The U.S. rebalance policy in the Asia-Pacific has led to a deterioration of China’s security environment, with increasing tensions in the East China Sea, including the dispute between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkakus Islands, and the South China Sea, where China has territorial disputes with Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Brunei. The situation has provoked a fierce debate in China on how to respond. The mainstream view in China is that the U.S. policy is to maintain the American dominance in the Asia Pacific and beyond, with some even believing the U.S. rebalance to be a covert containment of China.
From Beijing’s perspective, the rebalance policy is not just to rally the U.S. allies and win support from the other countries in the region, but it aims to gain the upper hand vis-à-vis China. Thus, despite repeated statements that the U.S. does not take sides in territorial disputes between China and its neighboring countries, the Obama Administration has seized upon opportunities created by emerging tensions over these disputes in the East and South China Seas, and intervened under the “excuse” that the U.S. has a substantial stake in maintaining regional peace and freedom of navigation in international waters. As a result, the U.S. effectively took the strategic initiative and put China on the defensive in its own neighborhood.
Essentially, Beijing sees the U.S. rebalance policy as a two-level game. The first one is between the U.S. and China. At this level, China’s national security is what is at stake. Given that nearly 65 percent of the population and 70 percent of the economy are concentrated along China’s coastal areas and neighboring provinces, China could hardly feel secure unless it has certain confidence in the security of the South and East China Seas. Moreover, it is vital for China, now the world’s largest trading nation, to secure its accesses to the ocean.
The stakes for the U.S. in this game, as Beijing sees it, are not just U.S. dominance in the region, but also its credibility and commitment in the eyes of Asian countries—especially its allies in the Asia-Pacific. Moreover, involvement in the East and South China Seas provides the U.S. with substantial leverage in dealing with China.
The second level of this game is between China and the other claimant countries in the South and East China Seas. Like China, these countries have the vital stake of national security in these disputes, and how they are solved could substantially impact their economic development.
China’s leaders have keenly realized that a confrontation with the mighty America does not serve China’s interests, as there is an asymmetry of power at this level of the game in favor of the U.S. Thus, while Beijing tends to be accommodating in dealing with the U.S., China strives to increase its military capabilities in the East and South China Seas, not necessarily to prevail in a confrontation with the U.S., but to increase both the military and economic costs the U.S. would have to bare in confronting China, such that Washington would rather drive a bargain than go to war with China.
At this second level of the game—the one between China and its neighbors—the asymmetry of force is in China’s favor, and time is on China’s side. While China has adopted an assertive approach in the territorial disputes, it appears in no hurry to find a solution but rather to “shelve the dispute for the joint development” with the other claimant countries. The aim is to optimize China’s economic strength by offering incentives to those who opt to “cooperate” with China and putting pressure on those who are defiant. Meanwhile, China’s fast growing military forces are used as a “credible deterrence” rather than a means to achieve policy goals.
Obviously, China wants to keep the two levels of the game separated from each other. That is why China is firmly against “internationalization” of the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, though it has to cope with the involvement of the U.S. and the U.S.-led alliances, particularly Japan.
A key point in the debate within China’s strategic community is whether the rebalance policy is part of a long term strategy of containment, or just the U.S. positioning to drive a hard bargain with China. So far, there is little evidence to show that China’s leaders see the rebalance policy as a long-term containment strategy. Such a strategy—as we observed during the Cold War period—would require policymaking to be driven by ideology, rather than interests, with a clear-cut political division in the international community and the economies independent of each other.
None of these are realistic in today’s world. Policymaking in both countries is driven by interests rather than ideology. Hence, there is no clear-cut division in the international community. More importantly, the economies are too deeply interdependent with each other to exercise any effective sanction for strategic goals.
Although China is obviously unhappy about the rebalance policy, the Xi Jinping leadership has not given up its effort to establish a “new type of great power relationship” between the two countries. Meanwhile, China maintains its assertive position in the East and South China Sea, assuming that there is not much the U.S. can do because President Obama is a lame duck. There is little doubt that Beijing foresees that the next U.S. president, whether a Democrat or Republican, will be tough on China, due to its domestic political environment. Again, China’s judgment for now is that such a tough position is unlikely to turn into a long-term containment policy, and therefore, the U.S.-China relationship should be manageable through bargaining and deal making. After all, this unprecedented and irrevocable interdependence has allowed ties between the U.S. and China to far transcend bilateral relations. Nowadays, any issue between the two countries will have global implications, and any major global challenge can hardly be managed, let alone solved, without the two countries working with each other.
For all these reasons, it would not be surprising to see that, while there is certainly a tit-for-tat response to the U.S. policy vis-à-vis China, it seems unlikely that China’s leaders would give up their push for a new type of relationship with the U.S. in the years to come.
