Understanding China, Part 2

Last week we looked at the underlying philosophical foundation of China's approach to the world order. This week we will look at China's strategy to achieve its desired objectives in geopolitics.

China today is a mercantilist totalitarian state deeply influenced by Marxist-Leninist-Maoist doctrines combined with a cult of personality around the General Secretary Xi Jinping, and it is a country that seeks to reimpose its “All Under Heaven” approach to the world order in which the Middle Kingdom receives tributes from all other lesser countries.?Importantly, China is not a nation-state the way Western and Westphalian paradigms define it. Rather, China is a party-state where the communist party and the government have competing organizations and institutions with the party always winning out (Rush Doshi, The Long Game, p. 35). This can be entirely confusing for observers as there will often be an overlap between the institutions. Under Xi, though, the party has gotten significantly stronger.

Xi is far more radical than most Westerners realize. His father, Xi Zhongxun, fought with Mao Zedong during the civil war, but when Jinping was 9, Mao had his father arrested while the Red Guards harassed the young child throughout his teenage years. Eventually, Jinping was exiled to the countryside. His sister would commit suicide over the humiliation and ostracism, but Jinping became a Marxist hardliner and devoted to the CCP, working his way up through the ranks. This devoted radical now wants to restore China to its glory and preeminence from before the "century of humiliation" through dominating the Indo-Pacific, reestablishing control over the territories of greater China, and receiving its due deference from its sphere of influence (Graham Allison, Destined For War, p. 109).

Chinese leaders believe that the US wants to control the international order, and only allow China to participate if it is on American terms. Not only is this insulting and hypocritical to them because it is America who wrote the rules, but China believes they deserve to participate in the international order as a great power simply by their economic, military, cultural, and technological position/superiority. It is considered common knowledge in China that their country and culture are inherently superior to all others. However, despite the belief that the US is trying to control the international order, China believes America is in decline; “therefore, as a result of an historic evolution, they [China] will eventually supplant [America].” Accordingly, China believes it can achieve “national rejuvenation” by 2049 and displace the US because the West (especially America) is in full decline. This is their opportunity to re-achieve the Middle Kingdom, and all of this frames how China engages the world in its foreign policy.

General Strategy

Despite its cliched use, Chinese strategic thought does follow wei qi (i.e., the game Go) and the strategies of the game. In the game, one wins by encircling the opponent while trying to deceive them about one’s own position; this is similar to Sun Tzu's approach to conflict as well (see Understanding China, Part 1). This is why it’s incredibly difficult to tell who is winning a game until the end. To put this in policy terms would be to say that China has a strategy of blunting America's (and other's) coercive capabilities while building its own coercive capabilities (The Long Game, p. 20-21). Coercion is not just physical force, though, and encompasses economic, political, and cultural mechanisms as well. Therefore, China is aiming to encircle the US to mitigate its power and influence while deceiving other powers about its ultimate goal of "rejuvenation" (i.e., superiority).

Importantly, their strategic conceptualizations based on wei qi also limits their thinking because they interpret the actions of America through that same lens (e.g., encirclement and deception). This means they deeply misunderstand US foreign policy and grand strategy, which has led to geopolitical mistakes and will likely to do so again in the future.

Influence Operations and Complacency

The primary goal of China’s information operations is to increase the positive perception of the country while hiding its objectives and true capabilities. Take for instance the ruse about China’s peaceful rise. At the beginning of the 21st century, China maintained its basic conceptualization of “All Under Heaven,” but with a powerful rhetorical twist. Zheng Bijian, when he was leading the think tank China Reform Forum, worked with the Ministry of State Security to come up with a brilliant theory of China’s path to great power status. “China’s peaceful rise” became almost a Shibboleth for US policy wonks who believed in the power of economic liberalization, e.g., the neoconservatives in the Bush administration and liberal institutionalists in academia. For example, Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick praised Zheng’s ideas on the peaceful rise, writing articles and giving speeches establishing the administration’s response to this.

However, Zheng’s conceptualization of “China’s peaceful rise” was a rhetorical device meant to mask the underlying threat. According to Zheng, China would rise peacefully as long as the world integrated it into the global economy, supported it culturally, did not intervene in Taiwan, allowed technology theft, and did not criticize its human rights record (Alex Joske, Spie and Lies, p. 108-09). Basically, China would rise peacefully as long as no one challenged them, and as long as other states basically acted as tributaries. This strategy of information operations is intended to promote "massive foreign investment, the acceptance of Chinese exports, indulgences when the government or state-affiliated organizations are caught stealing technology or violating WTO rules, and looking the other way on human rights abuses" (Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon, p. 115). Information operations, including the united front work and Confucius institutes, are meant to blind observers to China’s more nefarious objectives.

Note: Rand has just published an excellent e-book on China’s approach to psychological and information warfare if one is interested. See here.

Lawfare, International Institutions, and Geoeconomics

China's strategy with international institutions is “to blunt American order-building, reassure neighbors, and complicate US regional involvement rather than as forums for genuine problem solving” (The Long Game, p. 104). International institutions are just another part of the game to maneuver around the enemy and prevent encirclement of China.

When it came to the development of Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), China actually challenged the organization over its very name. Originally, the “C” was going to stand for community, but this was unacceptable to China because the implication was a regional body that would limit China’s power by focusing on economic liberalization and human rights. China limited the organization through preventing institutionalization and pushing back against its economic agenda. Other regional organizations were used by China to exclude the US and create the perception that they were willing to work with partners in Asia. For example, China made concessions to the ASEAN Regional Forum on tariffs and arbitration to keep the US out of Southeast Asia while establishing the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to keep the US out of Central Asia.

Then there are organizations China uses to shape regional and global order. In 2013, China developed the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (opened in 2016), and in 2014 it assumed the chairmanship of the Conference on Interaction and Confidence Building Measures (CICA). Both of these organizations, directed by China, would allow it to impose its own conceptualization of regional order through coercion, consent, and “legitimacy.” Finally, the UN remains a central part of China’s maneuvering for control of the world order. They view the UN as the core of the global governance system, and believe taking control of key positions will allow them to displace liberal values while elevating their own totalitarian principles. In 2020, China lead?4 of?the 15 principal specialized agencies of the UN. China’s approach to international institutions is the same kind of wei qi strategy that attempts to encircle the enemy while denying territory to one’s opponent.

Military Operations

The final topic to touch on is military operations because the US/West have a fundamentally different perspective on the use of force. For China, limited use of violence is used for psychological objectives rather than (just) military objectives, derived from the thought of Sun Tzu. During the Maoist period, examples include: Korean War (1950-53), shelling of Quemoy and Matsu during the two Taiwan Strait Crises (1954, 1958), Sino-Indian War (1962), the Zhenbao incident (1969), and the Third Vietnam War (1979). More recent examples include the border dispute and cyberattacks with India and the cyberattacks on Australia over political disagreements (both in 2020).

Each of these operations were not meant to achieve a primarily military objective. China’s strategy was/is to force its opponent to reconsider threats or alter behavior on a psychological level. This is why China has long held a concept of offensive deterrence that "involves the use of a preemptive strategy not so much to defeat the adversary militarily as to deal him a psychological blow to cause him to desist" from unwanted behavior (Kissinger, On China, p. 217). Essentially, China seeks to use force to change the psychological conditions and improve their position (Destined For War, p. 149). In addition, China does not understand peace and war as temporally distinct. For example, the infamous and semi-official Unrestricted Warfare by Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui advocates using what we call “gray zone” activity. There is no separation of peace and war because the state can utilize different tools, including limited force, at any time. Analyst should understand how China approaches the use of force because smaller attacks should be considered psychological attacks (not just physical), and they should note that the use of limited force is unlikely to indicate preparation for a larger conflict. However, this means analysts must also study when deviations occur, and the strategic implications of those deviations (e.g., a great power war).

Conclusion

This newsletter (and the previous one) only scratched the surface of understanding China’s strategy for achieving its interesting, but the topics covered were meant to elucidate the general approach that China exhibits and the mindset that decision makers have. Geopolitical risk analysts need to have a basic framework to analyze China’s behavior and forecast potential risks from it with an understanding of their primary goal to displace the US as the global superpower and achieve “national rejuvenation” by 2049. In addition, by understanding the mindset of Chinese decision makers, analysts will more accurately be able to forecast behavior. This is a topic worthy of (significant) further study, but hopefully these two brief essays help security professionals understand China better.