Some historical perspective ...
China Is Not an Imperialist Power
bu.edu
Nicholas Berry
Nicholas Berry is a specialist in Asian and Pacific affairs at the Center for Defense Information in Washington. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh and was a Fulbright lecturer in New Zealand. He is the author of six books, including IR: The New World of International Relations (Prentice Hall, 1999) and War and the Red Cross: The Unspoken Mission (St. Martin's Press, 1997). He has published numerous articles and over 100 commentaries in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and other newspapers.
In Brief
China is not an aggressive power. The U.S. military force structure can be downsized and reconfigured. Five factors have propelled major powers towards imperialism: a large, unified state; a rising economy; an ideology of dominance; a superior military capability; and popular support for an aggressive foreign policy. Today's China largely lacks these prerequisites. Its 15th century venture into imperialism ended in retreat, mainly for cultural reasons. The same cultural baggage still inhibits expansion, as does a rising economy dependent upon international integration. China lacks an ideology of dominance and superior military capabilities. Popular support for aggression is also missing.
Washington's estimate of Chinese strategic intentions will largely determine the future size and shape of the U.S. military establishment.
The drafting of the Pentagon's 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) is underway. With threats from Iraq and North Korea fading, the current scenario of simultaneously fighting two major theater wars becomes increasingly less credible. The emergence of a perceived Chinese threat, however, would demand that the U.S. military's force structure, troop deployments, weapons procurement, and research and development be primarily focused against China. Needless to say, it would also keep the Pentagon's budget moving up. Without a Chinese threat, force levels and deployments could be reduced, and a national security strategy based on building multilateral regional stability could be adopted.
History tells us a good deal about the rise of imperialist powers. A review of Chinese history reveals that the Asian giant does not fit the mold, and thus the likelihood of Chinese aggression is close to zero. The U.S. military can be safely reduced.
Five factors appear to be crucial before a country uses military force to establish hegemonic control over foreigners — or at least attempts to do so. They tend to be sequential, each one feeding on the preceding ones:
1. a large, unified state;
2. a rising economy;1
3. an ideology of dominance;
4. a superior (relatively) military capability;
5. popular support for an aggressive foreign policy.
A Large, Unified State
Logically, one may suspect that the other four factors precede this one — and to some extent they have. But a unified political unit of relatively significant size must first be established before it can embark on foreign domination. Athens, once a dusty little village, had to grow, incorporate surrounding land for agriculture, develop its port at Piraeus, and enlarge its population. It was then positioned to create hegemony beyond its established polity. Rome followed the same pattern, most importantly subduing and replacing its Etruscan neighbor and competitor to establish a secure city-state on the Italian peninsula. Islam roared out of Arabia after Mohammed united the Arab-speaking tribes. The Spanish in the 15th century had to unite under Ferdinand and Isabella and expel the Moors before they could think of bigger things. Elizabeth I had to consolidate control of the British Isles and ward off the Spanish Armada before the British could turn their attention to global affairs. Similarly, the Dutch in the 17th century had to expel their Spanish occupiers before they could contemplate a maritime empire.
The Russians under Ivan the Terrible had to ward off invasions from both east and west before becoming sufficiently territorially secure to modernize under Peter the Great. In the same century, the United States fought its war of independence and immediately thereafter sought to achieve its "Manifest Destiny" to expand coast-to-coast, albeit with a minor setback in failing to take Canada during the War of 1812. The Germans and Italians only achieved national unity in the 19th century in an era of rampant European nationalism, prepping them for their future ill-fated imperialism. Japan, the next to the last modern state (before China) to consolidate central government control with the 1868 Meiji Restoration, established the foundation for its military expansion.
China united in 221 B.C. under the emperor Qinshihuangdi after the Warring States era, but still suffered internal wars until finally pacified by the conquering Mongols. In the 13th century under the Khans, China sent its hoards westward, conquering all before them. Although two attempted invasions of Japan failed because "divine winds" (kamikaze) scattered the Chinese amphibious force, China dominated the Asian land mass north of the Indian subcontinent. In the 15th century it seemed poised to become the world's greatest expansionist power. Its economy was bureaucratically integrated; it employed the Chinese inventions of printing, paper, and advanced metallurgy; it had gunpowder and rockets and was home to the world's leading mechanical engineers. China built huge warships, some over 400 feet in length with eight, even nine, masts carrying hundreds of officials, sailors, and marines. Its fleets — one totaled 317 vessels — plied the Indonesian islands and entered the Indian Ocean in the first half of the15th century, having great commercial and imperial ambitions.
But the enterprise collapsed. A combination of discomfort with dealing with non-Chinese people, the huge expense of the maritime enterprise, unprofitable trade, and an internal power struggle back home won by the Confucian-inspired isolationists over the internationalists ended China's overseas expansion. The new emperor called the fleet home and had it destroyed. In 1477, even the logs of the great voyages were burned. David S. Landes in his book, The Wealth and Poverty of Nations, concluded that the Chinese abandonment of maritime expansion had long-lasting effects: "Isolationism became China. Round, complete, apparently serene, ineffably harmonious, the Celestial Empire purred along for hundreds of years more, impervious and imperturbable. But the world was passing it by."2
China remained an isolated Middle Kingdom for the next 400 years. China didn't need the world; it had everything it needed. Internal power struggles, however, were frequent. The 19th century witnessed European and Japanese intrusions into a technologically backward China. China lost the Opium War to Britain and a naval war to Japan (which took Taiwan as booty). Foreigners carved up China's coast into spheres of influence. Christian missionaries entered to convert the Chinese people. Chinese nationalists felt their country degraded.
Anti-foreign, anti-imperialist Chinese nationalism surged, first with the Boxer Rebellion in 1900 followed by the overthrow of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty in 1911. Under Sun Yat-sen and then Chiang Kai-shek, the Nationalists (Koumingtang or KMT) methodically defeated the regional warlords, but then faced two challenges. The KMT-Communist alliance broke down into a power struggle in 1927, with the KMT defeating the urban-based Communists. (Mao Zedong's rural-based wing of the Chinese Communist Party [CCP] survived and made its 1934 Long March to a northwest sanctuary). Before the KMT could consolidate its hold on power, the Japanese in 1931 seized Manchuria and began a full-scale invasion in 1937. That put the second round of the KMT-CCP power struggle on hold, only to resume in 1945 at war's end.
The CCP emerged victorious on the mainland on October 1, 1949, and Chiang and his KMT fled to Formosa (Taiwan) where they came under the protection of the U.S. Seventh Fleet after China intervened in the Korean War against the U.S.-led UN forces.
The 20th century can be seen as China's search for national unity and sovereignty. The Japanese were defeated, warlords eliminated, foreigners expelled, and Tibetan autonomy suppressed. Although Hong Kong was regained in 1997 and Macao in 1999, Taiwan remains separate. In effect, China's historic pattern of seeking territorial integrity is both old and new. The old unity spawned an attempt at overseas imperialism that fizzled out in the 15th century. That legacy, and the distaste for foreign imperialism provide a highly unappealing background for a new attempt at military aggression. The possible exception is the uncompleted effort to re-incorporate Taiwan. How the issue will be resolved will play a role in determining the level of Chinese foreign policy assertiveness. If Taiwan is reunited by military force, China would likely seek to limit U.S. influence throughout East Asia in order to protect its security against a hostile United States. On the other hand, a peaceful reunification with Taiwan would dampen Chinese assertiveness.
(The reader will have noticed that the more recent the attempt at continental or world hegemony, the more disastrously the attempt turned out. The efforts of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and the Soviet Union all ended quite badly, with each country suffering millions of deaths and ultimate state collapse. China's second historic pattern of expansion for national unity appears even later in the game, which does not auger well for Chinese imperialism.)
A Rising Economy
The struggle to consolidate state unity always creates a feeling of collective energy and an urge to promote greater production and create larger markets. Recent studies have shown that the economy — land, labor, capital, and trade — is the best predictor of national power, more so than military might. Athens excelled in agriculture, health measures, water management, crafts, and trade to build its economy. Rome followed suit, adding a safe land and water transit/trade infrastructure and introducing factories powered by waterwheels to increase production. For a time, science, technology, and trade flourished in the Islamic world. Later, the Industrial Revolution shifted economic development to Europe where Great Britain became its first beneficiary. Few areas on the planet have been more hospitable to economic growth than North America with its climate, arable land, rivers and harbors, and natural resources. Add to this mix the energetic, pioneering spirit of immigrants and the first program of mass public education, and an economic takeoff became inevitable. The United States by 1900 was the world's leading economy. Economic growth rates in Russia, Germany, and Japan also soared before World War I.
The imperial thrust of all these states rested on expanding economies. A country's popular belief in a "place in the sun" is largely determined by its rate of economic growth compared to others. (How seductive it is to conclude that economic productivity is the measure of an advanced civilization.) Superiority in what sustains and enriches life fosters ideas that superiority in other areas would be quite natural. The notion of the political survival of the fittest existed long before Darwin. The fittest — those with the economy to produce a strong military and the pride to inflame popular enthusiasm — would not only survive but must dominate.
China historically resisted labor-saving technology in favor of a labor-intensive economy, which encouraged rapid population growth. It resisted the comparative advantage of trade, stressing self-sufficiency. It resisted the diffusion of literacy, the growth of an urban middle class, and modern science and social science in favor of maintaining elitism and tradition. China entered the 20th century as "the sleeping giant."
World War II and the civil war hampered economic development. The consolidation of mainland China under CCP rule gave the Middle Kingdom an opportunity to modernize its economy. For all the horrors of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward and Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, his dictatorship destroyed feudal land relationships, instituted mass education (including for women), and began large-scale industrialization. However, by the time of Mao's death, the Chinese economy had stagnated.
It fell to Mao's successor to abandon the stale communist economy by introducing private enterprise, market pricing, foreign direct investment, and trade-promoting policies. From 1978 when he took power, Deng Xiaoping never wavered from his central idea that a growing economy would maintain Chinese unity, keep the CCP legitimate and in power, facilitate the reunion of separated parts of China, prevent foreign military intimidation, and make China a major player on the world stage. He called for the "four modernizations" — economy, agriculture, education/technology, and military. Data confirm the success of Deng's economic reforms. China's economy took off in the 1980s, averaging over 9% in annual GDP growth. Since 1980 the GDP has quadrupled to $4.8 trillion, making China's the world's fifth largest economy. Per capita income (purchasing power parity) is $3,600. Trade has zoomed to an annual (1998) $340 billion from a mere $21.2 billion 20 years before.
On the surface it might appear that China has created the foundation for an expansionist foreign policy. However, substantial internal and external impediments remain. Internally, the western region of China has not prospered as have the coastal provinces, although major programs are underway to redress the imbalance. Attention is being paid to failing state enterprises where labor strikes, protests, and regional unemployment present immediate problems. Endemic corruption in the form of bribes, influence peddling, smuggling, and protection rackets — are all enemies of entrepreneurship that must be addressed. Finally, environmental pollution has reached the point that health concerns in major cities, especially Beijing, indicate that expensive corrective measures cannot be put off.
But most inhibitors of Chinese aggression are external. At one time a nation's "place in the sun" referred to a rising state acquiring colonies as a just reward for the increase in state power. Colonialism, however, is dead and gone forever. A place in the sun today is a seat at the policy-making table in powerful international organizations. China is a member of the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and is about to join the WTO. It occupies one of the five permanent seats on the UN Security Council. It wields influence in ASEAN's Regional Forum (ARF) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum. Nowhere is China denied its rightful place in world affairs. Globalization decrees that, in an open, competitive international system, what a state achieves is up to that state. Although this system does penalize those states that have difficulty competing (and the World Bank and IMF are just now considering debt relief and other ways to help the less advantaged), China has benefitted greatly from globalization. Its economy is highly integrated with the world via trade, foreign direct investment, education (China ranks number one in the number of foreign students studying at American universities), and technology transfers. China's economy is highly interdependent with the economies of the United States, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore. Why would it risk economic collapse and becoming an international pariah by embarking on imperialistic adventures?
No modern economy can function alone. As regimes in Iraq and Serbia have learned, aggression provokes isolation. More importantly, all of China's major economic partners have close relations with the United States, and Washington would insist that an aggressive China be quarantined.
In addition, China's economy still pales when compared to that of the United States. The U.S. economy is more capable than China's of sustaining the arms and ideology to promote international power. In short, Chinese leaders have no intention of taking on the United States and its allies in a quest for regional or world dominance. They prefer a multipolar world and have not formulated an ideology of dominance.
An Ideology of Dominance
The Greeks saw barbarians beyond their borders. The Romans saw uncivilized and unwashed tribes that needed to be placed under the protection of Rome. Islam believed it had God on its side, as did the Spanish New World conquerors. The Dutch, French, and British believed that people in their "nonage" required the enlightenment of European civilization, so they assumed the "white man's burden." Americans held to the myths of occupying the "city on the hill" and racial superiority; they took the Philippines, as President McKinley said, to guide "our little brown brothers." The Soviet Union believed its ideology was universal and inevitable; what Kremlin leaders decreed was truth. Nazi Germany saw racial superiority as fully supporting efforts at military superiority. Japan saw itself as a superior civilization — one that had resisted European colonialism — and so was the perfect candidate to rid Asia of European colonialism. And by the way, it would create its own empire called the "Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere."
China may think it represents one of history's great civilizations, but nowhere is there a dogma on racial superiority. Quite the opposite. To counter racism, the Chinese have long argued that European and American notions of race were simply devices to justify imperialism, nothing more. Perhaps it once believed in the inevitability of communism, but the leaders in Beijing have been running away from Marxist-Leninism at Olympic speed. Culturally, the Chinese have great difficulty integrating with non-Chinese. Their civilization is only for them, not for other peoples. Even in melting-pot America, many Chinese-Americans find security in Chinatowns. Other overseas Chinese act the same. Their ethnocentrism is not a prescription for dominating foreigners — their Uihgar and Tibetan minorities excepted. Without an ideology of dominance, China is missing a key ingredient for embracing imperialism. Its military forces, therefore, have other duties.
Superior Military Capability
Athens had its fleet and subservient allies. Rome had its invincible legions. Islam had its cavalry and was the first to use cannon effectively when it conquered Byzantium. The Spanish, Dutch, and British employed advanced ships and firepower to establish empire. The Soviet Union used the Red Army to create and dominate its East European empire. And Nazi Germany and imperial Japan believed their martial spirit and modern military strategies gave them superiority over the states they would attack. Historians can count on one hand the countries that made war knowing that they were militarily inferior to their enemies.
China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) is heavily skewed to land forces. Only recently has the emphasis shifted to ballistic missiles and air and sea capabilities. It has 20 or so antique DF-5 liquid-fueled ICBMs, and its solid-fueled replacement is still four or five years away from deployment. It has no aircraft carriers. Of its 3,500 jet fighters, only 50 or so are advanced — the Russian made SU-27. It has two modern Sovremenny-class destroyers with Sunburn anti-ship cruise missiles — also bought from Russia. Its amphibious and air assault capabilities are inadequate to conquer Taiwan, although 250 or so ballistic missiles across the Taiwan Strait target that island.
Put simply, the PLA seriously menaces none of its neighbors, all of whom have some relationship with the United States. This is not to say that there is no concern, but if China is planning to create an empire, it certainly is casual about developing the military means to do so.
The PLA does have an agenda. It serves to defend the homeland, although that mission is fading with the absence of threats. Military personnel are being reduced by the hundreds of thousands — from 3,030,000 in 1990 to 2,470,000 in 2000 and dropping. The PLA is an instrument of internal control, deterring and combatting separatists in Xinjiang and Tibet, pro-democracy dissidents in the cities, and guarding against rural protests. It works at disaster relief. It is a coercive force to back China's territorial claims in the South China Sea, and its nuclear forces exist to deter any attempts at nuclear blackmail. The ability to engage in nuclear retaliation, the Chinese leadership believes, will prevent the United States from again using nuclear threats against China as it did in the 1950s over Quemoy and Matsu. Finally, the PLA is gearing up to punish Taiwan if Taipei dares to declare independence.
The threat to Taiwan is real. PLA officers frequently say: "We have no intention of attacking anyone, but if called upon [to punish Taiwan] we will do so without question." Such a threat is highly credible regardless of the consequences. There is an arrogance in the PLA born of China's rise to prominence and all the attention paid to it — especially by Americans — as a nation on the move. There is no doubt that any U.S. attempt to foster and uphold Taiwan independence will result in armed conflict. Chinese leaders increasingly warn the U.S., most recently in last October's white paper "China's National Defense in 2000," that re-establishing a mutual defense treaty with Taipei or providing Taiwan with theater missile defense (TMD) will illicit a harsh response. Taiwan is considered an internal matter, and any outside intervention on the issue would affront Chinese "sovereignty and territorial integrity." It is not imperialism, Chinese officials insist, to regain a "renegade" province. A proud China on the verge of unity simply would not tolerate dismemberment.
At the same time, the maintenance of the "one China principle" will keep Beijing patient. The costs of developing an assault capability, of provoking international economic isolation, of killing fellow Chinese, and of risking military failure if the United States supports Taiwan will keep China focused on peaceful efforts to regain Taiwan.
Until recently, Chinese leaders have had a hard time understanding that Taiwan needs to be wooed, not bullied, into reunification. As long as the costs of re-unification are perceived on Taiwan as unacceptable, the marriage will not occur. Eventually, the sentiment for Chinese unity may well push Beijing to adopt further, more rewarding approaches to woo Taipei.
Popular Support for an Aggressive
Foreign Policy
Perhaps the only historical exception to this factor as a prerequisite for imperialistic adventures is Italy beginning in the 1930s. Mussolini had some enthusiastic public support for his attack on Ethiopia, but it faded after Italy's aggression against Albania, Greece, France, and the Soviet Union. The combat record of Italian forces was dismal. An army and a people must believe that surrender would be cowardly. Most of all, they must believe that killing foreigners is morally acceptable — as seems to have been the attitude of Greeks, Romans, Arabs, Turks, Dutch, British, Russians, Germans, and Japanese.
Americans, however, were bothered by the killing during the U.S.-Philippine War. An extensive anti-imperialist movement emerged at the time, led by people as disparate as Andrew Carnegie and Mark Twain. Many historians have suggested that America's own history as a colony of Great Britain has produced an ingrained streak of anti-imperialism in the American psyche.
The same anti-imperialism sentiments exist in China. China cannot continually protest its history of foreign exploitation, its "150 years of humiliation," and then adopt a cultural norm that its exploitation of foreigners is acceptable. The Chinese may accept that life is full of contradictions, but this one would exemplify cognitive dissonance in the extreme.
Taiwan, of course, is not populated by foreigners.
Conclusions
Americans who see China as the new imperialist threat need to review the historical record. Unless history is meaningless as a predictor of events, China will not seek an empire. As long as China is secure on its periphery — and no country is prepared to attack it — the PLA will carry out its internal and defensive tasks, including putting pressure on Taiwan not to leave the fold. China is not an imperialist power.
China will, however, use military force to secure its territory if its leaders believe that is necessary. China did so in Korea, in border wars with India and Vietnam, in suppressing Tibetan separatists, and in a border skirmish with Soviet forces on Damansky Island. Taiwan remains under the Chinese gun. China will also continue to assert itself as an Asian power commensurate with its growing capabilities and seek to control the mineral resources under the South China Sea. Assertiveness, however, does not equal imperialism.
Overall, globalization renders imperialism passé. The world's governments, especially the major powers that benefit most from globalization, are status quo powers and are willing to intervene to prevent regional hegemons from disrupting the system. Coalitions in a globalized world have proven relatively easy to organize against major threats to the system, beginning with the UN operation in Cambodia through Desert Storm, Bosnia, Kosovo, and East Timor. The existence of globalization has not been challenged by any major power.
Therefore, the central task for U.S. foreign policy is to sustain globalization by striving to integrate all states into international organizations; assist weak states to the point that the system rewards them; work with other states to settle regional conflicts; promote trade, direct investment, and financial stability; and moderate weapons proliferation and arms races.
China can be a partner in each area. There is no need for it to be a "strategic partner," because there is no common enemy; a "normal partnership" is sufficient.
A realistic Pentagon assessment of the Chinese military threat for its QDR will conclude that a smaller U.S. military establishment focused on regional stability in Asia would be more than adequate to provide for U.S. security. |
