The China Nightmare

Dan Blumenthal

Description

This is a book about China's grand strategy and its future as an ambitious, declining, and dangerous rival power. Once the darling of U.S. statesmen, corporate elites, and academics, the People's Republic of China has evolved into America's most challenging strategic competitor. Its future appears increasingly dystopian. This book tells the story of how China got to this place and analyzes where it will go next and what that will mean for the future of U.S. strategy. The China Nightmare makes an extraordinarily compelling case that China's future could be dark and the free world must prepare accordingly.

Sujets

• Political Science
• Asia-Pacific
• Asian
• World
• China

Informations

• Publié par: AEI Press
• Date de parution: 28 octobre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780844750323
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE CHINA NIGHTMARE
The Grand Ambitions of a Decaying State
DAN BLUMENTHAL
T HE AEI P RESS

Publisher for the American Enterprise Institute Washington, DC
ISBN-13: 978-0-8447-5030-9 (Hardback)
ISBN-13: 978-0-8447-5032-3 (eBook)
© 2020 by the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without permission in writing from the American Enterprise Institute except in the case of brief quotations embodied in news articles, critical articles, or reviews. The views expressed in the publications of the American Enterprise Institute are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the staff, advisory panels, officers, or trustees of AEI.
American Enterprise Institute
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Printed in the United States of America
Contents Cover Title Copyright Contents Introduction 1. Big Ambitions 2. Why Global Centrality? 3. Deng’s National Rejuvenation 4. Closing the Curtain 5. Recentralization of Dictatorship 6. Expansion 7. Weak Points 8. Implications for America Afterword: The China Nightmare and COVID-19 Acknowledgments About the Author Notes
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Guide Cover Title Copyright Contents Start of Content Afterword: The China Nightmare and COVID-19 Acknowledgments About the Author Notes
Introduction
The geopolitics of the 21st century will be defined by an intensifying strategic rivalry between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the United States over the future of the world order. The PRC’s ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has considered the US its main rival since the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union soon after. Since then, CCP leaders have felt besieged from within and without and have come to view the United States as the source of their troubles.
At least for now, Beijing does not seek war or conflict with Washington. Rather, it seeks to undermine the pillars of US strategy and foreign policy, especially Washington’s preeminent position of power and influence in East Asia. Interested observers can understand China’s attitude toward the US by viewing a map of East Asia from Beijing’s perspective ( Figure 1 ).
The CCP sees China’s geostrategic position as weak and unsustainable. With only one coastline, which is home to the bulk of Chinese economic activity and its major trading ports, China’s leaders feel surrounded and vulnerable to US and allied forces stationed in Japan and South Korea. They also feel threatened by US security partnerships with the Philippines, Singapore, and, increasingly, Vietnam. Of course, Washington and its allies view things differently; they believe that forward-deployed US military forces, diplomatic and economic leadership, and the American-led alliance system have kept Asia peaceful and set the conditions for the region’s prosperity.
These dueling perceptions and, more importantly, conflicting goals are not the result of misunderstandings. Indeed, the two countries understand each other well. Rather, the two have fundamentally different national interests. The US seeks to retain its position as the prime power in Asia through this continued diplomatic and defense posture so that it can help the region become even more free and open. Beijing wants to carve out an authoritarian sphere of influence that it can control, making Asia repressive and closed.
Figure 1. China’s Ports and Maritime Approaches and the US Alliance System

Source: Shiphub, “Top 9 Ports in China,” September 30, 2019, https://www.shiphub.co/the-biggest-ports-in-china/ ; and Felix K. Chang, “Sideways: America’s Pivot and Its Military Bases in the Asia-Pacific,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, April 16, 2013, https://www.fpri.org/article/2013/04/sideways-americas-pivot-and-its-military-bases-in-the-asia-pacific/ .
To this end, Beijing is also obsessed with national “reunification,” which more precisely means regaining most of the “lost” territory that the Qing dynasty once held. The CCP has convinced itself that it cannot achieve national greatness or establish its sphere of influence without regaining these territories. In the early years of Mao Zedong, the CCP reestablished control over most of the territories conquered by the Qing dynasty. Now, it is working to solidify its control of Hong Kong and annex Taiwan, the last major “holdouts.”
Chairman Xi
In November 2012, just days after the conclusion of the 18th CCP Congress, then newly minted General Secretary Xi Jinping made a speech that touched on his desire for China to achieve “the great renewal of the Chinese nation.” 1 In his speech, Xi emphasized that for 5,000 years China has been a great nation, but in modern times it has endured great hardships. Many have tried before the CCP to renew China and bring it back to its central position in world affairs. In Xi’s narrative, where other Chinese patriots have failed, the CCP is succeeding. CCP leaders have long been animated by the idea that China’s division and weakness after reaching a geopolitical peak in the early 19th century were historical aberrations that will be reversed.
As this book shows, China was the sun around which countries in Asia revolved. While many Chinese empires dominated East Asia, this book focuses on the modern era starting when the Qing ruled. The Qing emperors not only reestablished the Sino-centric tribute system created by their predecessors in the Ming dynasty but also conquered more territory than any other regime in Chinese history. They marched westward to forcefully deal once and for all with the threats posed by the Mongols and other nomadic tribes. Their “bravery and wisdom,” along with the work of dynasties before them, resulted in what Xi called “a beautiful homeland where all ethnic groups live in harmony.” 2
Today, the CCP still rules over the land the Qing conquered, which is home to many ethnic groups throughout the Chinese heartland and in Tibet and Xinjiang. But they are not “living in harmony”; the CCP is harshly repressing them. Xi did not mention in his speech that the PRC is heir to a multiethnic empire and that the “national renewal” he seeks requires even harsher measures to hold this empire together and “reunify” with other once-imperial territories.
The China scholar Lucian Pye observed that China is “a civilization pretending to be a nation-state.” 3 More precisely, contemporary China is an empire pretending to be a nation-state, run by a Marxist-Leninist CCP regime. It is, in short, a Leninist imperium.
Until the 21st century, the CCP was content to limit the edges of its empire to China’s “near abroad.” Beijing focused its energies on controlling Xinjiang and Tibet, regaining Hong Kong, preventing Taiwan from being recognized as a country, and resisting perceived US interference in its affairs.
Increasingly, though, the CCP is acting on broader global ambitions. The Sino-American rivalry is no longer confined to the Indo-Pacific. Beijing considers the current global order, created and dominated by US power and influence, highly threatening to the CCP’s survival.
While China embraced elements of an open economic system starting in 1979 and went along with many of the rules and norms set by the West, it is now strong enough to attempt to change the rules to its liking. Xi envisions China moving more forcefully back to geopolitical centrality. This, in his view, is China’s natural place in the world. It is, after all, called the “Middle Kingdom.”
Now China’s rulers are seeking to make their power felt farther afield. They want to influence the decisions of all East Asian nations and shape a new world order. For over a decade, the CCP has been trying to gain effective control over the South China Sea and the East China Sea, two of the world’s most important waterways. China has developed relationships in Central Asia, the Middle East, and Africa to secure energy supplies. It has aggressively attempted to make good on territorial claims along its border with India. And it has dramatically strengthened relations with Russia.
On October 18, 2017, Xi delivered his “work report” to the 19th CCP Congress in Beijing. This was a seminal document, a coming-out for China under a new type of leader who felt confident enough in his domination of Chinese politics to speak assuredly about China’s global ambitions. National-level CCP Congress work reports are released to great fanfare. The 2,280 elite delegates who gathered in the Great Hall of the People to mark the 19th Congress were greeted by a stunning three-and-a-half-hour speech by CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping.
During his speech, Xi boldly announced his global ambitions. The world, he reported, was entering inexorably into a new era, one in which China has become strong and rich. Xi’s vision now that China is powerful is that Beijing will offer “a new option for other countries . . . and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind.” 4
For China to be able to do so, to offer something different from the current world order, the Chinese people must “strive with one heart to realize the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation. It will be an era that sees China moving closer to center stage.” 5
Xi further explained his vision during the Central Conference