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March 17, 2019
TEN DAYS before the American presidential election of November 2012, a four-man delegation was dispatched from Washington for Asia.
Their mission, put simply, was to avert a chain of events that could lead the United States into a war with China.
long-festering dispute between China and Japan over the ownership of some uninhabited islands in the East China Sea had flared up to dangerous levels. Chinese and Japanese ships and planes were jostling and buzzing each other in the waters around the islands, known as the Senkaku to the Japanese and the Diaoyu to the Chinese. Nationalist sentiments were rising on both sides. In China, anti-Japanese riots across the country had led to the trashing of Japanese-owned shops and factories. Japan itself was about to elect a government led by Shinzo Abe, who was determined to change Japan’s
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The United States guarantees Japan’s defense through the U.S.–Japan Security Treaty, and the delegation intended to make clear that the Senkaku Islands were covered by America’s security guarantee to Japan. The implications were both clear and alarming. If China were to attack the islands, the United States would be obliged to come to Japan’s aid. That would mean that the world’s three largest economic powers were at war.
For while the rights and wrongs of the issue are bitterly disputed on both sides, it is a shift in economic power that ultimately lies behind the rise in tensions in the Pacific.
Joe Nye argued that it was unthinkable to accept that the Western Pacific would become a Chinese sphere of influence because “such a response to China’s rise would destroy American credibility.”
In 2012, a senior Brit told me that he believed that the central challenge of the next generation would be managing the transition from a world dominated by the United States to a world in which China is the preeminent power.
periods in which an established great power is being challenged by a rising power are the moments of maximum peril for the world.
Thucydides trap
rising powers have gone to war with established powers on twelve out of sixteen occasions since 1500.
But a belief that increasing rivalry between the United States and China is inevitable is now common among Chinese academics and policy makers.
U.S. navy conducted a Freedom of Navigation operation in the South China Sea—sailing within twelve nautical miles of Subi Reef, one of several “artificial islands” that China had constructed to reinforce its maritime claims.
For the discussion of the possibility of a war between America and China is not simply confined to academic theoreticians and high-flying diplomats—it is also embedded in the military planning of both nations.
In recent decades, however, the tensest standoffs between the United States and China have come over Taiwan.
When the Communists finally won the Chinese civil war in 1949, the defeated Nationalists, led by Chiang Kai-shek, fled to Taiwan, just over a hundred miles off the coast of China. Ever since, mainland China has regarded Taiwan as a “rebel province” and an inalienable part of its territory.
The government in Beijing has pledged to go to war rather than accept any declaration of Taiwanese independence. The United States has formally accepted Beijing’s “One China” policy, but it has also promised to resist any mov...
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the gap in military capabilities between China and the United States is narrowing.
the United States is attempting to maintain a position as the dominant military power all over the world. China, by contrast, is simply attempting to be the dominant power in its region.
much of the weaponry that China is buying is specifically designed to make it harder for the United States to maintain naval dominance in the South and East China Seas.
New generations of Chinese cruise and ballistic missiles and submarines are aimed at targeting the aircraft carriers that are the basis of America’s naval dominance in the oceans around China.
China has also spent big on weapons that can target American satellites.
Air-Sea Battle,
specifically targeted China’s new weaponry, which is known in military jargon as having “anti-access and area-denial” capabilities—
because of its ability to deny the U.S. navy access to areas close ...
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The difficulty with the doctrine of Air-Sea Battle is that carrying it out would probably require America to escalate any conflict quickly—by attacking missile and surveillance systems based on the Chinese mainland in extensive bombing raids.
“The stock of modern U.S. military equipment is worth $3 trillion; despite its spending, China is at perhaps 10 percent that figure. Nor does China’s military have experience in modern combat operations.”19
Is China preparing for a war with its neighbors, or even with the United States itself? What are the intentions of the rising superpower of the twenty-first century?
“great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation”
National History Museum on Tiananmen Square in Beijing.
the story of China’s modern history,
Acres of space are devoted to the suffering inflicted by the Japanese invasion and occupation of China from 1937–1945, when some 15 million Chinese people died.
almost no space given over to the even larger numbers of people who lost their lives during the famines and state-sponsored killings of Mao’s Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962.
it seems to be official policy to keep the conflict with Japan at the forefront of the public mind.
The Communist Party’s mission is to right the historic wrongs inflicted on China and to restore the nation to its rightful position in world affairs.
Deng Xiaoping,
was Deng’s policies of economic reform and opening to the outside world, begun in late 1978, that transformed China over the course of a generation.
The economic reforms unleashed by Deng succeeded in more than doubling the size of the Ch...
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famous advice on how a rising China should deal with the outside world.
Coolly observe, calmly deal with things, hold your position, hide your capacities, bide your time, accomplish things where possible”—
“hide and...
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one of the most articulate and prominent exponents of the view that China and the United States had a mutual interest in the peaceful rise of China was Professor Wang Jisi of Beijing University.
architecture of globalization.
Wang had spent time as a visiting professor at Princeton University,
The new face of China’s foreign policy was Yang Jiechi, a man with a much more abrasive style.
“China is a big country and other countries are small countries, and that’s just a fact.”
the new Chinese leader swiftly provided evidence that he was willing to take actions that appealed to assertive nationalists.
Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ),
China’s ADIZ required all non-Chinese planes entering the area to identify themselves to the Chinese authorities.
But China was also capable of blending charm with menace, combining threats with the promise of lucrative win-win deals.
The United States and China announced a new understanding on climate change. And, after months of heavy lobbying from Tokyo, the Chinese leader agreed to shake hands with Shinzo Abe, the prime minister of Japan.
