An Insider's Guide to Washington's China War

Lee's article is at once too optimistic and too pessimistic. Too pessimistic because it ignores the fact that China is struggling with its own image and values; to use the metaphor Barbara Tuchman once used about Imperial Japan, it is undergoing a struggle between the fat totalitarian on the outside and the thin liberal man inside him who is trying to get out. As China grows the Party will have to make concession after concession to the popular will. Yes, it may become a little too populist but it is unlikely to thwart ever again resemble the totalitarian giant it once was. China is not Burma. China isn't even China, circa 1970. Its rulers will be able to stay in power only as long as they i.) deliver economic growth, and ii.) are broadly representative of the popular will. The fact that China is no longer an isolated, impoverished country with little to lose (as Mao once said) in a nuclear war is due to some farsighted leaders in both the West and in China; all of whom were pretty clearly in the "functionalist" camp.

However, the article was too optimistic in that it presumes a continued and, apparently, never ending increase in China's economic strength and clout. This cannot continue indefinitely, and may not even continue much longer. For the same problems mentioned in the article -- the corporate/cronyist capitalist model that China has created -- will prevent the society from developing into a world-beating juggernaught. Even if the economic and political systems of China can continue to evolve with the times, the country's massive demographic problems -- an aging population, huge imbalances between men and women, the coasts and the interior, dwarf those of any 'rich' Western nation and are likely to prevent China from being anything more than a very large, middle-income country. As its export-led growth nears its limit, China will start to look more and more like a larger, poorer version of Japan. Still, being a regional power, along with India and Japan, isn't such a bad thing, and should (hopefully) force the government to focus on China's own internal issues rather than expending its energy on increasing its regional influence. China has 5,000 of internally-focused history; there is little reason to doubt that that is going to change now.

Accordingly, a continued 'functionalist' dialogue would seem to be in the long term best interests of all the parties involved, the US, China, and importantly, the other Asian nations.

Yes, China’s strategic ambitions in Asia, if they are of the nature that the strategists fear, should be checked. Yes, China should be integrated into Asia’s system of alliances. Balance of power dynamics are still operating in the region, so the G2 process might undermine that system. But how exactly it would do so is left unclear in this article – is the argument that cooperating with China would give them something to coerce the US with, thereby eroding or at least constraining the U.S.’s leverage over it? I’m not convinced that regional security integration and bilateral cooperation are necessarily in conflict.

Second, non-economic discussions ARE necessary. This article completely fails to mention the other big agenda article at the S&ED – climate and energy. The Hudson institute may be keen on minimizing or ignoring the climate crisis, but the crisis sure isn’t ignoring our future.
Fortunately, both countries understand the dire security implications of climate change, the narrowing window of opportunity to act (to call climate change a long-term problem is deeply misleading when we have less than 5 years to turn things around), and, hopefully, the colossal magnitude of joint action - and yes, cooperation - that is needed to avoid the worst.

It doesn’t matter who’s absolute, historical, or per-capita greenhouse emissions are bigger – both have to plummet in the next 15 years or we’re screwed. China and the US aren’t the only key players, but they are the essential players. Exchanging views, building trust and contacts, and developing policies between the two countries is absolutely critical to confronting this colossal environmental, economic, and security challenge.

The security consequences of inaction are much greater than those of increasing regional tensions if the US privileges the bilateral relationship (to the extent that this actually happens.) Any article that analyzes US-China relations outside of the climate context is being deeply incomplete and irresponsible.

An important, and much-neglected point, is that many of the "functionalists" are engaged in or involved with businesses that do business with China. In the Obama Administration, a number of key officials come out of such backgrounds (not to pick on Obama, it is a problem with our foreign policy class and China).

It is interesting that Lee calls for China to be enmeshed in a regional framework, but omits Taiwan, which Japan, especially on the Right, is coming to see as important to its security. A couple of months ago Japan reminded the KMT government here that Taiwan's status is undetermined, which caused much consternation in Taipei, where the government is rushing to annex the island to China at a breakneck pace. China can hardly be "enmeshed" without the island.

China, on the other hand, is way ahead on enmeshment, especially of India, with a string of bases and agreements and deepening involvement in Sri Lanka and elsewhere, as well as a ridiculous and aggressive claim to the entire Indian state of Arunchal Pradesh.

With China's rise, the giant shove into China's grasp that the US is giving Taiwan will appear to future historians like the compounded failure of both missed opportunity and betrayal.

Michael Turton
The View from Taiwan