China’s Rise through Chinese Eyes

Earlier this month, I had the opportunity to interview a number of Chinese and other Asian experts on

Richard Weitz

The general consensus of the experts was that China-U.S. relations have improved significantly during the past few years from the nadir of 2010, when the two countries openly clashed over U.S. military activities in China’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and China’s newly assertive territorial claims in the South China Sea. But there were residual concerns about divisions regarding Japan, North Korea, Taiwan, and other issues.

Whereas a few years ago Chinese policy makers might have seen the United States as a declining power that was withdrawing from the eastern Pacific, the Obama administration’s Asian Pivot and other developments have made clear that the United States plans to remain an Asian power for a long time. In fact, Chinese experts I met were divided over the Asian Pivot. Some saw the strategic rebalancing as designed to constrain and counter China’s rise. Others considered the shift a natural response to the changing global security environment, which is increasing the relative importance of Asia according to a number of metrics.

Meanwhile, Chinese leaders have found an effective way to counter the Pivot by not behaving very aggressively and encouraging regional concerns that the Pivot was harming China-U.S. relations at everyone’s expense. Some Chinese suggested that the Pivot was driving Beijing and Moscow to cooperate against the United States. Indeed, many of the speakers from other Asian countries evinced alarm that deteriorating China-U.S. relations over the Pivot would negatively impact their interests. Their governments were reluctant to embrace the Pivot fully as long as it was seen as having an anti-Beijing thrust.

I had the opportunity to deliver several lectures at Chinese universities. The Chinese students, as well as their professors, spent much time attacking Tokyo for stirring up its territorial dispute with China by nationalizing the disputed islands. Even more surprising was the vehemence of their alarm at the allegedly heightened threat of Japanese re-militarism fueled in part by U.S. indifference and U.S. efforts to expand Japan’s regional security roles. Chinese analysts stressed that their government leaders had to take into account the strong popular sentiments on this issue. Many of the South Korean students I met in Seoul shared these anti-Japanese sentiments, which are largely absent in the United States but could complicate U.S. Asian diplomacy in coming years.

Some of the Japanese and U.S. speakers at the Asan Plenum attacked China for adopting a more assertive policy regarding territorial disputes in recent years, with one Japanese analyst complaining about China’s “territorialization” of its EEZ. The Chinese speakers resisted the view that China should remain primarily a land power and allow Japan and the United States to dominate the seas, explaining that their preoccupation with the small and often barren Pacific islands in the East and South China Seas by noting that their country had often been attacked from the sea, including by Japan and other Western countries. Some were upset by what they perceived as a change in Washington’s views towards China’s territorial conflicts, which they believed was encouraging Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam, and other countries to adopt a confrontational policy toward China.

Chinese academics generally downplayed perceptions that the Xi administration has (yet) made major changes in China’s foreign policies. They argued that the new leadership had altered its discourse in some area, with Xi’s style differing from that of President Hu. In their view, Xi and other leaders more openly express annoyance at North Korea’s provocative behavior, but they also are blunter in criticizing U.S. policies they dislike, such as U.S. missile defense programs in Asia.

Nonetheless, Chinese experts did not see any major changes in their country’s foreign policies. They considered significant alterations possible in the future, though they believed these would probably only occur in the context of a comprehensive and integrated revision in China’s foreign policies rather than on a piecemeal basis. These changes could aim to achieve major improvements in Beijing’s ties with Washington, though they could also represent a more comprehensive effort to counter the U.S. Asian Pivot, which could see China move closer toward Moscow and Tehran in resisting U.S. influence in Eurasia. In fact, China’s policies towards Russia and Iran, as well as North Korea, represent good signposts as to the overall orientation of China’s foreign policy.

Looking ahead, analysts offered various suggestions on how best to improve China-U.S. relations. Some Chinese stressed the need to reduce distrust between China and the United States. At the Asan Plenum, Jia Qingguo of Peking University advocated slowly expanding the currently limited collaboration on selected issues to build trust that could lead to more extensive cooperation later. Conversely, American expert Douglas Paal called for a “regional reset” in U.S. policies that would entail launching a bold initiative with an approximate 15-year timeline to develop and execute a positive bilateral cooperation agenda to fill in the details of the “new type” of bilateral relationship, such as a mutual investment treaty, agreed cyber and space security norms, and a vision of how we would like the situations in the Korea Peninsula, South Asia, and other regional hotspots to develop.

Addressing near-term challenges such as North Korea and Afghanistan is important, but having a vision of strategic partnership would be valuable for keeping policy makers in both countries focused on long-term opportunities as well as near-term challenges.

Richard Weitz is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis at the Hudson Institute. His current research includes regional security developments relating to Europe, Eurasia, and East Asia as well as U.S. foreign, defense, homeland security, and WMD nonproliferation policies.