Interpreting China's Grand Strategy: Past, Present, and Future

by Michael D. Swaine

RAND Asian experts Swaine and Tellis have chosen one of the most significant, controversial, and timely subjects, breaking new ground conceptually as well as analytically.

Genres: China, Politics

304 pages, Paperback

First published March 21, 2000

Reviews

[Terry Tucker · Rating 4 out of 5]

The reader of this review should consider this an extension of my recent review (4/17/23) of the book, Mao, the Untold Story, Chang and Halliday, 2006

This study identifies and analyzes the major factors determining China’s grand strategy—past, present, and future—to better understand the motivations behind Chinese strategic behavior and to assess how such behavior might evolve in the future, over both the near and long term.

China, like any other state, has pursued a grand strategy conditioned substantially by its historical experience, its political interests, and its geostrategic environment. China’s grand strategy is keyed to the attainment of three interrelated objectives: first and foremost, the preservation of domestic order and well-being in the face of different forms of social strife; second, the defense against persistent external threats to national sovereignty and territory; and third, the attainment and maintenance of geopolitical influence as a major, and perhaps primary, state. A fourth unstated factor is to export communism this will be demonstrated further in this review. .

Confrontation or conflict with the United States or its allies in Asia would most likely occur because of “normal” disputes between states—especially those disputes arising from perceived threats to China’s domestic order and well-being and China’s territorial integrity—and not from explicit or implicit great power struggles over control of the international system. Yet, China is transitioning to a more assertive strategy commensurate with its increasing power; it seeks to develop a sphere of influence by acquiring new allies and by underwriting the protection of others; and acquire new or reclaim old territory for China’s resources or for symbolic reasons by penalizing, if necessary, any opponents or bystanders who resist such claims. This new assertive strategy is prepared to redress past wrongs it believes it may have suffered and it is attempting to rewrite the prevailing international “rules of the game” to better reflect its own interests. And, in the most extreme policy choice imaginable, even perhaps ready itself to preventive war or to launch predatory attacks on its foes.

In Mao, the Untold Storym Mao envisaged a situation where “Communist parties all over the world will not believe in [Russia] but believe in us.” He saw a chance to establish his own “centre for world revolution.” In June of 1959, after an incident over a lost US Sidewinder Missile and Khrushchev’s visit to the US, Mao saw Khrushchev’s rapprochement with the West as a historic opportunity to put himself forward as the champion of all those around the world who saw peaceful coexistence as favoring— and possibly freezing— the status quo [ and even favoring the West] .

The goal for now, he told his inner circle at the beginning of 1960, was “to propagate Mao Tse-tung Thought” around the world. At first, the drive should not be too aggressive, in order, as he put it, not to be seen to be trying to “export our fragrant intestines” (to which Mao compared his “Thought”). The resulting propaganda campaign brought the world “Maoism.”

Mao’s Self-promotion abroad was fueled by vastly increased handouts of his usual trio: arms, money and food. On 21 January 1960 a new body called the Foreign Economic Liaison Bureau was formed, ranking on a par with the Foreign Trade Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, to handle the rise in foreign aid. Aid figures soared immediately. This spree of gifts by Mao coincided with the worst years of the greatest famine in world history. Over 22 million people died of starvation in 1960 alone.

Moreover, they were literally handouts, as Peking constantly said that loans should be treated as gifts, or that repayment should be deferred indefinitely. As for arms, the regime liked to say “We are not arms merchants”; but this did not mean it did not export arms, only that the arms did not have to be paid for.

Mao saw that his best chance was where there was a war, so the main donee on his list was Indochina, on which he lavished more than US $ 20 billion during his reign. In Africa he tried to latch on to the decolonization movement: there he showered cash, goods and arms on the Algerians, who were fighting the biggest anti-colonial war on the continent, against the French. In Latin America, Peking made a beeline for Cuba after Fidel Castro took power in January 1959. When Castro’s colleague Che Guevara came to China in November 1960, Mao doled out US $ 60m as a “loan,” which Chou told Guevara “does not have to be repaid.”

Mao’s playbook, also inspired by Chinese history, has been passed down and the current Chinese strategy would be easily recognizable by the Qing Dynasty today.

Neither Chinese nor Romans, retreating in the face of aggressive barbarians, dug in on a fortified line to save civilization. On the contrary, Chinese and Romans, each exploiting a geographical environment that had recognizable characteristics, built up the highest civilizations of their times. They expanded to take in all the terrain that could be profitably exploited by the techniques they already had, until they reached a zone—the depths of Mongolia, the depths of Germany—which because of costs of transportation and distances from metropolitan markets could not be further integrated with the urban-rural oikumene. Further expansion would mean diminishing returns—too much military expenditure, too little additional revenue. That was where they dug in and why they dug in. Their “defense lines” were in fact the limits which they themselves set on their own expansion.

the Chinese, like the Romans, pursued a variety of stratagems—punitive expeditions in some cases, coopting adversaries in others, and multiple forms of bribery in still some other instances—but the overarching objective still remained at the very least the neutralization of, or at best control over, the strategic periphery and, more important, the defense of a hegemony that was initially created by force, when possible, and ultimately legitimized and maintained by the claim of virtue and superior order and a related demand for deference from neighboring powers.

At the very least, therefore, growing Chinese power would at some point in the future likely result in a search for “hegemony” understood as a quest for universal acceptance of its increased power, status, and influence as a legitimate right.