Is There a China Threat, and If So What Should We Be Doing About It - Literature review Example

Is there a China threat, and if so what should we be doing about it? At the beginning of the 21st century, relations between China and the rest of the world have improved. Yet the ruling military regime that dictates Chinas international policy is hardly a clear-cut friend of the West. As an impressive competitor in the economic sector and an imminent contender for technological advantage China balances uncertainly between a promising free market and the bane of lingering communist rule (Thatcher, 170). Many in the free world still view China with distrust. From the appalling crackdown in Tiananmen Square, to the latest repression of Falun Gong and Chinas sustained military posturing over the sovereignty of Taiwan, communist leaders have clung desperately to a system of one-party rule. The enduring control of a worn-out, edgy, Communist regime scarcely serves to improve international confidence in the Chinese bid for a responsible position on the world stage of the new century (Lawson, 161). It is possible that what some see as the threat of a menacing new superpower might actually be the promise of a new forward-looking Chinese generation on the verge of the disavowal of old revolutionary sympathies with aspirations of taking an active part in a wider world growing ever more interdependent (Jian, 28). Professor Chen Jian offers a unique point of view from his background as a Chinese Red Guard during the infamous Cultural Revolution. Appraising Chinas foreign-policy from the vantage point of an insider rooted in Chinese history, Jian identifies a key factor in Chinese modern military behaviour as the belief that economic exploitation and military aggression by foreign imperialist countries have dishonoured the glory of the ancient Central Kingdom or Zhong Guo (Jian, 26). The perceived humiliation continues to foster a victim mindset unique to Chinese history that overshadows Chinas relations with the international community (Thatcher, 163). Chinese leaders held that the revolution would be ultimately successful when it recovered Chinas former standing in the world (Leffler and Painter, 278). China currently boasts a ten percent annual economic growth, but poverty is rife in its rural interior. The regime uses its extensive masses in the service of its growing economic prowess, while its aging leaders wrestle with the spectre of social dissolution under the strain of vastly diverse regional political, economic, and ethnic forces (Poole-Robb and Bailey,185). Serious domestic challenges compel modern China to focus its policy largely within its own borders. The persistence of political repression along with Chinas dismal human rights record may actually be the uneasy admission that the iron control is slipping by degrees from their grasp (Lawson, 149). Though Chinese labourers are more expensive than their equals in poorer countries of Southeast Asia or Africa, the Chinese nation offers a more stable situation for international investment in the current political climate, along with a dependable and competent labour force, primed by years of government-enforced discipline (Poole-Robb and Bailey, 185). The Chinese masses make attractive market prospects and inexpensive manufacturers. As Chinas market attains record trade, industrial output, and consumer spending, the nations future holds both promise and paradox for the world at large (Thatcher, 114). From near isolation China has escalated to the third strongest economy in world trade, behind the United States and Germany but ahead of Japan. Though the Chinese middle class does not quite experience the affluence Western nations enjoy, the standard of living for this growing sector of the public is relatively high within the general Chinese public, as Chinas domestic price differs substantially from the price of a comparable item in wealthier nations with higher standards of living (Segal, 56). Chinas citizens number close to 1.5 billion people, a population in great flux. Since economic reform began under Deng Xiaoping three decades ago, the Chinese have built up tens of millions of businesses (Fishman, 8). Immense numbers of Chinese peasants have forsaken agriculture and trickle through urban areas looking for work. Chinas embrace of market capitalism left farmers unaided, the inequity inducing peasants to depart the countryside, swelling the urban populace (Thatcher, 168). Experts estimate that in a decade nearly half of all Chinas people will live in urban areas (Fishman, 10). The productive facility of Chinas vast low-cost industrial labour, along with the rising demands of its billion-plus consumers, have turned the nation into the greatest natural resource on earth. How the international community deals with its promise could considerably impact our collective future (Fishman, 11). Chinas teeming population has made the nations penetration into the world of mass production unparalleled. Cost-effective Chinese peasants replace the high-level equipment that Western industrial powers spend millions to design (Lawson, 139). Yet Chinese policy makers are in serious pursuit of technological expertise as well as mass production. In addition to the promising original work of native Chinese research institutes, China negotiates technology transfers through foreign trade and hundreds of foreign-owned research centres based in China (Unger, 37). An anxiety for dominance in the Asian region gives China further incentive to improve technology and the economy, the better to modernize the Chinese military (Thatcher, 180). Military expenditures may surpass $87 billion plus per year. Analysts worry that a militarily powerful China poses a huge risk to global security and to the stability of the Asia-Pacific arena as well (Lawson, 149). Chinas past record of repeated recourse to force in dealing with crisis situations lends credibility to this unease. Some expansion may focus on Taiwan, or distrust Japanese intentions, or reflect uneasiness over the rise of military build up in the wider world (Gurtov and Van Ness, 114). Chinas striking progress has readied it to move ahead on the technological level of its civilian production, with obvious repercussions for future military modernisation as well. The actual estimate of Chinese defence outlay is fiercely disputed, and in all likelihood may not be evident to the regime itself (Thatcher, 181). The delineation of military expenses is inexact because of inconsistencies in the currency and domestic price. Modest estimates set Chinas military defence spending at least three times the officially released statistics (Shaoguang, 16). Under the influential reformer Deng Xiaoping the Peoples Liberation Army cut nearly a million troops and focused heavily on research into strategic technologies of foreign armies in modern warfare (Shaoguang, 12). Short of an unforeseen threat, Chinese military expansion is destined for a longer course of action than that feared by many foreigners (Thatcher, 178). The Communist regime estimates that Chinas modernization will be complete by the year 2049. Ultimately, to reach that goal, the Communist Party must maintain strong leadership, national stability, and congenial dealings with neighbouring nations to be free to acquire further expertise and advance needed commerce (Blasko, 326). Suspicions of an imminent China threat may be overblown, though not totally unwarranted. Without a doubt the expansion of China’s economic prowess will influence the overall balance of power and activate new areas of volatility in global relations, troubling the present order (Thatcher, 115). But the contention of impending threat is basically faulty in that it neglects the ambiguity of the sizeable hurdles that confront the Chinese in the course of the nations exponential progress. As Professor Jian suggests: "It is here one finds that although the Cold War has ended, Cold War-style thinking has not." (3) The modernization policy of the past two decades has drastically reduced China’s isolation on the international scene, and, at the same time, opened the Chinese masses to a degree to the ideals cherished by other nations in the international community (Poole-Robb and Bailey, 184). Arguably this contact will bring about eventual adjustments in Chinas perspective on the world order (Jian, 9). However much modernization has freed up the ingenuity that had long been inhibited by Communist control and liberated the aptitude of the Chinese people for a worthwhile quality of life, its thrust has also generated intense and contradictory changes in China’s economy, society, and culture (Taylor, 99). Serious political and social changes compel the Chinese to ask new and uneasy questions. The growing dichotomy between rich and poor contrasts blatantly with the professed objectives of the Communist ideal (Jian, 9). While Deng Xiaoping’s reform-and-opening policy improved Chinese living standards, it created deep economic inequities in Chinese society, casting communist ideology into doubt (Segal, 103). In light of the contradiction, the single validation for the existence of the Communist regimes absolute one-party rule holds that China would still be a fragile, corrupt, and fractured country with no standing in the world were it not for the Communist revolution (Jian, 10). In striking contrast to the set moral standard dominating the Mao period, an unprincipled social malaise generates an escalating ethical impasse for Chinese society (Segal, 105). If the Chinese communist state is responsible for the moral dilemma, the popular conviction prevails that the Chinese Communist government cannot relinquish power. In truth, without its stabilising authority Chinese society might well dissolve in total disintegration (Jian, 11). Authentic modernization must be first and foremost the product of the Chinese own initiative. Were the international community to try to revolutionize the nation from outside, it would interject a wholly for­eign factor that might risk any prospect of change in the future (Jian, 17). The Chinese are in the process of sorting out Chinas status in the international community as it deals with the attendant rise of nationalism (Zweig, 9). In the absence of a clear democratic tradition in Chinese antiquity, the effort to construct democratic principles is complex. In Chinas earliest memory, autocracy, rather than democracy, took precedence in Chinese political thinking. The word democracy frequently touted in Communist political life was anything but authentic rule by the people (Jian, 13). The process of Chinas modernization is of vital international interest. If Chinas precarious modernization process ultimately brings economic prosperity, social stability, and democracy to the nation, it could serve to convert China into a substantial insider (Gurtov and Van Ness, 124). Even were this not so, it is probable that a Chinese nation immersed in world commerce will not lightly put at risk its own economic interests in a largely interdependent international community. China is not an assured adversary now and will not inexorably become so in the predictable future (Thatcher, 181). By appreciating Chinas significance and initiating channels of communication with the regime, the free world may ultimately see China integrated advantageously into world order. China’s political leaders and the majority of its thinkers, estimate the next fifteen to twenty years to be critical for reaching key goals of modernization and quality of life (Jian, 25). In the greater process of an authentic assimilation of China into the global community, the succession should become appreciably easier as senior leaders from the revolutionary era depart from Chinese leadership over the same fifteen to twenty years. Arguably, a new generation in power, practised in an international venue, will more effectively work out a genuine Chinese prototype of democracy (Jian, 25). Renovation is as promising for the international sphere as for China because the nation possesses values of its own to proffer. With a return to its ancient wisdom and the highly-developed civilization of it past, China may play a role in making the world a more secure and better-quality venue for all. Unknown future dynamics aside, the twenty-first century is already witnessing a China reassessing something of its ancient glory as Zhong Guo with a new orientation from its isolationist interim. The Chinese nation seems likely to continue to reach beyond its domestic sphere of influence into the international arena, where it is certain to become an important competitor in an increasingly interdependent world. How the emerging challenge is met by the international community will define much of its future experience (Shenkar, 176). References Blasko, Dennis J. (1999) "Chinese Military Modernization: An Assessment." World and I. News World Communications, Inc. Vol.14, Issue 10, October,1999, p October 326. Fishman, Ted C. China Inc.: How the Rise of the Next Superpower Challenges America and the World. London: Scribner. 2005. Gurtov, Melvin and Van Ness, Peter.(2005). Confronting the Bush Doctrine: Critical Views From the Asia-Pacific, Asias Transformations London: Taylor & Francis. Jian, Chen. (1998) "The China Challenge in the Twenty-First Century Implications for U S. Foreign Policy." Peaceworks No. 44. Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace. 1998. 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