Dr. Munmun Majumdar
Since 1990, China has been adhering to Deng Xiaoping’s maxim of keeping a low profile while still getting things done. Does Xi Jinping’s speech in October 2013 at the foreign affairs conference of the Chinese Communist Party, articulating the striving for achievement amount to signaling a shift and jettisoning of Deng’s strategy? Is this then, a pointer to the start of a wholesale Chinese reversal of strategy? The story of China’s rise is long, consequential and global. The maritime disputes in either the South China Sea or in East Asia hardly give the entire account of China’s international trajectory.
Since the global financial crisis in 2007-2008 there has been a notable assertive and nationalist foreign policy shift in Chinese Foreign policy. This is most dramatically demonstrated in the high profile diplomacy to promote its agenda and maritime disputes with its neighbors defending its “core” interest. However, the characterization of such a shift remains unclear. Even the assertive label is being contested.
China under Xi Jinping has gone a step further from the concept of national community introduced by Zheng Bijian, at the Boao Forum for Asia. He was the architect of the peaceful rise strategy designed to leverage access to Chinese economic benefits in order to cultivate pro-China groupings of countries. Presently, it proposes to build various destiny communities and create zones of friendly countries dependent on China for its economic largesse to explicitly design a turn wherein intertwined interests would be the required impetus towards establishing security and political communities. Xi Jinping has also emphasized the importance of prioritizing the economic interests of countries that support Chinese core interests, even if it comes at a relative cost economically. Past economic goals solely prioritized making money with little consideration to strategic factors but Chinese leaders presently are beginning to dwell on how they can use the immense economic benefit of doing business to gain political influence.
While China’s new diplomacy is globally oriented notable with its international initiative that it undertook together with India, Brazil, Russia and South Africa-the creation in July 2014 of the $100 billion BRICS, at the same time is also decisive to return to Asia. The Silk Road program involving Central Asian, South Asian and Southeast Asian countries indeed showcases China’s emerging diplomatic ambitions. It was around the same time when President Xi and Premier Li Keqiang personally chaired the first and only multi-agency meeting on China’s regional diplomacy with all Communist Party Standing Committee members present that Xi-Li leadership had rolled out the Silk Route Strategy. This strategy entails building a Euro-Asian Silk Road economic belt to the west and a Maritime Silk Road to Southeast and South Asia. Written into the Decisions of the Third Plenum of the 18thChinese Communist Party Congress, the Silk Road strategy is based on open networks in euro-Asia and maritime Asia looped together through Chinese-financed infrastructure and transportation projects, as well as trade and financial ties. The Silk Road program is designed to infuse regional economic expansion with greater strategic purpose. Promoted together with policy concepts such as “Asian security” and the “Asia pacific dream which Xi expounded on at the 2014 APEC meeting in Beijing, the concept refers to economic prosperity and a tightening of Asian relations. The Silk Road clearly reflects China’s ambitions and also explains the obvious progress of the central governments efforts to develop China’s western regions while giving Chinese cooperation with Southeast Asia a renewed purpose and momentum.
The new turn in China’s plan also featured speedy Chinese military modernization with a focus on combat readiness along its periphery regions. The announcement of the Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) in East China Sea, the increase in military expenditure by double digits, the creation of the National security Commission chaired by Xi himself clearly show that Xi Jinping is much more than willing compared to his predecessor Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, to wield coercive power, military and economic, in regional diplomacy.
Again the deliberate strategic decision central to Beijing’s overarching anti access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy demonstrates that it is seeking to create a domestic and international environment that will limit US ability to intervene effectively in a given conflict.
All of these have had fallout on countries in the region with its obvious dynamics. Regional actors are anxious about Beijing’s long-term intention. Not just that. Beijing’s behavior is also pushing several countries of the regions towards external balancing, such as improving ties with the US and other major players in the region. In terms of external balancing US and Vietnam established a comprehensive partnership, Philippines and US signed an enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. Simultaneously, the countries are seeking to internally strengthen and modernize their militaries and expanding their ties with one another as well. For example India and Japan have upgraded bilateral defence ties and have pledged to enhance cooperation, especially in the realm of maritime security, again India provides arms and professional military training, particularly of junior officers, to Vietnam and Hanoi has granted India berthing rights at its Nha Trang port. Japan, Australia and ASEAN countries increasingly seek after India with its look east policy now recast in November 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi as its Act east policy that suggests a commitment to take part in the evolving Asian security order.
It is unlikely that China will shift away from relying on coercion and manipulating risk to achieve its territorial objectives more so since they correspond well with China’s strategy of active defence. Active defense is the operational component of Jiang Zemin’s National Military Strategic Guidelines for the New Period, which serves as the highest level of strategic guidance for all PLA military operations during war and preparation for war during peacetime.
The cold war experience had solidified the Western narrative stemming from World War I that inadvertent escalation causes major war and therefore crisis management is the key to maintaining peace. The Chinese leaders do not share this mindset. Instead they believe leaders deliberately control the escalation process and therefore wars happen because leaders decide at a given point that the best option is to fight. The focus on de-escalation through crisis management is therefore unlikely to produce any change in China’s behavior. Additionally, while the crisis management approach may have been a realistic cold war operational planning, it may not work when one considers the less violent and prolonged engagements that characterize Chinese coercive diplomacy when evaluating risk and rewards in the 1962 Sino-India War. If anything it will only provoke greater provocation. Likewise, the Chinese policy of embarking on taking calculated risks and testing the resolve of the opponent is common. India saw this when Chinese troops entered Indian Territory before the visit of the Chinese premier. It took three weeks for the explosive situation to resolve and saw the signing of a border defence cooperation agreement during Indian Prime Minister’s visit to Beijing. What remains to be seen is whether the agreement would actually prevent Chinese incursions that have been a routine feature in the past or whether it would use the same strategy of creeping assertiveness and push to the point when the adversary becomes dangerously annoyed and then subside easing of tension so as to not break the relationship and wait until another opportunity presents itself. Till then the big question is where is Xi Jiping going?
(The writer teaches at the Dept. of Political Science
Northeastern Hill University, Shillong)