Why has China's
foreign policy been more aggressive over the past three years? Why have the
Chinese undone a decade's worth of good neighborly diplomacy in Asia? The facts of the case are now well known. In Southeast Asia, China
declared the South China Sea a "core interest" (a term previously reserved for Taiwan and Tibet), in essence defining the sea
as Chinese territory. To punctuate the point, China
harassed Vietnamese fisherman near disputed islands in the sea.
In Northeast Asia, China
could not bring itself to condemn its North
Korean ally for Pyongyang's
wanton murder of South Korean soldiers and civilians on two separate occasions
last year. China
also picked a fight with Japan. After Tokyo
acquiesced in Beijing's demand to release a
Chinese fishing captain that had been arrested for ramming Japanese vessels in
disputed waters, China
suspended diplomatic relations, demanded an apology, and halted the sale of
rare earth minerals to Tokyo.
And finally there was China's
shabby treatment of U.S. President Obama during his November 2009 visit to China. If ever
there was a president entering office with an outstretched hand to Beijing, it was Obama.
His secretary of state went out of her way to downplay
China's human rights abuses. Obama delayed both a meeting
with the Dalai Lama -- a standard affair in U.S diplomacy -- and the sale of
the second half of a package of badly needed arms that President Bush had
promised to Taiwan.
During Obama's maiden voyage to China, Beijing
reneged on agreements to allow the president's speeches to air on
television without censorship, and left the new president to return to
Washington without
accomplishing anything on his agenda, from climate change talks to
Beijing's currency manipulation.
The explanation for China's international rudeness is a
threefold recipe for mischief: greater military power combined with leadership
weakness and a xenophobic nationalism that China's leadership created (I leave
out the view held by some in China that America is in relative decline, because
this is thinking is probably transient).
Greater Military
Power
China
now has a very capable military with which it can push around its neighbors.
Its shows of maritime strength in the South China Sea
are meant to cow weaker powers. Indeed, at the first sign of Vietnamese
resistance to Chinese claims, the official Chinese press warned
South East Asian nations not to become too close to the United States. And taking a page
out of its strategy for intimidating Taiwan,
the PLA
moved a brigade of its lethal short range missiles into place to get Vietnam
back into line. Given that China
attacked Vietnam in 1979 out
of irritation at Hanoi's pluck, when China waves a fist at Hanoi all parties pay attention.
China's
new policy of showing off rather than concealing its newfound military prowess
was on display when Secretary Gates visited China earlier this year. In the
lead-up to his visit, the People's Liberation Army apparently demonstrated its
anti-ship ballistic missile capability leading PACOM Commander Admiral Willard
to assert that the missile had reached "initial operational
capability." China's
leaders apparently found Gates's visit an opportune moment to display
their new J-20 fighter, an aircraft that apparently has stealth
capabilities. In short, China has more power and is exercising it in pursuit of
its national interests.
Weak Leadership
Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao have proven to be weak leaders,
unable to make tough decisions on economic reform and unable to keep all
politburo members in line with Deng Xiaoping's policy of "biding time and
hiding capabilities" (i.e., allowing China
to grow strong without provoking a countervailing coalition that fears China's
power). But it is not just a problem of weak leaders. The leadership system is weak. There is no one left in
China with the revolutionary legitimacy of Deng or the legitimacy he could hand
off (as he did to Jiang Ziamen), and thus the one-party state is now consensus
driven - no one member of the politburo seems to have more power or legitimacy
than another. Decisions seem to vacillate from those driven by complete risk
aversion (e.g. North Korea and economic reform) to those driven by the
aggrieved nationalism displayed by "netizens" and intellectual elites (see, for
example, the South China Sea and Japan rows described above). Because of the
weak leadership system, the PLA, which tends to favor a more hawkish foreign
policy, has as strong a voice in decision-making as party members concerned
with economic reform.
Xenophobic
Nationalism
Many observers of China have identified the nationalism
often expressed by internet users and Chinese intellectuals as a prime driver
of Chinese foreign policy. What many miss is that China is riding a tiger of its own
creation. Since the Tiananmen massacre of 1989, the Party has engaged in a
massive "patriotic education" campaign stressing both China's civilizational supremacy as well as its
humiliation at the hands of great powers such as Japan
and the United States.
Talk to Chinese citizens in their twenties and thirties and you are likely to
hear about Japanese-American plans to keep China weak and split Taiwan, Tibet,
and Xinjiang from China, and about China's natural place atop an Asian
hierarchy. These are the educated, supposedly Westernized Chinese, which
American policy had counted on to liberalize the People's Republic. Many
younger Chinese have never even heard of the Tiananmen massacre, view all
American policy as an attempt to contain China (including the war in
Afghanistan), believe Taiwanese democracy is an example of political chaos, and
are angry that Tibetans (many of whom have been killed or imprisoned in an
underreported three year long crackdown) do not appreciate that Beijing has
spurred economic growth in Tibet.
If many Chinese elites harbor these worldviews, one can only
imagine what the "losers" in China's
wrenching years of economic growth believe. And what about the tens of millions
of surplus men that China
has wrought with its One Child Policy and preference for sons? They will be at
the bottom of the Chinese socio-economic strata, unable to marry, and ready for
all manner of violence and mayhem. It is true that China has to contend more with
public opinion than it once did- but it created the climate of aggrieved
nationalism that now circumscribes or even drives its foreign policy. This is
not to say that there are no liberals in China
who want economic reforms or who want China to fully embrace liberty at
home and the liberal international order. Indeed there are, but the former are
keeping their heads down and making money and the latter cannot do much from
their jail cells.
The combination of more military power, weak leadership, and
aggrieved nationalism are systemic problems. They are likely to be part of the
Chinese foreign policy landscape for some time. China planted the seeds for each
decades ago - by investing in coercive military capabilities, by delaying
political reform, and by "educating" their people with über-nationalistic
propaganda. Now the world is reaping what Deng Xiaoping sowed.
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