Can the US slow down the rise of China?
Zheng Xuan, an influential Confucian scholar of the Han Dynasty,
once wrote, "Once
the key link is grasped, everything falls into
place." The United States also knows this and has
been adhering to this principle when making policies toward China
and promoting its global hegemony after the Cold
War.
So what is the key link of the U.S. strategy towards China?
It is guiding
China's development direction and grasping the orientation of
China.
The U.S. strategy with regard to China had two characteristics
during the Cold War.
The first was
to tear apart the China-Soviet Union alliance, and the second, to
conduct military containment so China cannot enhance its military
influence in the international
arena.
However, the United States had to rethink and adjust its China
strategy after the end of the Cold War mainly because it realized
that containing China had become an impossible
mission.
In terms of military, China's national defense capabilities have
been constantly strengthened since its founding. The share of
domestically-developed weapons in the nation's high-tech weaponry
is growing rapidly, and the weapons displayed in the large military
parade in 2009 were all independently developed by
China.
The Chinese military now has 16 times the amount of
domestically-developed weapons with intellectual property rights
compared to 10 years ago. Nothing can stop China's military power
from playing an active role in global affairs.
Economically, China successfully withstood the tests of the Asian
financial crisis in 1997 and the global financial crisis in 2008.
Its ability to resist international economic risks and foreign
economic interference has also been greatly enhanced. It was
internationally recognized in early August 2010 that China has
already become the world's second largest economy.
Seeing the policy of containment ineffective, the United States had
no choice but to attempt to guide the direction of China's
development in hopes of slowing it. The main theme of the U.S.
strategy towards China will be interfering with China's development
in many different fields and distracting China from enhancing its
national strength.
At present,
the United States mainly takes the following
measures:
First, it maintains
the existence of the "Taiwan problem" and a certain level of
military balance between the mainland and Taiwan through arms sales
to Taiwan.
Second, it instigates
countries that have border disputes with China to constantly
provoke incidents. Vietnam, India and Japan have repeatedly
expressed tough stances toward China since 2010 because of the
support of the United States.
Third, it launches
military exercises of various scales and forms around China —
especially China's offshore areas — to create a tense
atmosphere.
Fourth, it
strengthens military ties with China's neighboring countries and
provides them with advanced weapons and equipment to enhance the
military capabilities of these countries.
Fifth, it represses
China's military development together with Russia. Currently, there
are frequent military exchanges between the United States and
Russia, and Russia also expresses its interests in purchasing U.S.
military technologies.
It is highly possible that the United States and Russia will
achieve an "exchange of needs" in the aspect of high-tech military
technologies once the export of advanced military technologies from
the United States to Russia becomes a reality. This will further
widen the U.S. military advantage over China.
Sixth, the United
States disrupts China's peripheral security under the banner of
"counter nuclear terrorism." Currently, one of the prominent
features of the Obama administration’s military strategy is to
shift its focus from countering unconventional terrorism to nuclear
terrorism. The United States strongly promotes the concept of a
"nuclear-free world." It occupies the international moral high
ground and keeps on bringing high pressure on China's periphery
under the banner of "nuclear disarmament."
In a word,
grasping China is an important part of the U.S. global strategy,
and guiding China’s development is the current strategic choice of
the United States.
However, we must
also see that the U.S. strategy towards China is only based on
grasping China to prevent it from creating obstacles or threats to
U.S. hegemony.
Therefore, our strategy toward the United States should not be
suspicious, and we should not regard every move of the United
States as directly against China.
Meanwhile, we should also carefully study and judge U.S. actions
to correctly formulate our own development strategies.
The author Han Xudong is a
professor from the PLA University of National Defense of the
Chinese People's Liberation Army, translated by People's Daily
Online