Changes following the end of a premature ‘Harmonious world’
Having been interviewed in late 2013, most of Chinese scholars whom I met during my field trip to China considered the concept of ‘harmonious world,’ referred to as‘harmony with differences’ (包容差异的和谐), initiated by Hu Jintao a premature, blank concept. An anonymous expert at the Contemporary Institute of China International Relations (CICIR) even warned me of the hardline policy to be executed in Xi’s handlings of South China Sea disputes in the coming months.
Adding to a series of China Talk by well-known Chinese experts, notably Prof. Cheng Li, Linda Jakobson, and Bonnie Glassier at Lowy Institute, as well as Prof. Kerry Brown at the ACRI-UTS, Sydney in the past few months, Prof. Huang Jing’s fascinating and insightful lecture at ACRI-UTS on July 2, 2015 strikes us all with the increasingly grounded fear of a much more vulnerable and unsecure world on the arrival of an unpredictable rising power. Prof. Huang approaches China’s international personality and status in a critical and realistic way, distinguishing China’s rise from the conventional wisdom. Having dismissed China’s industrialization-based capabilities to control resources and to challenge the existing international order militarily as other major powers’ practice in history, Hoang remarkably points to the simmering tensions and potentially disruptive factors regarding ‘China’s unique rise,’ which in his word, ‘should be peaceful.’
Prof. Huang notes the striking differences between ‘a China who was forced to passively cooperate in solving problems in its neighborhood before and a China who, for the very first time, has the capacity to control or even manipulate the neighborhood currently.’ While considering China now is in the very fast transaction, Huang argues that openness is conditions for China’s rise given the fundamental bottlenecks including the huge gap between hard power and national interests, its stormy relations with the US despite the mutual strategic interests, and most importantly those problems from within China. Ironically, with the PLA’s immense military build-up which has sparked off mini-arm race in the region, ‘neither sides feel safer’ in a growing security dilemma and uncertainty. Huang reiterated that ‘no one can damage China, China is too big to be destroyed,’ implying that the main obstacle to China’s rise is from China itself. It is noteworthy that China has made its very own way spectacularly, without being doomed as being foretold that ‘whoever goes with the US then flourish, whoever go against the US then fail.’
In the light of an integration policy, Xi has proposed ‘new types of relationship between major countries (not major powers)’ and ‘a network of partnership (not alliance)’ aimed at paving the way for those kinds of game that better develop China’s interests and demonstrates Beijing’s verbal support of openness, equality, and inclusiveness in international relations. As Huang observes, the OBOR, at its first stage, is designed as a development scheme putting everybody on the same boat of integration to make money. Yet, as China initiates and sets the agenda for the OBOR scheme, Beijing’s renewed assertiveness in territorial disputes on the seas has undoubtedly put its idealist statements in question.
The resurgence of China Threat as a Reality, not Theory under Xi
First, concerning Beijing’s involvement in territorial disputes, Huang reiterates the striking fact that China’s two times resorting to violence with Vietnamese side in the contested South China Seas, in 1974 and 1988 respectively went unheard until China’s incident with the Philippines, an US ally between 1994-1995. Since 2009 until now, there have been at least 30,000 reports on South China Seas. Huang attribute the high attention on the disputes to the two reasons, namely China’s own assertive behavior which creates a very negative image region-wide, coupled with the external forces, especially the US’s re-balancing to the Asia-Pacific. As Beijing’s approach to the South China Seas remains unchanged since the 1950s, China’s so-called ‘big power autism’ against other small claimants mentioned by Edward Luttwak in ‘the Rise of China vs. the Logic of Strategy’ associated with the arguably irredentist 9-dotted claims constitutes a real threat to the international efforts of turning the South China Seas into a sea of peace and cooperation.
Second, Huang notes the danger of the two level-game, in which China engages the US in major power bargaining to test the US’s strategic credibility in the region, while the small powers, in their turn, attempt to utilize the US’s presence to gain some leverage in bargaining with Beijing. Given that the low likelihood of ‘the tail wags the dog’ scenario, China has time on its side, and therefore, should have not rushed into escalating tensions with the US and other small powers as evidenced in the past 6 years since 2009. The strategic ambiguity over the red line of security which usually works for major powers in gaining the upper hand over their rivals turns into a downward spiral of growing confusion, miscalculations and rising tensions in China’s case. The risky adventure in the disputed seas plotted by Beijing leaders who want to drop Deng Xiaoping’s ‘biding time strategy’ only bring them the harsh reality of negative responses from other stakeholders. The strong message sent to Beijing from Washington and its allies and partners in the region serves as a warning of the costs incurred on China if it adopts non-peaceful rising strategy.
Third, China’s rising coupled with initial flex of muscles in the contested seas serves as the driving force of power shifts and re-arrangements in the Asia-Pacific, notably with Japanese Primer Minister Shinzo Abe’s subtle diplomacy in consolidating the Japan-US strategic alliance as the true, reliable ‘cornerstone of security in Asia’ in Obama’s words, and in building an enlarged united front including Russia and other major powers in the evil omen of a rising China Threat.
While China has still enjoyed temporary relief given its own achievements in multilateral economic development and the so-called ‘empty shell’ in the US’s strategic credibility and commitments without (or with little) substantial follow-ups to the Asia-Pacific that has frustrated lots of the US’s Asian countries, it is essential of note that Beijing’s ‘Charm Offensive’ has run out of its original steam and China’s reputation itself has increasingly been undermined region-wide. The China Threat Theory has become de facto China Threat Reality under Xi Jingping should no remedies are taken to fix the problems.
By Julia Luong Dinh, PhD Candidate at the University of Sydney.
