US Interest in Asia - Research Paper Example

To what extent does Chinas rise present a threat to US interest in Asia? Introduction China’s recent rise as an important player in the arena of global politics is viewed as a phenomenon of significance, as regards relationship with its close neighbors and the US. China’s increasing emphasis on regional cooperation within Southeast Asian countries, especially after the Asian economic crisis, has led to increasing worries on the nature of China’s regional strategy and its accession to power amongst various countries worldwide, especially amongst its close neighbors. While some experts view China’s emphasis on regional cooperation as means for gaining hegemony and challenging the US, others feel this strategy promotes mutual commitments and economic alliances. In this context, it can be suggested that correct analysis of success or failure of foreign policies followed by the US towards Asian countries after the Cold War, depends largely on theoretical perspectives that explore the challenges as posed by increasing power of China. Under the current global economic order, the US has a dominant position, amongst all the developed nations. The economic and political norms that govern these nations show two basic traits: open and free form of markets as their preferred mode of economy and liberal democracy as their preferred mode of governance, and these traits are also seen in a majority of the developing nations worldwide. However currently, dominance of the US is facing a serious challenge from China, through the latter’s various regional strategies and recent emergence as a global power. The apparent threat, as emanating from China’s rise, is evident in a statement made by the governor of Japan (America’s chief ally in the East Asian region) Shintaro Ishihara in 2001, “In light of China’s rising economic and military might, as well as its territorially expansionist policies that directly threaten this island nation, Japan can no longer risk placing its security entirely in the hands of another power. As a sovereign nation, we must develop an autonomous defense capacity of our own.”1 Within realms of International Relations (IR), the understanding of a threat or the aspiration is of greater significance than the threat or the aspiration itself, while framing foreign policies. Whether China would actually pose to be a threat to the United States or to its neighbors within the next few years, is currently under debate and widely discussed within various scholarly groups and political circles, based on three major theoretical perspectives: liberalism, realism and constructivism. This article will explore the paradigm of realism on the subject of China’s emergence as global power. It will also review various reports, which reveal that China still lags behind the US in terms of economic progress and military capacity, thus, currently making it unsuitable to counter the strong position of the US in Southeast Asia. The article also derives that China’s activities within Southeast Asia is more trade-centric that aims at expanding its own market, than being strategy based to oust the US from this region. Discussion The concept of threat emanating from China’s emergence as a regional and global power A majority of the western scholars have contended that China would pose to be a grave threat to the stability of South East Asia, within the next few decades. To support their claims they used an analysis, which is based on the power structure transition theory, a chief characteristic of the realist perspective within IR studies. According to this theory, when a nation attains economic supremacy and acquires power, it inevitably seeks for greater control and influence, at both regional and global levels, which in turn leads to a change in the power structure at global and regional levels. The change in power structure owing to the emergence of a new global and regional power raises a challenge and creates regional and global instability, thus posing a danger for overall security. As the emerging state expands and accumulates its power resources, it acquires greater capability of expanding and furthering its own interests, both regionally and globally. Under such circumstances, the already established powers, in order to maintain a status quo might attempt at reacting violently against the emerging power. On the other hand, the newly emerging power, in order to change the global and regional power equation, might aim at waging wars. Undoubtedly, as per various organizational reports and expert observations, China is seen as emerging power in South East Asia (regional level), and to some extent at the global level, during the past few decades. As per the paradigm of the ‘rising power versus established power’ and the power structure transition theory, under the power structure as observed in South East Asia currently, China poses as a serious threat to regional security and stands as a grave challenge to the US and Japan (America’s chief ally in this region), and the latter two nations being already established powers would inevitably aim at counter-balancing the emerging threat. Based on this analysis the scholars from the western world have portended pessimistic views of the future where Asia is more likely to face conflicts.2 According to the realists, reviews of the history of international relations show a similar a situation during the two World Wars. During the early 20th century and during the years between WWI and WWII, Germany as an emerging power posed to become a threat to the stability and security of the entire West Atlantic. In late 19th century and in the period between two World Wars, Germany as an emerging power and strong aspirations to expand and gain supremacy turned out to be a threat to the security of the West Atlantic part of the world, a situation which finally resulted in the two great wars. The pattern that emerges from a historical review, thus reveals a scenario where any rising power soon becomes dissatisfied with its secondary position within the global arena of power play and tries to upgrade its status by directly or indirectly challenging the dominant (but declining) power. According to some of the realism theorists conflict is inevitable when the power of an emerging nation dissatisfied with its current status is at par with that of a dominant nation, and it is under such a condition that the power parity creates a scope to act for the challenger “committed to changing the relevant status quo.”3 The same theory has been applied to China which is viewed as an emerging power looking towards to changing the status quo in Asia. Some scholars claim that besides its current position as a rising power, China’s strong assertiveness is also evident in its historical past where it tried to dominate other powers or attempted to offset strategic borders, which makes it a threat for the US and its neighboring states. Concurrently the internal situation in China is also shown by these experts as likely to create a situation that might throw a challenge for its neighboring states and the US. It is contented by a majority of the western scholars’ belief that China is under dictatorial governance, or is in transition, shifting from dictatorial rule to democracy. Under current political regime, those in the leadership ranks in China, frame aggressive foreign policies primarily for garnering popular support using nationalist sentiments while also gaining elite authoritarian and military support. In this context, it was suggested that, “China’s history memory of past greatness and the desire to restore previous eminence; its determination to erase the painful legacy of a century of national humiliation; its desire to recreate the traditional Sino-centric world order as a means of regulating political and economic structures of super-ordination and subordination; its belief that China’s external security in the past was primarily assured by a strong state able to dominate or at the very least neutralize the strategic periphery; and so on.”4 Thus, from an overview it is clear that realist paradigm urges the United States to adopt aggressive foreign policies aimed at containing China’s growing power, which it views as a serious threat to American hegemony, and believes that China’s aspirations should be nullified to decrease all possibilities of destabilizing the present status quo. Realism perspective on the issue of threat from China (viewing its hard power) From a general perspective, realism is based on the hypotheses that global order is anarchic in nature while all sovereign states (rational agents) play the role of core actors in the arena of global politics, where they often fail to cooperate.5 Furthermore, according to realism no central authority governs the state behaviors,6 and it is only the structure of the global order that provides a framework for the behavior of the sovereign states.7 Realism theoretically provides strong justification for ‘China threat’ to the US and East Asian nations. With the realists emphasizing on shift in power relations between the states within the global order it has been suggested that “a state will seek to change the international system through territorial, political and economic expansion until the marginal costs of further change are equal to or greater than the marginal benefits.”8 Based on these theories realists contended that China being dissatisfied with current global order and its power equations with the dominant power, would look to challenge the present state of status quo,9 while some theorists have also suggested that China’s primary objective is to gain international hegemony.10 Some theorists claimed that Asia is slowly turning China-centric;11 while others believe that China’s strategy in building regional collaboration is aimed at challenging the US position in South East Asia.12 They contend that China’s emergence would be a zero-sum game between the US and China, leading to possible wars in the near future. In order to explore the realist perspective it is necessary to understand the actual extent of China’s rise in power. Power as a concept is difficult to measure as there are no exact formulas that equate realistic approximate weights to a nation’s economic progress, military capacity, leadership aspects and various other factors that are considered within a power equation. Power is also dynamic in nature. While measuring power of a State, IR scholars categorize it into two types: ‘soft power’ and ‘hard power.’ National assets like excellence in technology and moral values, which tend to enhance leadership images of a nation, are termed as ‘soft power.’ A nation’s economic and military capabilities relate to the term ‘hard power.’ In this context, in order to comprehend the extent of China’s growth, one must measure its power primarily in terms of ‘hard power,’ and derive whether China’s rise in power is adequate enough to pose a threat to the US and neighboring countries realistically. A look at China’s economy reveals that starting from the late 1970s (after implementation of ‘reform and opening’ economic policy) until the late 90s (1979 to 1997) the annual growth of GDP was 9.8% even during the Asian economic crisis, and in 1998 the GDP showed constant growth at 7.8%, while in 1999 the rise was slowed down to around 7.1%.13 From 2000 it again increased rapidly to 8% and just prior to the global financial crisis in 2007 the figures showed a high rate of 11.4%, and its “GDP rose from Rmb362.4 billion in 1978, at the start of the reform period, to Rmb30 trillion in 2008.”14 A study of the 2010-11 financial reports revealed that China stands second after the US, as regards global trading (Zinzius, 2004, 5). Its GDP rates, which declined during 2007-08 global economic crises, have started rising again from 2009 onward, placing its economy just after the US. Thus, the figures (as shown in fig 1) undoubtedly place China as worlds fastest growing economy, and “from 1989 until 2010, Chinas average quarterly GDP Growth was 9.31 percent reaching a historical high of 14.20 percent in December of 1992.”15 Fig: 1 China’s GDP growth rate. After a fall during the economic recession of 2007-08, the figures started rising from 2009 onward. 16 Yet, if these numbers are reviewed against the China’s large population which has already exceeded 1.3 billion, it translates into the fact that China’s real GDP per capita is only around US$ 7027 in 2010 as against the US figures of 42,708, as shown in fig 2.17 Fig 2: “Real GDP Per Capita in the U.S. and China, 1980-2030.”18 Therefore, with such poor GDP per capita, China can only be ranked as a medium power, when compared to the US GDP per capita, in terms of its economic capacity. In the context of military power, theorists of realism contend that China, in order gain supremacy over the US in Southeast Asia, would aim at rapid development and expansion of military capacity. In this regard, some of the realist scholars have presented as evidences the significant developments and enhancements of military capacity (regional level) of China, and claimed that the main objective of these modernizations is to challenge the US.19 Furthermore, China’s budget for defense has progressively increased over the last few decades. Reports show that budget was increased more than once between the years 1989 to 2000, after which it rose by almost 17 % (2001) and 9.6 % (2003).20 Gill further claimed that during the 1990s almost $750 million was used by China in acquiring weapons from other countries on an annual basis, which has progressively increased in the next one decade.21 These figures, according to the realists, clearly hint at a possibility of China attempting to counter the US influence in Southeast Asia in the near future. However, despite China’s military expenditures increasing significantly in last two decades, it remains far below the US defense expenditure. From the SIPRI yearbook 2012 report, it is clear that the US, with 41% of world share, is currently the largest military spender in the world, while China lags far behind with a mere 8.2%.22 The total amount spent by the US in military expenditure in 2011 was US$ 1,735 billion, while China spent around US$ 711 billion, again a significantly lower figure than the US. Therefore, it is as Johnston claimed, “Chinese military expenditures do not appear to have reached levels where one could conclude that Chinese economy is being militarized and mobilized to balance against US power.”23 More trade-centric than strategy based In the context of China’s emphasis on increasing regional cooperation, many realist scholars claim that this is a strategy aimed at gaining regional hegemony by weakening the US dominance in Southeast Asia and weakening its relationship with other countries (Japan) in this region. Some realists also claim that by advocating Asian only group and Free Trade Agreement with ASEAN, China has strategically aimed at removing American dominance from Southeast Asia. Realists believe that using regional cooperation; China is furthering its own influence in the area at the expense of the US, thus, creating a situation where Southeast Asian states would be obliged to choose between China and the US. However, these interpretations fail to explain the completeness of all regional strategies adopted by China in Southeast Asia, and overlooks the decision-making procedures at a domestic level within China. China’s zeal for regional collaboration was not promoted by the PLA hardliners, but mainly initiated by economic reformers, such as, Wen Jiabao, thus making it clear that China is more intent on increasing its trade, than delineating any strategy for ousting the US.24 Therefore, here it is obvious that realism as a theory, with its State-centric emphasis, overlooks the fact that internal politics (primarily trade related ones) have an important part to play within China’s foreign policies. Realists have always contended that sovereign States play the main role within global politics and power play, while internal politics has a very minor role within global politics, and owing to this perspective, theories of realism fail to integrate theories of internal politics within their hypotheses in a rational manner. Thus, here we find that besides the figures that reveal the two nations economic and military capacities, China’s trade related objectives trump the realists’ claim of China’s regional strategy of sidelining the US in Southeast Asia. Conclusion From an overall perspective, realists tend to emphasize that the issue of ‘China threat’ as a situation where China as an emerging nation is a dissatisfied power that would seek to challenge the US (a dominant power) and its allies. However, evidences show that this conclusion seems inconclusive and slightly premature at this stage. The theorists simply use similar situations and experiences faced by other sovereign States and apply it on China, while others unjustifiably tend to generalize China’s strategy taking into account its historical past. Furthermore, owing to the emphasis on State-centric order by the realists, their theories overlook the effect of domestic level politics (trade related) on global politics. Therefore, here it can be derived that the realist paradigm is too simplistic in nature and fails to explain totality of the regional strategy followed by China in Southeast Asia (which is more trade focused rather being strategic in nature), while facts and figures from various reports show that China lags far behind the US, in economic and military capabilities, to pose a real threat. References Buzan, B., and Segal, G. Rethinking East Asian security. Survival 36 (2), 3-21, 1994. Chinas GDP to Top Nine Trillion Yuan This Year, 2001, retrieved from http://english.people.com.cn/200111/27/eng20011127_85410.shtml [accessed 19th October 2012] GDP growth in China 1952-2011, Chinability, 2011, retrieved from http://www.chinability.com/GDP.htm [accessed 17th October 2012] Gilpin, R. War and Change in world politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981. Gill, B. “China’s evolving regional security strategy.” In, David Shambaugh (ed.), Power Shift: China and Asia’s New Dynamics. 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