Posted on by mengqi wu

The Fight for Survival: How China Centres Its Foreign Policies on Regime Security

Mengqi Wu 

 

Introduction

According to a study by the Pew Research Centre, 6 in 10 countries in the world today are considered democratic regimes, while the number of full autocracies reduced to 21 out of 167 countries in 2016. (Pew Research Centre) That places China, the most populous nation on earth and one of the world’s main engines of economic growth, squarely in an awkward position of geopolitical minority.

From the sanctions following the Tiananmen Incident in 1989 to the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in formerly Yugoslavia in 1999, to constant tensions in the South China Sea today, instances of diplomatic frictions between China and the West are abundant. Nonetheless, China has not been involved in any military conflicts with the rest of the world since the end of the Vietnam War, albeit realist arguments by scholars in relevant fields have always been suggesting that military conflicts are inevitable.

This essay extrapolates that these predictions of all-out conflicts are outdated and overly cynical. The rule of thumb in how the career politicians in Zhongnanhai design their foreign agenda is now all about maximizing its probability of regime survival, for as long as possible. Ever since 1989, Beijing’s foreign policies are designed to actively seek diplomatic stability and build up its army simultaneously, a result of Beijing’s dependency on its stellar economic performance and military deterrence to ensure domestic political stability and bolster regime legitimacy.

The Parameters of Analysis

One cannot be too careful when diving into a broad and over simplistic question such as “is China a threat?” Andrew Campion wrote in his book on China and American energy security, “Engaging with this question, in its simple and unadulterated form, requires that we be content with crass over-simplification of complex and oftentimes indefinite notions.” (Campion, 6) So in the face of a question like this, it is generally wise to dissect it into different facets and answer within set parameters.

This essay asks the following questions. 1) Is China’s hard power strong enough to be considered a potential military threat? 2) Is China’s soft power pervasive enough that it may challenge western domination in the global liberal order? 3) Under what circumstances would the incompatibilities between China and the West escalate into direct conflicts? 4) Do Chinese foreign policies tend to escalate or de-escalate the situation when they enter a disagreement?

 

China’s Military Insurance

The answer to the first question “Is China’s hard power strong enough to be considered a potential military threat?”  is a definitive “yes” if we take all the public records and data on Chinese military activities at face value. In 2016, China’s 216-billion-US-Dollar military budget is the second largest in the world, despite that of the United States still being miles ahead and almost triple the amount. China also has the fourth largest amount of nuclear warheads (SIPRI), one aircraft carrier, several islands in the South China Sea artificially built for military infrastructure and its first and recently opened overseas military base in Djibouti. (CNN) China has also been expediting its military technologies to prepare for potential space warfare, such as quantum satellites for secure communications and anti-satellite missiles. (CNN)

Some argue that none of these recent advancements are anywhere close to approaching the United States’ massive military deployed globally. One of those is Michael Cox. Several comparisons between the US military and Chinese military are raised in his essay. Though many consider military hard powers less prominent than they used to be in a generalized liberal global order and “in an age of asymmetric war where the weak can do a great deal of damage to the strong”, the United States continues to ensure peace and security in Asia and Europe on roughly 45% of the entire world’s military budget. The United States has 11 carrier groups while China currently owns one carrier. (Cox)

Contemplating US’s containment strategies for China in Eastern Asia, he also highlights the spending gap between China and the United States’ Asian-Pacific Allies combined (Japan, Australia, South Korea, India, etc.) on military, suggesting that the latter outspends the former by $85 billion. (Cox) But such comparison does not appear to be fair considering China also has several military allies in the region as well, including the heavily militarized North Korea and Pakistan, hence the investment gaps between assumed alliances are not as incorrigible as Cox paints it to be.

But it is worth considering the arguments made by those mortified by the prospect of a formidable Chinese military, given that China is every bit as militarily capable as Russia, if not more capable than this specifically identified geopolitical threat to the United States, since nuclear conflicts between nuclear weapons states under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons are highly unlikely. The only advantage Russia has over China is its global deployment given its global presence, while China outspends Russia by 3-1 annually and maintains a much larger army. (SIPRI)

Clearly, an unequivocally strong military and the melodramatic reactions to territorial disputes with the Philippines and Japan are intentional in that China wishes to be treated as a serious military powerhouse. There are two ways to explain this. First, realists like to compare a strong presence of force and violence to a good insurance policy for regime survival and fending off foreign intervention. Second, branding the communist regime a strong defender of national security and sovereignty is effective in granting the regime legitimacy domestically.

After decades of expansive military procurement, development and deployment under the initial “political power out of the gun barrels” policy by Mao, realist arguments for the military deterrence as an insurance from foreign intervention are still going strong, regardless of the “independent, self-determining and peaceful diplomacy” rhetoric by the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the mouthpieces of the state. (Xinhua) China’s massive military is certainly not a variable to overlook when analyzing national security threats to the West.

 

China’s Soft Power and Diplomatic Quest for Stability

Soft power, on the other hand, is much harder to measure and thus creates much wider divisions amongst scholars than hard power does. Economy, education, appeal of ideologies, fundamental values and many more may impact the soft power of a country. The sheer quantity of variables is so overwhelming that by selectively using different variables in your research, you may come up with drastically different conclusions. Danny Quah chooses the economy as the sole source of soft power. After calculations of historical trends of world’s economic centre of gravity, Quah opines that global economic drive will continue to shift east, and “if soft power mirrors but lags economic power, then the source for global and political influence will be similarly gradually shifting east over the next 50-100 years” (Quah, 8) Such long-term predictions based on previous years’ records may sound far-fetched or circumstantial. Nonetheless, there is no denying basic economic data showing the unprecedented economic growth of China since the economic reforms of the 1980s.

The economic spectacle and substantial progress in modernization in other areas have enabled China to wield its soft power to shape a more proactive diplomatic agenda and create a more China-friendly global political landscape. Emerging friendly relationships between China and other countries are rarely ideology-based, but stem from their economic and financial ties.

This strategy delivers two benefits to fruition. More friendly nations abroad mean less trade barriers and more business opportunities, and in turn stimulates economic growth and quells internal opposition to the regime. In the meantime, countries with close economic relationships would refrain from criticizing China on its human rights records, corruption and illiberal rule.

Jianyong Yue uses the instance of China’s WTO accession deal to illustrate China’s determination to fight their way into the global market and increase trade activities in the face of paramount uncertainties and difficulties. Yue concludes that China made the decision to barge forward in the accession process in spite of 1) egregiously discriminatory regulations on Chinese exports that were much harsher than those on India, and 2) unforeseeable risks of over-dependency on exports and heated global competition for weak domestic capital, because of their ulterior motives, stating, “Its deep concern for legitimacy thus led the Chinese regime to accept harsh terms on economic liberalization in order to secure WTO membership, in the hope of increasing export and FDI on a larger scale to reverse the declining economic momentum.” (Yue)

Yue is forthcoming about his assumption that the only source of legitimacy of a communist regime at that time was sustained economic growth, after the party’s political reformist promises went bankrupt after Tiananmen Incident in 1989. Yue put the WTO decision into the historical context of the democratic movements of late 1980s and Deng Xiaoping, and extrapolates that this foreign policy decision was a desperate attempt to compensate a domestic agenda. (Yue)

 

“Sustaining economic growth at all cost became the biggest political decision in China after the Tiananmen Incident in 1989. The way in which Deng Xiaoping drew lessons from the Tiananmen Incident played a key role in shaping the new path-dependence of China’s zero-sum marketization reform in the 1990s. Meanwhile, Deng’s eagerness to achieve instant economic gains, his misperception of the East Asian model and the Chinese leadership’s lack of will in autonomous national development, all led to a myopic development strategy based on external integration. Entry to the WTO on harsh terms highlights the country’s dilemma of national development in the 1990s and the leadership’s overriding concern for legitimation of the CCP regime.” (Yue)

China has certainly been attempting to expand its influence overseas through trade, investments, loans and different forms of foreign aid in more recent times as well. Some of the more recent examples include China’s financial assistance to Greece, a country in clear financial jeopardy. Greece has since completely embraced Chinese interests within the European Union and abroad. After all, why bother bowing down to Germany’s demand for austerity measures, when you can just take some easy Chinese cash? “While the Europeans are acting towards Greece like medieval leeches, the Chinese keep bringing money,” said Costas Douzinas, the head of the Greek Parliament’s foreign affairs and defense committee and a member of the governing Syriza party. Greece has helped China defeated three resolutions in the European Council, including a condemnation of Chinese aggressions in the South China Sea, a condemnation of the poor human rights conditions in China, and a policy for stricter screening on Chinese investments in Europe. (New York Times)

China’s “One Belt One Road” infrastructure and trade initiative has also been questioned by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as a scheme to exert financial control on participating countries by driving them into fiscal insolvency after lavishly lending them money to build and improve their infrastructure. (Outlook) Former US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson also warned African countries not to sacrifice national sovereignty for quick cash. (CNBC) Not surprisingly, one of the 29 countries participating in this program head speared by China is Greece, whose port of Piraeus will be the “dragon head” of the new Silk Road into Europe. (New York Times)

One of the patterns here is how the Chinese strategy looks aggressive without overt aggressions. All its moves are made to validate itself at every turn by shutting down the critics and deliver what seems to be economic opportunities. Such manipulation may seem Machiavellian to some, it is also part of the grand strategy to avoid direct conflicts with the democratic world through alliance building and narrative control.

 

Hazards and challenges

Despite Beijing’s rather toned down and de-escalating approach to foreign policy when compared to that of Russia under Vladimir Putin, North Korea under Kim Jung-Un and Iraq under Saddam Hussein, several hazards persist to potentially lead to large scale military or economic conflict.

1)

Capital permeation can still run into confrontations, particularly when the process is too expeditious. Stephen Andrew Campion looks at China Threat through the lenses of American energy security, infers that opposition follows when China’s impromptu and unsolicited capital flows into a market and the assets are considered strategic assets to the nation. This happened when the state-owned CNOOC (China National Offshore Oil Corporation) made a bid to buy American oil company Unocal for $18.5bn.  (Campion, 23)

“Despite the higher offer made by CNOOC, the Chinese company faced significant barriers in its attempted acquisition due to the influence of the CT in American perceptions surrounding China’s rapid growth in the first decade of the new century. US perceptions of an antagonistic China resulted in extensive debates as to the negative impact the sale of Unocal to CNOOC would have on US national security as arguments regarding the sale of strategic energy assets to a possible competitor country increased. Debates about the bid took place in official and non- official contexts as it was discussed at length in Congress as well as in the news media. CNOOC faced a lengthy review process by, and enough mounting pressure from the American government that it eventually withdrew its bid on 2 August, allowing Chevron its purchase of Unocal for $17.1 billion.” (Campion, 23)

2)

Excessively hardline approach over issues of South China Sea, East China Sea and Taiwan could lead to further escalation and direct military conflict with the United States and its allies. Nonetheless, it is worth pointing out that China, Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines have been successful resorting to diplomatic solutions in the past.

3)

Michael Cox predicts that a heavily distorted market like China will never be able to reconcile its fundamental differences in trade practices and economic regulations, and could ultimately bring about trade wars. He takes a different approach to refute the argument that the United States has lost their competitive edge, arguing on the bases of economic institutional integrity, innovation, universal values and higher education. He still sees the United States at the top of the west-centric food chain in that regard, and China’s growth “only began in earnest when they abandoned one, rather self-sufficient way of doing economics, and started the long journey towards a global economy that was western in design and market-oriented in fundamentals.” (Cox)

 

 

 

 

 

Conclusion

China is undoubtedly more salient on the global stage than it has ever been. Its authoritarian nature and self-imposed insecurities make it an idiosyncratic case when we study at foreign policies around the world. China’s foreign policies are purposeful, utilitarian, and risk averse. They aim to deter those countries who dare to provoke, silence those countries who dare to criticize, validate its own rule at every corner, and impose domestic stability through the promise of a better economy. This is a country that understands its minority status in the world and its lack of regime legitimacy at home. Therefore, all foreign policies revolve around one theme: survival.

 

 

Bibliography

  • Campion, A. (2016). The Geopolitics of Red Oil. London: Routledge.
  • Yue, Jianyong. “China, Global Capitalism and the Quest for Legitimacy.” International Politics, vol. 53, no. 6, 2016, pp. 752-774.
  • Cox, Michael. “Power Shifts, Economic Change and the Decline of the West?” International Relations, vol. 26, no. 4, 2012, pp. 369-388.
  • Quah, Danny. “The Global Economy’s Shifting Centre of Gravity.” Global Policy, vol. 2, no. 1, 2011, pp. 3.
  • Lendon, Brad & George, Steve. “China sends troops to Djibouti, establishes first overseas military base.” CNN. 2017. https://www.cnn.com/2017/07/12/asia/china-djibouti-military-base/index.html
  •  Desilver, Drew. “Despite concerns about global democracy, nearly six-in-ten countries are now democratic.” 2017. Pew Research Centre. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/12/06/despite-concerns-about-global-democracy-nearly-six-in-ten-countries-are-now-democratic/#

 

 

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