widely welcomed by China’s neighbors concerned with Beijing’s new asser-
tiveness in the region. Beijing reacted negatively and countered with various
military, economic, and diplomatic initiatives undermining US interests.
President Obama eventually would complain repeatedly, but China for the
most part went ahead with offensive actions. Chinese strong reassurance of
the United States in the first decade of this century was now privately seen as having been a mistake—a sign of weakness that would not be repeated. 13
Security Issues in Contemporary US-China Relations
171
Beginning in 2003, Chinese leaders entered a new stage in China’s efforts
to define China’s approach toward its neighboring countries and what Chi-
na’s approach meant for the United States and US interests in Asia and the
world. Premier Wen Jiabao addressed the topic of China’s peaceful rise in a
speech in New York on December 9, 2003. The exact purpose and scope of
the new emphasis on China’s “peaceful rise” became clearer over time. 14
According to senior CCP strategists and other officials, Chinese motives
rested on a leadership review of the negative experiences of China’s past
confrontations with the United States, Asian neighbors, and other powers,
and the negative experiences of earlier rising powers, such as Germany and
Japan in the twentieth century. They concluded that China could not reach its
goals of economic modernization and development through confrontation
and conflict. As a result, they incorporated and advanced the moderate fea-
tures of China’s recent approach to Asia and the world into their broader
definition of China’s peaceful foreign policy approach. 15
A central feature of the new Chinese approach was a very clear and
carefully balanced recognition of the power and influence of the United
States. In the 1990s, the Chinese leadership often worked against and con-
fronted US power and influence in world affairs. China resisted the US
superpower–led world order, seeking a multipolar world of several powers
where China would enjoy more influence and room for maneuver. By
contrast, in the next decade, Chinese leaders reevaluated this approach and
adopted a more pragmatic attitude to the continued unipolar world led by the
United States. 16
Greater pragmatism and a strong desire to offset views in the United
States that saw rising China as a competitor and a threat prompted Chinese
leaders and officials to narrow sharply their view of areas of difference with
the United States. They avowed that most differences with the United States
now centered on the Taiwan issue and US continued support for Taiwan. The
wide range of other Chinese complaints about US hegemonism in the
post–Cold War period was said to be reduced. This seemed to conform to
actual Chinese practice, though at times there were strong rhetorical attacks
in the Chinese media against US policies and practices not related to Tai-
wan. 17
In this improved atmosphere, Chinese leaders sought to build closer ties
with America. They wished to integrate China more closely in the Asian and
world system, which they saw as likely to continue to be dominated by US
power for many years to come. They pursued closer partnership with the US
leaders and wanted to avoid taking steps that would cause the US leaders to
see China as a danger or threat that would warrant a concerted US resistance
to Chinese development and ambitions. At the same time, they were not
abandoning their past differences with US hegemonism. They still disap-
proved of perceived US domination and unilateralism seen in US practices in
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Chapter 8
Iraq, US missile defense programs, US strengthening alliance relations with
Japan, NATO expansion, and other areas that were staples in the repertoire of
Chinese criticism of US practices in the 1990s. But Chinese officials were
not prepared to raise such issues as significant problems in US-China rela-
tions, unless they impinged directly on core Chinese interests. As a result,
most important Chinese criticism of US policy focused on issues related to
disputes over Taiwan. 18
According to Chinese officials and specialists, Chinese leaders pursued
the peaceful approach because they needed the appropriate environment to
deal with massive internal difficulties and to avoid creating foreign opposi-
tion as China developed greater economic and other power and influence.
Chinese leaders were said to judge that China faced a period of “strategic
opportunity” to pursue its important and complicated nation-building tasks
without major distractions, and they wanted to assure that complications and
distractions did not emerge in China’s relations with the United States. The
duration of this strategic opportunity was said to include the first two decades of the twenty-first century. 19
An early indication of the weakness in Chinese reassurances to neighbors
and the United States that China would invariably rise peacefully and harmo-
niously was seen in concurrent statements on China’s national security strate-
gy. There was a significant disconnect between China’s national develop-
ment policy and China’s national security policy. 20 The pronouncements about China’s peaceful rise and harmonious development made little or no
reference to military conflict, the role of the rapidly modernizing People’s
Liberation Army (PLA), and other key national security questions. The broad
outlines of Chinese national security policy were laid out in official Chinese
documents and briefings. 21 They revealed Chinese leadership’s strong concern about China’s security in the prevailing regional and international order.
This concern drove decades of double-digit percentage increases in China’s
defense budgets; it also placed China as Asia’s undisputed leading military
power and an increasingly serious concern to American security planners as
they sought to preserve stability and US leadership in Asia. 22
China’s military growth increasingly complicated China’s relations with
the United States and some Asian neighbors, notably Taiwan and Japan.
Leaders from the United States and some Asian countries were not persuaded
by Chinese leadership pledges to pursue the road of peace and development.
They saw Chinese national security policies and programs as real or potential
threats to their security interests. 23
Chinese national security pronouncements duly acknowledged that with
the end of the Cold War, the danger of global war—a staple in Chinese
warning statements in the 1970s and 1980s—ended. However, twenty-first-
century Chinese national security statements rarely highlighted the fact that
Chinese defense policy was being formulated in an environment less threat-
Security Issues in Contemporary US-China Relations
173
ening to China than at any time in the last two hundred years. 24 Rather, they made clear that the United States remained at the center of the national
security concerns of Chinese leaders. 25 Authoritative PLA briefings in 2008
presented growing US military power as the most serious complication for
/> China’s international interests, China’s main security concern in the Asian
region, and the key military force behind Chinese security concerns over
Taiwan, Japan, and other neighbors. 26
Chinese statements and the PLA buildup opposite Taiwan underlined that
Taiwan for many years up to the present was the most likely area of US-
China military conflict. The United States and its close ally Japan were
portrayed as the principal sources of potential regional instability in Asia.
Japan was explicitly criticized for various increased military activities and
for its alleged interference in Taiwan. 27
PLA and other Chinese officials registered strong determination to protect
Chinese territory and territorial claims, including areas having strategic re-
sources such as oil and gas. As discussed in more detail in chapters 9 and 10,
Chinese-Japanese and other territorial conflicts involving energy resources in
the East and South China Seas grew in scope and intensity in recent years,
and they intruded ever more directly on these PLA priorities. Chinese con-
cerns increased over US and allied forces controlling sea lines of communi-
cation, which were essential for growing Chinese shipping and increasing oil
flows to China. 28
The Obama government with some success continued the efforts of the
George W. Bush administration to strengthen exchanges and dialogues be-
tween US and Chinese military leaders, which were the weakest set of links
among the array of formal interchange between the two governments. As
noted in chapter 7, the Obama government also became concerned about
China’s perceived assertiveness and its repeated public threats and use of
coercion and intimidation regarding territorial claims involving neighboring
countries and US interests in unimpeded transit through Chinese-claimed air
and sea spaces. Encouraged by China’s neighbors, the US government em-
barked on a new military strategy, announced in January 2012 as part of the
US administration’s “rebalance” policy in Asia, which emphasized American
security, economic, and diplomatic reengagement with the Asia-Pacific re-
gion.
Though initial US military advances remained modest, US leaders
pledged robust US military interchange with allies and associates throughout
China’s eastern and southern periphery, from the Korean Peninsula through
Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific Islands, and into the
Indian Ocean and its central power, India. They said that with the US mili-
tary withdrawal from Iraq and planned withdrawal from Afghanistan, the
United States would reposition military assets and expand defense ties with
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Chapter 8
many of China’s neighbors, and the proportion of US warships in the Asia-
Pacific region would rise from 50 percent to 60 percent of the US war fleet. 29
China’s criticism of US initiatives made clear to specialists at home and
abroad a forecast of greater strategic competition for influence between the
United States and China—competition that would deepen the security dilem-
ma at the heart of the pervasive distrust between the leaders of both coun-
tries. Indeed, as discussed in chapter 7, the bold and assertive initiatives of the Xi Jinping government, which began in 2012–13
• departed from China’s previous reassurance efforts under President Hu
Jintao (2002–12).
• used wide-ranging coercive means short of direct military force to ad-
vance Chinese control in the East and South China Seas at the expense of
neighbors and key American interests.
• advanced China’s military buildup targeted mainly at the United States in
the Asia-Pacific region.
• increased military, economic, and political pressure on Taiwan’s govern-
ment.
• rebuffed efforts for stronger pressure on North Korea’s nuclear weapons
development while sharply pressuring South Korea’s enhanced US-sup-
ported missile defense efforts.
• cooperated ever more closely with Russia, as both powers increasingly
supported one another as they pursued, through coercive and other means
disruptive of the prevailing order, their revisionist ambitions in respective
spheres of influence, taking advantage of opportunities coming from
weaknesses in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia.
• used foreign exchange reserves and massive excess industrial capacity to
launch various self-serving international economic-development programs
and institutions to undermine US leadership and/or exclude the United
States.
• continued cyber theft of economic assets, intellectual property rights
(IPR), and grossly asymmetrical market access, investment, and currency
practices; also intensified internal repression and tightened political con-
trol—all with serious adverse consequences for US interests.
As noted earlier, beginning in 2014, usually reserved President Obama
complained often. President Xi tended to publicly ignore the complaints; he
emphasized a purported “new great power relationship” with the United
States to American critics who were skeptical of his intentions.
Security Issues in Contemporary US-China Relations
175
MILITARY MODERNIZATION THROUGH THE MID-2010S:
IMPLICATIONS FOR THE UNITED STATES
From the perspective of American defense planners and strategists, the Chi-
nese military buildup since the 1990s has focused in considerable part on
strengthening a capability to impede and deny US forces access to the Tai-
wan area in the event of a China-Taiwan military conflict or confrontation.
The scope of this “anti-access” effort seemingly has broadened: Chinese
military capabilities have grown to include the South China Sea and East
China Sea, where Chinese security forces have endeavored to expand control
and influence at the expense of other claimants and in the process have
challenged and confronted US naval vessels and military aircraft and under-
mined US regional influence. Related challenges have appeared in Chinese
efforts to counter US dominance in space and to use cyber attacks and other
unconventional means to erode US military capabilities. 30
As noted in earlier chapters, the United States has a fundamental interest
in sustaining naval and other access to the Asia-Pacific region. And since the
Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, it has undertaken the obligations of leader-
ship in sustaining a favorable balance of power in the region in order to
protect that access and other American interests. The conflicts of the Cold
War allowed for equilibrium to emerge in East Asia and the western Pacific
where—in general terms and with some notable exceptions—the United
States sustained dominance along the maritime rim of East Asia and the
western Pacific, while continental Asia came to be dominated by China.
Almost twenty years ago, this stasis was labeled the “Geography of Peace”
by IR specialist Robert Ross. 31
As of 2017 the situation has changed substantially. China has long chafed
under superpower pressure along its periphery. Its military modernization
gives top priority to upgrading power projection by air and naval forces
along its maritime borders. While the United States seemed satisfied with the
stasis Ross discussed at the end of the 1990s, American concern with Chi-
nese anti-access efforts now grows in tandem with the increasing Chinese
military capabilities to carry out the broadening scope of their anti-access
goals. 32
Key security issues involving Taiwan and other nearby contested territo-
ries, Chinese one-party rule, sovereignty, and resistance to superpower pres-
ence along China’s periphery provide the foundation for Chinese security
differences with the United States and help explain the suspicion and wari-
ness that characterizes contemporary Sino-American relations. Of course, as
explained in chapter 6 and chapter 7, prevailing discourse between the US
and Chinese governments has tried to emphasize the positive for a variety of
mainly pragmatic reasons important to the respective interests of the two
governments. Security differences tend to be dealt with in dialogues concern-
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Chapter 8
ing US-China military contacts and security issues in Asian and world af-
fairs. 33
The two governments also have developed considerable common ground
on important security issues. China used to be seen by the United States as an
outlier regarding issues of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) and related delivery systems. Into the 1990s, China passed nuclear
weapons technology and missile systems to Pakistan and engaged in suspi-
cious nuclear technology cooperation and missile development and sales
with Iran and other nations deemed hostile to the United States. Under pres-
sure from the United States and reflecting recalibration of Chinese foreign
policy and national security priorities, China moved to a position much more
consistent with American interests on WMD proliferation. 34 The United States and China at times have shown cooperation and common ground
along with significant differences in dealing with North Korea’s nuclear
weapons and ballistic missile programs and the danger they pose for stability
on the Korean Peninsula and elsewhere. 35 China also has worked cooperatively and in parallel with the United States in dealing with international
US-China Relations (3rd Ed) Page 31