve the withdrawal of US forces from Japan and Korea, the end of American regional alliances, the effective removal of the US Navy from the Western Pacific, deference from China’s regional neighbors, unification with Taiwan, and the resolution of territorial disputes in the East and South China Seas. Chinese order would likely be more coercive than the present order, consensual in ways that primarily benefit connected elites even at the expense of voting publics, and considered legitimate mostly to those few who it directly rewards. China would deploy this order in ways that damage liberal values, with authoritarian winds blowing stronger across the region. Order abroad is often a reflection of order at home, and China’s order-building would be distinctly illiberal relative to US order-building.” (Doshi, 2021, p.4).
“At the global level, Chinese order would involve seizing the opportunities of the ‘great changes unseen in a century’ and displacing the United States as the world’s leading state. This would require successfully managing the principal risk flowing from the ‘great changes’, including Washington’s unwillingness to accept decline, by weakening the forms of control supporting American global order while strengthening those forms of control supporting a Chinese alternative. That order would span a ‘zone of super-ordinate influence’ in Asia as well as ‘partial hegemony’ in swaths of the developing world that might gradually expand to encompass the world’s industrialized centers, a vision some Chinese writers describe using Mao’s revolutionary guidance to ‘surround the cities from the countryside’. Chinese order would be anchored in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its Community of Common Destiny, creating networks of coercive capability, consensual inducement, and legitimacy.” (Doshi, 2021, p.5).
“Politically, China would project leadership over global governance and international institutions, split Western alliances, and advance autocratic norms at the expense of liberal ones. Economically, it would weaken the financial advantages that underwrite US hegemony and seize the commanding heights of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ from artificial intelligence to quantum computing, with the United States declining into a ‘deindustrialized, English-speaking version of a Latin American republic, specializing in commodities, real estate, tourism, and perhaps transnational tax evasion. Militarily, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) would field a world-class force with bases around the world that could defend China’s interests in most regions and even in new domains like space, the poles, and the deep sea. Aspects of this Chinese vision are evident in high-level speeches proving that China’s ambitions are not limited to Taiwan or to merely dominating the Indo-Pacific. The struggle for dominance, once confined to Asia, is now over the global order and its future. If there are two paths to hegemony, a regional one and a global one, China is now pursuing both.” (Doshi, 2021, p.5).
China’s perceptions of US power and threat as well as its own growing power have guided the development of Chinese grand strategy to what it has become over the years. “China’s first strategy of displacement (1989-2008) was to quietly blunt American power over China, particularly in Asia, and it emerged after the traumatic trifecta of Tiananmen Square, the Gulf War, and the Soviet collapse led Beijing to sharply increase its perception of US threat. China’s second strategy of displacement (2008-2016) sought to build the foundation for regional hegemony in Asia, and it was launched after the Global Financial Crisis led Beijing to see US power as diminished and emboldened it to take a more confident approach. Now, with the invocation of ‘great changes unseen in a century’ following Brexit, Donald Trump’s election (and divisive domestic populism), and the coronavirus pandemic, China has launched a third strategy of displacement that expands its blunting and building efforts worldwide to displace the United States as the global leader.” (Doshi, 2021, p.4).
What has China done to blunt the power of the United States? Militarily, China moved away from a ‘sea control’ strategy to a ‘sea denial’ strategy using asymmetric denial weapons like sea mines, anti-ship ballistic missiles, and submarines to undermine US military power. Politically, China reversed its previous refusal to be part of regional institutions. “It feared that multilateral organizations like Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum (ARF) might be used by Washington to build a liberal regional order or even an Asian NATO, so China joined them to blunt American power. It stalled institutional progress, wielded institutional rules to constrain US freedom of maneuver, and hoped participation would reassure wary neighbors otherwise tempted to join a US-led balancing coalition.” Economically, China protected its economy until it was strong enough to become more independent from the West. The trifecta and its aftermath laid bare before Party leaders the Chinese economy’s dependence on US markets who then worked to prevent US revocation of China’s most-favored nation (MFN) trade status.” (Doshi, 2021, pp.11-12).
After blunting American power, what has China done to build its own power. Militarily, “China shifted strategy away from a singular focus on blunting American power through sea denial to a new focus on building order through sea control. China now sought the capability to hold distant islands, safeguard sea lanes, intervene in neighboring countries, and provide public security goods. China stepped up investments in aircraft carriers, capable surface vessels, amphibious warfare, marines, and overseas bases.” Politically, “China spearheaded the launch of the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the elevation and institutionalization of the previously obscure Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA). It then used these institutions, with mixed success, as instruments to shape regional order in the economic and security domains in directions it preferred.” Economically, “the Global Financial Crisis helped Beijing depart from a defensive blunting strategy that targeted American economic leverage to an offensive building strategy designed to build China’s own coercive and consensual economic capacities. At the core of this effort were China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), its robust use of economic statecraft against its neighbors, and its attempts to gain greater financial influence.” (Doshi, 2021, pp.12-13).
“Beijing used these blunting and building strategies to constrain US influence within Asia and to build the foundations for regional hegemony. The relative success of that strategy was remarkable, but Beijing’s ambitions were not limited only to the Indo-Pacific. When Washington was again seen as stumbling, China’s grand strategy evolved – this time in a more global direction.” The Chinese Communist Party led by Xi felt it was time to go “all the way”. That it was now time to expand China’s power globally. “The Chinese Communist Party concluded that the United States was in retreat globally. ‘Great changes unseen in a century’ provided an opportunity to displace the United States as the leading global state by 2049, with the next decade deemed the most critical to this objective.” (Doshi, 2021, p.13). “Politically, Beijing is seeking to project leadership over global governance and international institutions and to advance autocratic norms. Economically, it is trying to weaken the financial advantages that underwrite US hegemony and seize the commanding heights of the ‘fourth industrial revolution’. And militarily, the People’s Liberation Army is fielding a truly global Chinese military with overseas bases around the world.” (Doshi, 2021, p.13).
A Superpower Responds: Reality Check on China and the Specter of Global Conflict
Given China’s challenge, what is the United States doing and willing to do? With everything that is unfolding, will the ongoing rivalry make the world a better place? Or worse? But before such can be discussed, there is much to be gained from history for better understanding of the present and future. Both the United States and China have lessons learned from their past histories. This is both comforting as well as worrying. It is comforting in the sense that both protagonists do have some credible ideas on how their mutually destructive confrontation will play out and so will refrain from it as much as possible. It is also worrying in the sense that both powers, given their overconfidence in their own strengths while underestimating the other’s, and glossing over their own weaknesses while hyping up the other’s, now erroneously think one can still win over the other even in the age of mutually assured destruction. The wars of the past have been won by civilizations with superior firepower and greater resources. For more than half a century, the United States has been the global power that it is because it has been the largest economy and the mightiest army. Now China is challenging the U.S. because it has a larger economy and a People’s Liberation Army that can match the U.S. military. The only real question is when. And history tells us that a rising state usually challenges a reigning state when its power is almost at par with the leading state and its window of opportunity to challenge is about to close. With everything it may lose otherwise, the Chinese Communist Party may be feeling confident that by leading the era of artificial intelligence and quantum computing, it can be at par or even defeat the United States.
It is argued, however, that militarily rising states are economically and politically declining states too. One reason gives rise to the other. And history teaches us that once powerful states beginning to feel their decline looked to other lands to conquer in order to fill in their lack at home. Used up resources that caused the domestic population to feel hunger engendered public resentment and ushered in the unpopularity of the king or leader. In such situations, patriotism suddenly becomes the leader’s political campaign motto and new foreign policy in order to defend against a hostile neighbor. But in truth, the domestic situation has become a mutually coercive motivation between the led and the leader which has now expanded into foreign territory to acquire resources much needed for domestic survival. Other psychological reasons may come into play but they are usually encouraged especially by the leader to promote need into action. They may include resurrecting an old grudge against a previous power which humiliated the local country in the past. Being called the ‘sick man of Asia’ for instance, recalling the ‘rape of Nanking’, or still feeling the massive counter-productiveness of an opium-addicted China which led to the Opium Wars with the West. There are those who say the foregoing led to the establishment of an autocracy which is the only entity capable of effectively ruling China.
What formidable lessons can the past teach us today? Lessons that can be used to deduce the future? What does China really want today? What would a world ruled by China look like? Danger Zone: The Coming Conflict with China by Hal Brands and Michael Beckley (2022) is another excellent material that credibly assesses the current situation with China providing a not-to-be ignored account of things to come in the near future. First, it identifies what China hopes to achieve that it still hasn’t. Second, the book argues that China has in fact already peaked economically and has recently become more aggressive because the only way it can sustain its current sufficiency is through foreign acquisitions. Third, China must act before it is too late and its window of opportunity closes. Fourth, what does the past tell us? And fifth, what does the future hold based upon this past and what is unfolding?
According to Brands and Beckley (p.5), the following are indispensable aims of China. First, the 90 million-member Chinese Communist Party will do everything it can to perpetually remain in power. Second, “the CCP wants to make China whole again by regaining territories lost in earlier eras of internal upheaval and foreign aggression”. China has already recovered Macau from Portugal and Hongkong from England. Now, it has its undistracted eyes on Taiwan. Accordingly, China does not entertain any ambition towards becoming the global hegemon. It only wants a world wherein it is allowed to flourish on its own without undue interference. Unfortunately, though, the world does not operate in a vacuum and reunification with now ‘independent’ Taiwan would involve the Free World.
The second point argued by the authors is the fact that “China has been experiencing, and concealing, a sharp economic slowdown. It confronts growing political pathologies, worsening resource shortfalls, and an epic demographic catastrophe.” China’s capital-output ratio “has tripled since 2007”, has become the “world’s largest importer of agricultural products” in 2011, imports “75 percent of its oil and 45 percent of its natural gas”, with Xinhua reporting in 2014 that “China’s arable land was suffering degradation from overuse” and “20 percent” of it destroyed from pollution. (Brands & Beckley, 2022, pp.36-38). “China’s official gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate dropped from 15 percent in 2007 to 6 percent in 2019”. (Brands & Beckley, 2022, p.43). This was even made worse by the ill-effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The unreliability of China’s current ‘official’ economic performance is due in large part to the CCP’s ‘dictating’ of numbers and “pumping capital through the economy”. In reality, it is more likely that the Chinese economy has ceased to grow. China too is now suffering from the ill-effects of its drastic “one child policy” which condemns the country to a dwindled workforce in its prime while looking to care for a larger elderly population. Chinese demography also lacks a significant child-bearing feminine population due to the traditional preference for boys relative to the one-child policy. (Brands & Beckley, 2022, pp.35-36).
Thirdly, the authors argue that China is in fact now trying to act before it is too late and its window of opportunity closes. ‘Rejuvenation’ literally is what Xi Jinping has set out to do during his reign in power. From the ascension to power of the communists in 1949 until China became a U.S. ‘ally’ thanks to the Cold War with the USSR, the CCP was on a ‘strategic defensive’ largely being isolationist under Mao Zedong which did not work towards advancing China in the world. Then, from President Nixon’s 1972 visit with Mao in China in 1972 through Clinton’s 1990s Globalization inclusive of China and up to Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2012, it can be said that the Party went on a ‘strategic stalemate’ mode with the U.S. This was the period when China really developed but ‘hid its capabilities and bided its time’ so as not to attract undue attention from the West while it got itself stronger. Seeing the Soviet Party’s weakened adherence to unflinching strength, Deng Xiaoping did much to make the CCP view partnership with the West a growing threat even as China greatly benefited from its economic partnership with it. The world events discussed earlier convinced the CCP that it was on a non-reversible trajectory towards its destiny for survival and prove to the world that socialism has as much a right as democracy to exist in the world.
The rise of Xi Jinping in 2012 signals the point in history when the CCP decided it was time to march on the ‘strategic offensive’ to claim China’s destiny. China has already fully developed and plateaued economically. Even this is not enough as China has more than a billion mouths to feed. With dwindling resources, China has to look to other places to source fresh resources and safeguard the supply chain. A ‘renegade province’ has significant technological resources. The South China Sea is a wealth of resources that includes marine, oil, gas, and mineral deposits. But much of the sea is foreign territory governed by international law through the UNCLOS. The only way China can get its way to access resources in areas governed by international law is by force. And China has in fact done so. With its economic might, China has developed the PLA into a world-class military safeguarding the passage of Chinese supply chains through essential trade routes with the construction of military bases in BRI countries. A great power whose domestic survival is on the decline but has great military power can use that power for the continued survival of its people and to defend its way of life. When it sees its antagonists weakened by decay and turmoil, that great power will feel compelled to act before that rare window of opportunity pitting its optimal strength against its enemy’s optimal weakness is gone forever. By all evidence, China is now on the ‘strategic offensive’ (expansion) phase of its grand strategy.
Fourth, what does the learning curve of the past tell us about the fate of great powers? The past tells us that great powers are either rising or falling. But truth is that this rising or falling can also occur at the same time. And they did. In 1914, Kaiser Wilhelm II of Prussia worried that the German Empire (1871-1914) was being threatened by Russia in the east and France in the west. His chief of the General Staff, Helmuth von Moltke, urged him to “strike to defeat the enemy while we still stand a chance of victory even if that meant provoking a war in the near future”. (Brands & Beckley, 2022, p.80). Rising power Athens threatened established power Sparta in the Great Peloponnesian War from 431 to 405 BC. Thucydides chronicled the war and became the “father of the international relations canon”. His enduring “power transition theory holds that war is likely when a rising country threatens to overtake an established country. As the challenger grows stronger, it destabilizes the existing system. It provokes tests of strength with the reigning power. The outcome is a spiral of hostility.” A political scientist wrote that “war is most likely during the periods when the power capabilities of a rising and dissatisfied challenger begin to approach those of the leading state”. In 2015, Harvard’s Graham Allison argued that “throughout history, power transitions have led to war”. This assessment is particularly acute because China will soon be “the biggest player in the history of the world”. The “Thucydides Trap” has in fact been cited by Xi Jinping “in calling on America to accept Chinese primacy in Asia and beyond”. (Brands & Beckley, 2022, p.82). Asian power Japan was relatively democratic in the early 20th century until it became totalitarian leading up to its aggression in World War II due to economic depression and domestic troubles. “Tokyo’s answer was fascism at home and violence abroad. It outlawed dissent, jailed critics, and built a police state.” Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and from there proceeded to grab swaths of China. It sought to create a “New Order” in Asia where “all roads led to Tokyo”. (Brands & Beckley, 2022, pp.96-99). When we are reminded of the past, we suddenly remember how easily it can be the future again. But only with different players this time.
Finally, what kind of future can we expect from the current rivalry between China and the United States? As Brands and Beckley pointed out, “the rupture in U.S.-China relations came only in 2017” when “Donald Trump shattered the engagement paradigm and ushered in full-spectrum competition”. In December of that year, the U.S. “National Security Strategy described China as an international outlaw that was reshaping the world in ways antithetical to U.S. Values and interests”. The Secretary of State “called for a global alliance of democracies to keep China in its proper place”. It was the “most dramatic change in U.S.-China relations since Nixon visited Beijing”. Policy actions followed. “A significant bump in defense spending allowed the Pentagon to initiate its largest naval and missile expansion in a generation.” Other actions against included punitive tariffs, investment and technological restrictions seeking to cripple Huawei “and turn the world away from Chinese 5G providers, creation of the International Development Finance Corporation, a $60 billion answer to BRI (and AIIB), while the FBI was unleashed to go after China’s pervasive espionage and influence campaigns.” (Brands & Beckley, 2022, pp.63-64). Counteractions spread to all other areas of the American bureaucracy. Sanctions were imposed on CCP officials responsible for the destruction of Hong Kong’s political freedoms in 2019-2020. “The State Department declared that China’s program of mass incarceration, forced sterilization, and systematic abuse of the Uighur population amounted to genocide. The U.S. Navy ramped up its freedom of navigation operations (along with western allies) to challenge China’s claims in the South China Sea; arms sales and military support to vulnerable states increased.” (Brands & Beckley, 2022, p.64).
Under Biden, the U.S. has continued the containment of China with even more pointed urgency across all fronts. “The Pentagon formed an emergency China task force charged with sprinting toward better solutions for countering the PLA’s buildup, as U.S. officials sought to rally allies for a potential defense of Taiwan.” (Brands & Beckley, 2022, p.65). Biden upheld most of Trump’s “sanctions on China, while proposing a $50 billion effort to boost the American semiconductor industry; he began kicking Chinese firms with ties to the PLA and CCP intelligence organs out of U.S. capital markets.” (Brands & Beckley, 2022, p.66). Washington cut Beijing out of key scientific research supply chains. “Biden also threw down the ideological gauntlet, declaring that an epochal struggle between democracy and authoritarianism was under way. Washington must link arms with fellow democracies – on tech, trade, defense, and other issues – to defeat Beijing’s repressive model.” (Brands & Beckley, p.66). As one observer put it, “it seems that a whole-of-government and whole-of-society campaign is being waged to bring China down”. (Brands & Beckley, p.66).
China is of course aware of Washington’s displeasure and counteractions. CCP officials themselves admitted that “the CCP had made itself the primary target of a global superpower” and that “a united front has formed in the United States”. (Brands & Beckley, 2022, p.66). “And just as the U.S. turn toward China opened so many doors from the 1970s onward, the U.S. turn away from China has helped to close them. Countries that have benefited from the American world order are starting to understand the risks of a system run by Beijing. Almost everywhere China is pushing for advantage, a growing cast of rivals is pushing back.” (Brands & Beckley, p.66). This cast (and counting) now include Taiwan of course, Japan, Vietnam, Indonesia, the Philippines, India, Australia, South Korea, Malaysia, and other countries who are either claimants of disputed territories in the South China Sea or trading countries opposed to China’s unilaterally imposed Ten-Dash Line over international freedom of navigation in the high seas.
China’s National Security Strategy is telling at the very least. First, the Strategy “integrates security into every domain and every process of national development. All other issues – economic development, technological innovation, environmental policy – are adjuncts to the prime directive of keeping the party in power. As a result, every issue is a matter of national security. A trade war is no longer just an economic disagreement; it is an assault on China’s comprehensive national power and a possible prelude to a shooting war. This securitization of policy-making is dangerous, because it elevates every concern to the level of a vital national interest and justifies extreme responses. If a competing power tries to hurt China’s economy, for example, all options are on the table, including military retaliation. Second, China’s strategy embraces preventive solutions. The new policy focuses on ‘preventing and controlling’ threats before they metastasize. Chinese documents compare national security threats to cancerous tumors that need to be cut out quickly before they spread to vital organs of the state. Rival ideologies, such as liberalism, (Christianity), and Islamism, are infectious diseases against which China’s population must be immunized. The clearest illustration is in Xinjiang, where China has extrajudicially locked up more than 1 million Uighurs in (present-day) concentration camps.” (Brands & Beckley, 2022, pp.108-109).
China’s democracy prevention involves under-handed strategy and tactics designed to undermine the prevailing order to advance authoritarianism. “Beijing now spends billions of dollars annually on an ‘anti-democratic toolkit’ of NGOs, media outlets, diplomats, advisers, hackers, and bribes all designed to prop up autocrats and sow discord in democracies.” (Brands & Beckley, 2022, p.119).” “Beijing’s success in taking leadership positions in major international organizations (like the United Nations) now allows it to turn organs of the liberal order into tools of anti-democratic influence.” (Brands & Beckley, p.120). China is embarking to make AI and quantum computing effective tools of authoritarianism particularly in efficiently controlling their populations. Just imagine what the CCP can do with the “data-collection and messaging power of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Twitter” when these are combined with “big data, and cyber, biometric, and speech- and facial-recognition technologies that will allow dictators to know everything about their subjects.” (Brands & Beckley, p.121). “Needless to say, these technologies are a tyrant’s dream. Chinese companies were already selling and operating surveillance systems in more than 80 countries as of 2020. As the CCP feels increasingly threatened at home and abroad, there is every reason to expect Beijing to export digital authoritarianism farther and wider. Digital authoritarianism is creeping into the heart of the liberal world. The use of digital tools to manipulate public opinion, demonize opponents, and mobilize violent mobs of supporters is just as alluring for someone seeking power in a democracy as it is for a dictator.” (Brands & Beckley, pp.123-124).
To those of us who think that China has not been capable of actual external aggression throughout its history, the following contradicts that. “When cornered by rivals, China does not wait to be attacked. Instead, it usually shoots first to gain tactical advantage before its strategic situation gets even worse. In late 1950, waves of Chinese soldiers attacked U.S. forces in Korea for fear that the Americans would conquer North Korea and build military bases there. China suffered almost a million casualties but to this day celebrates its defense of North Korea as a glorious victory. In 1962, the PLA attacked Indian forces, ostensibly because they built outposts in Chinese-claimed territory in the Himalayas, but really because China felt it was being encircled by the Indians, Americans, Soviets, and Chinese Nationalists. Fearing invasion, China ambushed Soviet forces on their shared border in 1969.” (Brands & Beckley, 2022, pp.126-127). China attacked Soviet-allied Vietnam over Cambodia in 1979. It had another shooting incident with India in the Himalayas in 2020. China eyes Japan, its historical enemy, over the Senkaku Islands and other issues.
China sees the Philippines as a ‘juicy’ target which “meets all the criteria of a perfect enemy”. The Philippines is militarily weak. Although it won its case over China with the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016, China declared that it cannot be bound “by the rulings of a ‘puppet’ court half a world away”. (Brands & Beckley, 2022, p.128). By building right within the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone, China has backed up this declaration with defiant action. It really did so more for the country’s strategic value to Chinese imperial ambition. Now, China has access to resource-rich West Philippine Sea as well as bases to cover its BRI trade routes and soon project its expanded power unimpeded. “And while Washington has pledged to defend Filipino possessions in the South China Sea, Beijing might not believe it. ‘Would you go to war over Scarborough Shoals?’ the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was overheard saying in 2016. Still, “if China bludgeoned Filipino forces, it would force the United States into a very tough choice: defend an ambivalent ally over its territorial claims or stand aside as China makes a mockery of international law, expands its control of the South China Sea, and wrecks the credibility of U.S. allied commitments in Asia.” (Brands & Beckley, p.129).
“As bad as those scenarios are, they pale in comparison to what is likely to be the main event of a Chinese revanchist campaign: the conquest of Taiwan. Grabbing Taiwan is China’s top foreign policy goal, and preparations to reclaim the island reportedly consume roughly one-third of the PLA’s budget. If China subdued Taiwan, it would gain access to its world-class semiconductor industry and free up dozens of ships, hundreds of missile launchers and combat aircraft, and billions of defense dollars to wreak havoc farther afield. China could use Taiwan as an ‘unsinkable aircraft carrier’ to project power into the Pacific, blockade Japan and the Philippines, and fracture U.S. alliances in East Asia. Not least, successful aggression would eliminate the world’s only Chinese democracy, removing a persistent threat to the CCP’s legitimacy. Taiwan is the center of gravity in East Asia – and the epitome of a place where China’s leaders might think that near-term aggression could radically improve their country’s long-term trajectory vis-à-vis the United States.” (Brands & Beckley, 2022, pp.129-130).
“To close China’s near-term window of opportunity, the United States and Taiwan will have to move rapidly. First, the Pentagon can dramatically raise the costs of a Chinese invasion by turning the international waters of the Taiwan Strait into a death trap for attacking forces using hordes of missile launchers, armed drones, electronic jammers, smart mines, and sensors at sea and on allied territory near the strait. Second, America cannot win the fight unless it stays in the fight, and that means rapidly dispersing and hardening America’s bases, communications, and logistics networks in East Asia. Third, Washington needs to help Taiwan help itself. Fourth, the United States needs to reduce its geographic disadvantage – and buy time for these other measures to take effect – by boosting its military presence near, and even on, Taiwan. Fifth, America should develop the ability to disrupt China’s military communications systems. Finally, the United States needs to make China realize that a Taiwan war could go big as well as long (which can drag on for months or years). The more allies and partners America can bring into the fight, the less appetizing that fight will look to Beijing. (Brands & Beckley, 2022, pp.178- 183).
Conclusion
This paper has argued that China is no longer the sleeping giant of Asia. China may have struggled economically following the ascension of the Communist Party since 1949. But it has since 1972 gradually risen to become the most dominant economic power today thanks to the United States, the same superpower it now rivals and tries to dethrone. There is no room for doubt as to the global ambitions of China. At least half of the world may just as well begin getting used to an alternate global order ruled by China which has become the undisputed leader of the authoritarian world. Those countries which do not align with the emerging alternate world order will have to cast their lot with the reigning liberal order championed by the United States. There could be war in the near future if resulting clashes between these two powerful orders are not contained. Already, it seems an impossibility to see two world orders existing side by side. The onset of radical technologies interconnecting all spheres of life on the planet has practically dissipated all possibilities of isolation.
But before any shooting war can occur, there is still much that can be done by the United States to prevent direct military confrontation with China which could provoke World War III. Rush Doshi has proposed that “an asymmetric approach can be quite effective in blunting a rival’s hegemonic ambitions – and this approach will be even more effective when wielded by a still quite powerful United States. Building order is extremely difficult, and frustrating the effort to build is far less challenging. The logic of such an approach is relatively straightforward: to undermine China’s hegemonic ambitions at a lower cost than what China incurs in trying to advance them. Similarly, with respect to building, the goal is to rebuild US order – including its forms of control over China.” (Doshi, 2021, pp.315-316). As China blunted, built, and expanded at the expense of the U.S. across all spheres, Doshi wrote that the U.S. can now do the same to China. For their part, Brands and Beckley add that the U.S. and liberal powers must check China’s imperialism in the digital age; “safeguard democratic systems by actively weakening an opponent’s ability to damage them”; prepare for a long war with China; nurture U.S.-NATO relations; save Taiwan; and smartly play the danger zone strategy to avoid and not provoke war as much as possible.” (Brands & Beckley, 2022, pp.162-191). Time to accomplish all these in order for one to be on top of the other is now apparently of the essence. The superpower race is essentially on and political analysts assess the decade of the 2020s to be critical.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Dencio Severo Acop served in the Armed Forces of the Philippines for close to 30 years. A member of West Point’s Class of 1983, he is a decorated soldier-scholar winning the Distinguished Conduct and Service Stars and the Presidential Medal of Merit. Colonel Acop is among the pioneers of the elite ranger battalion, the Special Action Force. Highly educated, he sat in the Cabinet Cluster E (Defense and Security) of President Fidel Ramos as a young officer. The author is a certified protection professional, volunteer leader, published author, seasoned academic, and long-time public servant.