Shambaugh: China won’t be a global power until it figures out what it wants

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By
Alexander Sullivan

Best
Defense department of psynology

Contrary to some of
the more sensationalist appraisals of China's rise in world rankings, David
Shambaugh argues in his new book, China
Goes Global: The Partial Power, that despite China's undeniable
achievements, it has succeeded in becoming a global actor but not a global power.
Hence the word "partial."

Shambaugh, a George
Washington University political scientist, introduced his book last week in a February
13 talk at Johns Hopkins SAIS. He focused less on China's "vertical" rise -- its
skyrocketing GDP and increasing military sophistication -- than on the extent
of its "horizontal" expansion of its influence to the rest of the planet. He
analyzed China's current global presence along five vectors: diplomacy, global
governance, economics, culture, and security.

China has expanded
its reach in most of these areas: It is the world's second largest economy and possibly the largest trading nation; it has relations with over 170 countries;
it sits at the main table in most global multilateral fora; its official media
outlets are opening new bureaus abroad; and it just launched its first aircraft carrier to lead its navy
ever farther out in the Western Pacific. But according to Shambaugh, all the
government's efforts along these lines have yielded precious little in the way
of real power, as understood by people like Joe Nye -- that is, influence
exerted to make actor A do thing X.

On the face of it,
Shambaugh's conclusions are not unwarranted. China remains a "lonely power"
with few genuine friends in the world. Increasing assertiveness in the East and
South China Seas has helped roll back diplomatic gains made in its neighborhood
since the Asian financial crisis, and even in African and Latin American
countries where Chinese investment dollars (untrammeled by governance
guarantees) had gained fast new friends, the picture is becoming less rosy.

One of Shambaugh's
most interesting arguments is that while China's economic statistics are worthy
of admiration, its "multinational" corporations have abysmal international brand
recognition and an overall poor track record of breaking into overseas markets,
calling into question whether China's corporate sector is really as much of a
global business player as it is assumed to be.

He acknowledged that
China has tremendous latent potential as a true global power and that its
capacities will likely increase. What provoked by far the most interest during
the Q&A session was one of his explanations for why China has so far failed
to convert its potential into power, namely that Chinese elites are divided
over China's identity in the world and the values it should represent. The lack
of coherence among decision-makers in China, he said, has been one of the
biggest impediments to their effective exercise of power. Absent consensus, the
one thread that runs through it all (yi
yi guan zhi) is poorly disguised, narrowly defined self-interest, which
inevitably provokes counterbalancing by other international actors.