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Why Does the U.S. Get All the Tornadoes?
Posted By Daniel Blumenthal
Thursday, October 21, 2010 - 4:07 PM
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How can we make sense of a People's Republic of China that is supposed to be, in the words of Deng Xiaoping, "biding its time and hiding its capabilities," but in fact is picking fights with most of its neighbors, including the United States? The Chinese were supposed to be using their deep reservoirs of "soft power" and practicing a highly skilled diplomacy aimed at assuring all that China is rising peacefully. But over the past year, Beijing has been rather more clumsy than the caricature of Chinese cleverness might suggest. China has in effect declared the entire South China Sea -- a body of water that is of critical importance for its abundance of natural resources and for its position as the maritime connection between the Indian and Pacific Oceans -- to be its territorial water.
Needless to say, this has not gone over well with Vietnam and other Southeast Asian nations. And, just when it appeared that China would return to a lighter touch in the face of strong U.S. resistance to its South China Sea claims, Beijing bullied and coerced Japan into circumventing its legal processes after a Chinese fishing trawler rammed Japanese ships in the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu island chains. In sum, China's exercise of power has been more hard than soft. Beijing seems to be neither "biding its time" nor rising peacefully.
A recent book helps explain how PRC leaders think about the world and what may lead China to engage in the behavior we and our allies find offensive. In The Mind of Empire China's History and Foreign Relations, Christopher Ford makes a persuasive case for hardwired cultural conditioning as an explanation for China's imperious behavior. China possesses, well, the mind of an empire. According to Ford, Chinese history has no precedent for stable coexistence among sovereign equals. Moreover, struggle over primacy within China and later with other states is a fairly continuous characteristic of Chinese history. Here is Ford:
The Chinese tradition has as its primary model of interstate relations a system in which the focus of national policy is in effect a struggle for primacy and legitimate stable order is possible when one power reigns supreme-by direct bureaucratic control of the Sinic geographic core and by at least tributary relationships with all other participants in the world system.
According to Ford, China has an enduring sense of global order. Beijing assumes that the "natural order" of the political world is hierarchical and the idea of truly separate and independent states is illegitimate.
But wait, some might argue, what about China's embrace -- if not sanctification -- of the Western construct of international relations: Non-interference in the affairs of other sovereign states? If China's natural place is atop a Sino-centric hierarchy, and other sovereign states are lesser entities that should pay deference to China, then why use the histrionic defense of Westphalian norms which codifies equal status among states?
According to Ford, as well as China scholars Jacqueline Newmyer and Michael Pillsbury, the answer may lie in Chinese strategists' cultural conditioning: Many Chinese strategic elites analogize this period in international politics to the Warring States Period. According to Newmyer, the Warring States Period was "a militarized age when roughly seven small kingdoms vied for ascendancy over the territory now considered China's Han core, before the state of Qin emerged victorious, unified China, and launched the dynastic era that lasted into the twentieth century."
During this period of Chinese history, roughly coequal sovereigns competed for primacy until, as Ford says, "a just and moral unitary Confucian state" dominated for two millennia and established the correct pattern of hierarchical relations with China's neighbors.
This period of Chinese history is not simply a matter of academic interest. According to Newmyer, Deng Xiaoping sparked a renaissance in the study of this period among China's strategic elites. According to Pillsbury, the People's Liberation Army studies this period to learn how to approach the contemporary period of international politics.
Thus, it could be that the current sanctification of Westphalian norms in China's foreign policy is merely a useful instrument in what Chinese strategists view as the competitive struggle for political hegemony ongoing today. Sovereign equality is accepted as a reality, at least for now, until China can establish a political order more in line with the Sino-centric hierarchy it naturally prefers. The concept of "non-interference" and respect for sovereignty is a useful way for Beijing to defend the territory China already controls and that which China claims.
In a competitive international setting, China would be highly attentive to the slightest adjustment in the distribution of power among states. The proximate cause of China's expansive South China Sea claims may have been a judgment that the current hegemon -- the United States -- was reeling from the financial crisis and distracted by two wars. The weakness of the strongest state in the system presented an opportunity for China to make its claim on the South China Sea more public and coerce the lesser "tributary" states along its periphery to accept Beijing's diktat.
The strong counter-reaction by Secretaries Clinton and Gates took the Chinese by surprise and left Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi stunned and furious. But precisely in his moment of fury, Foreign Minister Yang had much to reveal about how the Chinese elite think. In Yang's view, Secretary Clinton was "attacking China." And as Yang said, "China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact." This reaction makes a great deal of sense when seen through the prism of China's world view as explained by Ford, Newymer and Pillsbury. First, Beijing sees itself as in an intensive competition for primacy that parallels the Warring States Period. U.S. attempts to stand up for its interests and allies are not taken at face value, they are "attacks" on China. Second, the natural order of things is that the "small countries" must accept China's superior position. In Beijing's view, accepting your natural place in the hierarchy is not just a matter of power politics in the classical realist sense, it is right, proper, and the only way to establish a stable order.
When the Senkaku/Diaoyu issue heated up again, China was no less brazen. It cancelled diplomatic meetings with the Japanese, cut off the export of rare earth materials upon which Japan depends, and demanded an apology after Japan gave in to Chinese demands. If one analyzes China's behavior in accordance with its strategic traditions, once again Beijing's behavior makes sense. First, in China's view, the island chain is part of China -- China cannot be whole or strong again unless it retains absolute control over all of once dynastic China. Second, Japan -- a country that for centuries was supposed to be, and indeed was, a lesser state -- grew stronger than China in the late 19th century. It also visited upon China humiliating defeats in war that led to abuses of Chinese citizens and the loss of dynastic territory. China will never be satisfied that the natural order has been restored until Japan accepts China's superiority and apologizes for its past. And a policy of apology and redemption along the lines of modern Germany will not suffice: Japan must come to China as a supplicant, a child who wronged his parents.
Ford's analysis of China's "mind of empire" explains quite a bit about China's behavior. But of course no one book can cover China's foreign relations in all its complexities. While strategic culture matters, there are other motivations for China's policy such as resource needs, an absence of any legitimating idea of governance, and the push and pull of power politics within the international system.
But policymakers must also take seriously the Chinese cognitive prism. American policy toward China must seem very odd within the halls of Zhongnanhai. Since President Nixon, Washington has invited China into the "family nations" -- the current formulation is an invitation to be a "responsible stakeholder" in the international system. But this system is ill-defined. The irony is that just when the Chinese found some use for Western international law, the West was abandoning the sanctity of the Treaty of Westphalia (see Kosovo, Darfur, Iraq).
An even deeper problem is that from a Chinese perspective, the only international system that makes any sense is the one China is working to restore: A Sino-centric one in which (once China finishes its project of growing strong and unifying China again by reclaiming all "lost" territories) it can establish a just, moral and unitary Chinese order. Within that order, non-Chinese people will have to pay the proper respect and deference to the Middle Kingdom.
The problem for Beijing is that no one outside of China has much use for that kind of international system. The West (the democracies of the world) is quite satisfied with the current liberal order. The key American foreign policy task of the 21st century, then, is to better explicate, legitimate, and defend that order at a time when it is under tremendous pressure from China. A strong defense of the Western system will help avoid the tensions we have seen over the past year. Chinese leaders must see that power is not shifting, that the U.S. means to protect the world order it created, and that attempting to change it would lead China once again to ruin.
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images
Let's start another cold or hot war
This article is just another war propaganda served to Washington's taste. Many views of this article is pre-Washington and aganist China. I don't have to rebute each one of them but the very last one.
"Chinese leaders must see that power is not shifting, that the U.S. means to protect the world order it created, and that attempting to change it would lead China once again to ruin."
First off, it is not the Chinese leaders, but the Chinese people who want to fight for their existance. Secondly, not every kindgom or dynasty will last forever. The US dynasty will of course try to keep its power and the order it created. China of course will try to keep all the lands and seas it feels it shall own. It may lead China once again to ruin, so be it.
There may be another outcome from this fight. It may lead the US to ruin. Remember, no dynasty will last forever. Let's wait and see, I bid my money on China's side and time is also on China's side.
Yes, there are cycles in the world, but they are far from inevitable or uniform. You seem to be endorsing a needlessly fatalistic view of the world. Historical "Cycles" are often used by the intellectually lazy and are usually a trick of perception.
You have made the best post on the whole topic. The adherence to a "cycles" version of history is at best inaccurate, and at worst, disastrous in assuming/preparing for "inevitable" shifts that in actuality will not occur.
I've always enjoyed reading the hacknayed prose promulgated by you hacks from Xinhua News, or whatever Beijing Bureau you clowns correspond from. If there is anyone spouting a 'Cold War' mentality, it is you. China is the only major country in the region threatening its neighbors, and the only one propping up a crazy, nuclear armed ally (while allowing that ally's people to starve) for the sake of realpolitic.
Anway, "no dynasty lasts forever". That is certainly true. But nations do. The secret to the success of the US is that the dynasty change is an ongoing process. We change over dynasties every four or eight years. On the other hand, the Communist Dynasty in China is over 60 years old, and looking increasingly creaky and out of date. You would be wise to learn a few lessons from history, my friend - but that would of course require you to think a little bit.
I am a Vietnamese. As a neighbour country and sharing similar culture, I have a lot of chance to read many type of Chinese stories, literature and film. I could say that this paper reflect exactly most of Chinese’s point of view. The word China is written in Chinese as "??" which could be translated word-by-word as "centre country" in English. I think this is the best way to describe everything the Chinese feels about their country: a country in the centre of the world.
We, Vietnamese, have suffered many bitterness from our big neighbour. One could say that the history of Vietnam is the history of continuous wars against China to survive. And luckily we still exist until today as an independent country unlike many others e.g. Tibet (and may be Taiwan also)...
Have you learned from your history
If you have, then shut-up your month. If you follow the US, you will be the next Tibet. Talking about realpolitics!
XINGCAIHA: Jong Guo should not be translated into "center.."
XINGCAIHA: Jong Guo should not be translated into "center country" because it is short for its long form, like USA for United State of America. In its Chinese form: Jong Hua (centering of Hua's cultures) Ren Min (peoples) Gong Huo ( republic ) Guo (country). In English, it is referred in short as China. In Chinese it is referred in short as "Jong Guo". What its long form stands for " united culture of Hua" which means to comprise of a make up of several cultures arising from the Hua culture. The policies of several cultures were continued from the Qing Dynasty which promoted (rather than place no restriction) on cultural closeness and unity. Marriages, government posts, and religion were not restricted as a condition for government posts.
Whoa Bill888, you typed a lot of flowery and romantic words to say something that really doesn't make sense. It's way simpler than that. The characters that make up "China" or in Chinese "Zhong" and "guo" literally mean "center/central" or "middle" and "country" meaning together "central country" no doubt to reflect China's role as the central Asian civilization in antiquity. Zhongguo thus means China. Zhonghua refers to Chinese peoples. The character "Zhong" for "Chinese", which can denote things Chinese as a prefix, and the character "hua" for "peoples." Of course "Zhong" because China was and is known as "Zhongguo" so "Zhong-" came to be known to denote China/ese. It's that simple. "Zhonghua Renmin Gonghehuo" (Chinese peoples-(Peoples)- Republic) is the official name of China from 1949 onwards and means "People's Republic of China." Since that term in itself, and communist party ideology revolved around "people", all Chinese peoples included, it makes sense to use "Zhonghua" in the official name. To end this, China China can simply referred to as "Zhongguo." (Literal English translation: Central country)
NORBOOSE: Give me one empire that it's alive and kicking, say, since AD 1.
Abusing of every human right there is aside (that is a hook), I enjoy China's rise and how cleverly they play this game. They make their own rules and use capitalism in most effective way there is. Ayn Rand would be proud.
This is among the most stupid opinions about Chinese
And, if Blumental is quoting the book right, The Mind of Empire is one of the worst book on China. The author simply doesn't get the Chinese psyche.
When Foreign minister Yang said "China is a big country and other countries are small countries and that is just a fact." The subtle nuance behind it is not to threaten those "small coutries." Rather it is to say: if you negotiate with me one by one, I will step back and give you more by sacrificing China's interests because you are small. But if you come to me with the backing of US, sorry, no deal.
China's tributary system was not designed to plunder the resources of vassals.
that's a very convoluted interpretation of what FM Yang said. I don't think we need to read any subtle nuance into a single blustering sentence.
China's tributary system was not designed to plunder the resources of vassals, it was designed to make the authority of their native elites dependent on Chinese authority and so undermine their autonomy and render them powerless.
This is completely misinformed, and frankly kind of racist.
"In Beijing's view, accepting your natural place in the hierarchy is not just a matter of power politics in the classical realist sense, it is right, proper, and the only way to establish a stable order. "
What are you really saying here? That the Chinese, who are realists, value a stability based on a clearly established international balance of power? That they think this is the only way to achieve stability in an anarchic world? How is this different from the general opinion of realists the world over, in all the policy centers of major states? It's not.
This is xenophobic scaremongering that has nothing to add to the discussion. FP should exercise more editorial judgment in the future.
anything about race. Why racist?
"A clearly established international balance of power" is a nightmare unless there is rule of law and governments are accountable to their people. It scares me to imagine what you think it means.
Simple
China is next Soviet.
China have trouble with all of its neighbors.
China going to powerful, More and more countries feel threat from China. They want some defece ally which against to China.
Probably, They will organize anti-China ally (like nato) by themselves. ASEAN is one of examples.
Sooner or later, Asia version NATO need at Asia. However, Which country is leader of this? India? or US?
Or are they just taking a page from an old playbook?
Soviet Crisis Prevention and Management
Why and When Do the Soviet Leaders Take Risks? by Hannes Adomeit
"This paper reviews Soviet behavior in international crises to determine both the patterns of Soviet behavior and their underlying determinants. Specifically, it considers whether Soviet leaders typically initiate or react to challenges and dangers; how the Soviet Union has attempted to manage the risks of crisis and conflict; whether the Soviets have generally been well prepared to cope with crises, and the effect their degree of control has had on their behavior; their use of verbal and nonverbal threats; the extent to which Soviet leaders rely on secrecy, deception, and surprise in or prior to an international crisis; whether Soviets prefer to create a fait accompli; whether Soviets observe certain 'rules' or 'conventions' in Soviet-American crises; and whether Soviet crisis behavior has varied under different leaderships. The author concludes that, in major superpower crises, Soviet leaders have typically preferred to achieve foreign policy objectives by the threat of military force rather than by the actual use of force, and have been conscious of whether their actions would be regarded by the adversary as an unacceptable threat to his vital interests and an intolerable change of the status quo."
Mirage of China's 'peaceful rise'
Mirage of China’s 'peaceful rise' was created by China-apologists that had blossomed in the aftermath of Nixon’s 1972 China embrace to counter Soviet Union.
Nixon’s embrace of China to counter Soviet Union has come back to haunt US in the form of second cold war just as Reagan’s embrace of Islamic fundamentalists to counter Soviet Union in Afghanistan came back to haunt US in the form of 9/11 attacks.
‘Peaceful or NOT’, US is largely responsible for China’s rise.
Had it not been for that Nixon embrace in 1972, China’s economic miracle would have been far more slower with all the US, West European and East Asian markets closed to cheap Chinese products. Had it not been for that Nixon embrace, China’s technological progress would have been far slower in the absence of West’s technology transfers. Had it not been for that Nixon embrace, China’s military progress would have been far slower in the absence of huge forex reserves that China accumulated from the massive exports of cheap Chinese products and China used those forex reserves to acquire latest military technology.
Why do you keep saying that China uses forex reserves to acquire technology or assets? You know that doing so would defeat the whole point of forex in the first place, which is to manipulate the value of currency?
Marty Martel: Dream of Hindsight-#1
It is really surprising that Marty Martel did not write about Nixon's account of making friend with China. From his view of hindsight, he had blamed Nixon for making China as it is now. However, that is just his own view of hindsight. The world Nixon lived in was so much different than the world now. The Soviet at then was not what Russia is now. The Soviet had many sphere of influences all over the world. Its military was so strong it could bring the war to the USA homeland. Also, the combined stock of nuclear weapons between the Soviet and USA could destroy the whole world 60 times as someone had claimed. During the Nixon Administration, USA was obviously loosing the war to Vietnam because China and the Soviet were helping the Vietnam. And war with the Soviet Union was a possibility and may not be victorious. The war with the Soviet may take place in the USA homeland. The Statue of Liberty, the Grand Canyon, many moms and children may be blown up in the war. As one way to force the Soviet to spread out its resources, Nixon made friend with China. Wary of the Chinese, the Soviet had deployed one million soldiers along the Soviet -China border. It was an option for which Nixon wielded an upper hand. It probably helped to bring down the Soviet.
To accord Nixon's maneuver with the success of China's development was an over statement. When Mao died in 1976, his experiment died with him. Deng XiaoPing had recognized the market place is the only way to release production. From his biographies, he had inherited from the late premier Zhou that opening up is the only way to success. Through out history of China, it was the market place which provided the largest GDP for the last 1800 years out of 2000. So China would have discarded the old Marx's system of "planned economy" even without the USA. In the beginning, many Hong Kong and Taiwan's business man set up shops in China. Only after 1995, many large USA corporations would seize opportunities for a bigger market. Therefore, Hong Kong and Taiwan's companies got an head start in the game.
No country's raise is peaceful - forget that
The US had fought many bloody wars to raise and to keep its leadership position , Civil, Spanish, Mexico in 18th and 19th centuries, Korea and Vietnam in 50s and 60s, Iraq and Afghan in the 80s and 90s. Predictably, the US will fight more bloody wars in the futures.
Of all the countries in this world, only China had spent so much on building that "Great Wall". It should have used those resources to lead a war to raid others like the Mongolian. What does the "Great Wall" of China tell us about?
the xenophobic Chinese were terrified of the steppe nations to the north and instead focused their expansionist aggression at that time on central Asia, where the silk road ran. The Mongols, Chinese, Tibetans, and Jurchen and Turkic peoples in the region have all spent the last thousands of years grabbing what they could from each other. That China was an exception is a fiction believed only by people entirely unfamiliar with the region's history.
Sitting here in Taiwan under Chinese missiles and threats of war, this aptly describes the Chinese mentality.
We're on the cusp of a major series of hegemonic wars involving China. Just this week China's Map World, its answer to Google Earth, began displaying the state of Arunachal Pradesh as part of India. China pulled its films from a Japanese film festival after the Taiwanese delegation refused to call itself Chinese. Way to win hearts and minds there, Beijing! But the whole point of Blumenthal's piece is that winning hearts and minds is not Beijing's way -- it is we who must kowtow.
Beijing blundering stupidity is a marvel; the region is tired of US hegemony. Japan was fighting with the US over bases, and the previous PM was friendly to China. Polls showed that the Japanese people were also full of warm fuzzies for China. Instead of blitzing Japan with cultural products, investments, warm statements, and friendliness, to separate Japan from its hated Yankee protector, China buzzed Japanese vessels, chased Japanese ships from Japanese waters, circled Japan with a naval flotilla without the customary notification, etc. In other words, China blew it.
And not just with Japan. With all its neighbors. China didn't have to invade Tibet and East Turkestan, but it did. It didn't have to create fantasy claims to Arunachal Pradesh and the Senkakus -- but it did (now Chinese are busy publicly proclaiming what many have long privately held -- that Okinawa is Chinese). China did not have to peeve the US nor did it have to routinely detain Vietnamese fishing vessels. All of these were entirely avoidable. Yet it did all these things, with the result that the Obama Administration, which came to power hoping to create a partnership with China, is now re-assessing China.
Of course we out here knew.
How can all this claiming of other nations' territory end? Well, in war. It is hard to say how or when -- too many variables -- but Beijing is headed down the path that Japan was in the 1930s. The international system has put no roadblocks in the way of China obtaining all the resources and investment and technology it needds --- quite the opposite, our elites were more than happy to sell America to China -- just as Japan in the 1920s and 1930s was able to obtain what it needed to expand -- yet insisted on pursuing a war against the powers that was totally stupid and self-defeating.
Good luck, Beijing. You're gonna need it.
Michael Turton
The View from Taiwan
PS: really loved the way WHLIU first announced that Washington wants a new Cold War, then when Alex BC pointed out what a laugh that position was, WHLIU immediately threatened to invade and kill him. That's basically the Chinese position, in a nutshell.
Don Bacon, your anti-Americanism is what makes you and lots like you so pro-China (assuming that you are not Chinese and just using a western name). It's not because its "China" per se. It could be the Sudanese, people like you don't care, the most important thing would be that a country could credibly challenge U.S. supremacy. China is your last hope is all. IF China becomes a global hegemon, in order to protect its interests it would have to interfere in the affairs of other countries in order to keep its position. If it doesn't it shouldn't even try in the first place. If China was in a position where it had established relationships in the Caribbean and South America and even military bases for decades, and America was growing more assertive in challenging China in the region, China would do the exact same thing to protect its interests. That's just how it is.
Preach Michael Turton! Completely agreed. Except for the part about "hated" yankee protector. Americans are not hated here at all. That was all really only confined to Okinawa. There is a heavy dose of historically and ethnically based anti-Chinese sentiment though and always has been.
why do you feel the need to come across as resentful and overbearing when you discuss China's increasing power? If what you say is true, why not be gracious and calmly confident? Actually, I could ask the same question of many of those who speak for the Chinese government.
The fortunes of nations and their relations to one another are not rigidly predestined. Nothing is inevitable, including China's rise. If Chinese hegemony in Asia is not in the interest of other Asian countries, or of the world as a whole, then there is no reason anyone "had better accept" it. There is nothing that people, especially people acting as a national group, like less than submitting to someone else because they feel they have no choice.
Sensational News Fabricated by Distorted Facts &Rich Imagination
The writer just wants to play up some sensational news so that he can attract some ignorant readers and earn his living. Don't blame him too much. He is quite pathetic already! By the way, his imagination is really remarkable! He could be a good lawyer in the US.
A few quotations taken out of context, and ideas taken from a book whose author does not even have a Wikipedia page and can't read Chinese, embedded into an article filled with weasel words, does not make a convincing analysis of the so-called Chinese "imperial psyche." I suggest Mr. Blumenthal do some more research before making grandiose and hollow arguments.
Shadow Government is a blog about U.S. foreign policy under the Obama administration, written by experienced policy makers from the loyal opposition and curated by Peter D. Feaver and William Inboden.
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