Chinese Grand Strategy in the 21st Century: According to Plan? (Asian Security Studies) [1 ed.] 1138229970, 9781138229976

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Asian Security Studies

CHINESE GRAND STRATEGY IN THE 21ST CENTURY ACCORDING TO PLAN? Thomas M. Kane and Noah E. Falkovich

Chinese Grand Strategy in the 21st Century

This book examines the state of China’s grand strategy in the 21st century, including political, military and economic factors. Over the past two decades, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has attained the second-highest gross domestic product in the world, taken a leadership role in East Asian regional organisations and substantially improved its military capabilities. Each of these developments – and many others like them – has attracted attention from scholars, journalists and policymakers. Less frequently acknowledged – but perhaps of greater significance – is the impressive congruence of Beijing’s accomplishments. This book highlights how the PRC’s successes support one another and pave the way for future accomplishments, and how these successes seem to be achieved in an unusually coherent and purposeful way. As Beijing’s relations with the rest of the world continue to evolve, with events ranging from the ongoing global economic crisis to the turbulence in China’s own stock market which may bring the PRC’s government under pressure to re-order its priorities, this book assesses China’s grand strategy and long-term approach to national policy. It identifies the political, military and economic instruments it is likely to use, the key challenges which it will face, and explores the implications for the global community. This book will be of great interest to students of Chinese politics, foreign policy, strategic studies, international security and IR in general. Thomas M. Kane is the author of eight books on world politics and strategy, notably Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power (Routledge, 2002). He has addressed the Advanced Command and Staff College of the British armed forces on the strategic significance of Southeast Asia and was formerly a senior lecturer at the University of Hull. Noah E. Falkovich is a graduate of the University of Maine’s School of Policy and International Affairs (SPIA), with an MA in international security and foreign policy. He currently serves as a guardian in the US Space Force.

Asian Security Studies Series Editors: Sumit Ganguly1, Andrew Scobell2, and Alice Ba3 1

Indiana University, USA United States Institute of Peace, USA 3 University of Delaware, USA 2

Few regions of the world are fraught with as many security questions as Asia. Within this region, it is possible to study great power rivalries, irredentist conflicts, nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation, secessionist movements, ethnoreligious conflicts and interstate wars. This book series publishes the best possible scholarship on the security issues affecting the region, and includes detailed empirical studies, theoretically oriented case studies and policy-relevant analyses as well as more general works. US-China Foreign Relations Power Transition and its Implications for Europe and Asia Edited by Robert S. Ross, Øystein Tunsjø and Wang Dong Explaining Contemporary Asian Military Modernization The Myth of Asia’s Arms Race Sheryn Lee The Covid-19 Crisis in South Asia Coping with the Pandemic Edited by Sumit Ganguly and Dinsha Mistree Chinese Power and Artificial Intelligence Perspectives and Challenges Edited by William C. Hannas and Huey-Meei Chang The Shanghai Cooperation Organization and Conflict De-escalation Trust Building and Interstate Rivalries James MacHaffie China, Faits Accomplis and the Contest for East Asia The Shadow of Shifting Power Joshua Adam Hastey For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Asian-Security-Studies/book-series/ASS

Chinese Grand Strategy in the 21st Century According to Plan?

Thomas M. Kane and Noah E. Falkovich

First published 2024 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2024 Thomas M. Kane and Noah E. Falkovich The right of Thomas M. Kane and Noah E. Falkovich to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Names: Kane, Thomas M., 1969- author. | Falkovich, Noah E., author. Title: Chinese grand strategy in the 21st century : according to plan / Thomas M. Kane and Noah E. Falkovich. Other titles: Chinese grand strategy in the twenty first century Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2024. | Series: Asian security studies | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2023023377 (print) | LCCN 2023023378 (ebook) | ISBN 9781138229976 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032595436 (paperback) | ISBN 9781315387383 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: China

Strategic aspects. | China

Relations

21st century. | China

Military policy. Classification: LCC DS779.47 .K376 2024 (print) | LCC DS779.47 (ebook) | DDC 327.51

dc23/eng/20230516 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023023377 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2023023378 ISBN: 978-1-138-22997-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-59543-6 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-38738-3 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781315387383 Typeset in Sabon by MPS Limited, Dehradun

To mentors and unlikely opportunities

Contents

1

Introduction

2

Strategic Imperatives and Historical Responses: The Origins of Chinese Grand Strategy

14

Combine the Military and the Civil?: China’s Transformation of Wealth into Power

40

The New People’s Liberation Army: Chinese Military Reform, Enhancement and Expansion

67

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

1

Shadow Security: Chinese Strategy in the Cyber, Intelligence and Information Domains

101

The View from the Middle: The Geopolitics of Chinese Strategy

132

The View from Above: The Strategic Challenges of Governance, Regime Legitimacy and Party Rule in China

161

Every Action …: Foreign Policy and Diplomatic Challenges to Chinese Strategy

198

Conclusion: Precedents and Principles

241

Index

246

1

Introduction

Over the past two decades, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has attained the second highest gross domestic product in the world, taken a leadership role in East Asian regional organisations and substantially improved its military capabilities. Each of these developments – and many others like them – have attracted attention from scholars, journalists and policymakers. Less frequently acknowledged – but perhaps of greater significance – is the congruence of Beijing’s accomplishments. The PRC’s successes support one another and pave the way for more. Not only have the PRC’s policymakers succeeded in a wide range of areas, but they appear to be doing so in an unusually coherent and purposeful way. These observations suggest – and this book will argue – that the PRC’s leadership is successfully practising what military thinkers call grand strategy. This affects the way in which one must interpret a broad range of Beijing’s policies, whether one seeks to understand those policies for intellectual reasons or to form policies of one’s own. To say that a political actor practises grand strategy effectively is to say that it has rational purposes for most of the things which it does, and to say that those purposes are likely to be multi-layered. Virtually, all national leaders, for instance, intend for their economic policies to succeed as economic policies, but those who are grand strategically minded may also hope to achieve such goals as encouraging commercial relationships which increase their political influence over their trading partners, promoting industries which contribute to their military capabilities and maintaining domestic support for the current regime in the process. Later sections will explore the theoretical issues surrounding grand strategy in detail. For purposes of this introduction, Edward Mead Earle defines the term usefully in his influential Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler. According to Earle, grand strategy is the ‘element of statecraft’ which comprehensively ‘integrates the policies and armaments of the nation’.1 Since Earle does not specify the purpose of this enterprise, this author would add that the objective of grand strategy is to secure national goals of enduring importance. This author would also add that grand strategy typically takes shape over extended DOI: 10.4324/9781315387383-1

2 Introduction periods of time. Beijing’s 21st attempts to integrate its policies and armaments for national purposes, to pick the most pertinent example, trace their lineage to decisions made by the PRC’s government under the administration of Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s. If these attempts continue to succeed, the PRC will enjoy the benefits of greater economic development and enhanced freedom of action in global affairs into the indefinite future. Although the PRC’s posited grand strategy seems to have been effective so far, it does not appear to be complete. Despite all Beijing’s accomplishments, the PRC has yet to realise many of its probable objectives. Although the PRC has acquired impressive new weapons systems, its armed forces remain uneven in quality, although the PRC has managed to expand its gross domestic product rapidly for more than one quarter of a century, its level of economic development remains uneven as well, and although the PRC is widely perceived to have grown in diplomatic influence, it has yet to resolve such volatile issues as its territorial disputes in the South and East China seas and the one concerning the status of Taiwan. For these reasons and others, one may reasonably assume that the PRC’s grand strategy remains a work in progress. Beijing will, however, need to modify its approach. The very fact that the PRC achieved so much in the 1980s, 1990s and early 2000s has changed its economic and political situation. External developments inevitably affect China’s circumstances as well. The Obama administration’s decision to ‘rebalance’ America’s foreign policy towards its Far East, to pick but one well-publicised example, has reminded nations throughout the Western Pacific that the PRC’s most powerful counterpart is also active in that region, and whatever attitude Obama’s successor adopts will readjust Asian political relationships yet again. Even if events were unfolding precisely as Beijing might wish, the PRC’s leaders would continually need to update their policies to account for the country’s current circumstances. Events are hardly unfolding as Beijing might wish. The PRC owes virtually all its recent accomplishments to its three decades of phenomenal economic expansion. Since 2014, it has found its previous rate of growth increasingly challenging to sustain. The Chinese stock market crash of August 2015 both dramatised and exacerbated this difficulty. This, at a minimum, introduces fresh uncertainty into any strategy its leaders may hope to follow. For Beijing, the coming years are likely to be volatile. If the PRC is to continue its rise, its leaders will need grand strategic insight as acutely as they have needed it at any point during the past three decades. Each new crisis, however, will challenge their ability to persist with any plan. Moreover, the PRC’s leaders will have to adjust their policies to account for the increasing constraints on their resources. Any grand strategy the PRC may have followed in the recent past is in danger of collapse. Although the PRC seems certain to survive as a prosperous and influential state, it risks descending into a period of stagnation which could last for an open-ended period of time. However its leaders respond to this risk, their decisions will affect all whose trade and security are tied to the Western

Introduction

3

Pacific. The most alarming possibility is that Beijing’s leaders will adopt more aggressive policies, perhaps to restore damaged pride, perhaps as a ploy to bolster their position in domestic political conflicts or perhaps as a result of a calculation that as their nation’s so-called soft power ebbs, so-called hard power may, in carefully chosen circumstances, become their most promising instrument. If, alternatively, the PRC’s leaders resign themselves to an era of disappointment, the risk of large-scale conflict may well be less, but the PRC’s ability to support its international partners and sustain the global economy will dwindle as well. Chinese passivity could also encourage political actors ranging from ethnic separatist organisations to smaller Asian nations to take assertive positions in their disputes with the PRC, and whatever the rights and wrongs of these disagreements, such a development seems likely to raise tensions. A third possibility is that the PRC will adapt its historical strategy to current conditions. This is almost certainly the method its leaders would prefer. Since this approach is likely to involve only modest changes of overt policy, and since the results are unlikely to be as visibly successful as they have been in the recent past, outside observers may find it difficult to tell what the adapted strategy is, and even the Chinese authorities responsible for implementing it may not always be able to judge its effectiveness. Nevertheless, although it will be challenging to assess an updated Chinese grand strategy, it is important to try. To the extent that such a strategy functions effectively, the PRC’s actions in the relatively near future are likely to have long-term implications which its international partners would be unwise to ignore. To the extent that it does not, the PRC’s leaders will need to consider other options – including more radical ones – or drift into a strategy of passivity by default. Thus, if the primary purpose of this book is to make the case that one can best understand the 21st-century PRC’s policies in terms of grand strategy, a secondary purpose is to develop a fuller picture of what that strategy seems likely to be, and how we might attempt to measure its progress. Beijing prefers to maintain peaceful trading relationships with as much of the world as possible. Nevertheless, it has never been content to participate in those relationships on terms dictated by the so-called international community, nor has it been willing to yield influence to potential rivals. Therefore, it has sought to increase its freedom of action through measures ranging from founding international organisations to precipitating limited military confrontations with regional opponents to expanding the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The PRC’s attempts to increase its military and diplomatic power have been particularly visible in East Asia, but as the second decade of the 21st century draws to a close, it appears to be repeating many of its more successful techniques on a larger scale in its relations with European nations and the United States. What remains of this chapter will discuss the concept of grand strategy and its application to the contemporary PRC. The next section after this introduction will argue that, despite arguments to the contrary, many of the

4 Introduction skills and practises which enhance military and political leaders’ chances of success in relatively contained contests for power such as wars are equally relevant to more open-ended challenges of crafting long-term state policy. Here, the theoretical case for grand strategy is established. The final section of this chapter will review prominent works on the PRC’s contemporary grand strategy. Although a number of authors present evidence that such a strategy exists, none have yet explored it in the ‘integrated’ way that Earle and other strategic theorists suggest is necessary. By comparing and evaluating some of the recent influential literature on this subject, the concluding paragraphs set the stage for Chapter 2’s analysis of the structural, historical and philosophical origins of Chinese grand strategy. Does Anybody Here Know What’s Going On? The Theoretical Case for Grand Strategy Although this book will argue that grand strategies exist and that Beijing has a relatively well-developed one, these are not claims to make lightly. Grand strategy falls into that category of things which one may take for granted in everyday conversation, but which become problematic when subjected to scrutiny. It is common and often useful to speak as if political organisations such as states had goals and more or less thoughtful approaches to achieving them. One may reasonably say that Britain has formed and broken alliances with other countries over the course of centuries in order to achieve its longterm goal of preventing any one nation from dominating mainland Europe, that Russia has persistently sought access to warm-water ports, that contemporary liberal democracies are struggling to balance their desire to police external conflict zones with their extreme reluctance to suffer or even inflict casualties and that virtually all 21st-century states sacrifice their more principled aspirations to the imperative of achieving economic growth. Thinkers from the Realist tradition of international relations theory have given the practise of treating states as discrete actors which rationally pursue their own distinctive interests in world politics intellectual respectability. Nevertheless, the practise of treating states as purposeful entities only reflects the actual conduct of world politics when it is carefully amended and qualified. To begin with, those with experience in government or the armed forces are entitled to note the difficulty of implementing even relatively modest plans for relatively limited periods of time. The fact that grand strategy involves questions of war and peace makes the point acute. Carl von Clausewitz’s rightly admired On War tells us that the defining feature of warfare is friction – the melange of complicating factors which render even the simplest tasks supremely challenging.2 These factors are never fully predictable and never fully quantifiable. They make planning in the usual sense of the word impossible. Clausewitz is far from alone in offering this observation. The ancient Chinese military author Sunzi, for instance, states that it is impossible to

Introduction

5

formulate a winning strategy in advance.3 Renaissance Italy’s political and military thinker Niccolò Machiavelli reckons that the goddess Fortuna governs half of all human affairs.4 The contemporary historian Martin van Creveld concludes a study of military logistics with the comment that war is not a rational activity, and that the rational mind is not a suitable instrument for waging it.5 When one considers the fact that logistics would seem to be the aspect of military operations in which rational planning plays the largest possible role, van Creveld’s statement becomes particularly significant. Although On War warns that the friction encountered in warfare is incomparable to the difficulties experienced in any other endeavour, even peacetime policymaking involves ample frustrations. Any activity exposed to the movements of financial markets is subject to yet another species of intractable uncertainty. Clausewitz scholars such as Barry Watts have noted that On War’s depiction of warfare parallels the situations envisioned in the branch of mathematics known as chaos theory.6 One principle of chaos theory holds that when three or more forces act upon an object, that object’s response becomes utterly unpredictable. If this is relevant to military operations, it would seem to be even more pertinent to anything which one might describe as grand strategy. Friction alone would make it difficult to practise grand strategy as a surface-level reading of Earle’s definition might lead one to envision it. Another reason why one must think twice about states’ ability to integrate their policies and armaments as Earle suggests is that states themselves are never perfectly integrated. Even the most efficiently organised bureaucracy will contain internal factions with competing priorities, even the most authoritarian governments must pay some attention to the caprices of the broader population, and even autocracies typically struggle to maintain continuity in their policies during periods of succession. Moreover, state leaders must contend with so many conflicting imperatives that they will seldom be able to channel all their resources into advancing a single wellfocussed policy agenda except when some emergency such as a major war forces one overriding goal upon them. These are the most prominent practical objections to the concept of grand strategy. At various times and for various reasons, scholars have proposed ways of overcoming them. International relations theorists of the Realist tradition, for instance, encounter many of the same difficulties as those who aspire to be grand strategists. Realism is a diverse body of thought whose followers have periodically recast it into such forms as Neorealism, Neoclassical Realism and the like, but most of its adherents would agree with scholars Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson that the chief ‘signpost’ which helps one to understand politics is ‘interest’ and most have also adopted those authors decision to discuss world affairs in terms of relations among nation-states.7 These Realists, like grand strategic thinkers, must justify their decision to treat states as discrete and rational entities.

6 Introduction Realism also parallels grand strategic theory insofar as it emphasises the competitive dimension of state politics. The school of thought known as Offensive Realism suggests that state relations are so agonistic that all participants must maximise their advantages to avoid falling victim to others who are doing the same. Defensive Realists allow for the possibility that some states may be more interested in preserving their current position than in aggressively improving it, but the implications of this school of thought for those whose vision of the good life includes anything beyond a perpetual struggle for national supremacy are only marginally more encouraging. Even Defensive Realists typically hold that states are perpetually rising and falling in power, and that this inevitably traps even the most conservative states into doomed struggles to maintain their position. One may analyse world events in terms of grand strategy without adopting the Realist belief in universal struggle. Nevertheless, Earle’s definition of grand strategy refers prominently to ‘armaments’, and most other authors on the subject take it for granted that they are discussing situations in which some degree of competition exists. This presumption affects their work profoundly. The problems of pursuing one’s endeavours in the face of potential enemies are fundamentally different from those of doing so in the absence of such opposition. Edward Luttwak has written an invaluable book which explores the unique paradoxes of competitive activities.8 The title of this book, significantly, is Strategy. Semanticists are free to debate the question of whether it might ever be appropriate to speak of strategy in one-sided activities, but as a matter of practice, those who are interested in purely cooperative situations will probably not find the current literature on grand strategy particularly useful. Therefore, this is another area in which Realists and grand strategic thinkers might seem to support each other. Realist thinkers have made painstaking attempts to defend these assumptions. The prevalence of war in human history makes Realist views about competition intuitively plausible. Kenneth Waltz stands out for his work to make a purely logical case for the inevitability of conflict. Waltz argues, briefly, that since states exist in an environment where war is possible, they must prepare for it.9 Each nation’s preparations for war increases that country’s potential threat to other nations, thus forcing those nations to engage in counter-preparations, which, in turn, elicit counter-counter preparations and so forth. Optimists are free to propose ways for those trapped in such a cycle to negotiate an end to their so-called security dilemma, whereas pessimists are entitled to note how unsatisfactory such solutions are likely to be. The practise of treating states as individuals with their own interests is harder to rationalise, and the assumption that states – or, worse, nations – are the only political actors worthy of note is still more troublesome. Indeed, in many 21st-century conflicts, national governments seem to be ineffectual bystanders. Morgenthau and Thompson made an early and important case

Introduction

7

for focusing on states as the primary actors in world politics by noting that whether or not this approach is perfectly faithful to reality, it allows for a rigorous approach.10 At a minimum, as Morgenthau and Thompson argued, this approach helps scholars resist the temptation to distract themselves with subjective minutiae such as the personal motives of policymakers. Moreover, assumptions such as this allow one to reduce the complexity of real-world situations to the point at which one can advance general theories about commonly (or universally) occurring political situations without having to evaluate each one as a unique case. This sort of abstract theorising is, at a minimum, intellectually gratifying, since it appears to produce a deeper, more coherent and more broadly applicable form of knowledge than simple observation. For many, it raises the hope that a sufficiently wellrefined theory of political behaviour would make it possible to predict the outcome of events which are currently in progress. Nevertheless, although Realist theory counters some objections to grand strategic analysis, it raises others of its own. The intangible complexities which theorists would prefer to exclude are the stuff of which strategy is made. Where Morgenthau and Thompson sought to distance international relations theory from subjective inferences about individual psychology, Sunzi famously enjoins readers to play on opposing commanders’ emotional weaknesses.11 Where theory-builders might seek to assume away the proliferating peculiarities of particular cases, Sunzi advises strategists to search them for sources of advantage.12 Similar points recur throughout the strategic literature of later centuries, albeit in a variety of different forms. Clausewitz, for instance, might well have viewed many of Sunzi’s stratagems with some scepticism, but he agreed that military success often hinges on the personal genius of an experienced commander.13 Julian Corbett’s early 20th-century work on maritime strategy explores the idea that the specific capabilities of naval forces make them useful for taking advantage of equally specific political circumstances to discomfit nominally superior opponents.14 These ideas seem to be as relevant to grand strategy as to any other level of strategic planning, and they render the Realist approach to theory-building untenable. Although Earle defined grand strategy in state-centric terms, prominent strategic thinkers have reserved the right to consider other levels of analysis when it suits them. Thus, just as followers of Morgenthau and Thompson deliberately gloss over issues such as individual psychology, prominent Realists have sought to condense broader understandings of grand strategy into more tightly defined concepts centred upon military power. The scholar Nicholas Kitchen documents this point in his article ‘Systemic pressures and domestic ideas: a neoclassical realist model of grand strategy formation’.15 Kitchen himself seeks to introduce the complexities of grand strategy to Realist theory in a controlled way. Although he does not advise Realists to consider strategic issues in the open-ended way favoured by authors such as Sunzi, he suggests that theorists identify ideas which shape policymakers’ approach to decision

8 Introduction making and include those ideas as a variable in models of state behaviour. In his view, this approach preserves Realism’s ability to generalise while allowing it to analyse situations more thoroughly and predict their outcomes more accurately. As a way of developing the Realist tradition of theory-building, Kitchen’s proposal is promising. As a way of exploring grand strategy qua grand strategy, it is incomplete. Strategy – and particularly grand strategy – is not simply about having power or using power, it is about creating power. Since, as Realists from Morgenthau and Thompson have acknowledged, the nature of power is contextual, strategists seek to transform the premises upon which even Kitchen’s theory is based. To the extent that strategists succeed, they will change both their relevant material capabilities and all parties’ ideas about them. Ironically, as Tami Davis Biddle of the US Army War College has noted, there is a well-developed literature developing the point that this is a source of frustration for strategists themselves.16 As Biddle notes, although military planners would typically find it convenient to know what policies civilian leaders might call on them to prepare for, the policymakers are commonly unwilling to make up their minds until their uniformed counterparts tell them what various contingencies might entail.17 To this extent, strategic planning begins to resemble, not the Realist tradition of international relations theory, but the alternative school of thought known as constructivism, which focuses on the propositions that ideas shape world politics, and that political activity, in turn, continually redefines those ideas. Seminal works on constructivism, however, take pains to distance themselves from the notion that political actors can deliberately exploit this process.18 Strategists, by contrast, are keenly interested in making this process useful. Since strategists aim to alter the foundations upon which theoretical models of political relationships are built, one must assess their chances of doing so before constructing the models. From an intellectual perspective, this is a dangerous thing to do. Since thought itself is an abstract reflection of reality, those who reject explicit theoretical assumptions inevitably fall back on implicit ones, which are far less likely to have been subjected to critical scrutiny. This is, however, how one must proceed in most practical affairs, including that of strategy. Human beings have demonstrated that they are capable of it, and that those who make the effort to do so in an informed and reflective way with due respect to the nature of their subject can come up with more useful answers on a more regular basis than those who do not. Despite all the difficulties in formulating, implementing and analysing grand strategy, political leaders must make decisions with grand strategic consequences. Those who study politics should be prepared to comment on their efforts. As Biddle noted in her 2015 monograph, the fact that the stakes of strategy are so high suggests that we have a responsibility to reflect on strategic issues as effectively as possible, even if the process is an imperfect one. Biddle is not the first to make this point – as she notes, the scholar

Introduction

9

Richard Betts expressed a similar idea in 2000.19 Any who want evidence for Biddle and Betts’ propositions might begin by consulting Hal Brands’ What Good Is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush. Brands’ historical studies suggest that for America, at least, strategic planning has been consistently worthwhile.20 Despite the eternal presence of friction and despite the inadequacies of existing theories, strategic thinkers over the centuries have developed an extensive literature on the methods of analysis which provide the most useful insights into their topic. This literature does not point to a single infallible method. Indeed, strategic authors commonly disagree with each other, and it is seldom possible to resolve their disputes with any finality. Nevertheless, if one consults and applies this literature in a thoughtful manner, one can make sense of military and political affairs which might otherwise prove baffling. That is the essence of this book’s theoretical approach. The authors will introduce the specific works of strategic theory they plan to apply as they become relevant. The fact remains that it is difficult – at least – for national leaders to develop coherent grand strategies in the same way that military commanders plan campaigns remains significant. Nevertheless, factors such as culture, geography and the constitutions of states provide an enduring structure to political affairs. Some leaders are more aware of these factors than others, but all encounter them. Thus, one may identify long-term implications of even relatively short-term policy decisions. This makes grand strategic analysis possible. Alfred Thayer Mahan explored these ideas in ways which are particularly relevant to the PRC’s situation in the early 21st century in his Influence of Sea Power Upon History, and this book will refer to that work in constructing its arguments. Pacific Islands? The Need for a Holistic Approach to Contemporary PRC Strategy Just as the concept of grand strategy demands critical reflection, so does its application to the contemporary PRC. Numerous authors have commented on Chinese foreign policy, and some specifically refer to grand strategic issues. Many of these works are well researched and insightful. Nevertheless, the defining feature of grand strategy is its attempt to combine a wide range of policy issues into an integrated whole. Even studies which include the word ‘grand strategy’ in their titles tend to focus on relatively narrow aspects of Beijing’s conduct, and although this allows them to explore those aspects in greater depth, it leaves their overall significance insufficiently explored. In 2015, for instance, Eric Hyer published a work titled The Pragmatic Dragon: China’s Grand Strategy and Boundary Settlements (UBC Press), but as the title itself suggests, it is less of a study of grand strategy than it is an attempt to put one narrow (if ominous) feature of Beijing’s foreign relations into broader perspective.21 The same points apply to Jian Yang’s 2011 work

10

Introduction

The Pacific Islands in China’s Grand Strategy: Small States, Big Games.22 Timothy Heath reverses this pattern in his 2014 work China’s New Governing Party Paradigm: Political Renewal and the Pursuit of National Rejuvenation.23 Although Heath does not mention grand strategy in his title, his book discusses Beijing’s farther-reaching national policies in a relatively wide range of different but mutually interacting areas. Heath’s work is based primarily on the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCPs) openly stated positions. Since the CCP is, for most purposes, the supreme decision making body within the PRC, its statements demand attention. A considerable proportion of any state’s policies consist of publicly known responses to generally recognised issues, so those who are interested in Beijing’s grand strategy need not view CCP claims with pure cynicism. Moreover, whether one believes the CCP’s statements or not, its attempts to present itself to the world are in themselves an aspect of its grand strategy. For these reasons, those who wish to understand the PRC’s strategy may find Heath’s work and others like it valuable. Nevertheless, one is also well advised to consider the possibility that the CCP has policies which it chooses not to make explicit. One may also consider the possibility that individuals and interest groups within the PRC’s official and unofficial organs of government influence policy in ways that circumvent even the institutions of the formidably powerful party. Indeed, since grand strategy depends so much on leaders’ responses to external factors such as geography, and since leaders form those responses while simultaneously trying to manage so many other affairs, grand strategic decisions may often arise from such sources as institutional culture and individual intuition, without ever being expressed by the people who make them. For these reasons, much of the information which one might wish to have in order to assess the PRC’s grand strategy is absent from official documents. According To Plan will use a wider range of sources in the attempt to discern patterns in Chinese policy which the CCP may not articulate. Many of the books which explore aspects of China’s grand strategy focus on its maritime dimension. Prominent among these is Yves-Heng Lim’s China’s Naval Power: An Offensive Realist Approach.24 These, along with comparable works such as Christopher J. Pehrson’s String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power Across the Asian Littoral (Strategic Studies Institute, 2006) focus on maritime issues.25 According to Plan builds on these works by putting the PRC’s naval expansion and seaborne trade in the context of its other military, economic and diplomatic activities. Avery Goldstein addressed related issues, notably diplomacy, in Rising to the Challenge: China’s Grand Strategy and International Security (Stanford University Press, 2005).26 Goldstein’s work focuses on the PRC’s attempts to manage rivalries and potential rivalries, particularly with the United States. Again, According to Plan will put this aspect of Beijing’s foreign relations in the context of the PRC’s broader attempts to enhance its influence in global

Introduction

11

affairs. Yi Zecheng takes up related themes in Inside China’s Grand Strategy: The Perspective from the People’s Republic (University Press of Kentucky, 2010).27 This book offers a distinctly PRC-oriented viewpoint. According To Plan will be more objective and systematic. Researchers at the RAND Corporation assessed China’s grand strategy in 2020.28 Their work, like this one, draws on speeches by Chinese authorities, publicly available Chinese policy papers, authoritative public statements from the Chinese armed forces, and Western expert analysis. Like this book, the RAND study provides in-depth analysis of the PRC’s recent military restructuring, and of its science and technology programs. The RAND authors, however, emphasise Sino-American relations and focus on predicting the future. Although they note that some scholars dispute the idea that China has a grand strategy, they spend less than two pages justifying their assumption that it does. This book offers four things which the RAND study does not. First, this book explores China’s relations with a broader range of countries in greater depth. Second, this book explores many issues more thoroughly – cyberwarfare and regional geopolitics being outstanding examples. Third, whereas the RAND study makes a useful attempt to forecast coming events, this one examines how we got to the current point. Fourth, and crucially, this book greatly strengthens the argument that China’s grand strategy is real and worth studying. This book and the RAND study serve different purposes, but complement each other well. Scholar Rush Doshi of the Brookings Institution takes a similar approach to the RAND authors in his 2021 book The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order.29 Doshi bases his arguments on an original collection of Chinese-language sources including memoirs, government documents, CCP papers and reports by nominally independent PRCbased think tanks.30 The Long Game covers similar topics to this book and the RAND report. It complements both with its in-depth analysis of the PRC’s participation in international organisations. This book differs from Doshi’s in much the same way it differs from the RAND report. Most significantly, this book rejects Doshi’s assumption that Chinese grand strategy is narrowly focused on competition with the United States.31 Although this competition is real, disturbing and of profound importance, this book finds that the PRC is pursuing a variety of goals. Some clearly bring Beijing into conflict with Washington but others may not. Therefore, where Doshi portrays a world of zero-sum rivalry between the PRC and the United States, this book suggests that a wider range of outcomes are possible. Perhaps because relatively few authors place grand strategy at the centre of their work, older books on this topic remain current. Noteworthy is Michael D. Swaine and Ashley Tellis’ Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present and Future (RAND, 2000).32 Although the earlier study remains worth reading, this book will provide readers with a more developed

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analysis founded upon a greater volume of detailed contemporary research. Swaine and Tellis are, however, correct to note the fact that China’s history provides clues to China’s current strategy. Chapter 2 will take up this theme. Notes 1 Edward Mead Earle, ‘Introduction’, in Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler, ed. Edward Mead Earle (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1943), viii. 2 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (London: The Folio Society, 1976), 68–71. 3 Tao Hanzhang, Sun Tzu’s Art of War: The Modern Chinese Interpretation, trans. Yuan Shibing (New York: Sterling Publishing, 1987), 96. 4 Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince and the Discourses, trans. Luigi Ricci, E.R.P. Vincent and Christian E. Detmold (New York: The Modern Library, 1950), 91. 5 Martin van Creveld, Supplying War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), 236. 6 Barry Watts, Clausewitzian Friction and Future War (Washington, DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies, 1996), 105–23. 7 Hans Morgenthau and Kenneth Thompson, Politics Among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948), 5. 8 Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, Revised and Enlarged Edition, Second Edition (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2002). 9 For a discussion of Waltz’s thought and its relevance to strategy, see Yves-Heng Lim, China’s Naval Power: An Offensive Realist Approach (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 10. 10 Morgenthau and Thompson, Politics Among Nations, 5. 11 Tao, Art of War, 112. 12 Tao, Art of War, 103. 13 Clausewitz, On War, 47–63. 14 Julian S. Corbett, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1988), 79. 15 Nicholas Kitchen, ‘Systemic Pressures and Domestic Ideas: A Neoclassical Realist Model of Grand Strategy Formation’, Review of International Studies 36, no. 1 (January 2010): 117–44. 16 Tami Davis Biddle, ‘Strategy and Grand Strategy: What Students and Practitioners Need To Know’ (Carlisle: US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute, 2015), Monographs, Books and Publications, 430, accessed December 3, 2021, https:// press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/430/ 17 Biddle, ‘Grand Strategy’, 8. 18 See, for instance, Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 5. 19 Biddle, ‘Grand Strategy’, 11. 20 Hal Brands, What Good Is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014), passim. 21 Eric Hyer, The Pragmatic Dragon: China’s Grand Strategy and Boundary Settlements (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2015), passim. 22 Jian Yang, The Pacific Islands in China’s Grand Strategy: Small States, Big Games (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), passim. 23 Timothy Heath, China’s New Governing Party Paradigm: Political Renewal and the Pursuit of National Rejuvenation (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), passim.

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24 Yves-Heng Lim, China’s Naval Power, passim. 25 Christopher J. Pehrson, String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power Across the Asian Littoral (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute, 2006), passim. 26 Avery Goldstein, Rising to the Challenge: China’s Grand Strategy and International Security (Redwood City: Stanford University Press, 2005), passim. 27 Yi Zecheng, Inside China’s Grand Strategy: The Perspective from the People’s Republic (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2010), passim. 28 Andrew Scobell et al., China’s Grand Strategy: Trends, Trajectories and LongTerm Competition (Santa Monica: RAND, 2020), 10–11, https://www.rand.org/ pubs/research_reports/RR2798.html 29 Rush Doshi, The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021). 30 Doshi, Long Game, 43. 31 Doshi, Long Game, 10. 32 Michael D. Swaine and Ashley Tellis, Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present and Future (Santa Monica: RAND, 2000), passim.

2

Strategic Imperatives and Historical Responses The Origins of Chinese Grand Strategy

For more than 3,000 years, recognisably Chinese states have sought to make their way in the world. Many of these states have thrived – and disintegrated – for similar reasons. In the 14th century, the Chinese author Luo Guanzhong opened his classic work Romance of the Three Kingdoms by remarking on the cyclical nature of China’s history, and the cycle it describes has repeated itself numerous times since then. Meanwhile, Chinese thinkers have developed a diverse and enduring body of thought about how rulers might maximise their chances for success. One could say similar things about most places. Indeed, one would be wise to study the political and intellectual history of any region in which one wishes to analyse contemporary issues. Nevertheless, a knowledge of China’s strategic past is exceptionally useful as a tool for understanding China’s strategic present. One reason is that the contemporary PRC occupies much the same geographical space as its imperial predecessors and another is that contemporary Chinese policymakers tend to be relatively well educated about their country’s tradition of political thought. Moreover, Chinese culture encourages people to take that tradition seriously in a way that other cultures, perhaps, do not. As a minor – but, perhaps, revealing – example of the latter point, one may note that China’s Communist Party (CCP) commonly uses Confucian teachings to explain and justify its principles.1 One is entitled to be cynical about any political organisation’s attempts to promote itself, but external reports suggest that this use of ancient philosophical writings has won the CCP renewed credibility with the 21st-century Chinese public. By way of contrast, one may recall the bemused response former American vice-president Danforth Quayle received when his wife claimed that he was a regular reader of Plato.2 Those seeking a more thorough discussion of the way in which traditional ideas influence contemporary Chinese policymaking may consult Henry Kissinger’s On China.3 Also significant is the fact that as the academic study of world politics has developed in the PRC, Chinese scholars have explicitly drawn on their country’s ancient tradition of political thought to propose a so-called Chinese School of international relations theory. This school attracted DOI: 10.4324/9781315387383-2

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global attention in 2005, when Zhao Tingyang of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences published a book presenting Imperial China’s vision of the ‘all under heaven’ (tianxia) single political system as a model for 21stcentury China to use in exercising influence throughout the contemporary world. Other scholars offer alternative ideas for adapting traditional Chinese concepts to the present. Not only do these thinkers refer to ancient ideas, many use classical Chinese historical works as case studies to support their arguments. Scholar Salvatore Babones offers an English-language review of the Chinese School literature, and critiques its reliance on ancient historical documents.4 The scholar Willaim Callahan finds renewed Chinese interest in exerting global influence ominous.5 Yih-Jye Hwang defends the Chinese School and offers an alternative overview of its main works.6 For purposes of this book and this chapter, the key takeaway is that prominent Chinese academics find the geopolitical superstructure of ancient Chinese civilisation and the classical thought of their forbears relevant to the present. This inclines one to infer that contemporary Chinese policymakers – especially those educated by academic proponents of the Chinese School – may well share similar ideas. The next section after this introduction discusses classical Chinese ideas about China’s government and its relations with foreign powers. The third section discusses ancient Chinese ideas about the interplay among politics, strategy and economics. This leads to a section on regional politics and economic systems in pre-modern China. The fifth section discusses the effects of China’s ‘century of humiliation’ on Chinese strategic thought. The sixth and final section explores the way in which Marxist, Leninist and Maoist arguments may incline 21st-century China’s grand strategy. China’s Traditional Self-Understanding Among the first things which one might look for in a strategic analysis of China’s history are points at which rulers and respected political thinkers established enduring propositions about the nature of the Chinese state and its role in the world. The way in which the members of a community understand their political situation helps establish both their shared goals and their means of achieving them. The fact that ancient Athenians could believe that they were the original inhabitants of their land, for instance, allowed them to approach strategic questions more flexibly than the Spartans, who had always to remember that they ruled over a resentful subject population. Millennia later, Otto von Bismarck would remark that the newly founded German Empire’s colonial policy would be dictated by its own position between a hostile France and a hostile Russia. Such understandings are foundation stones of grand strategy. Since China’s civilisation is older than any reliable historical records, one may speculate that early Chinese rulers were free to take their way of life for

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granted in much the same way as the ancient Athenians. By the end of the second millennium BCE, this was no longer the case. At that time, the state which later generations have regarded as the forerunner of modern China was an enclave on the Yellow River governed by the Shang Dynasty. Shang co-existed with other kingdoms which were at roughly the same level of technological development. These kingdoms accepted a high level of interdependence. Many of them seem to have acknowledged the Shang Emperor as their ruler. Nevertheless, the various communities also had independent governments overseen by local aristocratic families, and they were sufficiently culturally distinct to regard one another with prejudice. When Emperor Di Qin offended the rulers of Shang’s subsidiary kingdoms, allegedly by squandering his subjects’ resources on personal luxuries, King Wen of a state called Zhou led a coalition of like-minded aristocrats in rebellion. Wen died while the rebellion was in progress, but his son Wu defeated the emperor. At this point, ancient China entered the political unknown. Although Wu might have been able to dominate the kingdoms which had once made up the Shang Empire by brute force, he appears to have recognised that over the longer term, he would have been as vulnerable to rebellion as the monarch he had overthrown, and although he might have withdrawn to the relatively modest borders of his family’s traditional domain, he appears to have recognised the likelihood that other rulers would be less restrained. Accordingly, Wu declared himself emperor of all the kingdoms which had been affiliated with his own state and with Shang. Wu went on to promulgate a doctrine intended to vindicate his acts. Rulers, he claimed, receive their authority not through any human convention, but as a mandate from the natural order, which ancient Chinese people conceptualised as heaven. Heaven charges rulers with the tasks of managing collective resources in such a way as to promote the well-being of the population and correctly observing traditions viewed as essential to civilised life and perhaps even to the harmonious functioning of the universe. Rulers who perform these functions deserve obedience. If, however, rulers fail in their responsibilities, those who are willing and able to carry out heaven’s mandate are right to overthrow them. Not only did these arguments help Wu justify his personal claim on the throne, they helped justify his state’s claim to empire. Heaven grants its mandate to ensure good government, not to promote tribes or territories. Thus, if Zhou rulers emerge as champions of civilisation, the Shang people have no cause to reject them as barbarians. Wu began his reign with a spectacular ceremony featuring music and pageantry designed to demonstrate his appreciation for the traditions which the folk of Shang recognised as civilised. Although the mandate of heaven concept legitimised imperialism, it also permitted rulers to accommodate other powerful actors. Zhou emperors, for instance, found it expedient to devolve political authority to the noble

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families who had traditionally ruled over their various territories. As long as this system seemed to be promoting traditional mores and culturally acceptable relationships between the nominal rulers and their nominal subjects, Zhou ethicists felt that the requirements of good government had been satisfied. Han Dynasty rulers took a similar approach to securing peaceful relations and, where possible, profitable trading relationships with the frequently rapacious nomadic tribes of Central Asia. As long as all parties would agree to refer to goods sent from China to the tribal chieftains as magnanimous ‘gifts’ and to refer to goods sent from the tribes to China as respectful ‘tribute’, the Han Emperors were willing to pay the nomads substantial bribes for good behaviour. There are parallels between the founding ideas of the Zhou Empire and the founding ideas of the United States. The American Declaration of Independence opens with the claim that ‘governments are instituted among men’ to ‘secure’ rights which God himself has granted and goes on to accuse the British king of personal malfeasance.7 There is even some similarity between the Deist concept of God favoured by Thomas Jefferson and the impersonal idea of Heaven which prevailed in ancient China. US leaders have been able to draw on their country’s founding principles for support in their more assertive policies abroad, but have seldom found those principles an obstacle when they have chosen to remain aloof from morally charged international conflicts, or even to make common cause with undemocratic foreign governments. American leaders do, however, risk their constituents’ anger when they violate popular expectations about what a responsible government can demand of its citizens. One well-known 21st-century example of this is that American leaders have learned through repeated experience to be cautious about sacrificing the lives of military personnel. In a similar vein, Chinese rulers throughout the ages have faced pressure to demonstrate that they enjoyed heaven’s continued mandate. As time passed, China’s tradition of revolt against rulers perceived as corrupt or incompetent grew only more vigorous. Yet another commonality between the foundational propositions of Chinese and American political thought is that despite occasionally idolatrous displays of reverence for these hallowed concepts, Chinese and American thinkers throughout history have reflected critically on their national creeds. Leaders of the American Revolution such as Jefferson and Hamilton had sharply contrasting visions for their nation’s future, and later American political figures from Eugene Debs to Robert Welch have been more radical still. Confucius, likewise, shared many of Wu’s professed sensibilities, but drew attention to the hypocrisy in a usurping warlord’s appeals to morality and tradition. The centuries following the rise of the Zhou empire were a time of intellectual ferment in China in which many other contending theories of statecraft appeared. One body of thought which deserves special attention in a study of Chinese grand strategy is Daoism. Daoist writings such as Laozi’s Dao De

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Jing encourage scepticism towards grandiose assertions such as a monarch’s claim to govern by the mandate of heaven, not because the authors professed cynicism about rulers’ personal intentions, but because they argued that heaven would look after itself. Thus, a great deal of Dao De Jing emphasises the importance of humility concerning one’s role in the universe, and of permitting events to take their natural course. Where the Zhou rulers defined good government largely in terms of championing culturally hallowed customs, Laozi defined good government almost entirely in terms of creating an environment in which ordinary people could enjoy simple comforts in peace. The later Daoist thinker Chaung Tzu (Zhaung Zhou) famously refused to jeopardise his own life of simple comfort by accepting a position as a royal advisor, thus providing Chinese political thought with an undercurrent of apolitical individualism. Despite Laozi’s warnings against overdoing things, he does not advocate dull passivity. Laozi’s work implicitly acknowledges that one may wish to influence one’s circumstances, and suggests that the most effective way to do so is to watch situations unfold in a spirit of open-minded creativity until one identifies a space for action. This leads to another reason why a review of Daoist thought helps one to understand contemporary Chinese strategy. Daoist ideas on the way to achieve one’s goals appear to influence classic Chinese works on military strategy such as Sunzi’s The Art of War. Understanding this point helps one to understand Sunzi’s ideas, and, perhaps, the implications of applying them. For instance, although Sunzi has earned worldwide admiration, western authors such as Michael Handel have criticised him for such apparently naïve attitudes as his arguably excessive faith in intelligence and his seemingly excessive confidence in clever tricks.8 Handel successfully rationalises Sunzi’s apparently problematic statements. Nevertheless, the difference in perspective between the ancient Chinese writer and many of his 20th- and 21st-century readers runs deeper than these rationalisations suggest. Sunzi writes in a tradition which holds that there are patterns to all things, including politics and war. Taken in their entirety, these patterns are beyond human comprehension. Therefore, those who follow this approach are likely to be sceptical of theories purporting to explain broad categories of events in a definitive way, such as the still-elusive Grand Unifying Theory of contemporary physics or the Structural Realist approach in the academic field of international relations. Nevertheless, people may observe elements of these patterns as they emerge. Moreover, people are within these patterns, and may take advantage of them and, in a localised way, realign them. Thus, one of the reasons why Sunzi seems to rate intelligence more highly than other influential strategic thinkers such as the Prussian author Carl von Clausewitz may be that the ancient Chinese thinker was attuned to a wider range of possibilities for using it. Where Clausewitz emphasised the fact that a flood of confusing but emotionally charged data are unlikely to make a commander’s job any easier in combat, Sunzi emphasised the fact that a

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well-informed commander might find the opportunity to go into battle under more favourable circumstances. Clausewitz would have agreed, and there are passages in his work which confirm this point, but the Prussian’s approach to the study of war led him to focus on battle, and the ancient Chinese author’s approach led him to focus on the context in which battle occurs. A similar point applies to Sunzi’s references to winning battles without fighting. Handel suggests that Sunzi introduced the idea of bloodless battles as a hypothetical concept for purposes of advancing a theoretical discussion.9 Clausewitz explicitly bases critical sections of his work on ideal cases which he freely admits could never appear in real life. By exploring the possibility that Sunzi did the same, Handel reaches useful insights about both strategic thinkers’ works, and about the art of strategy itself. Handel also counters the criticisms of those who see Sunzi as naïve or deceptive about the inevitable horror of war. Thus, Handel helps readers overcome objections which might otherwise have prevented them from appreciating Sunzi’s work. Nevertheless, one is also well advised to recall that although Clausewitz took inspiration from authors who encouraged their readers to work through problems in a highly theoretical way, Sunzi appears to follow a tradition which treated all attempts to reduce reality to abstraction with scepticism. One sees evidence of this in the passage where Sunzi states that there can be no predetermined formula for constructing a successful strategy.10 Handel is correct to infer that no one familiar with war could overlook either the importance of destroying one’s enemies’ forces in combat or the inevitably bloody nature of this process, but even the frequently sanguinary Clausewitz notes that real engagements seldom escalate as far as theory might predict.11 An ancient Chinese strategist informed by the Daoist tradition would have been sensitive to the possibility that the most spectacular acts of war might well not be the most productive ones. The Daoist tradition does, however, support the idea that subtle interventions grounded in a holistic awareness of one’s situation may transform the circumstances under which more obvious deeds, such as engaging enemy forces in battle, take place. Laozi and Sunzi agree that such interventions may be so unobtrusive that those responsible for them never receive credit.12 A western critic could legitimately object that Sunzi seems to expect strategists to demonstrate an improbable degree of control over events. To this, a Daoist might respond that strategists need not stage-manage every detail – they need only take advantage of possibilities which were already present in the situation. If one shares the Daoist faith that such possibilities are, indeed, to be found in the world, one can reasonably take The Art of War’s claim that the highest achievement of strategy is to win battles without fighting at face value. Those seeking a fuller discussion of ancient Chinese strategic thought may consult this author’s.13 At this point in this study of contemporary Chinese grand strategy, it is sufficient to conclude that Daoism provides both a counterpoint to certain pretensions within the mandate of heaven discourse

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and a backdrop to most writings in traditional Chinese military thought. An awareness of Daoism also helps one to understand another influential critique of Zhou Dynasty political ideals. This is the school of thought known as Legalism. Daoism disparaged pieties like those which Wu celebrated in his ritual of peacemaking. Indeed, Laozi stated that people would be better off if they rejected the very idea of morality.14 The Dao De Jing also acknowledged that its worldview licensed rulers to behave ruthlessly, without regard for popular opinion.15 Laozi was, however, able to oppose war, capital punishment and oppressive treatment of a state’s population in terms which sound idealistic from a 21st-century perspective. The reason why Laozi could argue against what his culture understood as morality while simultaneously advancing principled humanitarian arguments is that he based his thought on a concept of cosmic order which was, in fact, stronger than the one advanced by Emperor Wu. In his argument against the death penalty, for instance, he depicts the universe as a carpenter, and warns that those who attempt to cut with the supreme carpenter’s saw will only injure their hands.16 More generally, Laozi seems to have regarded the things he valued as good in themselves and as productive of further goodness, in tangible ways which run deeper than human ethical theorising. The Dao De Jing notes, for instance, that those who temper their anger are more likely to lead long and enjoyable lives and more likely to enrich the lives of those around them.17 In a similar fashion, the Dao De Jing suggests that even states which differ greatly in power can interact on the basis of mutual interest.18 For those who seek supporting evidence, Laozi explains that he has deduced his principles through personal observation.19 Just as there are parallels between the Zhou rulers’ claims about the purpose of government and a similar assertion in the US Declaration of Independence, there are commonalities in the Dao De Jing’s appeal to empiricism and the American founders’ assertion that the premises of their argument are self-evident. Both simplify the problem of arguing for a kindly approach to statecraft, both will resonate with sympathetic readers, but neither is likely to persuade a committed sceptic. Since the Daoists themselves advocated scepticism about so many other matters, one might say that they started their readers down a dangerous path. This is the path that the Legalists followed. Each Legalist thinker advanced a distinctive line of argument, but one may generalise that the Legalists sought ways to organise the state to mobilise the strongest possible military forces, rejecting all ethical, cultural and metaphysical teachings which seemed to limit their ability to do so. Where Sunzi might have suggested that the ultimate source of victory in war is a strategist’s ability to use resources creatively, the Legalists focused on maximising the quantity of material resources available. Different Legalist thinkers seem to have held different views about the ultimate reasons why the goal of strengthening the state was worth pursuing. Virtually all Legalists, however,

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proposed restrictive codes of law enforced by cruel punishments and administered by a centralised bureaucracy to channel the population’s energies towards the state’s ends, and at least one advocated conquest specifically as a means to acquire valuable territory.20 Several of the most influential Legalists became senior officials in what was then the independent Chinese state of Qin. Under their guidance, Qin overcame its neighbours and reunified China on a grander scale than any of the Chinese Empires which had come before. The Qin Empire went on to build the first Great Wall and carry out numerous other spectacular public works projects, at phenomenal human cost. This author evaluates the Legalist approach to statecraft in depth in Ancient China on Postmodern War. For purposes of this discussion, the critical points regarding Legalism are that the Legalists advocated an explicitly amoral, authoritarian and imperialistic approach to government and that they achieved previously unattainable results, but also that, just as mandate of heaven theorists and Daoists would have predicted, Qin’s empire was short-lived. One of the factors which precipitated Qin’s fall was a revolt of the population, and where the leaders of uprisings against previous dynasties had typically been noblemen, even commoners took up arms against the harsh decrees of the Legalists. Mandate of heaven theorists would not have been surprised, and Daoists might have drawn special attention to the fact that three of the most prominent Legalist thinkers were, respectively, poisoned, sawn in half at the waist and torn to pieces by chariots. Later generations of Chinese rulers would draw another lesson from this uprising, and from the many similar ones which have erupted throughout China’s history. Revolutions are occasions for chaos. They may not produce massacres, civil wars or national schisms in every case, but they always introduce the possibility of such things. Those inclined to think in these terms may note that although the Legalists were infamous for destroying books, it was the rebel Xiang Yu whose troops set fire to the Qin imperial libraries and largely obliterated the written heritage of China. Therefore, although Chinese moralists have accepted some revolutions as justified, China’s rulers have felt entitled – if any entitlement was needed – to suppress dissent. Moreover, those brave enough to persist in the dispassionate Legalist mode of analysis would observe that the Qin Empire’s failure does not discredit the philosophical arguments of its founders. Indeed, one could plausibly maintain that Qin collapsed because it did not implement Legalist principles comprehensively enough. If Qin had advanced the Legalist programme of administrative reform to the point of developing an orderly system of succession, it might have crushed the rebellions and returned to its previous strength. Perhaps for these reasons, although later generations of Chinese rulers and thinkers have frequently rejected Legalism as wicked and misguided, they have repeatedly returned to Legalist propositions, more openly on some occasions than on others. This re-evaluation process continues in the 21st century.

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Numerous other thinkers have shaped the Chinese people’s traditional understandings of what their state stands for and how it can best realise its goals. Confucius, to pick the most obvious example, wrote in the tradition of the mandate of heaven theorists, but developed his ideas beyond those of the Zhou emperors. Indeed, as noted earlier, Confucius directly criticised Wu on certain issues. Later Confucians such as Mencius (Mengzi) and Xunzi made further contributions. Another noteworthy ancient writer on politics and strategy was Mozi. Mozi has received comparatively little attention in the 20th and 21st centuries, but he was popular enough in his time for one to consider the possibility that his ideas influenced better-remembered thinkers. Like the Legalists, Mozi advocated a direct, materialistic approach to solving problems. Unlike the founders of the Qin Dynasty, he placed paramount importance on providing for the needs of the population, and although he accepted the need for states to fight in self-defence, he sought to abolish war. At this point, one can note that the major schools of thought in ancient Chinese political theory understood statecraft in the same terms as contemporary analysts who use the concept of grand strategy. One recalls that one of the key differences between grand strategic thinkers and other influential branches of contemporary theory is that grand strategists accord political and military decision makers a considerable amount of agency in international affairs. Ancient Chinese thinkers from a wide range of philosophical persuasions viewed rulers and their supporting functionaries as agents in multiple senses of the word. These schools agreed that government officials had at least some power to influence the fortunes of the community through wise action – and, Laozi might have added, wise inaction. With the exception of Li Si, ancient Chinese political thinkers also agreed that rulers had the use this power in the service of a higher principle, whether this meant the cultural ideals championed by the Zhou emperors and Confucius, the earthy concepts of the common good presented by Laozi and Mozi or the austere vision of collective interest advanced by the more principled Legalists. One also recalls that this book accepts a tendency among grand strategic analysts to focus on international issues involving the possibility of violence. In one sense, ancient Chinese thinkers tended to do the opposite. Confucians, Daoists and Legalists alike were primarily interested in rulers’ relations with their own people. Only the Legalists relished the exercise of force. Nevertheless, although most ancient Chinese political thinkers would have preferred for governments to look inward, virtually all acknowledged that rulers’ ability to manage their own communities depends substantially on their success with external affairs. Moreover, interstate relations in ancient China were often hostile. Chinese political thinkers confronted this point. Sunzi opened his treatise with the matter-of-fact observation that war is a matter of life or death for the state, and not even the pacifist Laozi contradicts him. To the contrary, the Dao De

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Jing offers advice to military strategists and comments on the characteristics of a good soldier.21 To this degree, traditional Chinese political thought resembles contemporary Realism. Sinologist Alistair Ian Johnston found it worth exploring the proposition that China has a Realist political culture. Johnston finds considerable evidence for this case.22 Nevertheless, where 21st-century Realists tend to see conflict as a constant in interstate relations, ancient Chinese thinkers believed that rulers could exercise considerable influence over its frequency and form. Confucians suggested that rulers who set an example of virtue would earn deference from foreigners as well as their own subjects.23 Laozi suggested that those who were wise enough to make peace their goal and perceptive enough to move in harmony with changing circumstances could avoid violent confrontations.24 Sunzi focused on ways those who found themselves in such confrontations could impose a new peace on favourable terms, but warned rulers against gratuitous warfare and, as discussed earlier, suggested that the greatest success a strategist might hope for would be to master a situation without needing to fight. The Legalist point of view was closer to 21st-century Realism, but where the Offensive Realist Mearsheimer saw war as a tragedy which states cannot avoid, his possible Warring States era counterpart Shang Yang presented conquest as an opportunity which rulers would be foolish to pass up. Although Mearsheimer and Shang Yang may predict similar outcomes, the ancient Chinese thinker still accords human policymakers greater influence over the process. One also notes that Sunzi’s proposition that wellchosen acts taken discreetly in advance can set the stage for one to enter later disputes on better terms encourages leaders to strategise for the long term. Moreover, Confucianism and, in a different way, Daoism suggest the possibility that one may use intangible resources as respect, reputation and the attractive elements of one’s culture to supplement or even replace more obvious forms of power such as military force. Not only does this way of looking at things reduce the need for warfare, it gives state leaders a wider range of instruments, and it highlights the fact that many aspects of a state’s domestic policy have foreign policy applications. Here again, ancient Chinese thinkers seem to have come to a consensus which is more compatible with grand strategic thought than with other currently influential approaches to political analysis. Another area in which China’s traditional concepts of political identity encourage a grand strategic approach is that of state sovereignty. Ancient Chinese political thought took shape in a phase of history when the lords of the various territories which had once made up the Zhou empire increasingly acted as absolute rulers of independent states. Therefore, China’s political tradition recognises most of the institutions which define the so-called Westphalian model of sovereignty which has presumably defined international relations in the Western world since 1648. Those with an affection for

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the history of European diplomacy will find similar dramas of alliance building and alliance breaking in China’s Warring States period. Nevertheless, whereas the Treaty of Westphalia began a tradition which has come to imply that states should refrain from interfering in each other’s internal affairs, neither Confucians nor Legalists accepted such limitations as the ideal. The mandate of heaven knows no boundaries, and neither do the ambitions of a self-aggrandising empire. One may speculate that Daoists would have welcomed the Westphalian emphasis on restraint, but even Laozi seemed to accept the reality that large states dictate to smaller ones.25 Once again, ancient Chinese thinkers from a variety of philosophical persuasions promote ideas which would incline rulers to advance their positions abroad, not only through state-to-state diplomacy but also through policies designed to influence trans-state and sub-state actors directly. One notes that Marxism-Leninists also conceive of world politics in transnational terms, and that China made concerted efforts to support non-Chinese revolutionary movements during the Cold War. Having observed that ancient China’s political thinkers agreed that rulers should think grand strategically, one returns to the fact that they disagreed on much else. One must be cautious when generalising about what classical Chinese writings teach. On most issues, ancient Chinese political thinkers offer contrasting perspectives. Those who wish to understand their work and its impact do well to consider them in that way. There is, however, one more common theme to be noted. The very fact that ancient Chinese political thinkers advanced such a wide range of frequently metaphysical views indicates their confidence both in ideas as such and in their country’s potential to realise them. Where Spartans and Bismarckians felt eternally constrained by their societies’ material circumstances, ancient Chinese thinkers felt free to frame strategic issues as questions of principle. Legalist principles may seem less lofty than, for instance, those of the Confucians, but Qin’s campaign to unify the feudal kingdoms of Warring States China into a centrally organised empire was, in its own way, equally aspirational. This is particularly noteworthy when one considers the fact that Confucius, Laozi, Mozi, Sunzi, Shang Yang, Han Feizi and most of the other key figures in ancient Chinese political thought lived in periods when the Chinese empire was declining or fragmented. Their confidence came, not from complacency, but from an awareness of what their country might become. In this, one sees another parallel between political thought in ancient China and political thought in the United States. Not only were 18thcentury American revolutionaries ready to explain their revolution in terms of God-given universal rights, their 19th-century descendants were prepared to justify policies which pushed the US borders to Hawaii and the Aleutian Islands as manifest destiny. Now that America – if, perhaps, not the PRC – has reached a point of diminishing returns in direct territorial expansion, it remains to be seen whether the two countries’ traditions of principled selfpromotion will help or hinder their attempts to accommodate each other.

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Whose Economy? Another area in which ancient Chinese thought may inform contemporary Chinese strategy is that of economic policy. Premodern Chinese arguments touched on such currently relevant issues as the question of whether free markets are more efficient at producing socially desirable outcomes than state-run economies and the political consequences of allowing individuals to amass wealth. Ancient thinkers, like contemporary ones, took different positions on these matters. Nevertheless, just as one can identify themes in China’s classical writings ideas about the ends and means of government, one may note that Chinese thinkers from a variety of intellectual persuasions shared an understanding that trade and statecraft intertwine. Superficially, ancient China’s best-known political thinkers disparaged commerce. Confucius viewed merchants as unproductive. Laozi stated that, when a society follows the natural way, people will not travel far.26 This suggests, among other things, that they will not trade luxury goods abroad. Han Feizi viewed merchants as subversive and advocated harsh measures to control them. Nevertheless, rulers who subscribed to these doctrines found that wealth has its uses. The early Han rulers claimed to be Confucians, but as noted earlier, they found ideologically acceptable ways to justify their diplomatic and economic relationships with the nomad raiders. Qin’s first emperor owed his rise, not only to his state’s brutally efficient bureaucracy but also to the machinations of the plutocrat Lu Buwei.27 One is entitled to be cynical about such incidents, but these episodes reflect more than simple hypocrisy. The gift-tribute system achieved the legitimately Confucian goal of maintaining proper social relationships with a minimum of bloodshed and the pragmatic Legalists could hardly have objected to the Qin emperor’s success at exploiting his rich subjects to achieve his political goals. Other Chinese thinkers directly acknowledged the value of economic activity. Sunzi viewed a state’s finances as essential to its survival and put this point foremost when giving military advice.28 The moralistic historian Sima Qian celebrated the exploits of famous merchants alongside the deeds of more conventional heroes.29 Contemporary liberal economists – and perhaps also Daoists – would welcome Sima Qian’s arguments in favour of allowing markets to follow their own logic with a minimum of state interference.30 China’s premodern discourse on the nature of wealth creation and its implications for state power reached a climax in 81 BCE, when advisors to Emperor Zhao disputed the best way for the empire to manage its economy.31 Their arguments are known as the Debate on Salt and Iron. The previous emperor, Wu, had established state monopolies on the highly tradable commodities of salt, iron and liquor. Wu had also established a network of so-called transportation offices to handle logistics for his stateowned businesses.

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Advocates of the monopolies referred to the new system as one of ‘equitable marketing’ and price stabilisation. They noted that transportation depended partially upon compulsory labour. The national transportation offices, they claimed, distributed labour duties throughout the empire more equally than earlier and less centralised systems. Monopoly advocates also claimed that the state-controlled enterprises stockpiled commodities when prices were low and release them for sale when prices were high, protecting both producers and consumers from market fluctuations. Wu’s new economic system was not, however, purely socialistic. Private merchants continued to play a wide assortment of roles. Opponents of the system noted that these traders – particularly those with inside information about the state monopoly’s upcoming policy decisions – had opportunities for profiteering. This presumably encouraged corruption and made markets volatile again. Opponents of the new system also alleged that, rather than managing prices for the benefit of the population, government officials used the state monopolies to maximise prices for the sake of revenue. Emperor Wu had also changed the system of taxation. Previously, critics of his economic program alleged, common people had been able to pay their taxes in the form of locally grown agricultural products and locallyproduced goods. Under the new system, rulers allegedly demanded commodities with greater commercial value, forcing the commoners to trade to acquire acceptable tribute, thus rendering them even more vulnerable to market forces and unscrupulous merchants. The most prominent critics of the monopoly system were Confucian scholars. In keeping with Confucius’ own idealism, they scrutinised, not only the outcomes of the state monopoly system but also its moral implications. The opponents rejected the very idea that the state should seek profit. They also noted that the government’s embrace of commerce was enriching merchants, impoverishing farmers and pressuring the latter to imitate the former, all at the expense of the thrift, honesty and generosity which had once characterised rural life, and which remained the foundation of a harmonious society. Later, the critics of Emperor Wu’s economic policies recalled the history of the Qin Empire, alleging that the advocates of the imperial monopolies, like the Legalists, viewed the population purely as a means to achieving state ends, and that whatever benefits this utilitarian approach might produce in the short run, it would ultimately lead to ruin. Imperial Minister Sang Hongyang, who had helped to establish the new economic policies and advocated continuing them, agreed that the state monopolies were designed to provide funds for the military. Abolishing the monopolies, he declared, would not be expedient. Where the Confucian scholars rejected the profit motive, the Imperial Minister embraced it. Nevertheless, Sang did not leave the matter at that. Instead, he provided an alternative analysis of Wu’s economic policies, emphasising different social, and moral imperatives.

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Sang described how Emperor Wu had attempted to improve the empire’s defences against the Xiongnu nomads, who had periodically invaded China for centuries. The Imperial Minister might reasonably have noted that when nomad tribes united under aggressive leaders, they had the potential to destroy the Chinese state. This would have allowed him to make a powerful case that China needed to crush the Xiongnu before such a calamity came to pass. Indeed, Emperor Wu, whose name means ‘martial’, had spent a considerable portion of his career attempting to do that. Emperor Wu’s wars had involved hundreds of thousands of troops, and they had been hard-fought. China had conquered new provinces from Central Asia to modern Vietnam, and it had achieved a degree of security from large-scale invasion, but several of its campaigns had been debacles. Without the ability to raise large armies and replace heavy losses, the Chinese empire might have suffered the kind of defeat which would have left it prone to conquest from without or revolt from within. Both dangers were pressing throughout Wu’s reign. Sang might have made a convincing argument in favour of measures designed to raise funds for the military simply by noting that the empire needed to be ready for war, and that armed forces are expensive. The Imperial Minister chose, however, to focus on the less sensational matter of border security. This provides insight into the reasons why pragmatists such as himself wished to reconfigure the economy. The state monopoly system did not merely provide the Chinese state with resources, it provided it with flexibility. As Sang noted, the frontier territories were never really at peace. Even when the Xiongnu were cowed by war, appeased with gifts or co-opted through diplomatic marriages, Chinese rulers had no way to tell when or where the nomads might resume their attacks. Moreover, even during periods of relative stability, smaller nomad bands sallied into China seeking booty and captives. Sang argued that it would be unkind for the emperor to expose any of his subjects to such attacks and unjust for him to defend the border regions any less vigorously than he would defend the heartland. Although Sang couched his argument in humanitarian terms, one may note that Emperor Wu’s reasons for taking the defence of the outlying provinces seriously went beyond those of sentiment. To begin with, the provinces were valuable, if only as buffers between the nomads and the rest of the empire. Moreover, for the ruler of a large state to treat different regions differently is to court separatism. One recalls that one of the American colonists’ chief motives for seeking independence was Britain’s perceived failure to support them against European rivals and indigenous peoples. Sang went on to note that if the emperor was to protect the border provinces, he would have no choice but to subject troops to the hardships of war. Again, he presented his case in terms of compassionate feelings, and again, he implicitly raised a wider range of concerns. For ancient China, the

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problem of border defence went beyond the problem of mobilising armies. Chinese rulers needed to develop forces capable of responding to incursions of varying sizes by mobile foes throughout a vast region. Moreover, they needed to keep those forces permanently ready for action. This posed problems of logistics, intelligence, communications and force allocation comparable to the problems armed forces face when attempting to maintain security in regions threatened by insurgency. Counterinsurgency remains difficult for 21st-century nations. One reason why contemporary governments find it difficult to suppress insurgents is that long deployments of troops commonly produce a domestic political backlash, and even this issue had parallels in Han Dynasty China. Chinese emperors were free to suppress dissent brutally, but they faced danger when their policies incited revolt. Several of Emperor Wu’s military campaigns were controversial. Moreover, Wu faced a series of peasant uprisings and a continual threat of rebellion by provincial rulers. Not only did he live in well-founded dread of palace conspiracies, but he must have known that he, like all rulers, was only as powerful as the rest of the political establishment permitted him to be. It so happened that he had staffed his court with Confucians who, in principle, held that rulers had a duty to treat people benevolently. For these reasons, Wu may have found it unwise to be seen allowing his border troops to suffer unnecessarily from hunger and cold, but even if he felt capable of being callous about those issues, he would still have sought ways to implement his border security policies with minimum internal resistance. Emperor Wu commissioned technological solutions to certain problems of frontier defence. As Sang Hongyang noted, Wu established outposts and a system of warning beacons. This presumably allowed the Chinese army to patrol significant stretches of the border, and to summon reinforcements to any spot where nomads chose to cross. In an era when reconnaissance and communications were typically limited to the speed and range of troops on horseback, this kind of early warning system must have provided border guards with a significant advantage, especially against enemies whose way of war depended on striking unprepared settlements and withdrawing before opposing military forces could arrive. Nevertheless, for Emperor Wu’s border defences to work, the Chinese army needed reserves of troops continually ready to respond to incursions. Although the Han-era Chinese had more experience sustaining standing armies than, for instance, most medieval European rulers, it is difficult to maintain military forces in one place under pre-industrial conditions. Premodern forces typically acquired most of their supplies from civilians in their area of operations. As Sang Hongyang pointed out, China’s border provinces were too barren to support the forces necessary to defend them. Supporting the border garrisons not only required food and other commodities, but it also required the ability to procure them at times and in quantities dictated by military need, not by weather or season. The Confucian

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opponents of the salt and iron monopolies spoke approvingly of earlier periods in which common people had been able to pay their taxes in grain and locally produced handicrafts. In theory, Emperor Wu might have used such a system to accumulate resources for his border defences, but this would have required him also to create administrative, warehousing and distribution systems capable of matching the needs of the army to the produce of every region of the empire. Organising these systems would have been challenging and might well have involved costly failures. Operating these systems would have required large numbers of personnel, some of whom would have to have specialised skills. Since the empire would presumably be trying to avoid the need to acquire and spend money, its most obvious way to mobilise workers would be by expanding the use of compulsory labour service. The Qin Empire addressed its border security problems using its legal system to convict tens of thousands of relatively harmless people of notional crimes so that they could be sentenced to penal servitude building China’s first Great Wall, but this is presumably not the policy the Confucian moralists would have advocated, nor is it one which would have contributed to the empire’s domestic stability. Moreover, important as the border defences were, they were only one imperial project among many. Some were undoubtedly of lower priority. Most were presumably proceeding satisfactorily under existing taxation and administrative regimes. Nevertheless, if Wu had disrupted those regimes to make them support a complicated and expensive new undertaking on the scale of the border defence operations, he would have jeopardised a wide range of undertakings. Thus, it proved easier for the empire to go into business. Although this required the government to develop institutions capable of managing profitable commodities such as salt, liquor and iron, it allowed the government to pay other people to take on less rewarding tasks. The 21st-century governments often find it politically easier, administratively simpler and frequently more cost-effective to outsource military support functions which 20th-century armed forces commonly performed for themselves. Emperor Wu faced similar pressures and adopted a similar solution. Such an approach can only function in a society with a well-developed monetary economy. It functions best in a society in which capable individuals compete to out-perform each other at delivering the services which the state requires. Fortunately for Emperor Wu, the Confucian opponents of his methods were correct when they noted that market systems tend to snowball. Wu’s policies forced subjects to place a greater proportion of their goods and services up for sale and encouraged those who could become entrepreneurs. Opponents of Wu’s policies claimed that the system was unsustainable, even from a materialistic point of view. As the Confucian critics noted, those who grew rich trading used their new wealth to live extravagantly.

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Status-conscious people of more modest means did their best to keep up. This increased the demand for luxury items, which motivated greater numbers of people to seek their fortunes by producing them, which reduced the output of necessities, leaving the poor worse off than ever and rendering all of society more vulnerable to catastrophes such as famine. Neither side in the debate won a clear victory. Chinese rulers continued to use many of Wu’s methods, but they continued to encounter opposition within their own courts. This appears to have restrained them from exercising their power to control and exploit economic activity as freely as they might otherwise have done.32 Over a thousand years later, the Ming emperors gradually abandoned maritime commerce and exploration for many of the same reasons that the Confucian scholars of the Han Dynasty opposed the state monopolies on salt and iron. The debate on salt and iron illustrates several points about traditional Chinese thought on the relationship between economics and statecraft. The first is that, for over two thousand years, Chinese intellectuals have had detailed theories of economic life. These theories have addressed many of the principles which shape influential schools of thought in contemporary economic theory, such as the relationship between supply and demand, the vulnerability of markets to cycles of boom and bust and the debatable role of state intervention. They have recognised that economic practises are politically constructed, and that they can reinforce – or corrode – other important relationships. A second point is that these ideas produced enduring tension between those who preferred for the state to use its influence over the economy to promote a way of life and those who sought to maximise wealth, or, more specifically, revenue. The clash between these two visions of economic policy is not unique to ancient China. One sees similar ideas in conflict in Jefferson’s debate with Hamilton over the question of whether the United States should structure its national institutions to promote small-scale agriculture or large-scale industry. The spirits of Sang Hongyang and Hamilton dominate 21st-century thought, but environmentalists and anti-globalisation activists may still find that the Confucian scholars and Jefferson made valid points. A third point, and one which is particularly relevant to grand strategy, concerns the way in which states may use economic policy to gain advantages in wars and other contests. As noted earlier, Emperor Wu’s policies were more than a way of acquiring larger quantities of resources. They were a way of acquiring a greater proportion of those resources as money. Sunzi advised strategists to equip and deploy forces in ways which permit them to be fluid in their actions, like water. It is thus felicitous to recall that money is a liquid asset. Emperor Wu’s policies allowed him to raise and deploy forces flexibly. His policies also made it easier for him to provide his troops with walls and beacons, further improving their efficiency even when they were operating over large areas long distances on the fringes of imperial territory. If

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countries with productive commercial economies have an advantage in building defensive works on the land, they have an even more significant advantage in acquiring more technologically sophisticated military assets such as navies. As later generations of Chinese rulers would discover, forget, and discover again, maritime power is one of the most versatile tools a strategist can possess, and, again, one of its most noteworthy characteristics is its usefulness for projecting power. The reward of well-integrated economic and military policies is the enhanced ability to act faster and more imaginatively beyond one’s heartland. Regional Politics For Chinese strategists throughout the ages, economic matters have overlapped with almost equally critical issues of regional politics. As previously noted, one of the most fundamental intellectual problems of Chinese politics has been that of justifying the central government’s rule over its provinces, and one of the fundamental practical problems has been that of enforcing this rule. Even during periods when the central government has been powerful, rulers have been more successful at implementing their policies when they have succeeded at cultivating regional support and suppressing regional opposition. In periods when the central government has been weaker, foreign enemies ranging from Central Asian nomads to 19th-century colonialists have been quick to play one Chinese faction against another. The fact that different areas have local advantages in producing different goods is the essence of commerce. Ancient Chinese commentaries on economics frequently recite the specialty products of various places.33 Ideally, this would lead to a situation in which people in all regions did what they were best at and exchanged their products for mutual benefit. In practise, trading relationships virtually always contain some element of exploitation and government attempts to manage the process virtually always favour some parties’ interests over others. Ancient Chinese thinkers were conscious of these points as well. The farming communities which Confucians viewed as the backbone of civilisation were spread throughout China’s rural heartland. Since Confucianism has been influential and since food is essential, one should not be surprised that this area and its interests have dominated Chinese policy for much of history. Emperor Wu’s economic policies represented, among other things, a rebalancing of regional priorities. Wu chose to impose controversial measures in the normally favoured heartland to defend the recently expanded provinces on China’s north-western frontier. A side benefit of Emperor Wu’s policies was that they allowed the empire to take greater advantage of overland trade. Sang Hongyang explicitly noted this point. One may infer that since much of this trade passed through the frontier provinces, at least some of their citizens profited from it. Indeed, this trade may have helped encourage the frontier people to remain loyal to the

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empire. Nevertheless, despite the significance of Emperor Wu’s policies as an example of ancient Chinese strategic thought and as a foreshadowing of modern economic debates, one must keep them in perspective. Agriculture remained the main source of China’s wealth, the agricultural regions remained the base of imperial political support, land forces recruited and fed from those regions remained the empire’s most potent weapon and state policy generally reflected those facts. In the 12th century, nomad invaders overran China’s frontier provinces and went on to conquer much of its traditional heartland. This left the rulers of China’s Song dynasty to govern an enclave in the south and east. Eastern China happens to be coastal. The sea supports trade on a greater scale than any overland route and eastern China’s people had long taken advantage of this fact. As easterners became – if only by default – a larger percentage of the China’s population, Chinese society, politics and strategy grew increasingly mercantile and increasingly maritime. New cities appeared. Whereas urban areas in earlier phases of Chinese history had typically formed around the sites where rulers established their capitals, the emerging ones tended to coalesce around centres of trade. The imperial government used both Emperor Wu’s device of establishing state monopolies and a variety of taxes on private commerce to generate revenue. Sung rulers invested their funds in a ‘new great wall’ of fighting ships which could defend their maritime interests in places as far away as India. Sung China thrived in this way for 152 years. In 1279, a Mongol army conquered it from the land. The Mongol khans proclaimed themselves to be the new ruling dynasty of China and took full advantage of the maritime community which had taken shape on China’s coast. The Yuan dynasty of the Mongols succeeded at combining China’s north-western, central and south-eastern economies. When Chinese patriots overthrew the Mongols and established the Ming Dynasty, they inherited this functioning conglomerate. Like the Mongols, the early Ming emperors supported all three of China’s economic subcultures. This was the era in which the admiral Zheng He made his famous voyages around the Indian Ocean. Nevertheless, Chinese authorities increasingly preferred the north-west and its overland trade routes to the maritime south-east, and the central agricultural region to either. Observing this fact and noting the immense value of seaborne commerce, one might wonder how the rulers could be so blind. One reason is that although overseas trade enriched merchants, its value to the nation was contestable. Even during the maritime heyday of the Sung dynasty, China suffered from what modern commentators would call trade deficits, importing more than it exported. Since foreign suppliers demanded payment in the form of universally valued materials such as precious metals, these deficits sapped China’s reserves of so-called ‘hard’ currency. The Chinese government compensated for this by issuing paper money, but frequently succumbed to the temptation of printing too much, causing inflation.

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One recalls that one of the main attractions of commerce from the Chinese government’s point of view was that it allowed the state to conduct more of its business through the medium of money. When trade itself appeared to be undermining the monetary economy, the Confucian arguments in favour of an agricultural society became increasingly persuasive. Moreover, Ming China was large enough to be relatively self-sufficient. The items it acquired through long-range trade tended to be luxury goods, and this allowed moralists and pragmatists alike to dismiss them as inessential. In hindsight, one could observe that, even if the value of overseas trade was as negligible as its detractors claimed, China’s rulers would still have found it strategically useful to cultivate a shipbuilding industry and a community of experienced sailors. Influential theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan ultimately reconsidered his argument that only a nation with a thriving civilian maritime economy could become a military sea power, but there is no doubt that countries which possess such economies have a significant naval advantage. In a similar vein, when a country’s coastal region is prosperous, it can finance fortifications and support land forces for its own protection. Moreover, trade brings distant people into contact and gives them an interest in co-operating. This can pave the way for co-operation on other issues. Trade is, to adapt Joseph Nye’s useful expression, a way of projecting soft power. By the Ming period, China’s rulers had been using trade to secure alliances and co-opt potential opponents along their land borders for more than a thousand years. This is probably one of the reasons why they continued to favour overland trade even when maritime commerce had become more lucrative. One may assume that Chinese strategic thinkers were aware that they could achieve similar diplomatic influence over even greater distances through the judicious use of maritime trade. Ming-era mariners such as Zheng He did indeed use their good offices – occasionally backed up by force – to uphold the interests of ethnically Chinese communities in other lands. Nevertheless, from the perspective of the capital, the most obvious reason for China to seek influence overseas would have been to protect ocean-borne trade. When the desirability of that commerce came into question, the value of power projection became dubious as well. Thus, China’s rulers paid less attention to the opportunity to use overseas trade to influence distant peoples than they paid to the risk that trade would give foreigners undue influence in their own empire. The fact that China would eventually face maritime invasions from the east that would prove every bit as threatening as overland invasions from the northwest was unknowable. Later Chinese rulers neglected their fleets. Yet later ones imposed crippling restrictions on private maritime commerce. This left China defenceless against European, Japanese and American naval power in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Nevertheless, the fact that the Ming and Qing (Manchu) rulers struck the wrong balance between the economy of the coasts and the

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economy of the interior highlights the fact that any course they chose would have involved some sort of trade-off. The incompatibilities among China’s regions have complicated Chinese statecraft throughout history, and although Chinese strategic thinkers have responded to this issue in a variety of ways, few have overcome it. The Failure of Traditional China This chapter has explored classic texts and pre-modern incidents which seem likely to inform the makers of contemporary Chinese grand strategy, and which should certainly inform those of us who seek to understand it. Here, one should note that China’s 19th- and early 20th-century era of humiliation spurs us all to view the history of Chinese strategic thought from a new perspective. One should also note that Mao Zedong and his successors have added to China’s strategic tradition. Later chapters will explore contemporary Chinese thought in more depth, but at this stage, one does well to note the following points about how modern China’s ideas and circumstances compare with those of earlier times. To begin with, Britain’s victory in the first Opium War was the first of many incidents to dramatise the facts that politics are global, and that the medium of global power is the sea. These truths are ancient, and one must assume that Chinese rulers have been aware of them at some level for as long as there have been oceangoing vessels. Nevertheless, the events of the 19th century clarified their implications for modern China. Just as Chinese states throughout history have used war, trade and diplomacy to manage the peoples along their vulnerable north-western frontier, contemporary China must take an equally keen interest in the Indian Ocean, the Pacific, and ultimately the waters and continents beyond. Just as Emperor Wu and others of his temperament set aside Confucian scruples and Daoist preferences for inaction to pre-empt potential enemies on land, contemporary China needs proactive policies for securing its interests throughout the world. China’s 19th and 20th-century conquerors were not simply sea powers, they were industrial powers, and they enjoyed relatively high performance in most of their national institutions. China had its own tradition of large-scale manufacturing, and reformers such as the Legalists had successfully imposed efficiencies in other eras. Nevertheless, virtually all societies have had to adapt to a continuing process of technological change and political transformation over the past two centuries. China is no exception, and the leaders who shaped its destiny in the mid-20th century did not expect it to be. Thus, China’s 20th-century leaders did not merely revive measures which had worked for their country in the past, nor did they simply reproduce the established methods of more recently successful countries such as Great Britain. Rather, they participated in international movements which sought to be on the crest of change. Even the anti-Communist Jiang Jieshi sought support from the newly established Soviet Union. Mao Zedong not only embraced

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Communist ideology but mastered it to the point of making globally influential contributions. Communist Ideology and Contemporary Grand Strategy Mao’s Communism, as reformulated by pragmatists such as Deng Xiaoping, is the official philosophy of the People’s Republic. Since Beijing’s 21st-century policies differ so sharply from Mao’s, the question of whether Communist principles have a meaningful effect on the PRC’s contemporary behaviour recurs throughout this book. At this point, one may note that leaders of Marxist-Leninist states have historically pursued a broad range of policies, some of which are comparable to those in effect in the PRC. Lenin instituted a system of private enterprise within the Soviet Union when it suited his purposes and Mao Zedong repeatedly formed alliances of convenience with his ideological enemies. Such conduct is not necessarily hypocritical. Marx held that major events such as socialist revolutions and the evolution of socialism into true communism occur in response to impersonal economic forces. Mere humans must work within the limits of the conditions which prevail in their place and time. Those who have mastered Marxist theory will presumably understand their situation better than those who do not, and therefore they will be able to respond more astutely to their circumstances. Nevertheless, those who attempt to be more idealistic than the situation permits are merely indulging in egotism. Albanian Communist leader Enver Hoxha summarised these ideas in language which is particularly compatible with a work on grand strategic thought. In 1968, Hoxha assured visitors from Ecuador that as long as their ‘strategy’ was grounded in Marxist-Leninist theory, whatever ‘tactics’ they chose would also be correct.34 Hoxha elaborated on the point that revolutionaries in every country face unique challenge, and that local Communist leaders are best equipped to determine what their nation’s movement requires. Hoxha went on, however, to accuse Che Guevara of mixing Marxist-Leninist ideas with mere anarchism. This is only one strand of Marxist-Leninist thought, and Hoxha was a controversial figure even among Communists. Nevertheless, contemporary Chinese leaders could reasonably argue – as Marxists – that 21st-century circumstances require their country to do precisely the things that it is doing. They could argue that their policies have preserved a society founded on Marx’s principles for a quarter of the world’s population in an era when less adaptable Communist regimes have collapsed. They could also argue that the PRC’s commercial success helps push the global capitalist system to the point at which more revolutions will become possible. The Communist understanding of strategy and tactics resonates with earlier ideas in the Chinese tradition. Marx’s laws of history are, in a sense, a materialist adaptation of the Mandate of Heaven. Zhou emperors and modern

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Communists could also agree on the point that Heaven corrects social imbalances through revolutions. Laozi held that the motive forces of the universe are beyond comprehension, but he believed that such forces existed. To this extent, his thought can accommodate the Marxist belief in historical laws as well. Laozi and more military-minded thinkers such as Sunzi would have been quick to agree with Hoxha that, whatever large-scale influences might be at work, one’s tactics must conform to one’s immediate circumstances. Both would also have appreciated the point that those who set out to become heroes typically overreach themselves. On a different note, although it is difficult to say which side contemporary Communists would have taken in the controversy over Emperor Wu’s state monopolies, all participants in that debate raised issues about the relationship between economic systems and society which Marxists would be likely to appreciate. One must be careful not to take such comparisons too far, but it is worth noting that there appear to be long-term continuities in Chinese strategic thought, and that the PRC’s turn towards economic pragmatism is in keeping with both recent and older traditions. Nevertheless, the fact that China’s leaders are schooled in Marxist thought has implications for their long-term behaviour. Chinese authorities clearly believe that seeking profits through global trade is a promising tactic, to use Hoxha’s phrase, and they are likely to continue this course of action for so long that most of us would define it as a strategy. Communist ideology permits them to do so. The PRC’s leaders are, however, indubitably aware of what Marxist-Leninist theory predicts for the capitalist international community which they have chosen to engage with. Marx viewed the capitalist stage of social development as a milestone in the evolution of people’s ability to produce goods. To that extent, it is desirable. Nevertheless, Marx warns, all who partake of it find themselves enmeshed in relentless competition. This competition forces employers to exploit their employees ever more ruthlessly to avoid being driven out of business. As this process reduces a growing percentage of the population to misery, society becomes increasingly susceptible to revolution. According to Lenin, state governments seek to retard this process by infusing wealth into their national economies so that working people in their countries do not feel the pinch of capitalist exploitation quite so soon. To acquire funds for this purpose, Lenin claimed, states exploit weaker states. As competitive pressures in every state make workers ever poorer, this line of reasoning continues, governments must draw in ever greater quantities of resources from abroad. Eventually, this argument concludes, the strongest states will fight each other for access to the last territories worth exploiting, and humanity’s path towards world revolution will intersect with humanity’s path towards global war. Lenin set out these ideas in his essay Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. This work appeared in 1916. Those who lived through World War I,

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the Russian Revolution and the Communist uprising which shook Germany in 1918 could understandably have concluded that Lenin’s predictions were on the verge of coming true. A century later, one can see that reality is more complicated than early 20th-century revolutionaries might have assumed. Marxians are entitled to respond that those who had studied MarxistLeninist theory thoroughly would have been prepared for some of the complications. Communists might also note that the fact that capitalist society survived crises in the past does not prove that it will fare equally well against potentially greater challenges in the future. Moreover, an assortment of thinkers have proposed theories which accept Marx’s propositions about the rapacity of market-dominated society but allow for the possibility that capitalist elites may be able to put off their apocalyptic downfall. Even those who fundamentally reject the Marxist-Leninist view of the world must acknowledge that economic competition can produce some of the effects Marx and Lenin wrote about, and that although Marx and Lenin’s premises may be wrong, much of their reasoning is coherent. There is, in other words, a middle ground between accepting MarxistLeninist-Maoist doctrine blindly and rejecting it altogether. This reasoned approach to ideology is compatible with the contemporary Chinese Communist Party’s political agenda, and it is almost certainly attractive to educated Chinese citizens. Those who follow this approach are likely to recognise that Lenin’s predictions in 1916 are a long way from coming true. Deng Xiaoping declared that peace would last for an indefinite but long period of time.35 Deng did not, however, say that war would not come. The 21st-century Chinese leaders may not expect the kind of conflicts their predecessors imagined during the Cold War, but their knowledge of Marxist-LeninistMaoist theory may still incline them to believe that the international community is dysfunctional, and that even the so-called developed states are internally unsound. Patriotic recollection of China’s experiences in the 19th and 20th centuries can only reinforce these attitudes. Even those from other parts of the world and other philosophical leanings must acknowledge that there is all too much truth in them. Conclusion To summarise, Chinese political thinkers throughout history have thought in grand strategic terms. Rather than conceiving of strategy in narrowly military terms, they have emphasised the possibility of using a range of policy instruments in imaginative ways over extended periods of time to shape the environment in which wars – if actual fighting turns out to be necessary – take place. They have paid special attention to the use of social legislation, administrative reforms and economic policy to expand the state’s freedom of action. Chinese thinkers have also emphasised geopolitical factors, both inside China and abroad.

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The goals of Chinese grand strategy have varied, but they have tended to include an element of principle. One reason may be that China’s rulers found the principles convincing, and another is that they strengthen the Chinese government’s hold on its subjects’ loyalties. These principles have tended to be universal, and Chinese rulers have sought to apply them across borders. Such application could be as benign as Confucian attempts to civilise barbarians by demonstrating good behaviour or as forceful as Maoist programs to arm Communist revolutionaries fighting to overthrow foreign governments. Most Chinese political thinkers called on rulers to promote the interests of the population. Since the Chinese Empire always faced the dangers of rebellion and separatism, rulers have felt considerable pressure to do so. Confucians and Daoists tended to view foreign affairs as distractions from the state’s internal responsibilities and during the imperial period, a substantial number of China’s rulers were inclined to agree. China’s humiliation in the 19th and 20th centuries, however, discredited this tendency towards isolationism, and Marxist-Leninist theory makes the case that the politics of the predominantly capitalist world will become only more perilous over time. China’s 21st-century leaders are likely to plan their grand strategy accordingly. Notes 1 Jeremy Page, ‘Why China Is Turning Back to Confucius: President Xi Jinping, Set to Arrive in U.S. Tuesday, Is Promoting Traditions His Party Once Reviled’, New York Times, September 20, 2015, https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-china-isturning-back-to-confucius-1442754000 2 Russell Baker, ‘Observer: Newsy Hankie Panky’, New York Times, August 12, 1989, http://www.nytimes.com/1989/08/12/opinion/observer-newsy-hankiepanky.html 3 Henry Kissinger, On China (New York: Penguin, 2011), passim. 4 Salvatore Babones, ‘Taking China Seriously: Relationality, Tianxia, and the “Chinese School” of International Relations’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, September 26, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/978019022863 7.013.602 5 William A. Callahan, ‘Chinese Visions of World Order: Post-hegemonic or a New Hegemony?’, International Studies Review 10, no. 4 (2008): 749–61. 6 Yih-Jye Hwang, ‘International Studies in China’, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of International Studies, November 22, 2022, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/ 9780190846626.013.719 7 ‘Declaration of Independence: A Transcription’, US National Archives Museum, accessed August 2, 2021, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declarationtranscript 8 Michael I. Handel, Masters of War: Classical Strategic Thought (London: Frank Cass, 1996), 80; Handel, Masters of War, 138. 9 Handel, Masters of War, 18. 10 Tao Hanzhang, Sun Tzu’s Art of War: The Modern Chinese Interpretation, trans. Yuan Shibing (New York: Sterling Publishing, 1987), 96. 11 Clausewitz, On War, 23–4.

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12 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Gia-Fu-Feng and Jane English (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 17; Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 101. 13 Thomas M. Kane, Ancient China on Postmodern War: Enduring Ideas from the Chinese Strategic Tradition (London: Routledge, 2007), passim. 14 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 19. 15 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 5. 16 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 74 17 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 73. 18 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 61. 19 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 54. 20 For discussion, see Kane, Ancient China on Postmodern War, 114. 21 See, for example, Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 57, 68. 22 Alastair Iain Johnston, Cultural Realism: Strategic Culture and Grand Strategy in Chinese History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press), passim. 23 Confucius, ‘Teachings of the Master’, trans. William Jennings in Classics in Chinese Philosophy, ed. Wade Baskin (New York: Philosophical Library, 1972), 12. 24 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 37. 25 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 61. 26 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 80. 27 Michael Franz, China Through the Ages: History of a Civilization (Boulder: Westview Press, 1986), 58–9 28 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, 97. 29 Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian: Han Dynasty II, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), 433–54. 30 Sima Qian, Grand Historian, 434. 31 For discussion, see Edward W. Laves, Chinese Civilization and Society: A Sourcebook, ed. Patricia Buckley Ebrey (New York: Free Press, 1981), 23–6. 32 Franz, China Through the Ages, 79. 33 Laves, Chinese Civilization, 25, 157–60. 34 Enver Hoxha, ‘The Fist of Marxist-Leninist Communists Must Also Smash Left Adventurism, the Offspring of Modern Revisionism: From a Conversation with Two Leaders of the Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist) of Ecuador’, trans. Marcus Winter, Marxists Internet Archive, October 21, 1968, https://www. marxists.org/reference/archive/hoxha/works/1968/10/21.htm, accessed August 14, 2021. 35 Thomas M. Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 61.

3

Combine the Military and the Civil? China’s Transformation of Wealth into Power

Although Lenin held that capitalism makes war inevitable, many liberal thinkers believe something close to the opposite. Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution documents the point that liberal optimism about the role of trade in world politics has become ubiquitous in the 21st century.1 As Wright also notes, this optimism shapes policy in most states. Since the PRC has invested so deeply in global commerce, many commentators take it for granted that China’s leaders have at least tacitly embraced the consensus. In this spirit, Ali Wyne of the Atlantic Council suggests that Chinese president and Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping ‘channelled’ the early 20th-century liberal Norman Angell in a session of the US-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.2 Wyne and Wright note, however, that the PRC’s financial relations with the United States are not as stabilising as liberals might have hoped.3 Upon closer reading, even Xi Jinping’s comments at the Strategic and Economic Dialogue appear less angelic than Wyne suggests. As Wyne himself noted, Angell’s point was that economic interdependence makes war ruinous for both sides. Xi observed the size of the US and Chinese economies and went on to reflect that America and the PRC could do great things together if they cooperated, but that if they opposed one another, they would risk great harm.4 Although Xi did not specify causal mechanisms, his reasoning seemed to have less to do with the United States and China’s mutual reliance on each other’s markets than with the fact that both countries are powerful. Where liberals emphasise the point that trade constrains states, Xi seemed at least equally attentive to the counterpoint that wealth empowers them. The architects of Beijing’s current economic practices acknowledged both possibilities, and explicitly designed their policies to ensure that the PRC would gain the maximum possible power from its commercial ventures while experiencing the minimum possible constraint.5 Deng Xiaoping summed up his intentions in a slogan sometimes referred to as the ‘Sixteen-Character Policy/Statement’. The Sixteen-Character Statement included the following four phrases, in order: ‘combine the military and the civil’; ‘combine peace and war’; ‘give priority to military products’; and ‘let the civil support the military’.6 These phrases should be interpreted not as standalone epigrams, DOI: 10.4324/9781315387383-3

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but as sequential directives ordered by China’s most powerful leader at the time. This chapter documents the PRC’s apparent efforts to implement this slogan. The next section discusses the relationship between the PRC’s economic performance and its defence budget. The third section discusses ways in which Beijing has successfully outsourced strategically important activities to private industry, which has often managed to pursue them more efficiently and on an expanded scale. The fourth section discusses the PRC government’s public and private ventures to develop global transportation infrastructure, and the fifth section discusses the ways in which China’s infrastructure program brings Beijing political influence. Finally, the concluding section notes that, throughout all these processes, the Chinese Communist Party retains a high degree of control. Delivering the Goods: Economic Performance and Military Spending One can observe the basic relationship between Beijing’s economic policies and Beijing’s martial ambitions in the history of the PRC’s defence budget. Deng Xiaoping and his supporters determined that by prioritising trade over the military, they would be able to build both a stronger economy and stronger armed forces than would otherwise have been possible. Since then, Beijing’s economy and its military capabilities have, indeed, grown in tandem. Data compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) indicate that, from the 1990s onwards, Chinese military spending has tracked China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP).7 During this period, China has enjoyed an average economic growth rate of 9.23% per year.8 This has allowed the PRC to achieve the second highest defence budget in the world. Without the success of Deng’s economic reforms, the PRC’s current level of military spending would have been impossible. SIPRI data indicate that Beijing spent roughly $21.3 billion on its military in 1990 and $252 billion in 2020. In 1978, the year before the reforms began, the PRC’s entire GDP was only $149.5 billion. Machiavelli rejected the widely held belief that money is the sinew of war. Good soldiers, he argued, can always procure gold. Mao Zedong expressed similar romantic optimism when he described the masses of people who presumably supported Communist revolution as an iron bastion which no enemy can destroy.9 Nevertheless, no amount of revolutionary fervour could have raised the PRC’s armed forces to their current level of capabilities without economic development, and no amount of sacrifice, even from a country where the people who make up Mao’s masses number over 1.3 billion, could have maintained them there. Moreover, the fact that Beijing has tied its military spending so closely to economic performance for almost 20 years suggests disciplined planning on the part of its leaders. All governments periodically face pressure to cut defence

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budgets, and all governments periodically face pressure to raise them. Economic expansion would have made it exceptionally easy – and thus, perhaps, exceptionally tempting – for Chinese leaders to respond to such pressures. Had they chosen, they could have maintained or even increased military spending in absolute terms while diverting a larger proportion of their growing revenues to other purposes. Likewise, they always had the option of channelling far greater sums into their armed forces while holding domestic spending steady. Among great military powers, the PRC’s fiscal discipline is unusual. Data compiled by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) indicate that US military spending increased from 2.9% GDP in 2001 to 3.8% in 2004 and 4.7% in 2010 before plunging to 3.3% in 2015.10,11 The CSIS found that Russia’s defence budget rose and fell multiple times over the same period, with a low of 3.3% GDP in 2008 and a high of 5.3% in 2016.12 Throughout the 2000s, again according to CSIS statistics, China’s defence spending remained between 1.9% and 2.2% GDP.13 Beijing’s approach to defence budgeting is yet another piece of evidence to suggest that the PRC’s leaders are planning for the long term. One cannot fully know the Chinese leaders’ motives, but the fact that they have continually increased their defence budget in absolute terms demonstrates their intention to achieve greater strategic capabilities. If, however, they anticipated an imminent war, they would be well advised to spend considerably more. The fact that they have chosen to proceed at a pace dictated by GDP growth indicates a desire, not merely to gain power, but to do so in an economically sustainable way. Moreover, one of the challenges of contemporary defence planning is of making wise use of emerging technology. This does not necessarily mean fielding the most advanced equipment possible as soon as it is available. Since most technology – especially recently invented technology – becomes cheaper and better over time, those who are too quick to invest may merely find themselves burdened with overpriced gear that quickly becomes obsolete. These points are especially pertinent to countries with rapidly developing economies. In such states, not only is the body of scientific knowledge which makes new technology possible continually evolving, but the national means for manufacturing that technology in useful quantities is continually evolving as well. Once again, Beijing’s approach to setting defence budgets seems well suited to a long-term grand strategy. By investing steadily in limited amounts, the PRC’s leaders may add new technology as it becomes available without overcommitting themselves to any particular generation of equipment. If China’s leaders ever wish to upgrade their entire military establishment at once, they will have to come up with more money. One may note, in passing, that the larger the PRC’s economy grows, the more feasible this will become. Meanwhile, however, for as long as China’s leaders are content with slow but sustainable progress, their current approach will serve them well.

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Outsourcing R&D Not only does the PRC’s commercial economy provide money for the military, but it relieves the government of the need to fund a variety of strategically useful activities. This allows Beijing to conserve state resources. It also allows the government to distance itself from activities which may prove politically embarrassing. As the previous chapter noted, Chinese rulers have understood the advantages of outsourcing state functions – and of promoting economic structures which permit them to outsource state functions – for millennia. These advantages remain present today. Beijing has, for instance, largely transferred responsibility for technological research and development (R&D) to the so-called private sector. A 2021 report on China’s commercial R&D sector from McKinsey and Company indicates that, for over two decades, Chinese companies have steadily increased their collective spending on R&D both in absolute terms (yearover-year) and as a percentage of national GDP.14 By 2015, China Daily reported that private investors were providing 76% of the nation’s R&D investment.15 More recent reports suggest that the private sector has sustained a similar intensity of R&D investment into the present, even as publicly financed R&D expenditures fell after the pandemic shock in 2020.16 This has helped the PRC to expand its total R&D investment to well over 2% of its GDP in recent years.17 In 2016, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) presented data suggesting that the PRC was raising its R&D expenditures over ten times faster than other economically successful nations.18 While, in terms of investment intensity (percentage of GDP), China remains substantially behind certain smaller countries such as Israel, South Korea and Taiwan, that are hyper focused on innovation, China’s nominal R&D expenditures make it second only to the United States in terms of total volume. According to the UNESCO Institute for Statistics, the PRC was responsible for over 20% of all R&D spending globally – nearly $350 billion – by 2019.19 This investment has undoubtedly contributed to the surge in Chinese patent, trademark and proprietary industrial design applications. The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) reports that in 2020, Chinese filings in each of these categories grew at 6.9%, 19.3% and 8.3%, respectively.20 China also leads the world in volume for each category, filing close to 1.5 million patent applications – 2.5 times that of the United States – in 2020. These numbers suggest that the money that China’s private sector is pouring into research and development is producing tangible results. Not only do private investors expand the volume of resources available for R&D, but they allow the government to use its own research budget in a more focussed way. In 2015, Chinese Science and Technology Minister Wan Gang noted this point in an interview with China Daily.21 Wan Gang emphasised the fact that the PRC’s success at outsourcing industrial R&D allows the government to put more state resources into projects of primary interest to the

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armed forces. China Daily quoted other authorities who noted that the government would continue to channel its R&D budget into space exploration and high energy physics, both of which also have direct strategic importance. One might speculate that Chinese businesses would choose R&D projects for their short-term commercial potential, rather than their long-term benefit to the nation. The Chinese media has acknowledged this risk.22 EU data, however, show that PRC-based firms increased their spending on advanced research by 632% between 2007 and 2016.23 This outstrips PRC-based corporate spending on safer but less ambitious endeavours. EU data show that mainland Chinese firms increased their overall R&D budgets by an impressive but significantly lower sum of 478% over the same period. China’s 14th Five-Year Plan, made public in March of 2021, aims to further incentivise and institutionalise national innovation. Premier Li Keqiang stated that the central government would increase funding for basic research by 10.6% as well as implement additional tax breaks for companies engaged in R&D investment.24 In terms of pace, Beijing is targeting an annual growth rate for R&D spending of 7%, a full percentage point above its 6% GDP growth target. By definition, therefore, China’s R&D expenditures as a percentage of GDP will rise in the coming decade, giving Beijing a tailwind as it endeavours to become a world leader in cutting-edge sectors such as microchip manufacturing and advanced computing. While China has accelerated up the R&D ladder at breakneck speeds, investors in other countries – even those with technologically oriented economies – have tended to be more conservative. EU statistics show that American firms increased their spending on high technology during the period 2007–2016 by 72%. This was above the global average, but, even when adjusted to account for the fact that the total increase in US R&D budgets was only 63%, it still shows that American corporations were less willing to invest in advanced research than their counterparts in mainland China. EU findings show that Japanese corporate spending on high technology during the years under consideration actually declined, both in absolute terms and as a proportion of Japanese firms’ overall R&D spend. The PRC’s industrialists have proven collectively willing to invest in their nation’s technological future, and although they undoubtedly hope to make money in the process, they have spent more than their purely financial interests might dictate. Chinese businesses have also persuaded outside firms to share their own innovations. The Beijing government supports such exchanges with laws requiring foreign firms which wish to engage in joint ventures with PRCbased companies to engage in so-called technology transfer. Chapter 5 will discuss in further detail how this dynamic plays out in cyberspace. For the purposes of this chapter, one may note that this is yet another way in which the PRC’s businesses contribute to the nation’s knowledge base and technological development. Few achievements could be more relevant to Beijing’s continuing rise as a global power. Technological innovation is critical to the PRC’s attempts to

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sustain its economic growth as its economy matures. Christina Valimaki of Elsevier R&D Solutions has published a useful piece detailing this point with special reference to China’s chemical industry.25 Valimaki also notes the importance of research and development to solving environmental problems. China’s environmental health is another area which is becoming increasingly significant to the PRC’s short-term political and economic stability, as well as the medium-to-long term future of life on this planet. In this regard, China has made remarkable progress in recent years, particularly in the renewable energy sector. In the solar industry, for example, China is far and away the world’s largest and fastest growing major producer, controlling 35% of the global market and having installed more than 250 gigawatts of solar energy capacity at home.26 Looking abroad, Kevin P. Gallagher of Boston University recently argued in the South China Morning Post that China is well positioned – both financially and politically – to make major portfolio investments in green energy projects around the world in the coming years.27 Technological innovation will inevitably play a decisive role in the PRC’s ability to meet its domestic and international environmental goals. Moreover, technological deficiencies are among the greatest obstacles China’s leaders face in realising their military ambitions. This has been a recurring theme in Chinese military history ever since Britain’s small but relatively up-to-date naval detachment subdued the obsolete forces of the Manchu Empire in the first Opium War. In the 1950s, Beijing found itself once again technologically outclassed by the nuclear arsenals of the United States and USSR. Mao Zedong, despite his bluster about the irrelevance of such weapons, made acquiring them a priority. Perhaps even more significantly, the PRC establishment managed to persevere with its programmes to develop nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles and space capabilities even during the political turmoil of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, when many other national goals languished. (Chapter 4 will address the evolution of China’s nuclear posture in greater detail). As a result, the PRC entered the 1980s with a small but credible nuclear force. Meanwhile, however, advances in other areas, notably electronics, permitted the United States and several of its allies to field new equipment which augmented their so-called conventional military capabilities in a plethora of mutually supporting ways. At that time, America’s primary military competitor was the Soviet Union. Soviet military thinkers recognised America’s accomplishment, but failed to develop comparable technology of their own. At the end of the 1980s, one might reasonably have assumed that Beijing would have a harder time emulating the Western nations’ technology-heavy style of warfare than Moscow. Military authors Bernard Cole and Paul Godwin cite an adage claiming that defence-related technology in the USSR was normally ten years more advanced than military technology in the PRC.28 The primary reason was almost certainly the fact that the USSR’s

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economy during the 1980s and early 1990s was several times more productive than that of the PRC. Moscow’s scientific establishment and defence industry were correspondingly better developed. Moreover, the Soviet Union’s failure to match Western technology appeared to support the argument that politically liberal societies with competitive market economies have advantages in fostering innovation. Although Deng Xiaoping’s reforms were underway, the PRC remained authoritarian, its scientific efforts remained largely state-directed and its industries remained largely state-owned. The Tiananmen Square massacre demonstrated Beijing’s determination to control social change. China also remained considerably more rural than it has now become, and its workforce had not yet attained its current levels of education or technological proficiency. Meanwhile, America and its allies used their new military technology in the 1990–91 Gulf War. The American-led coalition won this war speedily while suffering remarkably few casualties. Although the precise role of technology in achieving this victory will always remain subject to debate, Western military analysts reached a widespread belief that their combination of new material capabilities and new ways of using them constituted an information technology-led Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA). Prominent Chinese observers shared the Western enthusiasm for the emerging techniques of so-called information warfare (IW).29 By the mid-1990s, despite all the obstacles which might seem to have stood in its path, the PRC had begun to seek IW capabilities of its own. The PRC was simultaneously attempting to upgrade its navy and air force. Since it already possessed substantial numbers of vessels and aircraft, its main challenge lay in improving the quality of its forces. This demanded improvement in training, doctrine, organisation and logistics, and it also urgently required improvements in equipment. The success of this programme, like the success of PRC’s attempts to achieve an RMA, depended upon advances in electronics. Chapter 4 will discuss progress in Chinese military technology more thoroughly. The points to note here are that the PRC’s economic reforms have transformed the social conditions which might once have held back its technological progress, and that its shift towards commercially sponsored R&D has been conspicuously successful at channelling resources into the militarily essential electronics industry. In 2017, the European Union released data indicating that PRC-based firms devoted 44.1% of their collective R&D spending to information and computer technology (ICT).30 By global standards, this is unusually high. EU data show that Japan, despite its prominent electronics industry, spent only 24.3% of its R&D budget in that area, and that the EU countries themselves spent a collective 19.5%.31 Moreover, a well-known literature suggests that ICT investment is relatively unproductive in economically developing countries such as the PRC. Those seeking an introduction to this topic might consult Dirk Pilat’s study, The ICT Productivity Paradox: Insights from Micro Data.32 Although this so-called ‘productivity paradox’ does not rule

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out the possibility that well-positioned Chinese firms might earn high profits in the ICT industry, the Chinese elites’ general willingness to direct so much wealth into this sector appears to represent more than an economic decision. China’s leaders have also invested substantially in recent years in other military relevant R&D areas such as shipbuilding, air defence technology and the aircraft industry. As part of China’s 13th Five-Year Plan (2016–2020), a Science and Technology Commission was established under the Central Military Commission (CMC) to promote militarily useful technological innovation in the civilian sector as well as the defence establishment. Since then, observers including the US Department of Defense have noted significant improvements in the PRC’s warfighting machinery, such as modernised ship designs.33 Meanwhile, at the 13th China International Aviation and Aerospace Exhibition held in September of 2021, the PRC flaunted a fleet of J-20 fighter jets, fitted for the first time with domestically built engines.34 The successful implementation of such advanced, domestically designed and manufactured operational technologies suggest that Beijing’s efforts to accelerate military innovation are paying off. R&D is among the most important areas in which Chinese corporations have assumed partial responsibility for strategically important activities, but it is not the only one. As a small but revealing example of Beijing’s willingness to outsource strategy, one might also note that the PRC has allowed private firms to organise armed security forces and sell their services to customers both within China and abroad.35 A less confident regime might well view such paramilitary organisations as threats to its own authority. Indeed, the PRC itself did not sanction such private military companies (PMCs) until 2004. The PRC’s contemporary leaders, however, seem satisfied that they can keep the PMCs under control. Moreover, private security forces perform useful functions for the PRC. As Chinese businesses expand into conflict-ridden parts of the world, they require increasing levels of protection. Beijing presumably wishes for Chinese corporations to succeed for economic reasons and appears to view protecting its citizens’ interests abroad as a matter of national prestige. On certain occasions, the PRC has used state resources to protect its businesses and their employees, but this is costly and often diplomatically difficult. Using state forces also attracts publicity and increases the risk of embarrassing failure. Beijing must also consider the fact that its armed forces are only beginning to develop the logistical capabilities necessary for longrange power projection. Private security firms protect the PRC’s interests at their own risk, drawing resources from other private interests and typically attracting less unfavourable attention. Thomas M. Kane has explored this issue more thoroughly in an article published with Parameters.36 The World’s Construction Company Yet another area in which the PRC’s state economic policies, PRC-based corporations’ business activities and Beijing’s strategic interests intertwine is

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that of infrastructure development. One of the key reasons why the PRC has achieved its current level of prosperity is that it has invested so heavily in its own infrastructure. Much as the Han Dynasty’s state monopolies and transportation networks allowed Han Dynasty rulers to build up the monetary economy, Beijing’s contemporary projects have promoted the kinds of industrial activity which draw capital into China. The PRC has, for instance, has more than doubled its port capacity since the 1990s.37 Meanwhile, Beijing has made comparable efforts to develop air transportation. Researchers for the East Asia Institute report that mainland Chinese airports serviced more than eight times as many aircraft movements in 2008 as they did in 1992, and the PRC has announced plans to continue its airportbuilding programme until at least 2020.38 Shipping is the most important form of transportation for a nation which wishes to develop a strong export industry, and air transport is a close second. This is almost certainly among the primary reasons why Beijing has emphasised ports and airports during the first decades of its rise. Also suggestive is the fact that China has developed its air cargo industry faster than its network of passenger flights. The PRC also places a high priority on its internal transportation network, and that this has, among other things, helped its export industry produce products of higher value. Beijing’s programme of infrastructure construction has numerous strategic benefits. To begin with, it promotes economic growth in general. This, in turn, enables higher defence budgets and promotes social stability. Moreover, the PRC’s infrastructure programme provides targeted support to the militarily useful aircraft and shipping industries. Improved transportation and communication networks also help the central government exercise influence throughout China’s hinterlands, both directly and by bringing remote peoples into greater contact with the cultural mainstream. Finally, improved transportation infrastructure also provides the PRC’s armed forces with greater mobility. For these reasons, some of Beijing’s domestic infrastructure projects have become controversial. The PRC’s ongoing programme of connecting Tibet to the rest of China by rail has attracted special concern. Advocates of Tibetan independence note that the railways encourage members of China’s Han ethnic majority to migrate to Tibet, providing the central government with additional supporters in the contested region and undermining the indigenous peoples’ traditional way of life.39 Even those who are inclined to view Beijing’s policies more sympathetically may note that as Tibetan people begin to derive more of their income from trade and tourism, many of them are likely to view their membership in the PRC more favourably. Meanwhile, Indian journalists portray the PRC’s infrastructure projects in this region as preparations for possible military operations against neighbouring countries.40 One notes that Chinese leaders might find it useful to have the capability to carry out such operations even if they hope they will never need to do so.

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As of 2014, the China-Tibet railway link was the most expensive railroad construction project ever undertaken in the PRC.41 The fact that Beijing is willing to spend so much on this programme while other important transportation projects remain unfinished indicates that the Chinese authorities view Tibet’s infrastructure as unusually important. One should also note that Tibet’s economic contribution to the PRC is tiny. Although the Tibetan economy is growing, it produced only $14.3 billion worth of goods and services in 2021, less than a thousandth of the PRC’s total of nearly 15 trillion.42 This suggests that Beijing has noneconomic reasons for funding the Tibetan railroads, making the political and military interpretations of its motives more plausible. Indeed, the Tibetan Plateau is central to China’s water and mineral supplies and its geopolitical security. Nine out of the ten enormous rivers that originate in the Hindu Kush Himalayan Region (HKH) and supply freshwater to 16 neighbouring Asian countries have source points in China, on the Tibetan Plateau. This includes not only the Yangtze River which supports 33% of China’s population and more than a fifth of the PRC’s GDP,43 but also the Indus and Brahmaputra rivers, which are invaluable to India as primary sources of freshwater. Tibet is also home to billions of dollars’ worth of rare earth metals, such as chromium and copper. These resource endowments are part of the reason why China’s territorial dispute with India along their shared border has proven so inexorable over the years and why China continues to militarise and fund infrastructure projects in the region. Tibet, sometimes called the ‘Water Tower of Asia’, is a political trump card for China of continental proportions. Meanwhile, the PRC’s economic needs are evolving. China’s GDP continues to grow rapidly by the standards of the developed world (even after the pandemic), the industries which have produced that growth remain strong and the infrastructure projects which support those industries are still in progress. Nevertheless, Chinese wages have risen, and decades of environmental neglect are taking a toll which Beijing finds increasingly difficult to ignore. For these reasons and others, the PRC is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain its growth rate simply by underselling its American and European competitors. What China wants to avoid most is the ‘middle income trap’. The middle income trap refers to a regrettable stage in economic development in which certain export-reliant countries fail to move up the value chain in their productive capacity, causing their economic growth and wages to stagnate. Two major accelerants of the middle income trap are shifting demographics that misalign labour supply and demand and insufficient national supplies of human capital. In China, both of these trends represent enormous medium to long term risks. China’s population is aging, and as Martin Chorzempa and Tianlei Huang argue in Foreign Policy, China’s urban-rural divide in education and public health threatens to substantially retard its future growth prospects.44

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But falling into the middle income trap is by no means guaranteed. There are a variety of ways in which countries in the PRC’s position can continue to grow. One is by developing stronger domestic markets. Chinese entrepreneurs can also improve their prospects – and their country’s – by taking advantage of resources such as an increasingly educated workforce to produce more valuable products. Yet another way for PRC-based firms to continue to expand is to find new markets and new sources of raw materials. Governments have some ability to encourage domestic consumption, but culture, psychology and market forces can frustrate such efforts. Political leaders can also enact policies to encourage entrepreneurship, but again, many of the factors which determine a nation’s collective success at moving into higher-value enterprises are beyond state control. The PRC does, however, happen to be surrounded by countries which have barely begun to realise their collective economic potential. Therefore, Beijing has an opportunity to repeat some of the policies which produced its initial burst of prosperity on an international scale, and to give its industries the opportunity to participate in the process a second time. The economic development policies which are easiest for the PRC to export and easiest for Chinese firms to profit from are those related to infrastructure improvement. Since 2013, the PRC government has been cooperating with other Eurasian states to develop ports, roads, railroads, airports, telecommunications facilities and similar amenities under the auspices of the widely publicised Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). PRC-based corporations have been investing enthusiastically in similar projects throughout an even wider range of nations for an even longer time. Many of these corporations are state-owned, and as the final section of this chapter will discuss, the Chinese Communist Party has numerous instruments for influencing even the ones which are nominally private. Therefore, it is reasonable to view the BRI and China’s business-led infrastructure projects as complementary. Just as the PRC’s domestic infrastructure programme provides Beijing with a range of strategic benefits, its international projects do as well. In both cases, the greatest benefit is economic growth. The beneficiaries of growth potentially include all countries involved, not only the PRC. China’s infrastructure investments also give Beijing the opportunity to gain greater military access to the regions which interest it the most. This is particularly visible when one looks at the PRC’s programme of port development. Since perhaps 2010, the Financial Times has noted, PRC-based corporations have been investing in non-Chinese port infrastructure at a prodigious rate.45 By 2014, Chinese-owned facilities handled 39% of the world’s container traffic. The Financial Times noted six instances in which PRC naval vessels have docked at ports owned by Chinese corporations in locations ranging from Greece to Sri Lanka. One of these ports is in Djibouti, where the People’s Liberation Army Navy has gone on to establish a permanent logistical base. Analysts for the East Asian Strategic Review also draw attention to the military potential of the Chinese-built harbour in Gwadar, Pakistan.46

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Gwadar is located on the Arabian Sea, at the western endpoint of the ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), one of the central projects in China’s Belt and Road Initiative. In 2011, the above analysts note that Pakistan’s prime minister explicitly invited the People’s Liberation Army Navy to use Gwadar as a base. Both Chinese and Pakistani officials have since distanced themselves from this proposal. Nevertheless, given Gwadar’s proximity to heavily used sea lanes connecting Middle Eastern oil producers to points east, one can reasonably suspect that the PRC will one day revisit this option. Indeed, as researchers at the US Navy War College have noted, while the Gwadar port remains inchoate and commercially underutilised, both the PRC’s government and many PLA analysts consider it to be a strategic strongpoint with significant diplomatic, economic and military potential.47 The PRC’s investments in land infrastructure complement its portbuilding programme. For example, given the fact that the PRC’s armed forces operate from the port of Djibouti, one might take special note of a Railway Gazette report that China’s Exim Bank provided 70% of the funds which allowed a trio of Chinese construction firms to build a railway connecting that harbour with points as far as 756-km inland.48 According to Chinese state media, the railway has recently demonstrated profitability as well as substantial capacity for passenger transport.49 The South China Morning Post adds that future lines will connect this railway to South Sudan.50 Beijing has deployed both United Nations-sponsored peacekeeping forces and less official security detachments to Sudan in the past, and may well find such a railway useful if it wishes to carry out similar missions in the future.51 Beijing is developing another network of mutually supporting infrastructure projects in the island nation of Sri Lanka. One element of this programme – the 99-year lease of the harbour in the town of Hambantota by China Merchant Port Holdings Company Limited (CM Port) – has attracted controversy over the past several years.52 The port and the surrounding harbour complex covers 23 square miles, including some inhabited villages. In 2017, when the lease agreement was finalised, large numbers of Sri Lankans protested that ceding this much land to a Chinese company and uprooting the villages encompassed by the project infringed upon their country’s sovereignty.53 Port opponents also expressed the fear – echoed widely by officials and private commentators in India, Japan and the United States – that the PRC intends to use the Hambantota port for military purposes. Recognising Hambantota’s location in the heart of the Indian Ocean – through which run the world’s most heavily trafficked commercial sea lanes – one may safely assume that Beijing has considered the strategic value of fully controlling such an asset. However, China has repeatedly renounced any intention of docking warships at Hambantota or using the port facilities for military operations of any kind. The final lease agreement made between the government of Sri Lanka and CM Port expressly forbids China from using the port for military

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activities, unless it is specifically invited to do so by Sri Lankan authorities. In 2017, Shihar Aneez of the Reuters news service quoted Sri Lankan Port Minister Mahinda Samarasingh as saying that his country would have ‘100% responsibility’ for port security, although Reuters also noted that the PRC retained 49.3% of the shares in the firm responsible for protecting the Hambantota port.54 Moreover, with a 70% stake in the project, CM Port retains substantial control over the evolution of the port as well. Still further, Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Dinesh Gunawardena revealed early in 2021 that CM Port may have the option to renew its lease of the port for another 99 years after it expires.55 One can hardly speculate about the future of a potentially 198-year arrangement, aside from noting that Beijing is making decisions with extremely lengthy time horizons. Moreover, the Hambantota port is only one of Beijing’s infrastructure projects in Sri Lanka. Not only is the PRC building a harbour in Hambantota, but it also built an international airport there.56 PRC-based firms also own harbour facilities in Sri Lanka’s capital of Colombo and intend to expand them dramatically. Like the Hambantota port project, Beijing’s plans for Colombo have attracted opposition from Sri Lankan people, and from the governments of nearby countries. The fact that PLAN submarines have repeatedly docked in Colombo adds to the controversy, and although Sri Lanka’s government has announced that no further military visits will be welcome, reports indicate that the Chinese government continues to propose them.57 Money Talks The disputes over Hambantota and Colombo draw attention to another way in which PRC-based business initiatives serve Beijing’s strategic interests: by taking advantage of financial relationships to influence other countries’ policies. In a 2014 election, Sri Lanka’s United National Party (UNP) won control of the Sri Lankan parliament. The UNP had campaigned on a platform of blocking Chinese firms’ attempts to build and operate a complex of commercial properties on reclaimed land in Colombo Harbour.58 The UNP explored its options for stopping the Chinese venture, announced that it would allow the land reclamation to go forward, and then reverted to its original position of opposing the project.59 In response, the state-owned China Communication Construction Company (CCCC), the principal backer of the Colombo land reclamation project, filed suit against Sri Lanka’s government.60 The UNP subsequently changed its position yet again, authorised CCCC and its partners to go forward with the project, and offered the Chinese firms additional land as compensation for delaying their operations. The UNP government’s capitulation probably has less to do with the CCCC’s 143 million US dollar lawsuit than with the fact that, according to estimates by Santander bank, Sri Lanka stood to receive $6 billion in investments from Chinese sources.61 The PRC was also one of Sri Lanka’s main

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sources of credit. At the time of the dispute, Sri Lanka owed Chinese lenders approximately $8 billion.62 No government would wish to alienate such a munificent patron. Moreover, as the US State department noted in its 2016 statement on Sri Lanka’s investment climate, the island nation was unusually dependent on foreign loans and investment.63 Neither the Sri Lankan government nor its national industries were in a position to finance their own development. In international trade, the island nation remained dependent on exporting a limited number of products to a narrow range of international markets. Indeed, the State Department noted, Sri Lanka received more foreign currency in the form of incidental expenditures by visiting migrant labourers than it took in through trade. Neither exports nor migrants nor more traditional forms of tourism provided the island nation with enough stable and widely accepted currency to import the goods it required to maintain its standard of living and pursue its development plans. This problem affected the entire country, but it was especially acute for the government. As the US State Department also noted, the Sri Lankan state was particularly inefficient at tapping national wealth through taxation. What revenue the island nation did manage to take in went to repay earlier loans. In 2017, the BBC reported that 95% of Sri Lanka’s government spending went to debt repayment.64 Thus, the island nation turned to the PRC to provide what its own economy could not. At the time of the Colombo port dispute, Sri Lanka’s government would have found Beijing’s support all but impossible to replace. For much of the 21st century, the United States, Canada and the European Union have imposed economic penalties on Sri Lanka due to human rights concerns, and although Western countries have begun to lift these sanctions, the US State Department notes that Sri Lanka’s regulatory climate continues to deter foreign investors.65 Beijing is willing to overlook Sri Lanka’s alleged use of torture in earlier decades and it has remained willing to overlook the Sri Lankan government’s uneven handling of economic matters more recently. The UNP appears to have discovered that, under the circumstances which prevailed in 2015–2016, defying the PRC on a matter that China’s leaders deemed significant would have been an act of self-destruction. Not only does this constrain Sri Lanka’s national policy, it affects its internal politics. Shihar Aneez of Reuters reports that, during the Hambantota dispute, Sri Lanka’s president reshuffled his cabinet to remove politicians who had spoken out against the PRC’s demands from posts in which they might influence relevant decisions. One may reasonably expect the new appointees to take a relatively pro-Chinese line in future disputes. One may also infer that they will favour like-minded candidates for promotion within their political parties and within state agencies, and that the next generation of Sri Lankan politicians and administrators will come under increased pressure to express an attitude of deference towards the PRC.

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Similar dynamics appear to be at play in the PRC’s economic and political relationship with Myanmar. Myanmar, like Sri Lanka, is an economically underdeveloped country which has historically been at odds with the Western international community. During Naypyidaw’s period of diplomatic isolation, Beijing took the opportunity to become one of its most prominent economic partners. Although Myanmar now has access to global markets, the PRC remains its export industry’s most valuable customer. The South China Morning Post notes that the PRC provided fully half of Myanmar’s foreign direct investment in 2016.66 Myanmar is also the site of numerous Chinese-sponsored infrastructure projects. Of special note is the PRC-backed initiative to develop port facilities at Kyauk Pyu. This port would, among other things, service PetroChinaowned pipelines which carry oil and gas across Myanmar into the PRC.67 Beijing has also expressed an interest in building roads and railways along the pipeline routes, and although such projects have stalled in the past, deputies to the PRC’s National People’s Congress have proposed reviving them.68 Meanwhile, Yimou Lee and Wa Lone of Reuters claim to have seen documents suggesting that the PRC also wishes to build oil refining facilities in the Kyauk Pyu region.69 The initiatives centred on Kyauk Pyu have enormous economic and military value to the PRC. The point to note here is that, just as the PRC-sponsored projects in Sri Lanka are unpopular with many Sri Lankan people, the PRCsponsored projects in Myanmar have attracted considerable opposition from Myanmar’s citizens. In 2018, concerns about shouldering an excessive debt burden and that an estimated 20,000 Myanmarese would lose their homes prompted Naypyidaw to scale back the Kyauk Pyu project.70 The original $7.3 billion commitment was reduced to roughly $1.3 billion. This decision was celebrated by opponents of China’s projects in Myanmar, who portray the PRC’s initiatives as economically exploitative and as a blow to Myanmar’s national pride. The Kyauk Pyu infrastructure projects also further involve the PRC in Myanmar’s internal disputes. In the north, as the United States Institute of Peace reports, China is already involved in numerous ongoing efforts to reduce conflict among warring Myanmarese ethnic groups.71 Kyauk Pyu is located in Myanmar’s impoverished Rakhine State, along the western coast. Rakhine State happens to be home to a predominantly Muslim minority group known as the Rohingya. Members of Myanmar’s Buddhist majority are known to consistently persecute the Muslim Rohingya and Rohingya militants sometimes strike back with violent acts of their own. Myanmar’s state security forces have assisted the Buddhist majority in the past, most famously during the 2016–2017 episode of ethnic cleansing which saw thousands of Rohingya murdered and hundreds of thousands more displaced. China made efforts to mediate during the crisis but shied away from any punitive measures that might ruffle the feathers of Myanmar’s government. As the PRC’s interests in Kyauk Pyu continue to grow, however,

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Beijing may decide to increase its engagement in Rakhine State, as it has in the north. Beijing’s investment in the region could potentially alleviate poverty. The PRC state-owned business conglomerate known as the CITIC Group that owns the majority stake in the project has predicted that the port and surrounding projects will create more than 100,000 jobs each year and $15 billion of tax revenue over 50 years.72 Optimists may hope that these job opportunities and an improved standard of living will reduce intergroup hostilities. Nevertheless, one may compare the impact of Chinese-sponsored development in Rakhine State to the impact of similar development in Tibet. Although economic growth will undoubtedly bring benefits, it may stifle the rights and traditions of local populations in the process. One may also assume that the PRC will expect Naypyidaw to protect the transportation network taking shape around Kyauk Pyu, and this could encourage Myanmar’s military and police forces to further securitise the region. This, in turn, opens the possibility that Chinese troops or private security personnel might become directly involved, presumably in support of the Myanmarese government. Additionally, the military junta that seized power in February 2021 appears to have successfully courted Beijing’s favour. Prior to the military takeover and the Rohingya crisis, Myanmar’s government under Aung San Suu Kyi claimed to be liberalising after decades of previous military rule. Some expected Myanmar’s leaders to demonstrate their commitment to democracy and human rights by resisting the PRC’s oversized presence, including some of its unpopular and socially problematic infrastructure projects. Indeed, Naypyidaw under Suu Kyi’s leadership did, in fact, resist years of pressure from Beijing to renew the controversial Myitsone Dam hydroelectric project that was suspended in 2011.73 As Cary Huang of the Hong Kong-based South China Morning post argued in 2016, Myanmar’s reform movement ought, in principle, to impede the PRC’s plans for Myanmar. But Myanmar’s reform movement was toppled alongside its government in 2021. The military junta led by General Min Aung Hlaing that currently rules Myanmar has cracked down harshly on public dissent and protest and demonstrated an interest in returning to Myanmar’s traditionally economically and diplomatically dependent relationship with China. In the weeks following the February coup, the military junta even hinted at its willingness to restart the Myitsone Dam project in an effort to attract engagement and legitimisation from PRC leaders.74 The Financial Times indicates that these and similar efforts have succeeded, as trade and diplomatic ties between China and Myanmar continue to normalise.75 This pattern of normalisation suggests that Beijing believes the military junta in Naypyidaw will remain in power long enough to justify a sustained partnership. Meanwhile, the Kyauk Pyu port remains as important to the PRC as ever, and the project continues to move forward. As of late 2021, The Economic

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Times reported that Myanmar has expedited work on the project.76 Though Myanmar’s political environment remains in flux, Beijing has remained committed to maintaining a strong economic foothold in the country. Trade with the PRC comes at a political price for economically developed nations as well. Since the early 2000s, to pick one clear example, the German government has crafted its economic policies to support its national export industry. Germany’s products closely matched the PRC’s needs, and China quickly became one of Germany’s most valuable customers. This appears to be more than a coincidence. Research by Felix Heiduk suggests that such prominent German leaders as Angela Merkel consciously intended to forge a Sino-German entente.77 Many German citizens, however, are critical of the PRC’s human rights record. Moreover, there have been a number of prominent cases in which Chinese business interests purchased well-known German corporations. Representatives of German trade unions described one prominent acquisition as a ‘disaster’.78 Nevertheless, German leaders from multiple political parties have repeatedly deferred to the PRC in disputes, even when it was not obviously in their electoral interests to do so. The Berlin government has also sided with China against its European partners – and, indeed, against privately owned German corporations – in disputes over trade policy in the European Union. Merkel’s efforts to push through the sweeping EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) towards the end of her tenure, despite the growing political rift between many European states and China, can be seen as a continuation of this pro-engagement and at times deferential approach. European policy analysts commonly take it for granted that the German government’s pro-China policies are economically motivated. This may be only a part of the story. The German political elite may find it politically useful to align themselves with China for reasons which go beyond trade. They may, for instance, hope to cultivate ties with Beijing in order to reduce their dependence on European partners, and perhaps even to counterbalance the hegemony of the United States. Similar points may apply to Sri Lanka, Myanmar and many other nations as well. This leads to circular questions about the degree to which these countries base their political relations with the PRC on trade or their economic relations with the PRC on politics. For purposes of this chapter, one may simply note that Beijing has consistently managed to make these politico-economic relationships work to its advantage. CAI, if ratified in 2023, may drive an economic wedge in Washington’s efforts to build a cohesive transatlantic front from which to compete with China. The PRC has also invoked its economic influence in disputes on the Korean Peninsula. In 2016, Washington and Seoul finalised plans to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in the Republic of (South) Korea. The PRC objected to this decision. To demonstrate its displeasure, the PRC imposed limited trade sanctions against

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the ROK. Beijing also announced that it was cooperating with Moscow to develop military options to counter THAAD. The Democratic People’s Republic of (North) Korea (DPRK) protested the US-ROK decision with even more vehement rhetoric. South Korea has a more robust economy than Sri Lanka or Myanmar, and its government is also prepared to resist military pressure. Nevertheless, THAAD was controversial in the ROK, and the fact that the missile defence system seemed to increase tensions between South Korea and its neighbours helped fuel opposition to Seoul and Washington’s policies. Meanwhile, the South Korean president who made the decision to accept THAAD became embroiled in a corruption scandal, and PRC-based media sources were quick to associate the two controversies. Although the ROK and United States deployed THAAD as planned, the PRC made the process politically more difficult for all concerned. As this author discusses in a 2017 article in South Korea’s Journal of Political Criticism, the PRC may well have succeeded at conditioning future ROK and US decision makers to handle such issues more cautiously.79 Moving to yet another part of the world, the PRC has been strengthening its economic ties with Latin America. Analyst Ted Piccone notes that Latin America happens to be one of the few regions of the world in which a significant number of states extend diplomatic recognition to the Republic of China (ROC) on Taiwan.80 This is, of course, a challenge to Beijing. Unsurprisingly, Piccone finds, the PRC directs most of its loans and investment capital towards its own supporters.81 Piccone does, however, note an exception. Nicaragua recognises the ROC.82 Nevertheless, as journalist Suzanne Daley explored in a 2016 article, Chinese businessman Wang Jing initiated a canal project worth $50 billion there.83 Since then Wang Jing has allowed this project to stagnate.84 Nevertheless, his venture seems to confirm many of this chapter’s points about the PRC’s attempts to make economic ventures serve political and possibly military purposes. Like many of China’s infrastructure projects, the proposed Nicaraguan canal project is ambitious. Not only would it provide ships traveling between the Atlantic Ocean and the Pacific with an alternative to the Panama Canal, Daley notes that it would be twice as deep, allowing vessels which have historically been unable to use the Panama route to pass.85 Moreover, like many of China’s other projects, the proposed canal would be only the most visible part of a comprehensive infrastructure complex. Another way in which the proposed Nicaraguan project resembles other Chinese ventures is that it is environmentally and socially questionable. Just as the PRC has convinced the governments of Sri Lanka and Myanmar to support its controversial initiatives, Wang Jing has induced the Nicaraguan government to cooperate with his plans even when they run counter to the interests of many Nicaraguan people. Among other things, he has secured broad powers to commandeer real estate at less than market value.86

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As Daley has noted, this not only threatens individual property owners, it potentially discourages non-Chinese businesses from investing in Nicaraguan enterprises, thus making Nicaragua all the more dependent on PRC-based support.87 There are also noteworthy differences between the Nicaraguan proposal and Chinese infrastructure projects in places such as Myanmar and Sri Lanka. To begin with, the PRC government and its state-owned corporations have taken a more explicit role along the so-called Belt and Road. In Nicaragua, by contrast, nominally private investors such as Wang Jing have played a leading role. Wang’s intentions, sources of wealth and relationship with the Chinese state are difficult to discern. Sceptics are entitled to reply that the relationship between a Chinese citizen who finds himself in a position to mastermind global business ventures potentially worth tens of billions of dollars and the Beijing regime is not really so mysterious as all that, but the fact remains that the PRC’s government has chosen to affect a discreet distance from the Nicaraguan canal project. This may, returning to Piccone’s point, signify Beijing’s desire to avoid the appearance of condoning a government which supports its Taiwanese rival, and it may support the PRC’s diplomatic efforts in other ways as well. Another difference between Wang Jing’s proposal and many of the PRC’s other infrastructure projects is that Beijing’s reasons for wanting a Nicaraguan canal are less apparent. From a military perspective, the most obvious benefits of a new canal connecting the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in the Western Hemisphere would accrue, not to the PRC, but to the United States. From a business perspective, it is not clear that a second central American canal would be profitable. For many of the same reasons, it is not clear that the PRC’s importers, exporters and shipping firms need the Nicaraguan route. This may indicate that the Nicaraguan canal project was poorly conceived, and it may also explain why Wang Jing has been willing to let it lapse. PRC-based investors have funded their share of boondoggles. Nevertheless, it seems anomalous that a magnate who has been successful enough in his career to speak credibly of carrying out a project of this magnitude would fail to perform market research. Therefore, one may consider the possibility that proposing the canal served Chinese interests, even if building it might not. One might, for instance, note that at the time when Wang Jing raised the idea of building a Nicaraguan canal, Panama also extended diplomatic recognition to the ROC. Since Panama was then investing considerably in upgrading its own canal, the prospect of facing new competition from Nicaragua must have caused Panamanian leaders some concern. In 2017, Panama switched its recognition to the PRC. As Ben Blanchard of Reuters has noted, Chinese authorities responded with evident satisfaction, promptly concluding 19 agreements with Panama’s government and welcoming the Panamanian head of state to Beijing for meetings with Xi Jinping.88

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From a financial perspective, the Nicaraguan canal was always dubious. Wang Jing himself appears to have realised this at an early stage, if, indeed, he did not understand it from the very beginning. Nevertheless, by raising the new canal as a possibility, the PRC increased the pressure on both Nicaragua and Panama to compete for its support. Meanwhile, as Reuters has noted, such bastions of PRC state-owned industry as the COSCO shipping firm have initiated more modest but far more promising new projects to develop new infrastructure in the Panama Canal region.89 One may reasonably conclude that these are the projects which Beijing actually hopes to see to completion, and that the Nicaraguan proposal was, at least in part, a ploy. Conclusion: The Visible Hands To summarise, the PRC is realising Deng’s goal of making civil economic development serve strategic purposes. Beijing’s success in this regard is more than a reflection of the fact that wealth brings power. It is also more than a tribute to the benefits of free markets. As this chapter has noted, there are numerous cases in which the Chinese business community has adopted courses of action which suit Beijing’s strategic interests even when the commercial advantages of those policies are unclear. This is unlikely to be coincidence. Deng and his compatriots made it clear that they not only intended to create a commercial economy but also to keep it under the Communist Party’s control. The contemporary PRC is using the control mechanisms earlier generations of leaders suggested and achieving the results they must have hoped for. Deng suggested that the CCP-led regime would regulate business activity through direct ownership of corporations, and, more generally, through state power.90 Li Peng, then serving as Chairman of China’s National People’s Congress, also noted the importance of Communist Party organisation as a so-called protective fortress against capitalist influence.91 All three measures remain prominent in the second decade of the 21st century. Deng’s first suggestion – that the regime retain ownership of key corporations – has encountered difficulties, but it seems to be fulfilling its purpose. Observers both within and without the PRC have criticised Beijing’s StateOwned Enterprises (SOEs) for inefficiency. Indeed, the Chinese armed forces have largely abandoned the practice of operating military-owned corporations as a source of revenue, and the PRC instituted far-reaching reforms throughout all SOEs in 2017. Even in purely economic terms, however, the SOEs offer the PRC some advantages – as privately owned corporations in China and elsewhere struggled in the 2008 economic crisis, Beijing used its control over national industries to maintain stability. Moreover, senior Chinese leaders continue to justify state ownership of corporations on the grounds that they facilitate the kinds of strategically valuable business ventures discussed in this chapter. In 2017, the South China Morning Post quoted the director of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of the State

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Council as pointing out that the PRC regime finds SOEs exceptionally reliable for such purposes as implementing the Belt and Road Initiative.92 The director added that SOEs were responsible for 60% of the PRC’s outgoing investments in 2016. One may presume – particularly given the director’s other comments – that a considerable proportion of these funds went to support the BRI. One may also presume that, by providing starting capital for BRI projects, the SOEs make it easier and more lucrative for private firms to become involved as well. Therefore, the SOE’s value to Beijing’s program of global infrastructure development is actually higher than the cited 60%. SOEs are in a position to play a similar role in other strategically important economic sectors, and the PRC undoubtedly uses them for that purpose. Beijing also continues to follow Deng’s second suggestion – that times of peace should be used to prepare for the potentiality of war. The PRC routinely enacts laws to encourage businesses to use their capital in ways that suit the regime’s goals. As foreign investors quickly discover, the PRC has complex and restrictive legislation regarding the ownership and governance of nominally private corporations. The PRC also makes lavish use of subsidies and regulatory incentives to encourage development in chosen industries. Since this favourable treatment has the potential to help Chinese firms undersell competitors, the PRC’s subsidy policies are a common source of friction between Beijing and its trading partners. Moreover, when Beijing considers it necessary, it gives nominally private investors direct instructions about what to do with their money. In 2017, for instance, the PRC’s State Council determined that Chinese business interests were putting too much capital into frivolous areas such as the global entertainment industry, while putting too little into R&D, resource acquisition and BRI-related infrastructure development.93 Accordingly, the Council imposed new trade guidelines requiring businesses to shift funds into the latter activities. What may be most revealing is that the State Council explicitly presented these measures as a way of ensuring that commercial activity would provide maximum support for the PRC’s so-called peaceful rise. The Council members seem to have a clear understanding that this is the reason why their country permits a market economy to exist, they seem confident that they are authorised to ensure that it fulfils this purpose, and they do not seem to anticipate any opposition on either issue. Beijing also continues to apply Li Peng’s advice regarding political mobilisation. The Chinese Communist Party maintains committees within a wide variety of Chinese organisations, including many businesses. These committees typically have significant authority over those organisations’ policies. Since their members often occupy senior administrative posts, they have great informal power as well. Moreover, since the Party committees’ influence within a corporation normally extends to decisions affecting personnel, even employees with no declared political affiliations find it advisable to treat them with respect. One should also note that the CCP as a whole is

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constituted so as to maximise the central leadership’s control over its subordinates, meaning that the committees throughout the PRC’s business community are relatively responsive to directives from the national political authorities. Just as the State Council recognises and explicitly asserts its role in keeping China’s economic energies focused on the regime’s political goals, the Chinese media quotes senior Chinese officials who explain the committee system in much the same terms. One of the reasons why the director of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission finds the companies under his control invaluable to the nation is that SOEs tend to have strong party committee structures.94 One may note in passing that the director’s explanation serves as a reminder of the degree to which the Party, and not the formal state institutions, remains the animating force of the PRC. Those accustomed to liberal systems of corporate governance and national government might assume that the fundamental reason why Chinese leaders can depend on SOEs to advance their policies is that the state is the majority shareholder, but from the PRC authorities’ perspective, it is, if anything, of even greater significance that the individuals responsible for SOE management are ideologically accredited, and that the Party has instruments to control the SOEs from within. Nominally private businesses have varying degrees of independence from overt CCP influence. Nevertheless, just as individuals within politically organised corporations cannot afford to oppose the party committees, firms which lack robust internal party structures cannot afford to oppose those which have them. One notes, for instance, that CCP organisations play a prominent role in the PRC’s banking industry. This alone gives the party power over all other actors in the Chinese economy. The fact that Chinese business culture emphasises personal relationships further enhances the influence of well-connected party members and those who cooperate with them while minimising the role of mavericks. Returning to the central argument of this book, one may conclude that the PRC’s economic policies are a clear example of grand strategy in action. One defining feature of grand strategy is that it integrates diverse elements of state policy. Beijing’s embrace of global trade and quasi-private enterprise has been simultaneously a social, economic, diplomatic and military initiative. Another defining feature of grand strategy is that it implies conscious longterm planning. The architects of the PRC’s economic reforms set themselves the goals which their successors have achieved and proposed methods of achieving them which their successors continue to implement. Another defining feature of grand strategy is that it aims to achieve an advantage in political competition. Deng Xiaoping’s Sixteen-Character Statement referred specifically to building up China’s armed forces. As this chapter has noted, the PRC’s economic programs have consistently served that purpose. Chapter 4 will focus directly on the PRC’s efforts to upgrade its military.

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Notes 1 Ali Wyne, ‘The Strategic Importance of U.S. China Trade Ties’, Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, June 3, 2015, https://www.carnegiecouncil. org/publications/ethics_online/0106 2 Wyne, ‘U.S. China Trade’. 3 Wyne, ‘U.S. China Trade’. 4 Wyne, ‘U.S. China Trade’. 5 Thomas M. Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 55–6. 6 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 94. 7 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Military Expenditure Database, https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex; ‘China - Military Expenditure (% Of GDP)’, Trading Economics, https://tradingeconomics.com/china/militaryexpenditure-percent-of-gdp-wb-data.html 8 ‘China GDP Annual Growth Rate’, Trading Economics, accessed November 16, 2021, http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-growth-annual 9 Mao Tse Tung, Quotations from Mao Tse Tung, trans. David Quentin and Brian Baggins (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1961), https://www.marxists.org/ reference/archive/mao/works/red-book/ch08.htm 10 China Power Project, ‘What Does China Really Spend on Its Military?’, CSIS, December 28, 2015, https://chinapower.csis.org/military-spending/ 11 ‘What Does China Really Spend on Its Military?’. 12 ‘What Does China Really Spend on Its Military?’. 13 ‘What Does China Really Spend on Its Military?’. 14 Elia Berteletti, Thierry Chesnais and Patrick Hui. ‘China’s Digital R&D Imperative’, McKinsey and Company, August 16, 2021, https://www.mckinsey.com/businessfunctions/operations/our-insights/chinas-digital-r-and-d-imperative 15 Cheng Yingqi, ‘R&D Fund Bolstered by Private Sector’, China Daily, October 28, 2015, http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2015cpcplenarysession/2015-10/ 28/content_22300991.htm 16 Xinmei Shen, ‘China Sees Slower R&D Growth in 2020 as Government Spending on Science and Technology Fell amid the Covid-19 Pandemic’, South China Morning Post, September 22, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/tech/tech-war/article/ 3149665/china-sees-slower-rd-growth-2020-government-spending-science-and 17 Shen, ‘China Sees Slower R&D’. 18 UNESCO Institute for Statistics, How Much Does Your Country Invest in R&D, http://www.unesco.org/new/en/media-services/single-view/news/how_much_do_ countries_invest_in_rd_new_unesco_data_tool_re/ 19 Olivia Adams, ‘R&D Tracker: China’s Rise in Academic R&D and Western Countries’ Rise in Concern’, Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada, February 23, 2021, https://www.asiapacific.ca/publication/rd-tracker-china-rise-in-academic-rd 20 World Intellectual Property Organization, Intellectual Property Facts and Figures, February 2022, https://www.wipo.int/edocs/infogdocs/en/ipfactsandfigures/ 21 Cheng, ‘R&D Fund Bolstered’. 22 Cheng, ‘R&D Fund Bolstered’. 23 European Commission Joint Research Centre, ‘The 2017 EU Industrial R&D Scoreboard’, January 2017, 41. doi: 10.2760/912318 24 Arjun Kharpal, ‘China Spending on Research and Development to Rise 7% Per Year in Push for Major Tech Breakthroughs’, CNBC, March 5, 2021, https://www.cnbc. com/2021/03/05/china-to-boost-research-and-development-spend-in-push-for-techbreakthroughs.html

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25 Christina Valimaki, ‘The Rise of China: Managing R&D in the New Superpower’, Industry Week, May 10, 2017, http://www.industryweek.com/competitiveness/ rise-china-managing-rd-new-superpower 26 Prableen Bajpai, ‘The Top Five Nations Leading in Solar Energy Generation’, Nazdaq, August 17, 2021, https://www.nasdaq.com/articles/the-top-five-nationsleading-in-solar-energy-generation-2021-08-17 27 Kevin P. Gallagher, ‘As the World Says No to Coal, China Is Poised to Lead on Green Energy Finance’, South China Morning Post, October 31, 2021, https:// www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3154239/world-says-no-coal-chinapoised-lead-green-energy-finance 28 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 79. 29 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 72. 30 European Commission, ‘2017 EU’, 5. 31 European Commission, ‘2017 EU’, 5. 32 Dirk Pilat, ‘The ICT Productivity Paradox: Insights from Micro Data’, OECD Economic Studies 38 (2004/1), https://www.oecd.org/eco/growth/35028181.pdf 33 US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2020), 23, accessed December 29, 2021, https://media.defense.gov/2020/Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/2020-DOD-CHINAMILITARY-POWER-REPORT-FINAL.PDF 34 Liu Xuanzun et al., ‘China’s J-20 Stealth Fighters with Domestic Engines Dazzle Crowd at Airshow China Opening’, Global Times, September 29, 2021, https:// www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1235407.shtml 35 Andrew Erickson and Gabe Collins, ‘Enter China’s Security Firms’, The Diplomat, February 21, 2012, http://thediplomat.com/2012/02/enter-chinas-security-firms/1/ 36 Thomas M. Kane, ‘China’s “Power-Projection” Capabilities’, Parameters 44, no. 4 (Winter 2014–15): 27–37. 37 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 99. 38 Yang Xiuyun and Yu Hong, ‘China’s Airports: Recent Developments and Future Challenges’, EAI Background Brief, no. 526 (May 13, 2010), 3, accessed December 9, 2018, http://www.eai.nus.edu.sg/publications/files/BB526.pdf 39 Reuters Staff, ‘China Opens $2-Billion Extension of Controversial Tibet Railway’, Reuters, August 15, 2014, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-tibet/china-opens2-billion-extension-of-controversial-tibet-railway-idUSKBN0GF13V20140815 40 Sushant Singh, Amitabh Sinha, and Anubhuti Vishnoinew, ‘Borders Without Railways: The Missing Strategic Link’, The Indian Express, July 6, 2016, http:// indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/borders-without-railways-themissing-strategic-link-2896395/ 41 Reuters Staff, ‘China Opens’. 42 ‘Tibet Sees GDP up 9.1 Percent in H1’, Xinhua, July 30, 2021, http://www. xinhuanet.com/english/2021-07/30/c_1310097779.htm; ‘China GDP’, Trading Economics, accessed 2021, https://tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp#:~:text= G D P% 20i n%2 0 C h in a % 2 0 is % 2 0 e x p e c te d,ac c or ding%20to%20our %20econometric%20models%20 43 Feng Hu and Debra Tan, No Water, No Growth: Does Asia Have Enough Water to Develop?, China Water Risk (September 2018), 2, https://www.chinawaterrisk. org/resources/analysis-reviews/no-water-no-growth-does-asia-have-enough-waterto-develop/ 44 Martin Chorzempa and Tianlei Huang, ‘China Will Run Out of Growth If It Doesn’t Fix Its Rural Crisis’, Foreign Policy, February 8, 2021, https:// foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/08/china-rural-crisis-economy-growth-middle-incometrap/

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45 James Kynge, Chris Campbell, Amy Kazmin, and Farhan Bokhari, ‘How China Rules the Waves’, Financial Times, January 12, 2017, https://ig.ft.com/sites/ china-ports/ 46 Mari Izuyama and Masahiro Kurita, ‘Security in the Indian Ocean Region: Regional Responses to China’s Growing Influence’, East Asian Strategic Review (Tokyo: National Institute for Defense Studies, 2017), 57–8, http://www.nids. mod.go.jp/english/publication/east-asian/pdf/2017/east-asian_e2017_02.pdf 47 Isaac B. Kardon, Conor M. Kennedy, and Peter A. Dutton, ‘China Maritime Report No. 7: Gwadar: China’s Potential Strategic Strongpoint in Pakistan’, CMSI China Maritime Reports, August 2020, https://digital-commons.usnwc. edu/cmsi-maritime-reports/7/ 48 ‘Ethiopia – Djibouti Railway Inaugurated’, Railway Gazette, October 5, 2016, http://www.railwaygazette.com/news/infrastructure/single-view/view/ethiopiadjibouti-railway-inaugurated.html 49 ‘Chinese Built Ethiopia-Djibouti Railway Earns 29 mln USD in Nine Months Period’, Xinhua, June 5, 2021, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-06/05/c_ 139990849.htm 50 Nectar Gan, ‘Why China-Built Electric Railway Linking Landlocked Ethiopia to Sea Matters to Beijing and Africa’, South China Morning Post, January 11, 2017, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2061124/whychina-built-electric-railway-linking-landlocked 51 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 129. 52 Maria Abi-Habib, ‘How China Got Sri Lanka to Cough Up a Port’, New York Times, June 25, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/25/world/asia/chinasri-lanka-port.html 53 ‘Sri Lanka Protest over Chinese Investment Turns Ugly’, BBC, January 7, 2017, bbc.com/news/world-asia-38541673 54 Shihar Aneez, ‘Exclusive: Sri Lanka’s Cabinet ‘Clears Port Deal’ with China Firm After Concerns Addressed’, Reuters, July 25, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/ article/us-sri-lanka-china-port/exclusive-sri-lankas-cabinet-clears-port-deal-withchina-firm-after-concerns-addressed-idUSKBN1AA0PI 55 Catherine Wong, ‘China Can Extend Hambantota Port Lease to 198 Years, Sri Lankan Minister Says’, South China Morning Post, February 25, 2021, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3122975/mistake-china-can-extendhambantota-port-lease-198-years-sri 56 ‘Mattala Rajapaksa (Formerly Hambantota) International Airport’, Airport Technology, August 11, 2017, http://www.airport-technology.com/projects/ hambantota-international-airport/ 57 Shihar Aneez and Ranga Sirilal, ‘Sri Lanka Rejects Chinese Request for Submarine Visit: Sources’, Reuters, May 11, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lankachina-submarine/sri-lanka-rejects-chinese-request-for-submarine-visit-sourcesidUSKBN1871P9 58 Shihar Aneez, ‘Sri Lanla Softens Its Stance on China Port City Deal’, Reuters, January 22, 2018, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-china-portcity/srilanka-softens-its-stance-on-china-port-city-deal-idUSKBN0KV2FV20150122 59 For discussion, see Wade Shepard, ‘Sri Lanka’s Colombo Port City: The Frontline of China and India’s Geopolitical Showdown’, Forbes, August 12, 2016, https:// www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/08/12/a-look-at-colombo-port-citythe-frontline-of-china-and-indias-geopolitical-showdown/?sh=252f72a12675 60 Reuters Staff, ‘Sri Lanka Says Chinese Firm Drops Claim Over Colombo’s Port City Delay’, Reuters, August 2, 2016, http://in.reuters.com/article/sri-lankachina-portcity/sri-lanka-says-chinese-firm-drops-claim-over-colombo-port-citys-

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delay-idINKCN10D18B; ‘About Us’, China Communications Construction Company, accessed August 24, 2021, https://www.cccc.com.my/aboutUs-HQ Santander Bank, Sri Lanka, Foreign Investments, accessed October 27, 2017, https://en.portal.santandertrade.com/establish-overseas/sri-lanka/investing-3 Shepard, ‘Sri Lanka’s Colombo’. US Department of State, ‘Investment Climate Statements for 2016: Sri Lanka’, July 5, 2016, https://2009-2017.state.gov/e/eb/rls/othr/ics/investmentclimatestatements/ index.htm?year=2016&dlid=254491 Yogita Limaye, ‘Sri Lanka, a Country Trapped in Debt’, BBC News, May 28, 2017, https://www.bbc.com/news/business-40044113 Shephard, ‘Sri Lanka’s Colombo’; US Department of State, ‘Investment Climate’; Reuters Staff, ‘Sri Lanka regains EU trade concession it lost over rights concerns’, Reuters, May 16, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sri-lanka-eu-trade/srilanka-regains-eu-trade-concession-it-lost-over-rights-concerns-idUSKCN18C1E8 Shi Jiangtao, ‘Why Does China Care So Much about Stalled Dam Projects in Myanmar’, South China Morning Post, 25 August 2016, http://www.scmp.com/ news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2008816/why-does-china-care-so-muchabout-stalled-dam-project Yimou Li and Wa Lone, ‘China’s $10 Billion Strategic Project Sparks Local Ire’, Reuters, June 8, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-silkroadmyanmar-sez/chinas-10-billion-strategic-project-in-myanmar-sparks-local-ireidUSKBN18Z327 Bai Tiantian, ‘China Needs Roads, Rail to Link Yunnan to Myanmar’s Kyaukpyu: NPC Delegates’, Global Times, March 7, 2017, http://www.globaltimes.cn/ content/1036494.shtml Yimou Li and Wa Lone, ‘China’s $10 Billion’. Yimou Li and Wa Lone, ‘China’s $10 Billion’; Kanuprya Kapoor and Ave Min Thant, ‘Myanmar Scales Back Chinese-Backed Port Project due to Debt Fears – Official’, Reuters, August 2, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-myanmarchina-port-exclusive/exclusive-myanmar-scales-back-chinese-backed-portproject-due-to-debt-fears-official-idUSKBN1KN106 USIP China Myanmar Senior Study Group, China’s Role in Myanmar’s Internal Conflicts, United States Institute of Peace, September 14, 2018, https://www. usip.org/publications/2018/09/chinas-role-myanmars-internal-conflicts ‘Xinhua Headlines: Kyaukpyu Port to Become Model Project in China-Myanmar BRI Cooperation’, Xinhua, January 18, 2020, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/ 2020-01/18/c_138716099.htm?fbclid=IwAR0BvjxDqT6TfI_DUiSeoPBE8KF1– xs6zoH3JYbFaUjnXfxe90U_76-wV4 Tom Fawthrop, ‘Myanmar’s Myitsone Dam Dilemma’, The Diplomat, March 11, 2019, https://thediplomat.com/2019/03/myanmars-myitsone-dam-dilemma/ Kelley Currie, ‘Can a Dam Deal Buy Beijing’s Support for Myanmar’s Junta?’, Foreign Policy, February 23, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/23/myanmarchina-dam-deal-junta-democracy/ Edward White and John Reed, ‘China Bolsters Ties with Myanmar Junta Despite International Condemnation’, Financial Times, June 22, 2021, https://www.ft. com/content/ca43da4c-4287-4de6-ad8a-57a2a32fe7f3 Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury, ‘Myanmar Junta Expedites Work on China Funded Kyaukphyu Port’, Economic Times, August 9, 2021, https://economictimes. indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/myanmar-junta-expedites-workon-china-funded-kyaukphyu-port/articleshow/85167272.cms Felix Heiduk. ‘Conflicting Images? Germany and the Rise of China’, German Politics 23, no. 1–2 (2014): 119.

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78 Nils Klawitter and Wieland Wagner, ‘Takeover Could Signal New Strategy for China’, Spiegel International, September 2, 2012, https://www.spiegel.de/ international/business/buying-germany-s-hidden-champions-takeover-couldsignal-new-strategy-for-china-a-813907.html 79 Thomas M. Kane, ‘Offensive Defensiveness: Classical Chinese Strategy and the THAAD Dispute of 2016’, Journal of Political Criticism 20, no. 6 (June 2017), passim. 80 Ted Piccone, ‘The Geopolitics of China’s Rise in Latin America’, Geoeconomics and Global Issues Paper 2, (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2016), 16, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/the-geopolitics-ofchinas-rise-in-latin-america_ted-piccone.pdf 81 Piccone, ‘China’s Rise in Latin America’, 17. 82 Piccone, ‘China’s Rise in Latin America’, 18. 83 Suzanne Daley, ‘Lost in Nicaragua, a Chinese Tycoon’s Canal Project’, New York Times, April 3, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/04/world/americas/ nicaragua-canal-chinese-tycoon.html 84 GCR Staff, ‘Panama Deal Likely to “Finally Scupper” Nicaragua Canal: China State Media’, Global Construction Review, June 26, 2017, https://www. globalconstructionreview.com/panama-deal-likely-fin7ally-scup7per-nicar7agua/ 85 Daley, ‘Lost in Nicaragua’. 86 Daley, ‘Lost in Nicaragua’. 87 Daley, ‘Lost in Nicaragua’. 88 Ben Blanchard, ‘After Ditching Taiwan, China Says Panama Will Get the Help It Needs’, Reuters, November 17, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chinapanama/after-ditching-taiwan-china-says-panama-will-get-the-help-it-needsidUSKBN1DH1FZ 89 Brenda Goh, ‘China State Firms Eye Land Around Panama Canal: Waterway Authority’, Reuters, March 27, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/uspanama-canal-land/china-state-firms-eye-land-around-panama-canal-waterwayauthority-idUSKBN16Y13J 90 Thomas M. Kane reviews Deng and other Chinese thinkers thoughts on these issues in Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 56–8. 91 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 56. 92 Wendy Wu, ‘How the Communist Party Controls China’s State-Owned Industrial Titans’, South China Morning Post, June 17,2017, http://www.scmp. com/news/china/economy/article/2098755/how-communist-party-controlschinas-state-owned-industrial-titans 93 Miao Han, Xiaoqing Pi, and Keven Hamlin, ‘China Codified Crackdown on ‘Irrational’ Outbound Investment’, Bloomberg, August 18, 2017, https://www. bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-18/china-further-limits-overseas-investmentin-push-to-reduce-risk 94 Wu, ‘How the Communist Party Controls’.

4

The New People’s Liberation Army Chinese Military Reform, Enhancement and Expansion

Despite the importance of trade and industry to China’s ongoing rise, Deng Xiaoping’s most pivotal strategic decision may not have been an economic one. Of possibly greater importance was his determination that the PRC could afford to delay its preparations for a third world war. Whereas Chinese leaders of the 1950s and 1960s felt compelled to plan for an imminent struggle with either the United States or USSR, Deng estimated that it would be many years before the PRC would face conflict on that scale.1 Without this assumption, Deng and his successors might not have felt that they had the leisure to spend decades reforming their country’s economy. In much the same vein, this assumption has freed them to pursue new military capabilities, even when quality comes at the expense of quantity. As a result, the People’s Liberation Army (which includes China’s navy and air force) is becoming able to support increasingly assertive policies on an increasingly global scale. This chapter examines Beijing’s efforts to reconfigure its armed forces to meet its 21st-century needs. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is on track but has yet to achieve many of its probable goals. Moreover, its new forces remain largely untested. Nevertheless, the PRC’s armed forces have made steady progress in a wide range of areas, they appear to have maintained sensibly chosen priorities and they generally succeed at supporting their government’s increasingly energetic foreign policy. These facts suggest that the authorities responsible for reforming the PRC’s military co-operated effectively with other branches of the Chinese regime. These facts also suggest that those authorities have approached their own jobs systematically and consistently, aligning means with ends. Common Cause: The Sino-Russian Arms Partnership One sees a clear example of how the PRC has integrated its military efforts with its broader foreign policy in the Sino-Russian arms trading partnership. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Chinese and Russian leaders made a concerted attempt to establish a cooperative relationship. This has proven to be a wise decision for both parties. Nevertheless, it was by no means preordained, nor was it guaranteed to succeed. DOI: 10.4324/9781315387383-4

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The history of the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s demonstrates the potential for conflict in Sino-Russian relations. Although Mao’s ideological disagreements with such antagonists as Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev helped to divide Beijing and Moscow during the Cold War, the Realist school of thought in international relations theory provides us with a salutary warning against overrating the role of either individuals or their professed belief systems. Material circumstances such as the fact that Russia and China are both military powers which share a long and disputable frontier are also a potential source of tension, and these factors continue to operate regardless of the restructuring of governments. Moreover, Chinese Communists determined to keep their own regime intact in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests might well have viewed a Russian leader such as Boris Yeltsin with antipathy, and vice versa. Therefore, when one observes that the PRC sought closer relations with post-Communist Russia, one must credit its leaders with making an insightful judgement about a matter of fundamental importance. One must also credit them with acting on it expeditiously. Russia’s leaders merit the same praise. The fact that the process went so smoothly suggests that there was always a greater level of understanding between Moscow and Beijing than many Westerners wished to believe, but although this helps to explain how the SinoRussian entente came to pass, it does not negate its significance. Beijing and Moscow’s grand decision to cooperate takes substance from numerous smaller decisions to work together on specific issues. One of the more telling issues happened to be that of exchanging military technology. In return for money, Russia provided the PRC with advanced weapons systems. The fact that both sides have been willing to engage in this exchange demonstrated an enormous level of mutual trust. The fact that Russia was equipping a potential rival was obvious. A SIPRI analyst has noted that Russian politicians expressed worries about this very point.2 Nevertheless, the financial support which Beijing provided to Moscow was critical to sustaining Russia’s national power as well. During the 1990s, as SIPRI also notes, Russia’s state defence budget collapsed to approximately 5% of what it had been in the Soviet period.3 This forced Russia’s arms manufacturers to rely on foreign sales for their survival – and SIPRI data indicate that there were years when the PRC provided as much as 60% of the Russian defence industry’s export income.4 Without China’s support, Russia would almost certainly have lost a tangible amount of its national ability to produce weapons – and, perhaps more importantly, to make efficient use of emerging military technology. Regaining production capacity and technological pre-eminence would almost certainly have been a slow and expensive process. Instead, Russian arms manufacturers survived the reorganisation of the Soviet Union in surprisingly good shape, given the fiscal and political upheavals of the time. And

The New PLA 69 so, Russia’s defence industry was ready at the end of the 1990s when the Russian government decided to start consuming its products again. As the 21st century has progressed, the advantages of the Sino-Russian arms trading relationship have fallen increasingly to the PRC. To begin with, Chinese arms manufacturers have copied Russian designs. This is not a new phenomenon. The PRC’s arms industry produced its own versions of Soviet equipment throughout the Cold War. Nevertheless, the PRC’s success at reverse-engineering Russian gear has allowed it to acquire new weapons systems in greater quantities, and to reduce its dependence on outside help. Moreover, China’s general level of industrial and technological development has reached the point at which Chinese arms manufacturers can use Russian designs as springboards to develop more advanced products of their own. Indeed, one may reasonably suggest that the PRC is outgrowing its need for imported technology. One may also note that the PRC would probably have reached this level of sophistication eventually on its own. Nevertheless, its arms trading relationship with the USSR allowed it to achieve critical military capabilities sooner, and thus to begin reaping the political advantages of military power sooner as well. As the next section will discuss, Beijing’s policy of importing weapons from Russia has played a particularly visible role in accelerating the PRC’s programme of naval expansion. Achieving Global Power: China’s Naval Expansion For at least a thousand years, there has been a commonly recognised relationship between the health of the Chinese nation and the health of Chinese maritime power. Therefore, Beijing’s situation in the first 30 years of its existence was a historical oddity. The PRC had already become a significant actor in global politics. Not only did it fight a coalition including both Britain and the United States to a standstill in Korea, it supported what Mao’s occasional antagonist Nikita Khrushchev would have called wars of national liberation as far away as Africa, and, indeed, it took the initiative in a series of bloody naval skirmishes with Vietnam. Nevertheless, the PLA Navy (PLAN) appeared best suited for passive operations along China’s own coast, and Western commentators found it possible to write as if this might always be so. Mao, by contrast, noted that the PRC would eventually need a strong navy.5 Deng Xiaoping expressed his belief that the time to acquire that navy had arrived.6 Chinese leaders of the 1980s and 1990s also put a high priority on developing a civilian shipping industry. At that time, however, the PRC faced great obstacles in achieving its maritime ambitions. To begin with, one of the PRC’s maritime rivals was all but invincible. Not only is the United States Navy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries tremendously strong, but America’s industrial and technological base put it in an excellent position to hold onto this advantage. Although Washington’s commitment to specific defence-related policies can be fickle, American politicians

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of all mainstream political persuasions tend to agree on the general importance of maintaining robust military forces. Moreover, America enjoys close relations with most of the world’s other naval powers and can generally count on direct military cooperation from such formidable maritime nations as Great Britain. For Beijing, Washington’s naval dominance is more than a hypothetical concern. In 1995–96, just as the PRC began to accumulate the wherewithal to transform its navy, the United States deployed a pair of aircraft carriers to intimidate China in the third Taiwan Straits crisis. Given the importance which the Communist Chinese regime invests in the Taiwan issue, the PRC’s leadership could not have had a more dramatic reminder of the reasons why it needed the ability to challenge American maritime power. Although the PRC’s leadership almost certainly intends to avoid actual war with the United States, it can pursue its other policy goals far more effectively if it can credibly threaten one. Moreover, the PLAN suffered from critical handicaps. As recently as the 1990s, for instance, most of its ships lacked surface to air missiles.7 Although they carried guns for close air defence, they remained vulnerable to enemy aircraft firing anti-ship missiles at range. In theory, PRC commanders might have been able to protect their ships by deploying aircraft of their own – but the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) was the most neglected branch of China’s armed forces. Not only did its pilots and equipment have a poor international reputation, it had neither the bases nor the refuelling capability it would have needed to provide meaningful amounts of air cover for vessels operating beyond flying range of the Chinese coastline.8 The PRC’s submarine contingent of the 1990s was large and relatively well supported, but even it had troublesome limitations. Chinese-built submarines of that period were noisy. This made them vulnerable to any opponent with an anti-submarine warfare capability. Moreover, the turn-of-the-century PLAN seems to have suffered from a shortage of trained submarine crews.9 This reportedly kept some of China’s older and less capable Romeo-class submarines confined to port. PLAN commanders may have decided to mothball the obsolete vessels. If this is the case, they may also have made the decision to stop expending resources on them. Alternatively, however, the apparent discrepancy between hardware and personnel may indicate that the PLAN submarine forces were suffering from some form of mismanagement. Moreover, the lack of crews would have limited the PRC’s Romeo forces’ ability to replace casualties suffered in war. Not only did the turn-of-the-century PLAN have specific and easily identifiable gaps in its material capabilities, but Chinese admirals had to question their forces’ efficiency at a more general level. Even in countries with mature economies and a continuous maritime tradition, navies must recreate their operational capabilities each time they make the transition from peace to war. A classic example might be America’s tardiness in reintroducing the convoy

The New PLA 71 system to counter German U-Boats in World War II, even after convoys had proved their virtual necessity in World War I. Another might be the challenges which Britain’s Royal Navy experienced in implementing effective damage control procedures during the Falklands War of 1982. Chinese sailors of the 1990s had had only limited opportunities to plan or train for the types of operations the Chinese political leadership wanted them to prepare for. Moreover, the PLAN’s probable shortfalls in skills and procedures intertwined with the PRC’s turn-of-the-century deficiency in information technology. The more effective armed forces of the contemporary period derive much of their combat power from their ability to co-ordinate actions by all of their components efficiently. Thus, William Owens famously referred to such forces as ‘systems of systems’.10 Although all military organisations throughout history have been, in a sense, systems of systems, Owens’ phrase acquires its special salience in the late 20th and early 21st centuries primarily due to the use of electronic information technology to help diverse forces spread over large geographical areas function systematically. Owens happens to be an admiral. His concept of warfare is particularly relevant at sea. As other sections discuss in more detail, Chinese strategic thinkers from the 1990s onwards have placed a high priority on acquiring the ability to make full use of modern military information technology and modern concepts of information warfare. The fact that the Chinese leadership also places a high priority on maritime power makes the acquisition of information warfare capabilities doubly critical. Moreover, if the PLAN was to play a more active role in the PRC’s increasingly active foreign policy, it needed to improve its ability to project power greater distances from its home ports. This was, in part, a problem of logistics. It was also, in part, a problem of acquiring land attack weapons and marine landing capabilities. As Chinese military officials of the 1990s observed, the defining features of a first-rate navy are amphibious forces and aircraft carriers.11 Over the past three decades, the PLAN has made significant progress in most – although not all – of these areas. Some of its advances have been more dramatic than others, and some of its best-publicised initiatives may be more significant in terms of national prestige than in terms of operational capability. Nevertheless, given the fact that no nation is ever able to gratify all of its military commanders’ possible desires at once, the PRC seems to have maintained sensible priorities. Moreover, although one cannot know when, if ever, Chinese naval planners consciously followed Sunzi’s principles, their decisions appear to be in keeping with the logic of his work. From a Sunziian perspective, the fact that the PLAN has made uneven progress need not be too serious a handicap. The Art of War frequently returns to the theme of combining forces with different capabilities in mutually supporting ways. In one of Sunzi’s reflections on this issue, he states that every military organisation includes both ordinary forces and extraordinary ones.12

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Sunzi presents these concepts in an abstract way, allowing readers to make up their own minds what qualities define forces as ordinary or extraordinary in any given situation, but he suggests that although one needs ordinary forces to keep the enemy occupied, one exploits the distinctive capabilities of the extraordinary forces to strike the war-winning blow.13 Even when the PLAN as a whole remained at a relatively modest state of development, the PRC’s naval planners developed so-called pockets of excellence in selected areas. Thus, even in the 1980s and 1990s, Chinese commanders had serviceable extraordinary forces at their disposal. PLAN officers occasionally referred to such areas of precocity as ‘killer maces’.14 This suggests that they shared Sunzi’s ideas about how to use them. The PLAN has, for instance, consistently maintained a formidable arsenal of torpedoes and surface-to-surface missiles. Moreover, it has acquired correspondingly large numbers of vessels capable of firing them. When the PRC began its programme of accelerated maritime development in the 1990s, it already deployed over 20 times as many torpedo and missile launch systems as its most prominent rivals, including the United States.15 As the naval development programme proceeded, the PLAN almost immediately began to develop and field more advanced anti-ship missiles.16 Thomas M. Kane discussed these issues in greater depth in Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power. Anti-ship missile technology is one of the areas in which the PRC has made intelligent use of Russian assistance. This is also one of the areas in which the PRC appears to have gone on to become a world leader in its own right. In the early 21st century, Russia provided China with the highly regarded Sunburn anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM).17 The PRC has since developed the ability to manufacture its own significantly improved version of Russia’s Klub (ASCM) and is working on even more advanced designs.18 Moreover, the PRC has developed and apparently deployed multiple ground-launched ballistic missile platforms capable of targeting ships at short, medium and long ranges. This is an engineering triumph, which bodes well for the PRC’s ability to invent and produce other sophisticated hardware. As of 2022, both the medium-range DF-21D and the intermediaterange DF-26 anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) have been tested and reached full operational capability status.19 Both platforms, capable of reaching targets 1,500 km and 4,000 km away, respectively, pose a widely acknowledged threat to US aircraft carriers, which optimistic American leaders might once have been tempted to regard as invincible. PLAN has yet to work out the kinks of precision targeting on open waters, but the PRC’s increasing proficiency and command of the ISR domain and the outfitting of warheads with terminal seeker technology capable of guiding in-flight missile manoeuvres suggests that China will eventually be able to blow even fast moving warships out of the water from great distances.20 Seldom does one category of weapons system have such a direct effect on the perceived balance of power between two strong nations. One may also note that the fact

The New PLA 73 that the PRC invested the resources necessary to develop these ASBMs serves as a reminder that they continue to see offensive naval weapons as a critical element of their strategy. One should not exaggerate the value of missiles and torpedoes. Navies have countermeasures against both. Nevertheless, these countermeasures are not perfect, and when they fail, the consequences can be catastrophic. Larger ships can, as always, survive more damage than smaller ones, but missiles and torpedoes have a levelling effect on naval combat. The imperfect and yetto-be-determined lethality of the PLA’s most advanced ASBM platforms also reinforces the importance of theatre proximity and geographical considerations in any imagined conflict with China. One may assume that the closer a potential adversary’s forces fight to China’s shores, the greater China’s advantage will be. Thus, the PRC’s missile and torpedo forces allow the PLAN to inflict losses – possibly serious ones – on virtually any opponent. Even in the 1990s, the PLAN had the option of opening a campaign with a powerful attack – possibly before its opponents had time to take advantage of its various weaknesses. Moreover, since 2020, China has had the largest number of vessels of any navy in the world.21 Even nominally superior opponents, such as the US Navy which possesses a larger fleet in terms of tonnage and various more advanced platforms, must treat virtually all of the PLAN’s ships as dangerous. The process of hunting them down would almost certainly be time-consuming, and canny PLAN commanders could undoubtedly find ways to make it moreso. As Chinese naval thinkers have noted, advances in communications and information processing technology make it increasingly feasible for naval commanders to concentrate missiles against well-selected targets, thus maximising their destructive effect, while keeping the missilelaunching ships dispersed, thus making it harder for opponents to find or destroy more than one of them at a time.22 A powerful offensive weapon is to be prized in any type of conflict. In a hypothetical war between the PLAN and another medium-sized navy, Chinese commanders could reasonably hope to open hostilities with a savage blow that would damage the opposing forces enough to give the PRC the advantage for the rest of the campaign. As alluded to above, the PLAN’s offensive prowess forces even the US Navy to accept that a war with China would involve significant losses. Sunzi also emphasises the importance of taking advantage of one’s opponents’ psychological traits. One may safely assume that he would have been equally eager to take advantage of political constraints on rival governments’ policies. As noted above, the PRC’s leadership has determined that none of the world’s more powerful countries are seeking large-scale war. Chinese leaders must also have noticed that, even in conflicts with weak and widely detested opponents, the US government goes to great lengths to avoid any risk of suffering even small numbers of casualties. Therefore, the PLAN’s ability to inflict losses gives Beijing considerable leverage in any contest of

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intimidation. One also notes that the PRC routinely engages in such contests in disputed regions such as the Sea of Japan and the South China Sea. Not only is the PRC deepening its so-called pockets of excellence, it is carrying out a more general upgrade of its vessels. To use Sunzi’s terminology, it is improving its ordinary forces. This is incrementally improving its ability to clear mines, shoot down enemy aircraft, sink opposing submarines, operate long distances from the Chinese coast and generally carry out the business of a 21st-century navy. Moreover, the PLAN has structured its modernisation program in ways which allow it to use its missiles and torpedoes to even greater advantage. The PRC has, for instance, made considerable progress at redressing the deficiencies of its submarine forces. Again, Beijing made good use of its tacit alliance with Moscow. In the 1990s and early 2000s, the PLAN acquired relatively quiet Russian attack submarines of the Kilo class. The PRC has since developed the ability to manufacture comparable Yuan and Song class vessels in its own yards. In 2021, the US DOD estimated that between the Yuan and Song classes, the PLAN operated roughly 56 diesel-powered attack submarines.23 Chinese submarine manufacturers have continued to improve their designs with minimal outside assistance. Nevertheless, Henry Boyd and Tom Waldwyn of the International Institute for Strategic Studies suggest that lack of base facilities and shortages of trained personnel continue to limit the size of the PRC’s submarine fleet.24 One way in which the PLAN has sought to remedy its personnel limitations is by investing in unmanned maritime vehicle (UMV) technology. Unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) and autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), in particular, offer Beijing an array of force multiplying capabilities ranging from marine ISR to anti-submarine warfare. In 2021, South China Morning Post’s Stephen Chen reported that China declassified a drone submarine program that has been in operation since the 1990s.25 Details from the secret program suggest that, as early as 2010, the PRC tested an autonomous submarine capable of identifying, targeting and firing cruise missiles at a mock enemy seacraft. Such technology, if perfected, could provide the PLAN with the expanded tactical toolbox and data collection capabilities necessary to level the underwater playing field with more advanced potential adversaries such as the US Navy. The Center for Security and Emerging Technology’s Ryan Fedasiuk has explored in greater depth the capabilities of specific Chinese AUV and UUV platforms as well as the major organisations and developers involved in their research and production.26 Beijing has also introduced two new classes of Chinese-built nuclear submarines in recent years. These include the Shang class fast-attack submarine (SSN) and the Jin class ballistic missile submarine (SSB) of which the PLAN has, as of 2021, nine and six of each, respectively.27 Although these vessels are more sophisticated than their predecessors, they may have room for further improvement. Dave Majumdar, defence editor of the American periodical The National Interest, opines that the PRC’s new nuclear

The New PLA 75 submarines remain relatively noisy.28 Even if Majumdar is right, the situation may be temporary – Minnie Chan of the South China Morning Post counters that the PRC is ahead of the United States at developing an innovative method for using atomic energy to propel a submarine which will be quieter than any currently existing nuclear undersea propulsion system.29 If perfected, the new system will also provide power for a directed energy weapon intended to shoot down incoming missiles.30 One could tell a similar story about the PRC’s surface fleet. When the PRC acquired the Sunburn missiles, it purchased Russian-built Sovremenny-class destroyers to carry them. The equipment on board these ships – notably radar systems, sonar systems and surface-to-air missiles – was probably more valuable than the vessels themselves. Chinese manufacturing capabilities have since advanced to a point which allows the PRC to produce indigenous warships of better quality. Not only does the PRC now build its own medium-sized naval vessels, but it has refitted its Sovremennys with presumably superior Chinese-made equipment. Beijing’s efforts to modernise its submarines and medium-sized warships reinforce its apparent strategy of using torpedoes and missiles as ‘assassin’s maces’. These types of vessels typically carry these sorts of weapons. Moreover, the PRC is researching designs for so-called arsenal ships, optimised to ferry large numbers of missiles into combat zones. The fact that the PRC chooses to publicise its interest in arsenal ships adds weight to the idea that Chinese leaders believe that their likely opponents will find missiles particularly intimidating. Although missiles and torpedoes clearly remain fundamental to the PRC’s maritime strategy, the Chinese Navy has signalled that it is outgrowing its policy of relying on pockets of excellence. In 2016, the PRC declared its first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, ready for combat. The immediate significance of this announcement may have been more symbolic than practical. Nevertheless, the symbolism alone indicates that China’s leaders have attained a fresh level of confidence in their ability to use naval power in new ways. One of the reasons why Beijing’s decision to claim an aircraft carrier capability demands attention is that China’s leadership waited so long to make it. The PRC obtained its first carrier hull in 1985 and has owned the vessel which became the Liaoning since 1998.31 Beijing has been importing aircraft suitable for carrier operations since the 1990s and has been training carrier personnel for a similar length of time.32 Although preparing ships, crews and aircraft for action is time-consuming, it need not have taken decades, and although the process is also expensive and technically demanding, other countries facing at least as many resource constraints as China have managed it. Not only has India deployed a carrier, but so has Thailand. Only senior officials in the Chinese naval bureaucracy know for certain why the PRC did not openly deploy an operational carrier sooner. For the rest of us, the most plausible explanation is that China’s leaders recognise

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that a prematurely deployed carrier could have become a liability. Leaving aside theoretical debates about the concept of strategic bombing, one may note that planes typically achieve their most lasting strategic effect in support of other forces and aircraft carriers are most potent when supported by other warships. Without such support, carriers are potentially vulnerable. Therefore, the power of a carrier is proportional to the overall power of the navy which deploys it. This is a psychological truth as well as a material one. During the period when the PRC’s vessels, electronics and surface-toair missiles were visibly obsolete, Beijing’s potential rivals found it relatively easy to dismiss Chinese gestures towards deploying carriers as simple vanity. Now that even sceptics must take Chinese ships and technology more seriously, one must take the PRC’s decision to deploy carriers seriously as well. The PRC’s carrier programme may still contain an element of bluff. One may speculate that the Chinese Navy announced the Liaoning ready for action in order to suggest that it was making better overall progress with its naval plans than is actually the case. Nevertheless, one may equally well postulate that the PRC leadership’s decision was exactly what it appears to be, and that the Chinese Navy is more than ready to support a carrier. Sunzi advised strategists to appear strong when they are weak and weak when they are strong.33 By waiting until the Chinese navy as a whole appeared relatively formidable before declaring a carrier operational, the PRC’s leaders made it impossible for outside observers to determine which half of this maxim they are putting into practice. Having declared the Liaoning operational, the PRC’s leadership continues to behave in ways which reinforce the carrier programme’s credibility. The Chinese leadership appears to be resisting the temptation to overplay their first carrier’s readiness for sea battles against powerful opponents. To the contrary, they have proposed using it in such roles as international disaster relief operations. Researchers for the Center for Strategic and International Studies review the Chinese leadership’s proposals in a study of the Liaoning’s capabilities.34 These missions are almost certainly within the new carrier’s capacity. As the PRC becomes able to contribute new resources such as carriers to such operations, it will presumably gain a greater say in the way the operations are carried out. Using the Liaoning to cooperate with other navies, the Chinese Navy gains opportunities to learn from foreign forces which have greater experience with carriers – and to demonstrate that its own carrier is effective. As the CSIS researchers go on to note, Liaoning also appears capable of taking on more warlike missions if called upon. Moreover, the PRC launched a second carrier – the Shandong – in 2019 and has announced plans to design and build more. The US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) predicts that China’s third, more advanced, carrier will enter service in 2024, and that the PLAN may ultimately field six or more aircraft carriers in the coming years.35

The New PLA 77 As the PRC’s carrier capabilities mature, the Chinese Navy will substantially increase its striking power, its reconnaissance assets, its anti-submarine defences and its ability to repel enemy aircraft. This will improve all its vessels’ ability to engage in sustained combat and survive. Moreover, it will enhance the PRC’s ability to carry out amphibious operations. The combined effect of these enhanced capabilities will be to make it easier for the PRC to fight and win conflicts greater distances from China, giving the Chinese mainland a greater margin of security and permitting Beijing to adopt more assertive policies throughout a greater part of the world. In combat with a powerful opponent, these advantages might be temporary. As of the early 21st century, it remains difficult to envision a scenario in which Chinese carrier aircraft could prevail in a protracted campaign against the US Navy. Nevertheless, it is becoming possible to foresee a scenario in which Chinese carriers could force the US Navy to engage in one, making it that much riskier, that much costlier and that much more time-consuming for the United States to achieve dominance in a Sino-American war. This, in turn, makes it easier for Beijing to resist intimidation – and also to practice it. Beijing is also displaying a new level of sophistication in amphibious warfare. The PRC’s attempts to improve its amphibious capabilities have similar implications to its carrier program. Like China’s carrier program, China’s amphibious warfare program has been going on with relatively little fanfare for decades. The Chinese Communist regime’s dispute with its island-based rival in Taiwan has prompted both sides to train marines and acquire landing craft ever since the Revolution. Thus, the PRC has always had amphibious capabilities. Nevertheless, its ability to use them has appeared questionable. In the late 1990s, American analysts estimated that the PRC could land 10,000–14,000 troops in a hypothetical invasion of Taiwan.36 These analysts went on to suggest that the PRC could reinforce its beachheads with approximately 40,000 more troops in later operations. The US deployed forces over twice this large to capture islands less than one tenth this size during the Pacific campaign of World War II. Although the Japanese garrisons defending those islands fought tenaciously, they were small and poorly equipped when compared to the armed forces of the contemporary Republic of China. Moreover, landing forces depend heavily on warships and naval air assets for fire support. Landing forces are also vulnerable to counterattack by both sea and air. Previous paragraphs have noted that the Chinese leadership would have been unwise to deploy aircraft carriers before modernising its frigates, destroyers and submarines. The same point applies to amphibious forces – and since air power plays a crucial role in landings, the Chinese leadership almost certainly made the right decision when it chose to focus on developing carriers first. Another reason why the PRC has bided its time in developing credible amphibious capabilities is that it has been even slower to upgrade its naval logistical system. Despite the PRC’s efforts to acquire modern warships, it

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has not built a comparable fleet of support vessels. As Yves-Heng Lim has noted, the PRC’s anti-piracy operations off the Horn of Africa circa 2008 pushed its power-projection capabilities to the limit.37 If the PRC finds supplying these types of patrols difficult, one may safely assume that it would find the logistical challenges of supporting even a modest amphibious operation far more so. Only in recent years has the PLAN begun to advance its capacity to sustain operations in blue waters. The Chinese leadership must find this situation frustrating. Some argue that Beijing needs a long-range expeditionary capability more acutely than it needs the ability to threaten the ROC. Mao Zedong’s 1975 observation that, whereas the ‘small problem’ remains Taiwan, the ‘big problem’ is the world seems more perceptive in the 21st century than ever.38 The PRC’s business interests in volatile regions of Africa and the Middle East guarantee that this will be so. Just as the Chinese Navy has used its strength in such areas as anti-ship missiles to make up for weaknesses in certain of its other weapons systems, the PRC has found ways to compensate for its shortage of replenishment vessels. The PRC has, for instance, prevailed upon the governments of several countries to place local police and military units at Chinese authorities’ disposal. Beijing has also encouraged PLA veterans to found security companies capable of deploying paramilitary forces abroad using private sector resources. Thomas M. Kane has explored the PRC’s use of non-traditional power projection techniques in depth in an article for Parameters, the journal of the US Army War College.39 Meanwhile, from the late 2000s onwards, Beijing has been developing modern amphibious assault craft. The Congressional Research Service, in the 2021 iteration of its annual summary of China’s naval modernisations, reported to the US Congress that the PRC deploys eight of the relatively new Type 071 amphibious transport docks.40 Each Type 071 is capable of carrying up to 800 ground troops, 20 light armoured vehicles and four helicopters.41 In 2017, Chinese media sources reported that the PRC planned to quadruple the size of its marine corps to a total of 100,000 troops.42 Shortly afterwards, the same outlet revealed that the PRC had begun construction of a new amphibious warfare ship of a model to be known as Type 075.43 Commissioned into service in 2021, the PLAN’s first Type 075 ‘landing helicopter dock’ resembles a smaller version of the US Navy’s Wasp class amphibious assault ship. The vessel is almost twice as large as the Type 071 and capable of carrying 30 helicopters apiece.44 The PRC announced its plans to expand its marine corps approximately four months after the Liaoning made its debut. The proximity of these events is probably more than coincidence. Beijing’s decision to acquire landing forces, like its decision to deploy operational carriers, indicates that the Chinese leadership had achieved a new level of confidence in the overall strength of its navy. Both decisions also indicated that the PRC’s leadership wished to communicate that confidence to potential friends and rivals

The New PLA 79 abroad. As the South China Morning Post reported, the PRC leadership reinforced this message by deploying Type 071 vessels to disputed regions of the South China Sea in 2018.45 Beijing has also acquired additional supply ships. In the summer of 2017, during roughly the same period in which China began to publicise its construction of the Type 075 and its decision to expand its marine corps, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported that the PRC had commissioned the first ship in a new class of replenishment vessels, larger than any other in the Chinese Navy.46 As analyst Kevin McCauley notes, the PRC is also introducing new military transportation aircraft, notably the relatively large Y-20.47 McCauley adds, correctly, that the Chinese armed forces could requisition civilian ships and aircraft in a time of emergency.48 Such a mechanism may already exist by way of the People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM), an armed fishing fleet with thousands of reserve vessels subordinate to the PRC’s principal domestic security organ, the People’s Armed Police (PAP). PAFMM has already been observed in recent years using grey zone tactics to occupy contested features in the East and South China Seas.49 Nevertheless, even with the new equipment, the PRC’s logistical capabilities remain substandard. The SCMP has acknowledged this fact.50 McCauley confirms the point, noting that whereas the US Navy has one replenishment vessel for every five warships, the PRC has only one for every fifteen.51 Aircraft do not have enough cargo capacity to replace water transportation, except in small, brief operations. This is true even for lavishly equipped military forces such as those of the United States, and it will certainly be true for the PRC, which, according to McCauley, had fewer than 50 medium-sized transportation aircraft in 2018.52 The PRC’s lack of logistical capabilities would seem to limit the utility of its new amphibious forces, and, indeed, its navy as a whole. This invites one to ask why Beijing has not invested in more replenishment ships. One cannot rule out the possibility that Chinese naval planners simply find combat vessels more glamorous. Alternatively, they may have made the judgement that they needed a superficially impressive fleet more urgently than they needed an operationally effective one. Yet another possibility – suggested by scholar Yves Heng-Lim – is that the PRC is content to remain a regional power and plans to resupply its fleet from harbours along its own coast.53 Although it is possible to interpret the fact that the PRC has placed a relatively low priority on logistical ships as a sign that Beijing’s global interests remain modest, one may also draw the opposite conclusion. As the PRC acquires international influence, it becomes increasingly capable of persuading foreign countries to resupply Chinese vessels in their own ports. Observers commonly note that the BRI seems crafted to provide the Chinese Navy54 with port facilities in strategically desirable locations. Chinese military analysts quoted in the SCMP’s article on the new supply ship make a similar point. These analysts note that port cities can supply a combat fleet more lavishly

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and for longer periods than even the most robust flotillas of logistical vessels.55 They go on to note that, at the time of publication, the PRC had already acquired a permanent base at Djibouti and was actively seeking such facilities in other places throughout the world.56 The fact that Chinese analysts were able to present these arguments in public suggests that the Chinese government is comfortable with their views. One may still suspect that the Chinese Navy will find its lack of supply vessels a handicap. Logistical vessels can sail anywhere on short notice and are relatively reliable. Even powerful nations with extensive networks of overseas bases often find that crises spring up in unexpected places, and that putative allies may prove fickle. Nevertheless, the Chinese government appears to have used its economic and diplomatic initiatives to defer its need for more logistical ships, and this is yet another illustration of the overall coherence of Chinese policy. The Great Rebalance If the PRC’s success at expanding its navy is one sign of sound strategic planning, its success at contracting its ground forces is another. Since the late 1980s, Beijing has reduced troop numbers from 3,000,000 troops to approximately 2,000,000. Carin Zissis tracks the size of the PLA between 1987 and 2006 in a backgrounder article for the Council on Foreign Relations.57 In 2017, China’s Global Times reports, the PLA announced plans to cut its size by one million more.58 This would leave the ground forces with slightly under one million troops. Ironic as it may seem, cutting troops has almost certainly made the PRC stronger. Since China appears unlikely to face a land invasion, it has little need for its large ground forces. By reducing those forces’ numbers, the PRC enables itself to concentrate resources on more useful things. Moreover, military downsizing gives China’s authorities a tool for culling personnel whose professional opinions, political loyalties or allegedly corrupt practises make them resistant to the leadership’s policies. Thus, from the Chinese regime’s point of view, the military benefits of cuts are clear. Nevertheless, the Chinese leadership must have found them difficult to implement. Chinese army officers have undoubtedly been reluctant to lose their commands, and senior ones have enough political influence to push back against the process. Moreover, the social and economic costs of releasing hundreds of thousands of newly employed veterans into the civilian economy are enormous. Chinese citizens have repeatedly mounted public protests against the cuts. As the PRC’s leaders attempt to improve their country’s economy and maintain their legitimacy in the eyes of their country’s people, they must encounter continual temptations to let sleeping dogs lie with their overstaffed ground forces. The cuts have, however, proceeded steadily for decades. Moreover, the PRC is successfully realising their potential military benefits. Not only has

The New PLA 81 Beijing profitably redirected resources from its army to its navy, it has carried out reforms which make the ground forces considerably more useful. Like most countries, the PRC faces internal unrest more frequently than it faces international wars, and, again like most countries, it finds that its overseas conflicts tend to have more to do with securing its interests against insurgents and criminal gangs than with fighting full-fledged armies. Accordingly, even as it has stripped personnel from the PLA, it has expanded the People’s Armed Police.59 Moreover, from the 1990s onwards, the PRC has trained, equipped and organised an increasing proportion of the PLA as so-called Rapid Reaction Forces (RRFs). As the name implies, the RRFs are logistically and doctrinally prepared to deploy to troubled regions of China, disputed border regions or overseas conflict zones on relatively short notice. This alone makes them more relevant to the PRC’s current needs. The same mobility will also give them tactical advantages when and if they find themselves in battle. RRFs also incorporate elite units trained to carry out operations requiring an exceptional degree of initiative.60 Beijing is also reconfiguring its air force. The changes have been less spectacular than those affecting the navy or the ground forces. As previously noted, China’s air arm has historically been underdeveloped. During the 21st century, the PRC has begun to redress this deficiency, but it has given the PLAAF lower priority than the PLAN. This appears to have been a sensible compromise. Beijing’s policy of prioritising its navy has almost certainly allowed it to obtain a more robust long-range power projection capability in a shorter period of time. Ships can replicate the bombardment functions of aircraft more economically than aircraft can replicate the cargo-carrying functions of ships. Naval vessels can also remain on station indefinitely, whereas aircraft must often measure their time over a combat zone in minutes. In addition to these general points about the relative advantages of maritime power, the PRC’s political situation and level of development in the 1990s and 2000s made naval development more promising. Throughout that period, the PRC lacked overseas bases. Moreover, the PLAAF is a newcomer to mid-air refuelling. Those seeking a detailed study of the PRC’s efforts to develop aerial refuelling capabilities may consult Dr. Carlo Kopp’s report to the Australian research institute Air Power Australia.61 These facts would have made it difficult for the PRC to dispatch aircraft beyond flight range of its own borders without substantial amounts of outside help. Furthermore, the PRC almost certainly finds the technological challenges of manufacturing state-of-the-art military aircraft more daunting than those of modernising its shipbuilding industry. Nevertheless, the relative weakness of the PLAAF is a handicap for the PRC. Both navies and ground forces are far stronger with air cover. Also, as the PRC takes an increasingly active role in world affairs, it will become increasingly likely to encounter situations requiring an immediate response.

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As noted earlier, the PRC’s decision to deploy aircraft carriers and amphibious ships suggests that its leaders believe that their country is entering a new phase in its emergence as a global military power. If so, it would be logical for them to take the opportunity to increase their investment in the PLAAF. There are reasons to believe that they are doing so. From 2016 onwards, the PRC has been importing Russian-built SU-35 fighters. Reuters provides an overview of SU-35 transfers between Russia and China from 2016 to 2018.62 Not only are these aircraft potent in their own right, they provide Chinese aeronautical engineers with the opportunity to study their relatively advanced jet engines. As researcher Sebastien Roblin noted in a 2017 article, this appears likely to help the PRC overcome one of the remaining technological obstacles to producing state-of-the-art combat aircraft of its own.63 Wendell Minnick of Defense News notes that Chinese engineers may also find the SU-35’s radar and other sensor systems interesting.64 In 2021, Beijing expressed interest in purchasing Russia’s newest stealth fighter, the Su-57, presumably for training and research and development purposes as well.65 Meanwhile, in 2017, PRC officials introduced a new Chinese-built fighter designated J-20. The J-20 is a so-called stealth aircraft, designed to avoid detection by enemy radar. As of 2022, Chinese state media has claimed that the J-20 has reached full operational capability, but the true combat readiness of the platform still remains in question. Some analysts consider the J-20 a want-to-be fifth-generation platform due to ongoing limitations in Chinese engine technology and lack of certain highly advanced sensor systems.66 However, the SCMP reports that China’s military is working to upgrade the J-20’s engine, replacing the Russian AL-31F fourth-generation engines they are currently fitted with China’s indigenously manufactured WS-15 engine.67 Also unclear is the exact operational purpose intended for the J-20. Presumably, the J-20 was designed to rival adversary platforms such as the US F-22 Raptor and perform similar penetrative bombing missions. Though some are sceptical about the ability of the PLAAF’s flagship platforms to compete with the US military’s best, the rapid improvement of the J-20 platform suggests that China will eventually close the gap in capabilities. Indeed, the J-20 represents a significant improvement in the PLAAF’s combat power, and also in the PRC’s ability to develop advanced aircraft. The Center for Strategic and International Studies offers a detailed analysis of the J-20, along with references to numerous other sources.68 Moreover, the PRC is substantially improving its air force training. For one, a report by the China Aerospace Studies Institute suggests that, since 2020, the PLAAF has resolved many of the efficiency, hardware and rigourrelated problems that had encumbered its initial fighter training programme for decades and is now producing more skilled pilots. A study by the RAND Corporation also indicates that pilot training at the unit level has also become increasingly professionalised, realistic and representative of real combat.69 Additionally, a different RAND study notes that PLAAF exercises

The New PLA 83 increasingly feature simulations of long-range maritime operations.70 This increases the Chinese Air Force’s readiness to support the Chinese Navy, and thus to support a global foreign policy. The RAND authors note that, beyond helping PLAAF personnel develop valuable skills, these exercises also serve to intimidate the PRC’s overseas competitors. The PRC government appears, in short, to have reallocated its military resources in ways which reflect its changing international interests. Not only has it succeeded at withdrawing funds from the traditional ground units, it has succeeded at spending them in ways which build up more useful types of forces. Both achievements testify to a capacity to implement policies against bureaucratic resistance. Moreover, both testify to its ability to persist with challenging policies over periods measured in decades. The Great Rewiring Not only is the PRC redistributing money among the various branches of its armed services, but it is reforming the way in which they work together. This is more than an administrative exercise. As previously noted, Chinese military thinkers of the 1990s set themselves the goal of emulating America’s success at waging so-called information war. The essence of information warfare is efficiency. Thus, although 21st-century information warfare relies on emerging technology, its success has as much to do with organisation as it has to do with microchips. Chinese military and political leaders recognise this fact and are transforming their armed forces accordingly. Different authors present the concept of information warfare differently. Moreover, the phrase ‘information warfare’ is but one of a growing number of terms for a variety of closely related trends in 21st-century military practice. Therefore, it is worth revisiting the reasons why concepts such as information warfare currently attract so much attention. It is also worth exploring the ways in which the Chinese military leadership seems to understand them. The idea of information warfare (IW) grew out of 1970s-era Soviet writings on so-called military-technical revolutions (MTR). Soviet authors of that period observed that advances in electronic technology were providing armed forces with new equipment allowing them to perform a variety of mutually supporting activities more effectively. Most notably, improved command, control and communications (C3) systems could transmit data collected by improved sensors to combat units equipped with increasingly accurate weapons. Forces which succeeded at integrating C3, sensors and precision weapons effectively would become able to deliver more lethal fires at betterchosen targets faster while consuming a smaller volume of munitions. Soviet military thinkers later decided that the various MTRs constituted a more general Revolution in Military Affairs. As previous sections have noted, these ideas gained international attention after the United Nations coalition’s well-publicised use of new technology in the 1990–91 Gulf War.

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This is also the period in which alternative terms for the concept began to proliferate. The term information warfare has been popular in China. The fact that Chinese military thinkers favour this expression may cast light on the way in which they understand the subject. Whereas the term MTR focuses on technology, the term information warfare focuses on what the technology does. The reason why improved C3, improved sensors and increasingly accurate weapons have revolutionary potential is that they collectively allow armed forces to acquire more accurate information and act on it more efficiently. The converse is also true – those who use this approach to warfare effectively may hope to pre-empt their enemies’ moves, blind their enemies’ reconnaissance assets, destroy their enemies’ C3 facilities and otherwise prevent their enemies from using information as effectively as they otherwise might. This is a versatile way of thinking about conflict. Just as emerging technology and emerging ways of thinking about it can optimise the business of finding and killing one’s enemies, they can also optimise many of the other processes of war. One can, for instance, adapt the concepts of IW to explore such topics of contemporary interest as space warfare and cyberwar. Alternatively, one can broaden one’s understanding of information to include messages aimed at inducing other people to adopt certain points of view. Thus, propaganda, deception and persuasion can become aspects of information warfare. The term information warfare also invites one to reflect on the ways in which armed forces put information to practical use. Although emerging technology clearly plays a role in this process, so do far older elements of the art of war, notably training, doctrine, command structures and logistical preparation. As but one example of this point, one may note that although technology allowing infantry soldiers to exchange information with aircraft crews has existed for approximately a century, coordinating ground and air operations on the battlefield remains challenging. Admiral Owens acknowledged these truths when he conceptualised 21st-century armed forces as ‘systems of systems’, and Chinese leaders have adopted that expression as well.71 Since technology is only as effective as the people and institutions which employ it, terms such as information warfare and systems warfare seem to reflect a discerning approach to understanding the problems of 21st-century war. This approach has also allowed the PRC to make the most of its situation. Although the PRC has fielded such essentials of 21st-century warfare as precision-guided munitions, its leaders must assume that rival powers such as the United States will have more advanced military electronics for decades. Such rivals have no intrinsic advantage, however, at structuring their forces to use contemporary information technology effectively. From the 1990s onwards, the PRC has been restructuring its military logistics system to maximise its forces ability to fight in a so-called informatised environment. McCauley details Beijing’s efforts in this regard in his report to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission.72 This

The New PLA 85 restructuring program benefits from a virtuous circle. Even as logistical reform enhances the PRC’s ability to wage information warfare, information technology allows Chinese logisticians to supply combat forces more efficiently. One may note, for instance, that one of the most spectacular examples of 21st-century information technology in action is the existence of satellite navigation systems. The PRC has deployed its own such system, known as Beidou. As McCauley notes, Chinese military logisticians use Beidou effectively to deliver supplies precisely where they are needed in fluid situations.73 In 2021, the PRC achieved its long-standing milestone to provide comprehensive, worldwide coverage.74 One may observe in passing that this supports a more general proposition that the PRC leadership has planned its space program intelligently to support a wide range of other national objectives. Satellite navigation is but one of many 21st-century methods which Chinese logisticians are harnessing. The PRC is also adopting a common Command Information System (CIS) to facilitate communication and informationsharing among all its forces.75 McCauley, again, offers a detailed discussion of how Chinese military authorities have integrated logistics into this network.76 The CIS appears well designed to help supply officers identify and meet combat units’ needs promptly with minimal waste. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping and his supporters have begun to reform military training throughout all branches of the Chinese armed services. Again, one of their main goals has been to enhance the PRC’s ability to wage information warfare. Another is to teach soldiers, sailors and air force personnel to co-operate more effectively in joint operations. Since information technology has potential for helping the various branches of the armed services work together in mutually supporting ways, one may view joint operations training as another aspect of preparation for information warfare. In autumn of 2015, the Xi Jinping administration followed the training reforms with a series of increasingly comprehensive reorganisations of the military command structure.77 Yet again, one of the key aims was to maximise the armed forces’ ability to perform in an informatised environment. Another objective was to give the Communist party leadership – notably Xi himself – more direct control. Those seeking a detailed account of both the training reforms and the reorganisation may wish to consult the 2015, 2016 and 2017 editions of the East Asian Strategic Review.78 Any inclined to equate Communist ideology with rigid hierarchy should note that PRC military reformers have explored the need for military leaders to bypass the traditional chain of command. Analyst Masayuki Masuda of the East Asian Strategic Review documents this point.79 Although Masuda does not elaborate on the reformers’ purposes, one may reasonably infer that PRC authorities are seeking to empower personnel at all levels to take full advantage of the information available to them under modern conditions. At least some Chinese military thinkers appear to be sensitive to US Marine General Charles Krulak’s widely quoted observation that the combination of

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modern information technology and modern political sensibilities can thrust individual non-commissioned officers into a strategically decisive role. If the PRC leadership is committed to taking military advantage of the so-called information revolution, its training, organisational and logistical reforms are steps in the right direction. The fact that it has implemented them on such a large scale provides yet further evidence of the consistency of its policies and of its power to enact them. Having said that, one should note that the reforms have not always gone smoothly. In 2017, Masayuki Masuda noted that insufficient numbers of Chinese officers had gone through the new training programs, that the structural reforms were incomplete, and that the PLA had yet to define its commanders’ areas of authority and responsibility with sufficient clarity.80 The PRC’s efforts to master information warfare are not complete, but they provide further evidence that Beijing is pursuing its grand strategic goals effectively. Dress Rehearsals Not only does the PRC’s new training programme prepare personnel for information warfare, but it reinforces all of Beijing’s other military endeavours. Ships and aircraft are only as good as the people who operate them. Organisations which appear well suited to their purposes on paper function only if their members have the collective ability to realise their potential in practice. One may safely assume that the oversized, under-resourced and seldom used PLA of the 1980s suffered from serious defects in the collective efficiency of its personnel. Moreover, the fact that the PRC’s political circumstances have changed dramatically since the end of the Cold War have compelled its military leaders to prepare military personnel for new types of conflict requiring new and often more demanding skills. Thus, the PRC leadership of the past 30 years has needed to improve its military training regime in order to ensure that military personnel could perform in the field. Moreover, training exercises offer the PRC a way to demonstrate its military competence to outside observers. This second function of military training is important to any state, but it may be particularly useful for the PRC, since Beijing relies heavily on military display to intimidate rivals and assert their own resolve to resist intimidation. The PRC’s leaders appear to recognise these points and have taken measures which seem well suited not only to providing Chinese military personnel with realistic training, but to doing so in a highly visible way. In the 21st century, the PRC has carried out increasing numbers of military exercises on an increasingly large scale. The US Department of Defense has documented this in its annual reports on the PRC’s national power. In 2010, for instance, the DOD reported a ground-breaking Chinese manoeuvre from the previous year in which the PLA redeployed 50,000 troops in a simulated expeditionary operation.81 This was undoubtedly challenging, as it occurred before the PLA’s post-2016 command and control upgrades. Moreover, it

The New PLA 87 showcased the PRC’s success at developing mobile forces capable both of battlefield agility and of intervening in conflicts outside China. In 2013, the Chinese Navy followed suit by conducting what was then the largest open ocean exercise in its history.82 Over the last decade, the PRC has increased the sophistication of its military exercises. As David Logan of the Jamestown Foundation explains, China’s operational wargaming drills, such as the PLA’s ‘STRIDE’ Red-Blue exercises have evolved significantly in size, complexity and tactical fidelity over the years.83 Whereas early iterations of PLA Red-Blue training reportedly felt scripted and unrealistic, newer versions have improved in difficulty and introduced unexpected tactical challenges, such as electromagnetic warfare, into the simulated environment. Today, more branches than just the PLA Army and Navy conduct large-scale expeditionary exercises as well. In 2018, PLAN Marine Corps (PLANMC) deployed nearly 25% of its personnel – a force of roughly 10,000 troops – to conduct tactical and operational training in the provinces of Yunnan and Shandong.84 Meanwhile, the PRC conducts increasing numbers of combined military exercises with other countries. The US DOD illustrates this by noting that Beijing carried out 21 combined exercises in 2011 and 2012 alone, compared with only 32 in the previous five years.85 Recent data suggest that this enthusiasm for combined exercises has persisted. In 2019, the PLA conducted at least 19 bilateral or multilateral military exercises with foreign countries.86 The PRC also developed a keenness for participating in UN peacekeeping operations. DOD analysts state that Beijing increased its peacekeeping commitments tenfold in the first decade of the 21st century.87 Peacekeeping is, presumably, a benevolent use of military power, but it also provides troops with an opportunity to test their skills. Thus, it offers armed forces the same benefits as realistic training exercises. Joint training exercises and peacekeeping operations also allow foreign observers to witness China’s military competence. Thus, they reinforce Beijing’s ability to use its armed forces to exert influence. One notes that this tactic has the potential to backfire. If the Chinese military performed poorly in exercises or on UN operations, outsiders would see this as well. Since the PRC’s leaders are presumably aware of this, their willingness to put their armed forces on display suggests that they are growing increasingly confident of the general success of their military reforms. Joint exercises and peacekeeping have other uses as well. Both function as so-called defence diplomacy, signalling the PRC’s willingness to cooperate with various partners and eliciting such signals in return. In a similar fashion, both serve to reinforce the participants’ preferred interpretations of certain political situations. One may note, for instance, that Beijing frequently joins other states in so-called counterterrorism exercises. One may reasonably infer that one of the Chinese leadership’s motives for taking part in these events is its desire to define ethnic separatists and other political opponents as terrorists.

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Joint exercises also allow armed forces from different countries to improve their ability to support one another in coalition warfare. Such efforts – like all preparations for war – have psychological uses as well as material ones. Therefore, it is worth paying special attention to the PRC’s 21st-century exercises with Russia. Minnie Chan of the South China Morning Post reported eight Sino-Russian naval manoeuvres between 2012 and 2017.88 Since then, China and Russia have conducted several more combined military exercises, some with clear operational applications. Their most recent naval exercise, for example, was an anti-submarine drill which took place in late 2021 in the Sea of Japan. The exercises demonstrate, at a minimum, that the PRC’s military relationship with Russia goes far beyond arms trading. This should deepen our respect for Beijing’s diplomatic achievement in cultivating a military entente with Moscow. Moreover, many of the joint exercises have taken place in politically significant waters. In May 2015, as the US Naval Institute (USNI) notes, Russian and Chinese warships sailed together in the Black Sea.89 This put them off Ukraine’s coast in the immediate aftermath of a Ukrainian conflict in which Russia’s armed forces played a direct and controversial role. Russia also has tense relations with its neighbours in the Baltic. In 2017, after a NATO exercise in that region, Chinese warships appeared in the Baltic on relatively short notice to conduct a new round of manoeuvres with Russian counterparts, as USNI commentators have noted.90 Moscow and Beijing followed the Baltic operation with a joint naval exercise in the Sea of Japan. Reporters commenting on this operation for the South China Morning Post acknowledged that Russia is engaged in a territorial dispute with Japan over the Kurile Islands.91 The SCMP did not mention the fact that Beijing has its own disagreements with Tokyo in the Sea of Japan, but it might well have. Meanwhile, in 2016 and 2017, Russia and the PRC conducted a pair of exercises designed to prepare their national air defence systems for a coordinated response to air or missile attack. The Russian news agency Tass provided dates for the exercises and quoted officials of the PRC’s defence ministry as saying that the preparations were not directed against any specific opponent.92 The Chinese Defence Ministry officials may not have intended to be convincing. In 2016, the PRC and Russia were protesting America’s decision to deploy its own Terminal High Altitude Air Defence (THAAD) anti-missile system in the Republic of Korea. One may reasonably infer that one of the objectives of the Sino-Russian air and missile defence exercises was to demonstrate Beijing and Moscow’s shared determination to match the US action. More generally, one may observe that the number of powers which might subject Russia or the PRC to air or missile attack is limited. One can, no doubt, imagine scenarios in which some small and suicidal regime chose to attack one or the other of them. America, after all, justified its deployment of

The New PLA 89 THAAD as a defensive measure to protect its allies from North Korea. Nevertheless, Moscow and Beijing’s interest in joint air and missile defences suggests an interest in presenting a united front in confrontations with sophisticated military powers. It suggests a desire to make this interest public, and, assuming that the exercise was productive, it suggests that Russia and the PRC are improving their ability to act on this interest in the extreme of circumstances. As of the second decade of the early 21st century, all of the world’s sophisticated military powers are more or less aligned. Most have close relations with the United States. Therefore, the Chinese defence ministry’s statement that its air and missile defence exercise was not directed against any specific opponent is dubious. The exercise makes palpable the PRC leadership’s claims to advocate a more multilateral world order, in which American influence would presumably be diminished, and the political alignments which have prevailed since the end of the Cold War would no longer be so certain. And so, the air and missile defence exercise is a brightly coloured thread in the fabric which joins the operational details of the PRC’s military reforms to its diplomatic efforts to the broadest and most ambitious goals of its national policy. Atomic Signals In recent years, the frontier of China’s military modernisation effort has increasingly included advancements in the nuclear realm. This trend is somewhat of a historical aberration. For decades, the PRC has taken a minimalist approach to its nuclear capabilities and, in many ways, has consciously limited advancements to its strategic lethality. It’s true, as noted above, that Mao Zedong chose to be expeditious in initiating the PRC’s nuclear program in the mid-1950s, likely in response to the Korean War and America’s outsized presence in the Taiwan Straits and East Asia.93 But, over the years, China has been far less ambitious than it could have been in the nuclear domain. The PRC did not develop a significant intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capability until the 1980s, and even as it surpassed the European powers in terms of economic might and political influence – and approaches parity with the United States in the 21st century – its strategic nuclear posture has largely remained unchanged. Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s M. Taylor Fravel, an expert in Chinese military strategy, explains that, since it detonated its first nuclear bomb in 1964, the PRC has been committed to a fundamentally defensive nuclear doctrine.94 This doctrine is two-pronged, consisting of a policy of ‘no first use’ and a policy of minimal strategic deterrence. Together, these two policies inform the PRC’s overarching strategy of ‘assured retaliation’ – or second-strike – which was designed exclusively to protect China from nuclear coercion and deter a first-strike by an adversary. While China’s conventional military posture has evolved and transformed on numerous occasions and the

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PLA has made consistent use of emergent technologies to enhance its capabilities, the PRC’s leaders have intentionally compartmentalised the nation’s nuclear programme to maintain doctrinal and strategic consistency. Mao Zedong was famous for dismissing the warfighting utility of nuclear weapons, believing that only people – not technology – could win wars.95 He also ensured that control over the PRC’s nuclear programme would be kept in the hands of the CCP, by way of the Central Military Commission (CMC), rather than under the direct purview of the PLA. For Mao and his successors, the possession of a capable nuclear deterrent was necessary to freely pursue certain national interests, but nuclear weapons should not be subjected to the arms race-inducing pressures of conventional military competition. This sentiment is reflected in the historic force structure of the PRC’s nuclear arsenal, which has evolved to be composed of a smaller number of defensively postured, nuclear-compatible ICBMs, rather than more operationally dynamic air or water-based capabilities. However, recent evidence suggests that China may be rethinking its nuclear posture. In the summer of 2021, two private space infrastructure companies captured and released commercial satellite images of what appear to be three significant missile silo construction projects in northern China.96 Collectively, roughly 300 apparent missile silos have been spotted scattered across the three sites located near Yumen (Gansu), Hami (Xinjiang) and Ordos (Inner Mongolia). The missile silos revealed in the satellite imagery mirror a model first seen under construction at the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) training site near Jilantai (Inner Mongolia). There, the size and specifications of the silos – as imagined from the overhead imagery – suggested the development of a new, more efficient platform from which to launch smaller, solid-propellant fuelled ICBMs.97 While Beijing has repeatedly evaded answering questions about the official purpose of the vast, remote construction projects in its heartland, officials in the US Defence Department have been eager to use the silo fields-tobe as publicly available evidence of an accelerating nuclear build-up in China. If the conventional narrative is true and the alleged silo sites are to be armed with long-ranged nuclear-compatible missiles, observers may anticipate a doubling or tripling of the PRC’s nuclear capabilities in just a few short years.98 There are several reasons to believe that the alleged silo sites are, in fact, a part of a Chinese nuclear modernisation effort. First, the insulated location of the construction fields in China’s centre-north and north-western provinces suggests a military, rather than a commercial or civil, application. Some Chinese military commentators have argued that the PRC has already transitioned away from the costly and strategically vulnerable fixed silo, in favour of mobile truck-mounted launch platforms.99 ‘Why would the PLA choose to spend its resources on a less technologically sophisticated platform?’ they ask. But others have responded that a large quantity of fixed silos located far enough away from major population centres could serve the strategic purpose of soaking up enemy warheads in the event of a first strike

The New PLA 91 and if, shrewdly, only a portion of the silos are ever filled with missiles, the PRC can play a duplicitous ‘shell game’ in which the true location of its full nuclear force is never completely verifiable. Second, the expansion of the PRC’s ICBM force presents numerous strategic advantages. If it is true that the silos under construction are designed to store newer, solid-fuel missiles, one may infer that they will be filled with one or more of PLARF’s more recent, more sophisticated and more lethal ICBM models. For example, the DF-41, solid-fuel ICBM capable of splitting into multiple warheads mid-flight – heretofore only seen deployed on transporter erector launchers (large, missile-equipped trucks sometimes referred to as TELs) – could plausibly be outfitted to launch from a stationary missile silo. Such an advancement would increase the lethality of China’s nuclear force. From a defensive perspective, increasing the sheer number of ICBMs in its stockpiles ironclads the PRC’s second-strike capability – the promise of assured retaliation that underpins its historic nuclear posture. Diversification of nuclear assets and their deployment in greater number would increase the survivability of China’s nuclear capability in the event of a hypothetical first strike. Taken together, it is not difficult to see why expanding its ICBM force might appeal to leaders in PLARF and the CCP who take seriously the threats posed to China in the nuclear domain. The final reason to believe that the silo fields in Yumen, Ordos and Hami are of strategic-military significance is that they may, in fact, be consistent with what appears to be a doctrinal shift in the PRC’s nuclear posture. For several years, the US defence establishment has accused China of abandoning its minimalist approach to nuclear deterrence. Defense News’ Mike Yeo and Robert Burns note that the Pentagon expects the rate of China’s nuclear expansion and modernisation thrust to exceed even that which was predicted by the Defense Department’s 2021 report on China’s military power.100 The 2021 report predicted that the PRC could have more than 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.101 But as those exposed to the principles of nuclear strategy might understand, not all 1,000 warheads are expected to be mounted on ICBMs or stored in silos in rural China. Indeed, the PRC possesses several delivery mechanisms for its nuclear weapons, including avionic, seafaring and spacefaring platforms, in addition to its ballistic missile force. PLA Air Force (PLAAF), for example, appears to be in the process of developing a new ‘H-20’ stealth bomber aircraft that some analysts have likened to the American B-2 Spirit.102 The South China Morning Post’s Kristin Huang reported in 2021 that China’s H-20 bomber is expected to have a combat radius of several thousand miles and the advanced payload specifications necessary to carry both conventional and nuclear missiles simultaneously.103 Such an asset would afford China’s leaders the capacity to project nuclear standoff power as far as the US military base in Guam and beyond. On the naval front of China’s nuclear arsenal, PLAN operates a growing fleet of ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) capable of remaining submerged

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and hidden for long periods of time and delivering a stealthy retaliatory strike in the event of an enemy first-strike. Currently, the PRC has deployed six Jin class (Type 094) SSBNs – each armed with up to 12 nuclear warheadcompatible submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) – and is in the process of building a new, more advanced class of nuclear-powered SSBN.104 Initial reporting suggests that this new class of submarine, referred to as the Type 096, will have the capability to hit the continental United States from as far as the Indian Ocean.105 Lastly, in the space domain, the PRC’s ballistic missile service, PLA Rocket Force (PLARF), captured the spotlight in 2020 after launching what the US Department of Defense claims to be a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile.106 Though hypersonic missiles are not typically classified as space assets, China’s test rocket prompted a concerned response from the West due to the design of the weapon’s re-entry vehicle, which allows the missile to reorient in space and then enter the atmosphere at an entirely new trajectory.107 This technology makes hypersonic missiles particularly hard to track, much less shoot down with missile defence systems.108 Its speed and manoeuvrability makes the hypersonic missile all the more dangerous when paired with a nuclear warhead. Together, China’s air, land and sea-based nuclear delivery platforms constitute what is sometimes referred to as China’s maturing nuclear triad. Hypersonic missiles included, one might call it a ‘tetrad’. But of what strategic significance is its expansion and modernisation? The enlargement of China’s nuclear force and the increasing sophistication of its nuclear triad may indicate a fundamental shift in the PRC’s nuclear posture and an abandonment of its ‘minimal deterrence’ doctrine. If China’s nuclear arsenal is expected to double or triple in size in the coming decade, the underlying premise of a minimal deterrence doctrine would suggest that a comparable shift in scale was taking place among China’s adversaries. But the strategic posture of the United States, India and other nuclear powers has remained largely unchanged in recent years. SIPRI’s data indicate that the US and Russia reduced their overall nuclear weapon stockpiles in 2020.109 In this context, it appears that China may be departing from its historical nuclear posture, at least in one significant way. Why might the PRC’s leaders feel the need to abandon their policy of minimal deterrence? For one, Beijing might lack confidence in the effectiveness of its conventional military forces. Apart from the short lived 1979 Sino-Vietnamese border war, roughly 70 years have passed since China fought any sort of costly, prolonged international conflict. In this context, the enlargement and enhancement of its nuclear force can be seen as a means to compensate for any perceived lack of conventional military strength. Another explanation could be that the PRC’s leaders see real nuclear conflict as an increasingly plausible scenario. Such a perception would explain Beijing’s keenness to narrow the gap between its own nuclear capabilities and those of its most likely adversaries. Bolstering its

The New PLA 93 nuclear forces will also afford the PRC with a more resilient defence against nuclear coercion. Lastly, as M. Tayler Fravel emphasises in his assessment of China’s conduct in the nuclear realm, the PRC’s nuclear doctrine is sometimes best understood by directly evaluating the intentions of those at the head of the Chinese Communist Party. As noted earlier, matters of nuclear power have historically rested in the hands of the PRC’s paramount leaders. Until perhaps now, China’s nuclear doctrine has reflected the persistence of the strategic norms established under Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping.110 Today, the apparent evolution in China’s nuclear doctrine may simply be one of many features in Xi Jinping’s – today’s paramount leader – ambitious and assertive foreign policy style (Chapter 8 will discuss this phenomenon in greater detail). It is certainly plausible that Xi is facilitating a transition from China’s traditional deterrence-centric approach to nuclear strategy to a mentality that prioritises real warfighting capabilities. But despite the ensuing acceleration and expansion of its nuclear arsenal, the PRC’s military and civilian leaders have rejected the claim that China is abandoning its nuclear doctrine of minimal deterrence. Fu Cong, the arms control director at the PRC’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, maintained in 2022 that China’s nuclear advancements have and will continue to reflect the real security concerns of the Chinese nation and will be limited to only that which is required to maintain a true strategic deterrent.111 Beijing has long argued – not outrageously – that the Pentagon’s concern surrounding China’s nuclear modernisation efforts is fundamentally hypocritical. As SIPRI’s 2021 assessment of world nuclear forces highlights, the total number of warheads possessed by the US and Russia are both more than ten times that of China’s inventory.112 Even American commentators, such as the RAND Corporation’s Edward Geist, have argued that the US defence establishment needn’t worry excessively about the PRC’s nuclear advancements.113 According to Geist, the US has more than enough weapons of its own – both conventional and nuclear – to deter any medium-term nuclear threat that could be posed by China. With these conditions in mind, the PRC’s decision to modernise and expand its nuclear forces appears all the more strategic. If Beijing’s intent is truly just to update its capabilities to match a widening set of security concerns, it has the space to do so without dramatically increasing its diplomatic exposure. Without significant – and unlikely – reductions in US nuclear stockpiles, Western calls for arms control or other measures to limit China’s nuclear development will continue to ring hollow. In the same vein, the still chasmic gap in size between the PRC’s nuclear arsenal and those of its competitors makes it all the less likely that a larger and more lethal Chinese nuclear triad will trigger many meaningful changes in the nuclear force posture of its adversaries. Meanwhile, a more robust nuclear force makes China a more muscular player on the world stage. It affords China’s leaders with the prestige and deterrent effect necessary to pursue an increasingly assertive and in some

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cases aggressive foreign policy agenda. For example, if a hot conflict were to break out between the PRC and Taiwan, the PRC’s advanced nuclear force would make it less likely that any third parties, such as the United States, could use nuclear coercion to sway the conflict. Moreover, with awareness that developments in the nuclear realm invite intense international scrutiny, Beijing is signalling that it may be willing to abandon foundational norms and military doctrine in order to pursue its broader strategic objectives. Such decision making requires careful calculation and deliberation on a long time horizon, suggesting that, in the nuclear realm, the PRC’s leaders are thinking in terms of grand strategy. Conclusion: Strategy and Synchrony This congruence between operational details, doctrine and policy is the defining achievement of 21st-century China’s defence policy. Although Beijing has attracted attention by deploying aircraft carriers and other spectacular new pieces of hardware, these acquisitions have been components of a more comprehensive campaign of mutually supporting reforms. As this chapter has shown, the PRC is coordinating its programmes of training, reorganisation, nuclear modernisation, naval expansion and ground force contraction to prepare its armed services for expeditionary missions employing up-to-date technology and requiring high levels of skill and technology. It has inevitably taken time for the PRC’s armed forces to reach their current level of competence, and Chinese defence planners have structured the process effectively to meet both their short-term and long-term needs. One notes, for instance, how the Chinese armed forces relied on so-called pockets of excellence to compensate for their historical weaknesses, and then incorporated them into more generally capable forces as they became able. This invites one to ask what the PRC’s next steps might be. In the second decade of the 21st century, Beijing has begun to acquire the ships it might need for amphibious landings, and for surface battles against competent enemy navies. Although it is unlikely to prevail in actual combat with US forces, it has tangibly improved its ability to intimidate even Washington in conflicts which fall short of war. The PRC has signalled its growing confidence in its influence and capabilities by carrying out naval manoeuvres in contested regions. Meanwhile, the Belt and Road Initiative and related activities give Beijing new political and economic interests abroad. As previously noted, the Belt and Road Initiative also provides the PRC with overseas bases. Nevertheless, the PRC’s logistical deficiencies continue to handicap its ability to fight beyond its borders. The relative underdevelopment of the PLAAF, though diminishing, further limits the Chinese armed forces’ ability to fight militarily developed opponents. Beijing may also need to invest more in its air force if it develops a greater interest in carrying out long-range strikes against irregular opponents. One may reasonably predict that the PRC will eventually redress its logistical and aerial lacunae. Although there would

The New PLA 95 be no reason to interpret Beijing’s decision to take such a step as inherently belligerent, one would be well advised to note that it will take the PRC’s ability to wage large-scale expeditionary warfare to a new level and that it will also enable them to assert their position in international controversies even more firmly than is presently the case. Notes 1 Thomas M. Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 61. 2 Simeon T. Wezeman, ‘China, Russia and the Shifting Landscape of Arms Sales’, SIPRI, July 5, 2017, https://www.sipri.org/commentary/topical-backgrounder/ 2017/china-russia-and-shifting-landscape-arms-sales. 3 Wezeman, ‘China, Russia’. 4 Wezeman, ‘China, Russia’. 5 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 62. 6 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 63. 7 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 87. 8 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 88–9. 9 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 86. 10 William Owens, The Emerging U.S. System-of-Systems, National Defense University Strategic Forum, no. 63 (February 1996), https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/ pdfs/ADA394313.pdf. 11 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 89. 12 Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching, trans. Gia-Fu-Feng and Jane English (New York: Vintage Books, 1972), 103. 13 Tao, Tao Te Ching, 103. 14 Jason Bruzdzinski, Demystifying Shashoujian: China’s ‘Assassin’s Mace’ Concept (The Mitre Corporation, December 2005), https://www.mitre.org/ publications/technical-papers/demystifying-shashoujian-chinas-assassins-maceconcept. 15 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 83. 16 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 83. 17 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 83. 18 Lyle J. Goldstein, ‘True Threat? Meet China’s YJ-18 Supersonic Anti-Ship Cruise Missile’, The National Interest, April 4, 2021, https://nationalinterest. org/blog/reboot/true-threat-meet-china%E2%80%99s-yj-18-supersonic-antiship-cruise-missile-181917. 19 US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2021), 61. https://media.defense.gov/ 2021/Nov/03/2002885874/-1/-1/0/2021-CMPR-FINAL.PDF. 20 Felix K. Chang, ‘China’s Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile Capability in the South China Sea’, Foreign Policy Research Institute, May 24, 2021, https://www.fpri. org/article/2021/05/chinas-anti-ship-ballistic-missile-capability-in-the-southchina-sea/. 21 David Axe, ‘Yes, China Has More Warships Than the USA. That’s Because Chinese Ships Are Small’, Forbes, November 5, 2021, https://www.forbes.com/ sites/davidaxe/2021/11/05/yes-china-has-more-warships-than-the-usa-thatsbecause-chinese-ships-are-small/?sh=b12dd56611d9. 22 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 76. 23 US Department of Defense, China 2021, 162.

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24 Henry Boyd and Tom Waldwyn, ‘China’s Submarine Force: An Overview, Assessing the Size, Strength and Location of China’s Submarine Fleet’, International Institute for Strategic Studies, October 4, 2017, https://www.iiss.org/ en/militarybalanceblog/blogsections/2017-edcc/october-0c50/chinas-submarineforce-1c50. 25 Stephen Chen, ‘China Reveals Secret Programme of Unmanned Drone Submarines Dating Back to 1990s’, South China Morning Post, July 8, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3140220/china-reveals-secretprogramme-unmanned-drone-submarines-dating. 26 Ryan Fedasiuk, ‘Leviathan Wakes: China’s Growing Fleet of Autonomous Undersea Vehicles’, Center for Security and Emerging Technology, August 17, 2021, https://cset.georgetown.edu/article/leviathan-wakes-chinas-growing-fleetof-autonomous-undersea-vehicles/. 27 Ronald O’Rourke, China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities Background and Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service Report: RL33153 (March 2022), 7, https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/RL33153.pdf. 28 Dave Majumdar, ‘Why China’s Nuclear Subs are Subpar’, The National Interest, October 7, 2015, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/why-chinasnuclear-subs-are-subpar-14023. 29 Minnie Chan, ‘Why Chinese Submarines Could Soon Be Quieter Than US Ones: Top Naval Engineer Says New Propulsion System Will Put PLA Navy “Way Ahead” of US’, South China Morning Post, July 4, 2017, http://www.scmp.com/ news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2098986/why-chinese-submarines-couldsoon-be-quieter-us-ones. 30 Chan, ‘Chinese Submarines’. 31 Royal Australian Navy, HMAS Melbourne (II) – Part 2, accessed September 4, 2021, https://www.navy.gov.au/hmas-melbourne-ii-part-2; China Power Project, ‘How Does China’s First Aircraft Carrier Stack Up’? CSIS, updated August 26, 2020, https://chinapower.csis.org/aircraft-carrier/. 32 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 90. 33 Tao Hanzhang, Sun Tzu’s Art of War: The Modern Chinese Interpretation, trans. Yuan Shibing (New York: Sterling Publishing, 1987), 95. 34 China Power Project, ‘How Does China’s First Aircraft Carrier Stack Up?’. 35 O’Rourke, China Naval Modernization, 19. 36 Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy, 91. 37 Yves Heng-Lim, China’s Naval Power: An Offensive Realist Approach (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 44. 38 Winston Lord, Analysis of Secretary Kissinger’s Meeting With Chairman Mao, October 21, 1975 (USC U.S. China Institute), https://china.usc.edu/analysissecretary-kissingers-meeting-chairman-mao-october-21-1975. 39 Kane, ‘China’s “Power-Projection” Capabilities’, passim. 40 Kevin McCauley, Modernization of PLA Logistics: Joint Logistics Support Force, Testimony Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, February 15, 2018, https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/McCauley_Written %20Testimony.pdf. 41 McCauley, Modernization. 42 Minnie Chan, ‘As Overseas Ambitions Expand, China Plans 400% Increase to Marine Corps Numbers, Sources Say’, South China Morning Post, March 13, 2017, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2078245/ overseas-ambitions-expand-china-plans-400pc-increase. 43 Minnie Chan, ‘China Building Navy’s Biggest Amphibious Assault Vessel, Sources Say’, South China Morning Post, updated March 29, 2017, http://www.scmp.

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com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2083109/china-building-navys-biggestamphibious-assault-vessel. Chan, ‘China Building Navy’s Biggest Amphibious’. Chan, ‘China Building Navy’s Biggest Amphibious’. Viola Zhou and Sarah Zheng, ‘China Commissions New Naval Supply Ship’, South China Morning Post, August 1, 2017, http://www.scmp.com/news/china/ diplomacy-defence/article/2105010/china-commissions-new-naval-supply-ship. McCauley, Modernization. McCauley, Modernization. Steven Lee Myers and Jason Gutierrez, ‘With Swarms of Ships, Beijing Tightens Its Grip on South China Sea’, New York Times, April 3, 2021, https://www. nytimes.com/2021/04/03/world/asia/swarms-ships-south-china-sea.html. Zhou and Zheng, ‘China Commissions’. McCauley, Modernization. McCauley, Modernization. Yves Heng-Lim, China’s Naval Power: An Offensive Realist Approach (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 82. Zhou and Zheng, ‘China Commissions’. Zhou and Zheng, ‘China Commissions’. Zhou and Zheng, ‘China Commissions’. Carin Zissis, ‘Modernizing the People’s Liberation Army of China’, Council on Foreign Relations, December 5, 2006, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/ modernizing-peoples-liberation-army-china. Yang Sheng, ‘Reform to Downsize PLA Army, Boost Navy Numbers’, Global Times, July 11, 2017, http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1055927.shtml. Dennis J. Blasko, ‘A New PLA Force Structure’, in The People’s Liberation Army in the Information Age, ed. James C. Mulvenon and Richard H. Yang (Santa Monica: RAND, 1998), 262, https://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_ proceedings/CF145.html#download. Andrew N.D. Yang and Col. Milton Wen-Chung Liao (ret.), ‘PLA Rapid Reaction Forces: Concept, Training and Preliminary Assessment’, in The People’s Liberation Army in the Information Age, ed. James C. Mulvenon and Richard H. Yang (Santa Monica: RAND, 1998), 48–5, https://www.rand.org/pubs/conf_ proceedings/CF145.html#download. Carlo Kopp, ‘The PLA-AF’s Aerial Refuelling Programs’, Air Power Australia, updated April 2012, http://www.ausairpower.net/APA-PLA-Tanker-Programs. html. Reuters Staff, ‘Russia to Deliver 10 SU-35 Fighter Jets to China This Year’, Reuters, May 24, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-china-military/ russia-to-deliver-10-su-35-fighter-jets-to-china-this-year-ifx-idUSKCN1IP0QH. Sebastien Roblin, ‘China’s Air Force: 1,700 Aircraft Ready for War’, National Interest, October 29, 2017, http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/chinas-airforce-1700-combat-aircraft-ready-war-22940. Wendell Minnick, ‘Russia-China Su-35 Deal Raises Reverse Engineering Issue’, Defense News, November 20, 2015, https://www.defensenews.com/air/2015/ 11/20/russia-china-su-35-deal-raises-reverse-engineering-issue. Mark Episkopos, ‘Why China Wants Russia’s Su-57 Stealth Fighter’, National Interest, November 15, 2021, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/whychina-wants-russias-su-57-stealth-fighter-196328. Kristin Huang, ‘Chinese Magazine Praises J-20 Fighter, But Experts Doubt It Can Rule the Skies’, South China Morning Post, September 18, 2021, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3149198/chinese-magazine-praisesj-20-fighter-experts-doubt-it-can-rule.

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67 Minnie Chan, ‘China’s Advanced J-20 Stealth Fighters Are Getting an Engine Upgrade, Source Says’, South China Morning Post, March 15, 2022, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3170433/chinas-advanced-j-20stealth-fighters-are-getting-engine. 68 China Power Project, ‘Does China’s J-20 Rival Other Stealth Fighters?’, CSIS, updated August 26, 2020, https://chinapower.csis.org/china-chengdu-j-20/. 69 Lyle J. Morris and Eric Heginbotham, From Theory to Practice: People’s Liberation Army Air Force Aviation Training at the Operational Unit (Santa Monica: RAND, 2016), passim, https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/ RR1415.html. 70 Mark Cozad and Nathan Beauchamp-Mustafaga, People’s Liberation Army Air Force Operations over Water: Maintaining Relevance in China’s Changing Security Environment (Santa Monica: RAND, 2017), 21–48, https://www.rand. org/pubs/research_reports/RR2057.html. 71 Cortez A. Cooper III, Joint Anti-Access Operations: China’s “System of Systems” Approach (Santa Monica: RAND, 2011), 5, https://www.rand.org/ pubs/testimonies/CT356.html. 72 McCauley, Modernization, passim. 73 McCauley, Modernization, 4. 74 US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2021), 67, https://media.defense.gov/ 2021/Nov/03/2002885874/-1/-1/0/2021-CMPR-FINAL.PDF. 75 McCauley, Modernization, 9. 76 McCauley, Modernization, 9. 77 Shinji Yamaguchi, Yasuyuki Sugiura, Rira Momma, and Yasushi Wada, ‘China: Xi Jinping’s Administration, Proactive Policies at Home and Abroad’, East Asian Strategic Review 2015, no. 1 (May 2015): 99–132, http://www.nids.mod. go.jp/english/publication/east-asian/e2015.html. 78 East Asian Strategic Review 2015, ed. Eiichi Katahara (Tokyo: The National Institute for Defense Studies, 2015), passim, http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/ publication/east-asian/e2015.html; East Asian Strategic Review 2016, ed. Shinji Hyodo (Tokyo: The National Institute for Defense Studies, 2016), passim, http:// www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/publication/east-asian/e2016.html; East Asian Strategic Review 2017, ed. Shinji Hyodo (Tokyo: The National Institute for Defense Studies, 2017), passim, http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/publication/east-asian/e2017. html. 79 Masayuki Masuda, ‘China: Quest for a Great Power Role’, East Asian Strategic Review 2017, no. 1 (May 2017): 96, http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/ publication/east-asian/pdf/2017/east-asian_e2017_03.pdf. 80 Masuda, ‘China: Quest for Great Power’, 95–7. 81 US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2010 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2010), 2, https://www.hsdl.org/? abstract&did=4498. 82 US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2014 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2014), 7, https://www.globalsecurity. org/military/library/report/2014/2014-prc-military-security.pdf 83 David C. Logan, ‘The Evolution of the PLA’s Red-Blue Exercises’, Jamestown Foundation China Brief 17, no. 4 (March 2017), passim, https://jamestown.org/ program/evolution-plas-red-blue-exercises/.

The New PLA 99 84 US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2019 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2019), 23, https://media.defense.gov/ 2019/May/02/2002127082/-1/-1/1/2019_CHINA_MILITARY_POWER_ REPORT.pdf. 85 US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2013 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2013), 1, https://dod.defense.gov/ Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2013_China_Report_FINAL.pdf. 86 US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2020 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2020), 169, https://media.defense.gov/ 2020/Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/2020-DOD-CHINA-MILITARY-POWERREPORT-FINAL.PDF. 87 US Department of Defense, China 2020, 2. 88 Minnie Chan, ‘Drills with Russia Put Chinese Navy to the Test in Unfamiliar Waters’, South China Morning Post, September 14, 2017, http://www.scmp. com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2111231/drills-russia-put-chinesenavy-test-unfamiliar-waters. 89 Magnus Nordenman, ‘China and Russia’s Joint Sea 2017 Baltic Naval Exercise Highlight a New Normal in Europe’, USNI News, July 5, 2017, https://news. usni.org/2017/07/05/china-russias-baltic-naval-exercise-highlight-new-normaleuropean-maritime. 90 Nordenman, ‘Join Sea 2017’. 91 Chan, ‘Drills with Russia’. 92 ‘Russia, China to Hold Joint Computer-Assisted Missile Defense Drill’, Tass, 17 November 17, 2017, http://tass.com/defense/976152. 93 M. Taylor Fravel, ‘China’s Nuclear Strategy Since 1964’, in Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy since 1949 (Princeton University Press, 2019), 237. 94 Fravel, ‘China’s Nuclear Strategy’, 243. 95 Michael Krepon, ‘Mao on the Bomb’, Arms Control Wonk, February 9, 2014, https://www.armscontrolwonk.com/archive/404038/mao-on-the-bomb/. 96 Matt Korda and Hans Kristensen, ‘A Closer Look at China’s Missile Silo Construction’, Federation of American Scientists, November 2, 2021, https://fas. org/blogs/security/2021/11/a-closer-look-at-chinas-missile-silo-construction/. 97 Hans Kristensen, ‘New Missile Silo And DF-41 Launchers Seen in Chinese Nuclear Missile Training Area’, Federation of American Scientists, September 3, 2019, https://fas.org/blogs/security/2019/09/china-silo-df41/. 98 Joe Gould, ‘China Plans to Double Nuclear Arsenal, Pentagon Says’, Defense News, September 1, 2020, https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2020/09/01/ china-planning-to-double-nuclear-arsenal-pentagon-says/. 99 Liu Zhen and Kristin Huang, ‘Is China Building a Vast Network of Nuclear Missile Silos?’, South China Morning Post, July 2, 2021, https://www.scmp. com/news/china/military/article/3139667/china-building-vast-network-nuclearmissile-silos. 100 Mike Yeo and Robert Burns, ‘Pentagon Warns of China’s Progress Toward Nuclear Triad’, Military Times, November 3, 2021, https://www.militarytimes. com/news/pentagon-congress/2021/11/03/pentagon-chinese-nuke-force-growingfaster-than-predicted/. 101 US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2021), 90, https://media.defense.gov/ 2021/Nov/03/2002885874/-1/-1/0/2021-CMPR-FINAL.PDF.

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102 Ethan Kim Lieser, ‘Meet the New Xian H-20: China’s Stealth Bomber?’, 1945, April 10, 2022, https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/04/meet-the-new-xian-h-20chinas-stealth-bomber/. 103 Kristin Huang, ‘China’s Mysterious H-20 Strategic Bomber ‘May Be Able to Strike Second Island Chain”, South China Morning Post, May 25, 2021, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3134609/chinas-mysterious-h-20strategic-bomber-may-be-able-strike. 104 Yeo and Burns, ‘Pentagon Warns’. 105 Minnie Chan, ‘China’s New Nuclear Submarine Missiles Expand Range in US: Analysts’, South China Morning Post, May 2, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/ news/china/military/article/3131873/chinas-new-nuclear-submarine-missilesexpand-range-us-analysts. 106 Robert Delaney, ‘US Accuses China of Deviating from ‘Minimal Nuclear Deterrence’ Strategy’, South China Morning Post, October 19, 2021, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3152806/us-accuses-china-droppingminimal-nuclear-deterrence-strategy. 107 Stephen Chen, ‘Explainer: What Are Hypersonic Weapons, and Why Is There a Race Between China, the US and Others to Develop Them?’, South China Morning Post, January 24, 2022, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/ article/3164444/what-are-hypersonic-weapons-and-why-there-race-betweenchina-us. 108 Kristin Huang, ‘US Satellite Could Detect Chinese Hypersonic Missiles, but Could It Stop Them?’, South China Morning Post, December 23, 2021, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3160869/us-satellite-could-detectchinese-hypersonic-missiles-could-it. 109 ‘Global Nuclear Arsenals Grow as States Continue to Modernize–New SIPRI Yearbook Out Now’, SIPRI, June 14, 2021, https://sipri.org/media/press-release/ 2021/global-nuclear-arsenals-grow-states-continue-modernize-new-sipri-yearbookout-now. 110 Fravel, ‘China’s Nuclear Strategy’, 237. 111 Ken Moritsugu, ‘China Denies US Report It’s Rapidly Growing Its Nuclear Arms’, Defense News, January 6, 2022, https://www.defensenews.com/global/ asia-pacific/2022/01/06/china-denies-us-report-its-rapidly-growing-its-nucleararms/. 112 ‘World Nuclear Forces’, in SIPRI Yearbook 2021 (September 2021), 334, https://sipri.org/sites/default/files/2021-06/yb21_10_wnf_210613.pdf. 113 Edward Geist, ‘The U.S. Doesn’t Need More Nuclear Weapons to Counter China’s New Missile Silos’, Rand Blog, October 18, 2021, https://www.rand. org/blog/2021/10/the-us-doesnt-need-more-nuclear-weapons-to-counter.html.

5

Shadow Security Chinese Strategy in the Cyber, Intelligence and Information Domains

Given the PRC leadership’s interest in information warfare, one must presume that Chinese authorities have noted the strategic importance of the notional environment generated by interaction among data-processing devices and commonly known as cyberspace. If one is to believe influential Western writings on the subject, preparations for cyberwarfare are essential to any 21st-century nation’s security. Strategic theorist Colin S. Gray cites colleagues who compare the disruptive potential of online disputes to that of nuclear war.1 Although Gray believes that these colleagues overstate their case, he takes their arguments seriously enough to answer at length. Therefore, if one is interested in Chinese grand strategy, one must ask how the Chinese leadership is responding to the advent of the virtual world. Any answer to this question must be qualified, for two reasons. The first reason is that the strategic significance of cyberspace is controversial. Even those who take the idea of cyberwarfare seriously must concede that the term implies different things to different people. Meanwhile, Gray makes the case that cyberspace is overrated as a medium of international conflict.2 Strategic theorist Martin Libicki of the American Air University makes similar arguments.3 Therefore, in order to describe the PRC’s cyber strategy, one must take a position on what the term cyber strategy might mean. The second reason why one must frame any argument about any country’s strategic approach to cyberspace carefully is that reliable information on the subject is unusually difficult to obtain. One of the distinguishing features of cyberspace is that it is exceptionally easy for actors to conceal their activities. Although there have been several widely reported computer intrusions coinciding with international conflicts, it remains impossible to identify the perpetrators with certainty. If it is difficult to trace actual cyberattacks, it is even more challenging to guess what preparations a country may be making for hypothetical cyber conflict in the future. With these caveats, one may note that the PRC’s approach to cyber security appears well coordinated with other elements of its grand strategy. Reports by reputable firms, governments and news sources suggest that the PRC has taken advantage of opportunities to use cyber-enabled methods to advance its national agenda. The PRC’s alleged online activities appear to DOI: 10.4324/9781315387383-5

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support its other policies and vice versa. Moreover, just as Beijing appears to have progressively modified its military, economic and diplomatic programs to reflect its developing economy and its increasing influence in the world, it also appears to have kept its cyber activities up to date with its circumstances. The Chinese leadership also seems to have a realistic sense of what cyber enabled methods can and cannot do. Beijing has distanced itself from so-called hacking in ways that suggest a sensible awareness of such methods’ limitations, or at least of their potential to backfire politically. Indeed, despite reports from American Internet security companies indicating that cyber enabled methods of intelligence collection have served the PRC well, those same corporations also present persuasive evidence that, at times, Beijing has been surprisingly willing to practice restraint. Such behaviour is laudable, but it may also suggest that the Chinese leadership considers its own political system peculiarly vulnerable to cybernetically enabled subversion. This observation may give one insight into the Chinese leadership’s approach to making grand strategy, and into the future challenges which their strategy may face. The next section after this introduction will explore the strategic uses of cyberspace in theoretical terms. A third section will discuss the PRC’s stance on offensive action in cyberspace, a fourth will discuss intelligence operations and a fifth will discuss hacking attempts targeted at media organisations. The sixth section discusses the PRC’s advocacy of international treaties to limit conflict in cyberspace, and Beijing’s attempts to police the Internet in China. Finally, a conclusion draws together the findings of this chapter. What Is Cyberspace for? To assess the PRC’s strategy for using cyberspace, one must understand what such a strategy might accomplish, and what alternative courses of action the Chinese leadership might have considered instead. The published literature on strategic thought provides little guidance on these issues. Gray and Libicki have reviewed the relevant works and concluded that no one has presented a compelling explanation of how cyberspace fits into strategy.4 Therefore, those who wish to explore this topic must begin at the beginning and engage in some theorising of their own. This section explores four plausible perspectives on the strategic significance of cyberspace and conclude that the most useful way of understanding the matter is to think of the Internet as a medium for intelligence collection and sabotage. Moreover, there are reasons to believe that the Chinese leadership has reached a similar conclusion. The simplest way to understand the strategic significance of the Internet is to view cyber strategy as an extension of intelligence operations. Even the most curmudgeonly observers of contemporary technology must concede that the Internet provides access to a great quantity of valuable information.

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CIA veteran Sherman Kent’s claim that over 90% of all strategically useful intelligence is freely available from public sources is more credible in the 21st century than ever. One needn’t look further than the role open-source intelligence groups such as Bellingcat have played in charting the narrative surrounding numerous international conflicts to verify Kent’s claim. Moreover, governments and private organisations alike routinely store even confidential data electronically. A succession of well-publicised breaches demonstrate that it is often possible for so-called hackers to access that data illicitly. This way of understanding cyber strategy has many virtues for both scholars and practitioners. To begin with, it requires no controversial assumptions about the capabilities of contemporary technology. We already know that it is possible to acquire data online. Furthermore, intelligence theorists and intelligence professionals are already used to the fact that it is possible to collect strategically useful information from a wide variety of sources, many of which rely on advanced electronic technology. Adding Internet-based intelligence (which the Canadian police forces have aptly dubbed INTINT) to the mix does not appear to upset either established theories or established practices in any significant way.5 Moreover, it is reasonable to propose that most contemporary political and military leaders regard intelligence as valuable, and therefore it is reasonable to believe that they will take full advantage of cyber enabled means of collecting it. Much of the time, the first perspective on the nature of cyber strategy will be appropriate. Nevertheless, the model of cyber strategy which equates cyber operations with intelligence glosses over some of the ways in which strategists might make use of the Internet. The fact that the Internet provides countries with an abundant new source of intelligence is not why some commentators compare cyber conflict to nuclear war. Cyberspace acquires its apocalyptic potential when users rely on the Internet for essential transactions such as banking, when they store important records on computers without maintaining offline backups and when they connect control systems for such vital infrastructure as electrical power grids to externally accessible networks. As people make themselves dependent on cyberspace in such ways, they potentially give hackers opportunities to disrupt their societies. When armed forces take advantage of the Internet, they too run the risk of having their online systems disabled or turned against them. Thus, there is a second way of understanding cyber strategy – one which emphasises the directly offensive potential of cyber operations. From this perspective, it becomes possible to use the expression ‘cyberattack’ or ‘cyber offensive’ in a literal sense. Clausewitz usefully defined an offensive battle as one in which one takes the initiative.6 Elsewhere, Clausewitz states that the ultimate goal of strategic attack is to subjugate the enemy, that attackers achieve this objective through the means of destroying the enemy’s forces, and that it is possible to erode opposing forces’ combat effectiveness

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indirectly through such means as depriving them of valuable territory.7 As of the early 21st century, it is realistic to envision situations in which hostile parties initiate online operations that harm their enemies in ways which indirectly weaken opposing military forces and ultimately contribute to creating a situation in which opposing governments offer concessions. Such a scenario is often referred to by strategists as a fait accompli. James J. Wirtz of the Naval Postgraduate School has written authoritatively on the subject.8 This is more than a semantic point. The concept of the attack is almost unarguably essential to the logic of strategy. Therefore, if it has become possible to execute an attack through a new medium, it has become possible to construct effective military strategies in new ways. This invites us to explore the distinct characteristics of online attacks which make them strategically useful. Some of these characteristics do, indeed, present points of comparison between cyber operations and nuclear warfighting. One of the distinguishing features of nuclear strategy is that it is generally synonymous with air and missile strategy. Cyberattacks, like ballistic missile strikes, can take place at long range with minimal warning. Moreover, those who plan for nuclear war are well advised to remember that even the most restrained use of nuclear weapons is likely to cause panic. A large-scale cyberattack would probably achieve its most significant results through social disruption. Another point of comparison between cyber war and nuclear war is that, in both cases, virtually everyone feels vulnerable. There are, of course, steps which governments and others can take to reduce their vulnerability. This holds true in both cases as well. One can take measures to make it more difficult for enemy hackers to penetrate one’s computer networks, and one can also dig fallout shelters. Nevertheless, as of the early 21st century, there is a widespread and probably well-founded belief that all such protective measures are fallible. Perhaps for these reasons, certain commentators speculate that national leaders are basing online strategies upon familiar concepts of mutual deterrence. Researchers Max Smeets and Stefan Soesanto review literature on this topic for the Council on Foreign Relations.9 If so, one should note that cyber deterrence has apparently failed to maintain cyber peace. One is free to decide whether this indicates that the widely held assumption that mutual vulnerability promotes mutual restraint is flawed, or whether it merely indicates that political actors find it easier to gamble with the risk of a network crash than with the risk of nuclear annihilation. One could, upon considering these points, conclude that cyberattack is a uniquely valuable tool which all 21st-century strategists will wish to have at their disposal. Libicki and Gray remind us that there are serious limits to this tool’s usefulness. Gray, for instance, stresses the point that cyberattacks can never directly destroy anything but information.10 Information has a dubious reputation among writers on strategy and war. Clausewitz went so far as to suggest that military commanders perform more effectively without

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it, and although the Prussian undoubtedly intended for readers to understand this claim in a highly specific context, the fact remains that physical force is decisive in a way that data are not.11 Libicki adds that cyberattacks only work under specific circumstances. For hackers to gain unauthorised access to an opponent’s computer network, he explains, they must typically take advantage of a design flaw in that network’s hardware or software.12 Such flaws are often referred to as ‘zeroday vulnerabilities’ or ‘exploits’ that a vendor is unaware of. However, one may note that vulnerabilities may also be deliberately introduced into a system by its creator. In this case, such flaws are sometimes referred to as ‘backdoors’. If appropriate design flaws do not exist, corresponding types of cyberattack become impossible. Once the network operators become aware of the flaw, they have the opportunity to correct it, and thus, as Gray also observes, no specific method of cyberattack against a given system should succeed more than once.13 More generally, Libicki notes, those who are concerned about cyberattack can reduce their risk using pre-digital forms of technology and shielding sensitive systems from external input.14 As Libicki points out, those who wish to attack enemy military forces’ information infrastructure may achieve greater results more consistently using time-tested methods of electronic warfare such as radio frequency jamming.15 For these reasons, Libicki judges cyberattack to be unreliable as an instrument of strategy. Gray summarises the conclusions of this third and more sceptical perspective on cyber strategy when he advises readers to think of cyberattack as a mere ‘enabler’ of action by traditional forces.16 Gray and Libicki’s perspective is, however, most relevant to strategy in the narrowest sense of the word. If one conceives of strategy as a level of war planning above operations but below state policy, then one must agree that cyberattack is unlikely to accomplish anything decisive against a reasonably well-prepared enemy. This book, however, is about grand strategy, which takes place in peace as well as war and involves all elements of a state or other political actor’s power. At that level of planning, cyberattackers have a wider range of options. To begin with, many peacetime political leaders will prove more riskaverse than military commanders in time of war. Although a cyberattack which temporarily cuts off electric power to a medium-sized city might not prevent troops from mobilising or bombers from carrying out their missions, many governments would go to some length to avoid one. Moreover, although Libicki is unquestionably correct when he observes that no one is under any obligation to place their armed forces at risk of cyberattack by connecting militarily critical systems to electronically mediated networks, the facts remain that many socially and economically critical institutions currently do perform essential functions over the Internet, that many of them are privately managed and thus at least marginally more difficult for state authorities to monitor, that many of them practice inadequate security

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procedures, and that it would require daunting amounts of time and IT skill to raise any country’s general level of resistance to cyberattack, even if any central authority had the mandate to do so. Lawmakers such as US Senator Angus King, Co-Chair of the Cyberspace Solarium Commission, have tried for years to implement policy along those lines, but with only limited success. Although one might hope, a la Gray, that no cyberattack against friendly military forces would succeed more than once, it is a reality that malware and online scams survive in the civilian Internet indefinitely, claiming new victims long after those who happen to be attuned to such threats have taken measures to counter them. This suggests a fourth perspective on cyber strategy. The most appropriate concept for understanding cyberattack may be, not nuclear deterrence or offensive operations in so-called conventional war, but sabotage. Like hackers, saboteurs rely on their enemies’ lapses in security. The effects of sabotage, like the effects of hacking, are normally modest and short-lived. Countermeasures are usually effective against both. Nevertheless, under favourable circumstances, saboteurs can inflict significant damage in places which other forces are politically or physically unable to attack. In 1916, to pick a well-known example, a pair of explosions destroyed over two million pounds of munitions on Black Tom Island off New York City, thus keeping them out of the hands of the Allied Powers in the ongoing First World War.17 This clearly benefited Germany, and as Sam Roberts of the New York Times reports, an international tribunal eventually convicted the German secret services of destroying the Black Tom facilities in a deliberate attack.18 At the time, however, New York City authorities had no clear evidence that the explosion was deliberate and no certain way to identify the perpetrators.19 Since America was officially neutral in the First World War at that time, and since Germany had an interest in avoiding any incident which might have provoked the United States into entering the war, anonymity suited Berlin’s purposes well. Moreover, long-range zeppelins notwithstanding, the German armed forces would have found it challenging to reach New York by any other means. The distinctive characteristics of the Internet have the potential to make computer-assisted sabotage particularly effective. As of the early 21st century, cyberattacks are easier to carry out anonymously than bombings. The fact that cyberattacks are typically bloodless may further reduce the risk that victims will make the effort to identify the perpetrators and retaliate. Moreover, if hackers manage to find suitable vulnerabilities in widely used software applications, they can affect larger numbers of people over wider geographical areas than individual saboteurs could normally expect to harm in a physical attack. Thus, the best way to account for the strategic possibilities of the Internet – and to analyse the ways in which others are using the Internet in practice – may be to recognise that most cyber operations are primarily intelligence collection operations while remaining cognizant of the parallels between

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hacking and sabotage. This approach may be particularly relevant for those who are interested in China. China’s political establishment appears to be acutely sensitive to the strategic potential of sabotage, and the dangers it poses to their country. The preamble to the PRC’s 1982 constitution recounts how the Chinese army and people have historically thwarted ‘aggression, sabotage and armed provocation’, implying that Beijing perceives sabotage as a threat comparable to military invasion.20 Also noteworthy is the fact that the PRC defines the term sabotage to include political subversion. Article 1 of the 1982 constitution specifically prohibits ‘sabotage’ of China’s socialist system.21 Other Communist governments have taken a similar view of the matter. KGB defector Peter Deriabin and US intelligence officer T.H. Bagley write of the Soviet Union’s broad definition of sabotage.22 The Internet is an ideal medium for disseminating propaganda and organising dissent. Therefore, if one views so-called political sabotage as a serious threat, one returns to the view that although Gray and Libicki’s points are well-taken, cyberattack is a potentially effective instrument of strategy. Since cyberattacks are relatively safe and inexpensive to carry out, this instrument is likely to be used. Therefore, acts of aggression are likely to become more common. All societies will suffer their effects – but some may find them particularly difficult to deal with. Under such circumstances, governments might find a mutual interest in concluding international agreements to limit cyber conflict. The Better Part of Valour? China and Cyberattack As the previous section has noted, one of the first questions which anyone who wishes to construct a cyber strategy must answer is whether cyberspace offers users a viable way to carry out an attack. In at least one well-reported incident, senior Chinese military commanders have answered this question with a clear yes. In practice, however, Chinese policies suggest that the Chinese leadership is also aware of the potential limitations of cyberattack. What remains of this section reviews what Chinese generals have said, and what publicly available information reveals about their practice. One of the clearest examples of the PRC political establishment’s public position on the offensive potential of cyberspace took place at a conference between officers of the Chinese and American armed forces in early 2013. At that conference, a Chinese general stated that cyberattacks could be as devastating as nuclear weapons.23 Those interested in the theoretical issues related to cyber strategy may note that this general is one of the more credible military thinkers to make this claim, and that Libicki responded to him directly in his own treatment of the subject.24 One may also recall that PLA colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui wrote extensively about the potential of what they referred to as network attacks to disrupt modern societies in their book Unrestricted Warfare.25

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One may safely assume that Chinese officers who speak on these matters in public choose their words carefully. Therefore, one may assume that the general and the colonels conveyed a message which the Chinese military establishment wishes to propagate. One may, therefore, ask how this message serves Beijing’s purposes. Like most politically charged messages, it is likely to have multiple levels of meaning. At one level, PRC officers who make grand claims about the potential of cyberattack are simply presenting informed opinions about a matter of professional interest. One may evaluate their arguments in the same spirit of objectivity with which one evaluates a surgeon’s arguments about a new technique for performing an operation. Nevertheless, since warfare is competitive in a way that surgery is not, one may also ask what impression PRC officers might be attempting to make on potential allies and potential opponents. A straightforward way of answering this question would be to suggest that the Chinese officers are putting friends and foes alike on notice that they are aware of a powerful new weapon, and that they are probably capable of using it. Another way in which a nation might demonstrate its readiness for cyber conflict might be to fire a warning shot. At this point, one should note that the PRC government has never openly taken such a step. There is no conclusive evidence to prove that it has done so covertly. Media sources have, however, reported incidents in which Chinese citizens claim to have acted on their own initiative to avenge perceived slights against their country. These individuals claim to have acted for patriotic reasons. Nevertheless, they also maintain that they acted as members of private activist organisations, without government support.26 The South China Morning Post reports that, circa 2001, these hackers numbered over 80,000.27 Suspected targets have included the US White House, along with journalists, political organisations and others in countries ranging from Iran to Japan.28 The PRC’s hacker organisations may, indeed, be self-organised and selfdirecting. Nevertheless, the fact that at least one Chinese businessman has identified himself as a former member to reporters for a Hong Kong publication without any visible fear for his career suggests that Beijing is willing to tolerate such groups’ existence. Moreover, Reuters reports that, circa. 2010, the PRC’s hacker community marketed online training courses in intrusion techniques.29 If reporters were able to uncover these educational opportunities, one might reasonably assume that the PRC’s police were capable of uncovering them as well. Whether or not the PRC government willingly condones patriotic hacking, the fact that its citizens are so ready to practice it affects Beijing’s relations with international businesses and foreign states. Those who are vulnerable to cyberattack are well advised to treat China with respect. Earlier sections suggested that Chinese military officers are attempting to present the PRC as an online force to be reckoned with. If so, the existence of the patriotic hackers works in their favour.

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The patriotic hackers’ goals seem closely aligned with those of the government. One notes, for instance, that one of the best-known hacking organisations adopted the name Red Honker Union.30 The fact that members identified themselves as ‘red’ suggests that they are not only Chinese nationalists, but that they share the ideology of the present regime. On a related note, Wun Nan of the SCMP claims that the patriotic hackers who attacked American targets circa 2001 took inspiration from anti-foreign statements in the ‘mainstream media’.31 This presumably refers to the mainstream media of the PRC, which is heavily influenced by the state. One might well describe the hackers as militant conformists. Indeed, the Beijing authorities are entitled to find the patriotic hacking movement encouraging for reasons that go beyond cyber strategy. The fact that tens of thousands of computer experts are willing to go to such lengths to support the PRC for no direct material reward suggests that the Communist regime enjoys considerable goodwill within an economically and perhaps militarily crucial sector of its population. Moreover, this goodwill appears to run deep. The same skills which allow hackers to carry out crossborder cyberattacks also allow them to access news from outside China. They are, in other words, exceptionally well equipped to question the PRC government, and yet many of them appear to be making a well-informed decision to champion its principles. There may still be occasions in which the PRC government finds its citizens’ online activism embarrassing. Fortunately for Beijing, at least some of the patriotic hackers appear willing to take direction. One veteran of the hacking movement informs the South China Morning Post that, approximately a year into his online campaign against America, authorities instructed him to desist.32 The fact that he reports the incident so freely suggests that he complied. Even if other hackers prove less tractable, the fact that they are acting as private citizens allows Beijing to deny responsibility for their actions. As one assesses the strategic significance of China’s patriotic hackers, it is worth noting that cyberspace is not the only environment in which citizens take international politics into their own hands. Individuals from a variety of East Asian countries use small civilian vessels such as fishing boats to assert their governments’ territorial claims in such disputed regions as the South China and East China seas. On some occasions, Chinese citizens have challenged other states’ claims, and on others, PRC-claimed regions have been the target. Just as one is entitled to suspect that the PRC is capable of suppressing patriotic hacking more effectively than it chooses to suppress it in practice, one is entitled to suspect that East Asian countries could do more to discourage maritime militancy. Oceangoing activists presumably use harbour facilities in their home countries, where they are presumably subject to the same monitoring and regulatory measures as other seafarers. Moreover, a government that was determined to discourage its citizens from challenging other states’ territorial claims would presumably leave those who cross

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into contested waters to the devices of foreign maritime security forces. Individuals who are arrested in foreign countries cannot normally rely on their own governments to rescue them. Nevertheless, there have been a series of well-publicised incidents in which East Asian states have sent naval vessels to the aid of civilian sailors at risk of apprehension in disputed waters. For the sake of accuracy, one should note that the civilian sailors involved in these disputes have not all been politically motivated. Many have simply been fishing in waters which their own countries’ laws granted them every right to be in. By most moral and legal standards, such behaviour is innocent. Nevertheless, these sailors have acted to challenge foreign governments. Thus, they have offered themselves up as instruments of foreign policy. Although their governments may not have solicited such offers, neither have their governments unequivocally declined. Therefore, one may ask why a government might tolerate the activities of hackers, activists and enterprising fishermen. One reason may be that law enforcement authorities simply do not see the task of suppressing minor crimes against unpopular foreign countries as a priority. In the case of the fishing incidents, law enforcement authorities in the fishermen’s home countries presumably did not even see sailing in what their nation claims as its own territorial waters as a crime. Another possible reason why state institutions accept grass-roots support in international disputes is that private individuals can get away with things that would be excessively provocative if governments did them directly. This, however, invites one to ask why a government would be shy about provoking its opponents. One reason might be that although the regimes in question are at odds on certain issues, they recognise a mutual interest in cooperating on others. Thus, they may wish to avoid actions which might destroy their relationship. This is almost certainly relevant to both the East Asian territorial disputes and to the disputes in which Chinese citizens claim to have engaged in patriotic cyberwar. Another reason why governments might refrain from excessively provocative action is that state leaders may lack confidence in their ability to force a direct conflict to a satisfactory conclusion. Since the PRC’s opponents in its maritime territorial disputes typically enjoy qualified support from the United States, Chinese authorities are highly reluctant to allow confrontations in contested waters to escalate too far. This may explain why, even when the PRC has introduced warships into such confrontations, it has often relied on small vessels which are visibly incapable of resolving the situation through direct action. Although the PRC leadership’s decisions to deploy small warships carry symbolic significance, they simultaneously communicate the message that their significance is nothing other than symbolic. Libicki would suggest that governments are no more likely to achieve decisive victories against competent opponents through cyberattack than the PRC is likely to achieve a satisfactory outcome in a sea battle with an American fleet. And although the PRC’s military modernisation programme

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is continually improving Beijing’s chances in a naval war, Libicki sees no reason to assume that cyber weapons will ever be significantly more effective than they already are. If Libicki is right, any government which chooses to engage in cyberattack would be well advised to take measures to distance itself from the outcome, not only because the attack is likely to cause diplomatic offense, but because the attack is unlikely to do anything significantly more damaging, and because if the victims refuse to capitulate, there may not be any cybernetic way for the attackers to renew their assault. One of the greatest risks of waging cyberwarfare may be embarrassment. Despite the fact that Chinese military officers have discussed cyberwarfare in such sensational terms, the PRC leadership has conducted itself as if it agrees with Libicki. Even when one takes patriotic hacking into account, conflicts involving China have been comparatively quiet on the cyber front. In the first two decades of the 21st century, cyberattackers have disrupted Estonia’s banking system, Ukraine’s electrical grid and, allegedly, Iran’s uranium processing facilities. Although the perpetrators of these attacks remain anonymous, all the incidents in question took place in the midst of international disputes, suggesting a political motive. Nothing comparable has taken place in the PRC’s territorial disputes with such rivals as Japan, India and the Philippines, even when those conflicts became tense enough to involve military confrontations. Taiwan’s infrastructure has also continued to function. It’s Who You Know: China, Intelligence and the Internet in the Early 21st Century This is not to say that the PRC has remained strategically aloof from cyberspace. To the contrary, the cybersecurity firm Mandiant alleged in 2013 that one of the world’s ‘most prolific’ perpetrators of online intrusions as measured by volume of information stolen is none other than the Second Bureau of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff Department’s Third Department, also known as Unit 61398.33 Mandiant refers to this unit as Advanced Persistent Threat One (APT-1) and has since published numerous updated profiles of APT-1.34 In addition, Mandiant alleges that since it began tracking Chinese cyber espionage activities, it has observed a total of 244 unique threat actors, 36 of which continue to operate out of the PRC.35 To further complicate matters, each Chinese APT that Mandiant has identified appears to operate according to distinct mission sets which characterise the thematic sectors they target most and each’s preferred method of cyber infiltration.36 Mandiant is not alone in making such accusations. Taiwan News quotes the director of the ROC’s Department of Cyber Security as alleging that hackers attack Taiwanese government websites 20–40 million times per month.37 The director attributes most of these attacks to the PRC. Franz-Stefan Gady of The Diplomat quotes Japan’s National Institute of Information Communications Technology as reporting that 40% of the estimated 25 million cyberattacks

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against Japanese targets in 2014 originated in China.38 In 2019, US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) Director Christopher Wray famously commented that the ‘FBI [opens] a new China-related counterintelligence case about every 10 hours’.39 If public allegations of this type are any guide, Chinese hackers appear to be focusing their efforts on collecting information rather than directly inflicting harm. Mandiant’s analysis supports this claim. The analysis notes, for instance, that APT-1 follows a well-established operating procedure apparently designed to steal the largest possible volume of data.40 Mandiant’s assessments of other major Chinese APTs concur. Thus, those who accept Gray and Libicki’s conservative views regarding the warfighting potential of online conflict are entitled to infer that the PRC authorities agree with them. Mandiant also explores in depth the type of data that China’s APTs appear to be seeking. According to Mandiant, APT-1 attacks a wide variety of organisations throughout the English-speaking world.41 Although Mandiant presents data indicating that over 80% of the known incidents identified with APT-1 took place in the United States, Mandiant analysts do not allege that Chinese hackers are targeting Americans for political reasons.42 To the contrary, the analysts suggest that APT-1’s choice of targets is exceptionally broad.43 No particular organisation – and presumably no particular nation’s organisations – appear to have been singled out. Since the PRC restructured its defence establishment in 2016, and most of China’s espionage activities were consolidated under the PLA Strategic Support Force, it appears that China’s hacking efforts have only become more utilitarian. Mandiant observes in its 2019 M-Trends report on global cybersecurity threats that the focus of Chinese cyber intrusions has in many ways shifted over the last decade from the United States to countries and entities connected to the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative.44 APT-40, for example, is one prolific Chinese hacking entity that appears to prioritise regional political intelligence from China’s neighbours in Southeast Asia in addition to targeting international research institutions in pursuit of advanced naval technology.45 Another group, APT-30, exclusively targets members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).46 Noting that, as of 2021, roughly 15% of entities infiltrated by Chinese APTs reside in the United States, those who contend that the United States remains a core strategic target of Chinese cyber espionage would not be without substantiation.47 However, it is useful to note that China has diversified its target pool and adjusted its hacking priorities according to evolving interests and concerns over the years. China’s APTs do not appear to be working against any particular enemy, but they do appear to be working towards defined objectives. As Mandiant analysts noted in 2013, the PRC set itself a goal of developing seven so-called ‘strategic emerging industries’ in its 12th five-year plan.48 Mandiant found that APT-1 concentrated most on gleaning information from foreign businesses engaged in these so-called strategic industries. Mandiant’s analysts noted dryly that such information would obviously be valuable to Chinese

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corporations – many of which are state-owned.49 Since 2013, the breadth and sophistication of China’s cyber intrusions has advanced and its strategic priorities have evolved, but Mandiant continues to observe that the targets of Chinese hacking are informed predominantly by official state priorities such as five-year plans, defence white papers and significant economic initiatives.50 Just as APT-1 seemed intent on gathering intelligence pertaining to US product development and manufacturing procedures during the first decade of the 21st century, younger groups, such as APT-10, tend to focus on industries connected to the national security sector, such as engineering, Internet technology, aerospace and telecommunications.51 These trends suggest that Beijing tasks its cyberspies strategically, according to national objectives. The US office of the Director of National Intelligence has released public reports making similar allegations.52 Meanwhile, according to testimony presented before the US Congress, the PRC’s traditional intelligence services have been pursuing goals that align with its cyber activities. In 2008, the US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security held a hearing on the enforcement of federal espionage laws. Robert C. Scott, the chairman of the subcommittee, opened the proceedings by characterising early 21st-century espionage as ‘technology targeting’ and declaring that it was inherently different from the intelligence operations of the Cold War.53 In this hearing, Larry Wortzel, a veteran intelligence officer then serving as chairman of the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission explored the PRC’s approach to post-Cold War espionage in detail. Just as Mandiant suggests that China’s APTs tend to pursue the military and economic objectives set out in the PRC’s five-year plans and other strategic initiatives, Wortzel suggests that the PRC’s traditional human intelligence organisations spent the first decade of the 21st century pursuing objectives set out in a Chinese initiative launched in 1986 and known as the 863 Program.54 The 863 Program aims to acquire technology for both commercial and military purposes. Wortzel stressed the point that, for practical purposes, the PRC’s military and industrial development activities are so closely intertwined that it is impossible to distinguish between them. Elsewhere, Wortzel cited statements by US Immigration and Customs officials identifying the PRC as the primary threat to American technical secrets. Wortzel obtained these statements from the US Department of Defense’s 2007 report on the Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, but more recent testimony in front of the US Senate Committee on Armed Services indicates little has changed. In 2021, the Hoover Institution’s Matt Pottinger argued that the PRC’s espionage efforts have only become more focused on advancing its own strategic ambitions while degrading US power and influence.55 Another parallel between alleged Chinese cyberattacks and alleged Chinese human intelligence operations is that both are sometimes the work of private citizens. Previous sections have discussed the PRC’s patriotic

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hackers, who admit their existence but deny any connection to the government. Even when it comes to highly established and proficient hacking groups, such as APT-41, it is difficult to distinguish which activities are statesponsored and which are motivated by private political or financial interests.56 Similarly, Wortzel entertains the idea that one well-publicised spy case involving sophisticated espionage tradecraft could have been the work, not of the PRC government, but of a Chinese university research institute. At a different point in the subcommittee hearing, David G. Major, president of the Center for Counterintelligence and Security Studies, claimed that so many nominally private Chinese organisations engage in what Congressman J. Randy Forbes characterised as ‘espionage activities’ that American law enforcement authorities face a resource problem in attempting to monitor them. One may also note that if Forbes and Major are right, the PRC government has found a way to leverage its own intelligence collection resources effectively. As Chapter 7 explores in greater detail, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has, in recent years, increasingly inserted itself in the management and affairs of nominally private organisations and enterprises, allowing it to mould the activities of otherwise apolitical actors to align with the PRC’s strategic objectives. Mandiant’s claim that the cyber branch of the PRC’s armed forces is operating in support of recent five-year plans and Wortzel’s corresponding claim that the PRC intelligence services are operating in support of the 863 Program support this book’s overall argument that Beijing is doing a relatively effective job of coordinating its national policies in support of a coherent long-term strategy. One also notes that both the 863 Program and the relevant sections of the 12th, 13th and 14th five-year plan are compatible with the principles of the Sixteen-Character Statement. Both focus on technological progress and economic development. Both also appear to aim at using the PRC’s improving technology, increasing prosperity and growing industrial capacity to strengthen China’s armed forces. Wortzel noted the military objectives of the 863 Program in his testimony before Congress and analyst Russell Hsiao reviewed the military dimension of the 12th five-year plan in a study for the Jamestown Foundation.57 There are, however, alternative ways to interpret Wortzel’s and Mandiant’s findings. If Chinese intelligence collectors are focusing on acquiring commercially valuable information, it may simply mean that they view economic development as an end in itself. More cynical observers have speculated that at least some members of organisations such as APT-41 benefit personally from their activities. Moreover, Wortzel, Forbes and Major suggest that many so-called Chinese intelligence operations are the work of private entities. Since one normally assumes that businesses exist to make money, one could conclude that Chinese intelligence collection is guided by nothing more strategic than the profit motive. Therefore, one is entitled to ask whether Chinese intelligence organisations – whether state-run or otherwise – have demonstrated an interest in anything

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beyond financial gain. The answer appears to be yes. Mandiant, for instance, itemises the types of data acquired by China’s APTs in their known operations for each year. As mentioned earlier, Mandiant has found that Chinese cyberspies target an array of sectors, ranging from academia to healthcare to defence industry.58 Many APTs have demonstrated an appetite for personal information about target organisations’ employees.59 Mandiant analysts hint that China’s hacking activity increasingly resembles just one component of a broader national, strategic effort. One may certainly note that information on specific networks and individuals would be useful for future hacking efforts. Information on employees may have an even broader range of uses, depending on the relevant individuals’ personal circumstances. Such information offers those so inclined with the raw material to coerce, persuade or impersonate vulnerable people. An economically motivated intelligence collector might use tools of manipulation, such as ransomware, to acquire even greater amounts of commercially useful data. This is however, only one of the ways in which an intelligence collector may be able to proceed. Once one establishes an intelligence network, one may hope to expand it in a wide variety of directions. This principle applies to networks of computers, and it also applies to networks of human beings. Mandiant alleges that APT-1 uses unsuspecting people’s computers as so-called ‘hop points’ in order to access the systems which it actually wishes to penetrate.60 In a similar fashion, once one recruits a human being as an intelligence agent, one may use him or her to approach other people with a view to recruiting them as well. The Internet allows any connected computer to contact any other, and one may safely assume that substantial numbers of corporate employees have relationships with people in government, the media, the military and other communities which Beijing might find strategically interesting. An intelligence organisation which begins by targeting commercial enterprises does not necessarily have to end there. Mandiant’s analysts are probably correct when they suggest that industrial secrets have historically been APT-1’s immediate priority. Nevertheless, one may reasonably propose that the threat organisation is also assembling an infrastructure which will allow it to collect intelligence and perhaps carry out other operations for a wide range of purposes against a wide range of targets. As the following paragraphs will discuss, computer security firms, reputable news sources and spokespeople for the US government have made allegations which seem to confirm that the PRC is assembling such an infrastructure. This, in turn, seems to confirm that the Chinese cyber and intelligence communities are more or less faithfully implementing their government’s grand strategy. A spectacular example of how China-based hackers may be assembling a database of personal information on strategically interesting individuals came to light in 2015. In that year, as Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post reports, the US Government’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) discovered that intruders had gained electronic access to confidential records

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on approximately 22 million people.61 The occasionally controversial but frequently well-informed technology periodical Wired explored the nature of these records in more detail, noting that they potentially included, not only personnel files on US government employees but background checks on private entrepreneurs contracted for government work, similar data on members of the judiciary and dossiers of potentially compromising information on applicants for US security clearances.62 The OPM itself issued a press statement acknowledging that hackers had gained access to 5.6 million people’s fingerprints.63 For purposes of historical accuracy, one should note that the OPM has also suffered a series of other data breaches, which may or may not be related to the one under discussion. Wired details peculiarities of the OPM hackers’ methods which suggest that the attack originated in the PRC.64 Rachel Weiner of The Washington Post states without qualification that American officials traced the attack to China, although she does not identify a source.65 Nakashima cites unnamed US government officials who characterised the attacks as espionage.66 The Post also notes that the PRC government denies any involvement in the OPM incident and has arrested several of its citizens for alleged involvement in the attack.67 These arrests did not, however, end the international controversy over the incident. Two years later, as Evan Perez of Cable News Network reports, the American FBI arrested a Chinese national on charges of involvement.68 The FBI seized the alleged hacker while he was attending a conference in the United States.69 In reporting the arrest, Perez quoted FBI representatives as repeating the claim that the PRC government was responsible for the OPM intrusion.70 Meanwhile, the computer security firm ThreatConnect has published evidence associating the OPM incident with other hacking attempts.71 These include a foiled intrusion attempt against the American defence contractor VAE and a successful cyberattack on the health insurance provider Anthem. ThreatConnect estimates that the Anthem attack compromised the personal records of approximately 80 million people.72 Although ThreatConnect’s data does not prove that the same people were responsible for all these incidents, it suggests that the individuals responsible used similar techniques, alluded to the same comic books and indicated possible awareness of one another’s exploits.73 This suggests that the individuals were working together. ThreatConnect’s data also suggest that the perpetrators of these incidents operate from China.74 Not only do the perpetrators of these attacks appear to have had similar taste in literature and a similar country of origin, but they also appear to have had similar motivations. Both the OPM hackers and the Anthem hackers appear to have focused on stealing individuals’ personal information. Such data are valuable to criminals, who use it to commit various forms of fraud. As ThreatConnect noted, the hackers responsible for other largescale thefts of personal information have been quick to place their stolen

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data on the black market.75 However, more than a year after Mandiant analysts believe the Anthem breach began, ThreatConnect was still unable to find any signs that the stolen information had been offered for sale.76 The OPM hackers also appear surprisingly uninterested in profiting from their crime. The Washington Post notes one possible exception.77 Two years after the OPM incident became public, the Post reported that a US government attorney had accused suspects in a fraud case of using data from the breach.78 As the Post also reported, senior officials in the US Department of Justice promptly criticised the attorney’s claim as unproven.79 Officials from the US Department of Homeland Security cited in the Post’s piece added that, if financially motivated criminals were in possession of the OPM data, one would have expected them to do far more with it over a far shorter period of time.80 There appears to be considerable logic to this statement. Only the hackers know for certain what became of the stolen data. One cannot rule out the possibility that private criminals of unknowable nationality have found some way to profit from it while remaining undetected. Nevertheless, the fact that the OPM and Anthem hackers behaved in such similar ways reinforces the hypothesis that they are at least loosely affiliated and most likely operating on China’s behalf. In a similar vein, the fact that they eschewed the most well-established methods of profiting financially from their activity reinforces the hypothesis that they or their employers were more interested in using the stolen personal information to identify government employees who might be vulnerable to recruitment or manipulation by Chinese state intelligence organisations. It is noteworthy that acquiring large tranches of personal identifiable information (PII) may also serve counterintelligence purposes. After the 2015 OPM hack, members of the US intelligence community and Congress raised concerns that American spies stationed in China could have their covers blown.81 For fear of exposure, several US intelligence agencies recalled their officers from China.82 These events reinforce the hypothesis that China’s intelligence organisations – and, by extension, the PRC’s government which maintains them – are themselves motivated by broad concerns of national security and power and not simple greed. ThreatConnect’s proposition that the Anthem/OPM hackers were also interested in VAE Inc. may reveal more about the intruders’ objectives. The intruders may, of course, have simply been looking for yet more repositories of personnel records. Nevertheless, one notes that VAE itself is a provider of IT services, including cyber security.83 One may reasonably suggest that the attackers hoped to acquire information from VAE’s files which would help them compromise the various government-owned networks which VAE supports. In other words, the VAE attack suggests that OPM/Anthem hackers are laying groundwork to help themselves to carry out even grander acts of espionage or sabotage in the future. The fact that VAE resisted the hackers’ efforts when other organisations succumbed is a tribute to its employees’ professional skills.

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Hacking the Media As the theoretical section noted, one of the most promising ways to use cyberspace for strategic purposes may be to employ it as a medium of propaganda. The theoretical section also made the point that China’s leaders have historically been sensitive to what propaganda can accomplish. Therefore, it is interesting to note that just as APT-1 seeks information on individuals and computer systems in the business world and the OPM intruders sought similar information about the US government, other hackers appear to be collecting comparable data on the employees and IT networks of Western media organisations. In 2013, for instance, the New York Times admitted that it had been the target of such an attack.84 The Times noted that the attack had occurred shortly after it published an article on the Chinese prime minister’s financial situation.85 Times reporter Nicole Perlroth described the perpetrators of the attack as ‘Chinese hackers’. Perlroth added that the Times had hired security consultants to analyse the attack, and that those consultants concluded that the attackers had used methods associated with the Chinese military. The South China Morning Post provided details on the hackers’ objectives. According to the SCMP, the intruders acquired a number of corporate passwords and went on to access the personal computers of 53 Times employees.86 Mandiant analysts suggest that the attack on the Times was part of a pattern. According to Perlroth, the security firm provided its clients with a report alleging that Chinese hackers had targeted over 30 individuals employed by an assortment of media companies for personal attacks.87 Perlroth also notes that The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News both claim to have been targeted by Chinese hackers. Both also claim to have foiled the attacks. Bloomberg, like the Times, notes that the intruders struck shortly after it published an article scrutinising the affairs of a senior figure in the PRC government.88 Meanwhile, in 2010, the well-known corporation Google accused Chinese hackers of penetrating its systems.89 Whether one defines Google as part of the media is a matter of semantics, but its e-mail service, Internet search engine and other products play an analogous role in 21st-century life. Google plays a role in providing large numbers of individuals with the ability to disseminate and consume information. Thus, it plays a role – if only a passive one – in shaping public opinion. It also plays a role in facilitating grassroots political action. Therefore, if Mandiant is correct in asserting that Chinese hackers are systematically targeting news outlets, it would be reasonable to believe that the alleged attack on Google was part of a related program. Google representatives claimed that the hackers who penetrated their company’s systems were seeking personal information on human rights activists who had been scrutinising the practices of the PRC government.90 Not only did Google reveal that intruders had attempted to collect such data

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wholesale by compromising its corporate systems, Google also alleged that hackers had been attempting to penetrate selected activists’ individual Google accounts on a one-by-one basis.91 The Washington Post added that the intruders had also targeted source codes for Google-owned software products.92 One notes, in other words, that the Google hackers appear to have been interested in much the same type of information as APT-1, the Anthem/OPM intruders, and whoever attacked the New York Times. This is compatible with the hypothesis that the various hackers are carrying out a coherent strategy. As previously noted, one promising way to employ the type of information which these various hackers have been collecting would be to use it to recruit and control spies. Therefore, it may be more than a coincidence that that the Google hackers appear to have been interested in other information with obvious applications in espionage. The US courts can authorise law enforcement agencies to monitor suspected criminals’ use of the Internet, in much the same fashion that they can authorise those agencies to tap suspected criminals’ telephones. Ellen Nakashima of The Washington Post quotes US government officials as reporting that the Google hackers acquired lists of individuals whose accounts were under surveillance.93 These officials noted that such information could have helped the Chinese intelligence services determine whether US officials were monitoring their undercover operatives. This would have allowed them to take measures to protect operatives whose identities had become known. Alternatively, it would allow them to use those operatives to feed the US authorities false information. One might also consider the possibility that Chinese authorities might have been interested in some of the individuals on the list for the same reason as the Americans. Some of the suspected criminals and terrorists which threaten the United States may also threaten the PRC. The commercial significance of the surveillance data, however, would appear to be minimal. Personal information on a relatively small number of journalists and human rights activists would not seem to be lucrative either. Therefore, the attacks on Google and the various news organisations provide further evidence that Chinese hackers are pursuing strategically valuable information whether or not it is profitable. These attacks – particularly the one in which hackers attempted to acquire Google’s source codes – also provide additional evidence to support the idea that Chinese hackers are seeking information which will allow them to carry out more ambitious operations at some later time. Although APT-1’s operations, the OPM/Anthem intrusions, the attacks on the various news organisations and the Google incident have significant features in common, those with an eye for numbers may have noted at least one difference. Whereas APT-1 and the OPM/Anthem intruders acquire data on a colossal scale, publicly available reports on the attacks on Google and the assorted media companies suggest that these intrusions directly affected only a few dozen individuals. There are a variety of possible explanations.

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One may simply be that the OPM/Anthem hackers were more successful. Google representatives claim that the attack on activists’ e-mail accounts largely failed to achieve its goals.94 Another explanation may be that the goals of the various intrusions were different. The OPM/Anthem intruders appear to have been engaged in the hacking equivalent of basic science, indiscriminately accumulating knowledge in the hope that some of it might eventually turn out to be useful. The hackers who attacked the New York Times and Bloomberg may have begun with a clear plan to influence specific journalists reporting on specific issues. Yet another explanation may be that the technical challenges of penetrating different types of organisations are different. In short, there are a plethora of plausible ways to interpret the differences between the various intrusions which remain compatible with the idea that most or all the attacks have been part of a coordinated strategy. Nevertheless, the differences may reveal fault lines within the hacking community. Thus, they cast a light – however dim and flickering – upon the question of whether the perpetrators of these various attacks were organised and the related question of how. More broadly, they return us to the questions of whether the Chinese government was involved, and how it may be incorporating cyberspace into its overall national effort. Those with a special interest in cyberspace and intelligence would do well to scrutinise the similarities and differences between the attacks closely. Such an effort may help to identify the perpetrators, their relationships and their methods. It may also help to identify ways in which the hackers’ practices have changed over time. In a similar vein, it may prove that different hackers have been guided by different philosophies. There may be factions and doctrinal debates within the hacking community which may affect its members’ behaviour and may, indeed, provide their opponents with opportunities to thwart them. For purposes of this study, it is sufficient to note that although the differences between the various attacks do not damage the book’s overall argument about the coherence of Beijing’s policies, they do strengthen the idea that many of the hackers operate at least somewhat autonomously. Once again, the PRC government appears to be maintaining a distance from cyber operations, even when those operations appear to advance its projects. There may be a variety of practical reasons for this, as previous sections have noted. Nevertheless, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that China’s leaders are behaving cautiously, or at least leaving room for plausible deniability. Arms Control in Cyberspace For most of the last decade, the PRC’s leaders have appeared to seek – perhaps sincerely – the moral high ground in cyberspace. Despite all allegations which have come up in the course of this chapter, it is worth remembering that the Chinese authorities strenuously deny any connection to hacking. Previous

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sections have discussed their responses to such specific cases as the OPM incident. Beijing’s representatives also remind foreign critics that it is unfair to portray China as a uniquely aggressive actor in cyberspace. Following the Google intrusions, The Washington Post quoted unnamed Chinese sources as noting that Chinese institutions are frequently on the receiving end of hacking attempts, and that many of the cyberattacks on the PRC originate in the United States.95 In 2015, Xi Jinping took further steps to present the PRC as a champion of peace and law-abiding behaviour on the Internet. That year, Xi and American president Barack Obama issued a joint statement on cyber security. The American White House published a translation of Xi’s official remarks. According to the US document, the Chinese leader confirmed that he and the American president had agreed not to engage in or support online theft of intellectual property.96 The history of diplomacy is replete with empty promises. It would not appear to be in any government’s interests to forego cyber-enabled espionage. Therefore, it is understandable that many American commentators responded to the Xi-Obama statement with reserve. Richard Bejtlich of the Brookings Institution, for instance, detailed ways in which the PRC might keep to the letter of the agreement while enthusiastically spying on US targets.97 The IT security firm FireEye published a report calling readers’ attention to several other critiques of the Xi-Obama agreement.98 Perhaps the most scathing was a publication by the human rights organisation Freedom House.99 This report noted the agreement’s absence of verification measures and failure to address politically motivated hacking. Nevertheless, Western scepticism notwithstanding, a close reading of the joint statement suggests that, on paper at least, China’s leaders were as enthusiastic about the agreement as their American counterparts. Xi made an unequivocal commitment to renounce all theft of intellectual property.100 Obama specified that the agreement focused on theft ‘for commercial advantage’, suggesting that both sides were retaining the right to steal intellectual property for other reasons.101 Xi listed concrete steps that the two sides would take to combat criminal use of the Internet.102 Obama’s parallel statement referred only to promoting unspecified ‘rules of the road’. One may assume that the two leaders’ understandings matched even when the nuances of their language did not. Even still, Xi’s choice of words suggest that he wanted the agreement. Moreover, actions are said to speak louder than words, and a year after the Xi-Obama declaration, FireEye issued a report suggesting that the Chinese government had largely kept its end of the bargain.103 Indeed, if FireEye’s data are to be believed, incidents of suspected Chinese hacking activity were declining precipitously in frequency even before the agreement was in place.104 FireEye partially attributes the decline in hacking activity to the public exposure of earlier intrusions, and to the US government’s efforts to pressure the PRC into halting them.105 Moreover, FireEye analysts speculate that one

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of the reasons why the PRC – in their view – hosted so much hacking activity in the past was that a wide range of governmental departments and affiliated organisations engaged in hacking on their own initiative.106 The analysts note that hacking incidents began to decline in frequency at the same time that the Chinese government instituted a series of reforms aimed to eradicate corruption and strengthen central control.107 The analysts speculate that as the reforms move forward, the Chinese central authorities will stop permitting their subordinates to engage in diplomatically embarrassing industrial espionage. FireEye warns, however, that the Chinese authorities may reallocate their national IT resources to redouble their efforts at acquiring information of military and political value.108 FireEye’s assessment proved remarkably prescient. As Mandiant, FireEye’s former parent company, illustrated in its 2019 annual report, much of China’s hacking activity resumed in 2017 after the two-year lull ushered in by the Xi-Obama Agreement.109 The volume of intrusions did not return to the levels observed in the early 2010s, but the expansion and scope of illicit cyber activity was nonetheless significant to many. According to Reuters, even certain US officials were surprised by upticks observed as recently as 2021.110 Importantly, Mandiant notes that instead of focusing on commercial targets and intellectual property theft, China’s cyber spies have pivoted to decidedly more political and strategic marks. This development introduces its own unique array of concerns for their victims. Here, one may conclude that China’s government has handled cyber espionage using similar methods it has applied to other critical issues in its development. As the Sixteen-Character Statement would prescribe, the PRC initially gave precedence to its commercial interests. In this phase, the central authorities devolved much of the responsibility for achieving its goals to nominally independent actors, some of whom resorted to unscrupulous tactics. Even government and military departments such as Unit 61398 may have enjoyed a comparatively high degree of autonomy. But in recent years, Beijing has tightened the reins on all state actors, including its apparent breadwinners. Its focus, as the Sixteen-Character Statement would again prescribe, has shifted to military and technological modernisation, an area over which the PRC’s leaders would undoubtedly prefer to exercise maximal control. Indeed, there are compelling parallels to be drawn between Beijing’s cyberspace policies and the original economic reforms which set the PRC on its current course. Those reforms, like Beijing’s initial disposition towards cyberspace, put many of the PRC’s development goals in the hands of nominally autonomous entrepreneurs. Anyone familiar with the history of industrial development in other countries might have predicted that some of those entrepreneurs would operate with a certain degree of ruthlessness. Nevertheless, the reforms brought China national wealth. As time has passed, the central government has taken increasingly vigorous measures to curb corruption, raise environmental standards and improve the population’s

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standard of living. In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party has also vigorously reasserted itself in society and in the economy. Beijing applied similar principles to defence budgeting. Throughout much of its history, the People’s Liberation Army had the freedom to earn a profit by operating commercial enterprises – and the responsibility to meet a portion of its expenses by doing so. When the PRC’s national resources were more limited, this policy undoubtedly made it easier for the Chinese civilian authorities to stretch the state budget. Ultimately, however, the policy invited corruption and distracted military personnel from their primary occupation, and as the Chinese government grew wealthy enough to finance the military directly, it largely phased out the PLA-run corporations. If, indeed, the PRC once found it expedient to permit certain cyberspace actors to behave in a free-wheeling fashion, and if it has now decided to rein them in and plan its incursions more strategically, one may count this as further evidence of the overall consistency in its policies. There is reason to believe that the PRC’s leaders have had control over their nation’s cyber activities all along. If FireEye and Mandiant’s findings and interpretations are correct, Beijing managed to slash the frequency of suspected Chinese cyberattacks against non-Chinese targets from over 70 per month in the spring of 2014 to less than ten per month by the autumn of the next year.111 Then, only a few years later, attacks perpetrated against the same demographics would somewhat suddenly climb exponentially. One might make conjecture that these trend reversals could be attributed to changes in Chinese law enforcement priorities or resources. In all likelihood, however, it suggests that although for some time Chinese hackers may have been individually responsible for their actions on a day-to-day basis, the authorities always had means of bringing them under control and even co-opting their efforts. This interpretation of the PRC’s behaviour also invites one to wonder what happened in 2013–15 which prompted Beijing to change its policies at that time. The FireEye analysts make a plausible case that the American government deserves some of the credit. Although FireEye provides little detail on American actions, one may assume that they are referring to such incidents as the US Justice Department’s May 2014 decision to indict five Chinese military officers for hacking-related crimes.112 The Justice Department announced that this was the first time in history that it had charged what it described as ‘known state actors’ with such offences.113 Chinese authorities undoubtedly found these sorts of incidents embarrassing. Nevertheless, one should not lose sight of the fact that if the PRC government was implementing the same Sixteen-Character principles which it appears to have implemented with the PLA-owned corporations and with the Chinese business community as a whole, China’s leaders always intended to bring their country’s hacking community under control at one point or another. American diplomatic and law enforcement efforts may have convinced them to take this step sooner rather than later, but one doubts that

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this type of pressure would have forced them to abandon a well-established and probably effective policy. It seems more likely that they chose to respond to US initiatives because they had already concluded that the policy was ripe for change. The diplomatic windfall was just an added bonus. The PRC appears to have enacted other reforms at points where its economic growth has reached the point where cruder methods relying on devolved authority have become less necessary. Therefore, one may reasonably conclude that Xi’s willingness to renounce online industrial espionage in 2015 reflects Beijing’s growing confidence in China’s own industries. Nevertheless, this may not be the only reason. Years before Xi’s joint statement with Obama, the PRC had already established its credentials as a supporter of international cooperation to promote cyber security. One may reasonably conclude that, at the time, the Chinese leadership cared enough about this issue to take meaningful action to make such cooperation effective. As latter sections explore further, this vision has since retreated when it comes to the West. But where it suits its interests, Beijing remains committed to collaboration. The PRC happens to be one of the founding members of the international cohort known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO). As analysts working for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) have documented, the SCO has actively promoted cross-border efforts to combat various forms of online shenanigans.114 In 2009, the SCO’s members agreed among themselves to an understanding on, in their words, ‘cooperation in the field of ensuring information security’. NATO provides an unofficial English translation of their agreement.115 Two years later, in 2011, the PRC and three other SCO members petitioned the United Nations (UN) to adopt a similar agreement on a global scale.116 In 2015, the PRC joined with five of its SCO partners to present an updated version of this request.117 The SCO has also announced joint exercises in combating cyberterrorism.118 The SCO’s petitions to the UN go into detail about the ways in which signatories believe that online aggression can undermine global security, and about the types of activities which signatories wish to prohibit. One notes that the SCO documents emphasise different points from the Obama-Xi joint statement. Whereas the joint statement focused on protecting business from financially motivated spying, the SCO petitions focus on protecting infrastructure and political systems from sabotage. The SCO’s proposed international Code of Conduct also affirms the importance of upholding principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity.119 These are, of course, issues of special sensitivity for the PRC. This chapter’s theoretical section suggested that the PRC leadership may be exceptionally sensitive to the danger of cyber-enabled subversion. The SCO petitions seem to support this proposition. One also notes that Beijing has passed some of the strictest laws regulating Internet activity in the world, and that it devotes considerable resources to making those laws effective.

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In 2013, Western media sources picked up an article from The Beijing News stating that the PRC employed over two million so-called public opinion analysts to search the Internet for subversive material.120 The existence of such a costly, industrialised censorship program implies that, while Beijing likely enjoys various benefits associated with cyber espionage, China’s leaders may prefer a world in which all nations were relatively less vulnerable. Indeed, if reports by American Internet security firms are accurate, Chinese organisations dedicated to offensive cyber operations are far smaller than those dedicated to defence. According to Mandiant’s research, APT1 is the largest hacking organisation operating out of China.121 Mandiant estimates that APT1 has a maximum of several thousand employees.122 APT1’s members are almost certainly more technically skilled than the two million Internet police that China employs to filter through Internet content, and Mandiant claims that they benefit from a large support staff.123 Moreover, offensive cyber operations may simply be less labour-intensive than policing. Nevertheless, it seems reasonable to conclude that the PRC devotes many times more resources to suppressing online dissent than it ever devoted to collecting online intelligence. Moreover, the state Internet police represent only a fraction of the PRC’s cyber security capability. Just as the PRC has incentivised nominally independent businesses to support its economic programs, it has mobilised private sector resources to defend itself online. As the South China Morning Post reports, Internet security legislation which became effective throughout the PRC in 2017 requires all operators of so-called critical information infrastructure to render assistance to security agencies.124 Since the legislation defines its terms broadly, those agencies are presumably free to demand whatever support they find most useful. The SCMP goes on to note that the legislation requires infrastructure providers to store business and personal data in media physically located within China, thus ensuring that it will be available if government agencies ever wish to access it.125 Providers must also pass state-administered security reviews.126 In 2021, these obligations were more formally codified in two pieces of add-on legislation – the Data Security Law (DSL) and the Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) – that further specified China’s data localisation requirements and implemented steep financial and regulatory penalties for those unable or unwilling to comply.127 Although private companies bear the direct costs of complying with these measures, one should note that the PRC has assumed indirect costs by introducing these pieces of legislation. The SCMP quotes a representative of the American Chamber of Commerce in China as noting that the new laws significantly raise costs for foreign firms operating in the PRC.128 Particularly in the modern era of globalised cloud storage, strict data localisation rules can be enormously cumbersome for tech firms, particularly large and influential ones. This is presumably true for indigenous firms as well. Although the SCMP cites data to suggest that this has not in any way significantly dampened global optimism about the Chinese economy, one

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may assume that the PRC would be marginally more prosperous without the law.129 Thus, the fact that the Chinese leadership enacted the legislation underscores that leadership’s deep concern about the dangers of cyber subversion, its willingness to take firm measures to counter those dangers, its willingness to accept opportunity costs to make those measures effective and its ability to use a wide range of policy instruments to those ends. Conclusion Overall, the Chinese leadership appears to be responding intelligently and comprehensively to the phenomenon of cyberspace. If reports by such firms as FireEye, Mandiant and ThreatConnect are reliable, the PRC successfully uses Internet-based espionage in conjunction with more traditional techniques to collect intelligence in support of its national goals. These reports also suggest that the PRC is positioning itself to continue using the Internet for offensive purposes in the future. Beijing’s determination to distance itself from such activities suggests a healthy awareness of the limitations of such methods and a sensitivity to their diplomatic risks. The PRC’s attempts to protect its own so-called cyber sovereignty against hackers and political dissenters also appear to be in keeping with its broader political agenda. Beijing’s use of diplomacy and regulatory measures to promote cybersecurity confirm its ability to integrate programs in different policy areas in a coordinated way. Thus, the PRC’s approach to strategy in cyberspace supports this book’s overall argument that the Chinese government is exceptionally effective at practising grand strategy. Nevertheless, one may also observe that the Chinese leadership’s strategy in cyberspace seems weighted, on net, towards the defensive. This may reflect the Chinese authorities’ principled aversion to espionage, sabotage and other forms of aggression. More prosaically, it may reflect their sincere desire for harmonious relations with other states. More realistically, it may reflect a presentiment that the Chinese political system is exceptionally vulnerable to subversion. To the extent that this presentiment is exaggerated, it may motivate the Chinese leadership to behave with unnecessary caution. To the extent that this presentiment is valid, it indicates a dangerous obstacle to the PRC’s national goals, with implications which extend far beyond cyberspace. Notes 1 Colin S. Gray, Making Strategic Sense of Cyber Power: Why the Sky Is Not Falling (Carlisle: Strategic Studies Institute, 2013), 1, https://www.files.ethz.ch/ isn/163664/pub1147.pdf. 2 Gray, Making Strategic Sense, passim. 3 Martin C. Libicki, ‘Why Cyberwar Will Not and Should Not Have Its Grand Strategist’, Strategic Studies Quarterly (Spring 2014): 23–39, http://www. airuniversity.af.mil/Portals/10/SSQ/documents/Volume-08_Issue-1/Libicki.pdf.

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4 Gray, Making Strategic Sense, 6; Libicki, ‘Why Cyberwar’, 23. 5 Canadian Police College, Using the Internet as an Intelligence Tool, http://www. cpc-ccp.gc.ca/programs-programmes/technological-technologique/intint-uioreng.htm. 6 Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Michael Howard and Peter Paret (London: The Folio Society, 1976), 536. 7 Clausewitz, On War, 532, 536. 8 James J. Wirtz, ‘The Cyber Pearl Harbor’, Intelligence and National Security 32, no. 6 (March 2017): 758–767, doi: 10.1080/02684527.2017.1294379. 9 Max Smeets and Stefan Soesanto, ‘Cyber Deterrence Is Dead. Long Live Cyber Deterrence!’, Council on Foreign Relations, February 18, 2020, https://www. cfr.org/blog/cyber-deterrence-dead-long-live-cyber-deterrence. 10 Gray, Making Strategic Sense, 36. 11 Clausewitz, On War, 67–8. 12 Libicki, ‘Why Cyberwar’, 31. 13 Gray, Making Strategic Sense, 44. 14 Libicki, ‘Why Cyberwar’, 30. 15 Libicki, ‘Why Cyberwar’, 31–2. 16 Gray, Making Strategic Sense, 44. 17 Sam Roberts, ‘An Attack That Turned Out to Be German Terrorism Has a Modest Legacy 100 Years Later’, New York Times, July 24, 2016, https://www. nytimes.com/2016/07/25/nyregion/an-attack-that-turned-out-to-be-germanterrorism-has-a-modest-legacy-100-years-later.html. 18 Roberts, ‘German Terrorism’. 19 Roberts ‘German Terrorism’. 20 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, 1982, December 4, 1982, https://china.usc.edu/constitution-peoples-republic-china-1982. 21 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, 1982. 22 Peter Deriabin and T.H. Bagley, The KGB: Masters of the Soviet Union (New York: Hippocrene Books, 1990), 204. 23 Jane Perlez, ‘U.S. and China Put Focus on Cybersecurity’, New York Times, April 22, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/23/world/asia/united-statesand-china-hold-military-talks-with-cybersecurity-a-focus.html. 24 Libicki, ‘Why Cyberwar’, 38. 25 Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America (Brattleboro: Echo Point Books, 2015), passim. (The original work was published in the People’s Republic of China in 1999.) 26 Wun Nan, ‘From Hackers to Entrepreneurs: The Sino-US Cyberwar Veterans Going Straight’, South China Morning Post, August 21, 2013, https://www. scmp.com/news/china/article/1298200/hackers-entrepreneurs-sino-us-cyberwarveterans-going-straight. 27 Nan, ‘From Hackers to Entrepreneurs’. 28 Melanie Lee and Lucy Hornby, ‘Google Attack Puts Spotlight on China’s “Red” Hackers’, Reuters, January 20, 2010, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-googlechina-hackers-idUSTRE60J20820100120; Nan, ‘From Hackers to Entrepreneurs’. 29 Lee and Hornby, ‘Google Attack’. 30 Lee and Hornby, ‘Google Attack’. 31 Nan, ‘From Hackers to Entrepreneurs’. 32 Nan, ‘From Hackers to Entrepreneurs’. 33 Mandiant, APT 1: Exposing One of China’s Cyber Espionage Units, accessed March 2022, https://www.mandiant.com/sites/default/files/2021-09/mandiantapt1-report.pdf.

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34 ‘Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)’, Mandiant Insights, accessed March 2022, https://www.mandiant.com/resources/apt-groups. 35 Mandiant, M-Trends 2022 (March 2022), 80, https://www.mandiant.com/ m-trends. 36 ‘Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs)’, Mandiant Insights, accessed March 2022, https://www.mandiant.com/resources/apt-groups. 37 Huang Tzu-ti, ‘Taiwan Government Websites Hit with Over 20 Million Cyber Attacks a Month, Mostly from China’, Taiwan News, April 5, 2018, https:// www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3398654. 38 Franz-Stefan Gady, ‘Japan Hit by Cyberattacks at an Unprecedented Level’, The Diplomat, February 20, 2015, https://thediplomat.com/2015/02/japan-hit-bycyberattacks-at-an-unprecedented-level/. 39 Christopher Wray, ’The Threat Posed by the Chinese Government and the Chinese Communist Party to the Economic and National Security of the United States’, FBI, July 20, 2020, https://www.fbi.gov/news/speeches/the-threatposed-by-the-chinese-government-and-the-chinese-communist-party-to-theeconomic-and-national-security-of-the-united-states. 40 Mandiant, APT-1, 3. 41 Mandiant, APT-1, 22. 42 Mandiant, APT-1, 22–3. 43 Mandiant, APT-1, 22. 44 Mandiant, M-Trends 2019 (March 2019), 29, https://www.mandiant.com/sites/ default/files/2021-09/rpt-mtrends-2019.pdf. 45 Fred Plan et al., ‘APT40: Examining a China-Nexus Espionage Actor’, Mandiant, March 4, 2019, https://www.mandiant.com/resources/apt40-examining-a-chinanexus-espionage-actor. 46 https://www.mandiant.com/resources/apt-groups 47 Mandiant, M-Trends 2022, 80. 48 Mandiant, APT-1, 24. 49 Mandiant, APT-1, 25. 50 Mandiant, M-Trends 2022, 78. 51 Fireeye iSight Intelligence, ‘APT10 (MenuPass Group): New Tools, Global Campaign Latest Manifestation of Longstanding Threat’, Mandiant, April 6, 2017, https://www.mandiant.com/resources/apt10-menupass-group 52 National Counterintelligence and Security Center, Foreign Economic Espionage in Cyberspace (2018), 5–7, https://www.dni.gov/files/NCSC/documents/news/ 20180724-economic-espionage-pub.pdf. 53 Enforcement of Federal Espionage Laws, Hearing Before the Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security of the Committee on the Judiciary House of Representatives, 110th Cong. (January 29, 2008) (Larry M. Wortzel, Chairman, United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission), https://www. gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CHRG-110hhrg40456/html/CHRG-110hhrg40456.htm. 54 Enforcement of Federal Espionage Laws (Wortzel). 55 The United States’ Strategic Competition with China, Hearing Before the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, 117th Cong. (June 8, 2021) (Matt Pottinger, Fellow, Hoover Institution), https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/hearings/theunited-states-strategic-competition-with-china 56 Mandiant, M-Trends 2020, 26. 57 Enforcement of Federal Espionage Laws (Wortzel); Russell Hsiao, ‘Twelfth Fiveyear Plan Accelerates Civil-Military Integration In China’s Defense Industry’, Jamestown Foundation, January 14, 2011, https://jamestown.org/program/ twelfth-five-year-plan-accelerates-civil-military-integration-in-chinas-defenseindustry/.

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Mandiant, M-Trends 2019, 31. Mandiant, APT-1, 25. Mandiant, APT-1, 39. Ellen Nakashima, ‘Chinese Government Has Arrested Hackers It Says Breached OPM Database’, The Washington Post, December 2, 2015, https://www. washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chinese-government-has-arrestedhackers-suspected-of-breaching-opm-database/2015/12/02/0295b918-990c11e5-8917-653b65c809eb_story.html?utm_term=.817fdadc6553. Brendan I. Koerner, ‘Inside the Cyberattack That Shocked The US Government’, Wired, October 23, 2016, https://www.wired.com/2016/10/inside-cyberattackshocked-us-government/#start-of-content. Sam Sumach, Statement by OPM Press Secretary Sam Schumach on Background Investigations Incident, Office of Personnel Management (September 23, 2015), https://www.opm.gov/news/releases/2015/09/cyber-statement-923/. Koerner, ‘Inside the Cyberattack’. Rachel Weiner, ‘Justice Department Walks Back Link Between Fraud Scheme and OPM Hack’, The Washington Post, July 10, 2017, https://www. washingtonpost.com/local/publisafety/justice-department-walks-back-linkbetween-fraud-scheme-and-opm-hack/2018/07/10/7c9e851a-8454-11e8-8f6c46cb43e3f306_story.html?utm_term=.e49962baa15b. Nakashima, ‘Chinese Government Has Arrested’. Nakashima, ‘Chinese Government Has Arrested’. Even Perez, ‘FBI Arrests Chinese National Connected to Malware Used in OPM Data Breach’, CNN, August 24, 2017, https://www.cnn.com/2017/08/24/ politics/fbi-arrests-chinese-national-in-opm-data-breach/index.html. Perez, ‘FBI Arrests Chinese National’. Perez, ‘FBI Arrests Chinese National’. ThreatConnect Research Team, ‘OPM Breach Analysis’, Threat Research, June 5, 2015, https://threatconnect.com/blog/opm-breach-analysis/. ThreatConnect Research Team, ‘All Roads Lead to China’, Threat Research, February 27, 2015, https://threatconnect.com/blog/the-anthem-hack-all-roadslead-to-china/. ThreatConnect Research Team, ‘OPM Breach’. ThreatConnect Research Team, ‘All Roads’. ThreatConnect Research Team, ‘All Roads’. Marianne Kolbaskuk McGee, ‘A New In-Depth Analysis of Anthem Breach’, Bank Info Security, January 10, 2017, https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/newin-depth-analysis-anthem-breach-a-9627. Weiner, ‘Justice Department Walks Back’. Weiner, ‘Justice Department Walks Back’. Weiner, ‘Justice Department Walks Back’. Weiner, ‘Justice Department Walks Back’. Jeff Stone, ‘CIA Spies in China May Have Had Their Cover Blown from the OPM Hack’, Business Insider, July 26, 2015, https://www.businessinsider.com/ cia-spies-in-china-may-have-had-cover-blown-from-opm-hack-2015-7. Evan Perez, ‘U.S. Pulls Spies from China After Hack’, CNN, September 30, 2015, https://money.cnn.com/2015/09/30/technology/china-opm-hack-us-spies/. See VAE’s Website, https://vaeit.com/about/overview/. Nicole Perlroth, ‘Wall Street Journal Announces That It, Too, Was Hacked by the Chinese’, New York Times, January 31, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/ 2013/02/01/technology/wall-street-journal-reports-attack-by-china-hackers. html. Perlroth, ‘Wall Street Journal Announces’.

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86 AFP, ‘Chinese Hackers Mount Fresh Attacks – and Smarter Than Ever, Says US Security Firm’, South China Morning Post, August 14, 2013, https://www.scmp. com/news/article/1296574/chinese-hackers-back-smarter-ever-says-ussecurity-firm. 87 Perlroth, ‘Wall Street Journal Announces’. 88 Perlroth, ‘Wall Street Journal Announces’. 89 Dave Drummond, ‘Statement from Google: A New Approach to China’, The Washington Post, January 12, 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ content/article/2010/01/12/AR2010011202903.html?tid=a_inl_manual. 90 Drummond, ‘Statement from Google’. 91 Drummond, ‘Statement from Google’. 92 Ellen Nakashima, ‘Chinese Hackers Who Breached Google Gained Access to Sensitive Data, U.S. Officials Say’, The Washington Post, May 20, 2013, https:// www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/chinese-hackers-who-breachedgoogle-gained-access-to-sensitive-data-us-officials-say/2013/05/20/51330428-be3411e2-89c9-3be8095fe767_story.html?utm_term=.a3ab2233cd3f. 93 Nakashima, ‘Chinese Hackers Who Breached Google’. 94 Drummond, ‘Statement from Google’. 95 Nakashima, ‘Chinese Hackers Who Breached Google’. 96 Barack Obama and Xi Jinping, Remarks by President Obama and President Xi of the People’s Republic of China in Joint Press Conference, White House, Office of the Press Secretary (September 25, 2015), https://obamawhitehouse. archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/09/25/remarks-president-obama-and-president-xi-peoples-republic-china-joint. 97 Richard Bejtlich, ‘To Hack or Not to Hack’, Brookings, September 28, 2015, https://www.brookings.edu/blog/up-front/2015/09/28/to-hack-or-not-to-hack/. 98 Mandiant, Red Line Drawn: China Recalculates Its Use of Cyber Espionage, Fireeye iSight Intelligence, (June 2016), 1, https://www.mandiant.com/ resources/red-line-drawn-china-recalculates-its-use-of-cyber-espionage. 99 Sarah Cook, ‘Obama-Xi Agreement Will Not Resolve China Cybersecurity Threat’, Freedom House, November 9, 2015, https://freedomhouse.org/article/ obama-xi-agreement-will-not-resolve-china-cybersecurity-threat. 100 Obama and Xi, Remarks. 101 Obama and Xi, Remarks. 102 Obama and Xi, Remarks. 103 Mandiant, Red Line Drawn, 11. 104 Mandiant, Red Line Drawn, 11. 105 Mandiant, Red Line Drawn, 4. 106 Mandiant, Red Line Drawn, 4–5. 107 Mandiant, Red Line Drawn, 4–5. 108 Mandiant, Red Line Drawn, 5–6. 109 Mandiant, M-Trends 2019, 29. 110 Steve Holland and Doina Chiacu, ‘U.S. and Allies Accuse China of Global Hacking Spree’, Reuters, July 20, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/technology/ us-allies-accuse-china-global-cyber-hacking-campaign-2021-07-19/. 111 Mandiant, Red Line Drawn, 11. 112 US Department of Justice, ‘U.S. Charges Five Chinese Military Hackers for Cyber Espionage Against U.S. Corporations and a Labor Organization for Commercial Advantage’, Office of Public Affairs (May 19, 2014), https://www. justice.gov/opa/pr/us-charges-five-chinese-military-hackers-cyber-espionageagainst-us-corporations-and-labor. 113 US Department of Justice, ‘U.S. Charges’.

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114 ‘Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, https://ccdcoe.org/organisations/sco/. 115 ‘Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence. 116 ‘An Updated Draft of the Code of Conduct Distributed in the United Nations – What’s New?’, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, https://ccdcoe.org/incyder-articles/an-updated-draft-of-the-code-of-conductdistributed-in-the-united-nations-whats-new/. 117 ‘Letter dated 9 January 2015 from the Permanent Representatives of China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, the Russian Federation, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan to the United Nations Addressed to the Secretary-General’, UN General Assembly, A/69/723 (January 2015), https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/786846. 118 ‘SCO Plans to Hold Exercises on Combating ‘Cyber-Terrorism”, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, https://ccdcoe.org/incyderarticles/sco-plans-to-hold-exercises-on-combating-cyber-terrorism/. 119 ‘An Updated Draft of the Code of Conduct Distributed in the United Nations – What’s New?’, NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, https://ccdcoe.org/incyder-articles/an-updated-draft-of-the-code-of-conduct-distributed-in-the-united-nations-whats-new/. 120 Katy Hunt and Cy Yu, ‘China “Employs 2 Million People to Police Internet”’, CNN, October 7, 2013, https://www.cnn.com/2013/10/07/world/asia/chinainternet-monitors/. 121 Mandiant, APT 1, 2. 122 Mandiant, APT 1, 11. 123 Mandiant, APT 1, 16. 124 He Huifeng, ‘Cybersecurity Law Causing “Mass Concerns” Among Foreign Firms in China’, South China Morning Post, March 1, 2018, https://www.scmp. com/news/china/economy/article/2135338/cybersecurity-law-causing-mass-concerns-among-foreign-firms-china. 125 He Huifeng, ‘Cybersecurity Law’. 126 He Huifeng, ‘Cybersecurity Law’. 127 Matt Haldane, ‘Explainer | What China’s New Data Laws Are and Their Impact on Big Tech’, South China Morning Post, September 1, 2021, https://www.scmp. com/tech/policy/article/3147040/what-chinas-new-data-laws-are-and-their-impactbig-tech. 128 He Huifeng, ‘Cybersecurity Law’. 129 He Huifeng, ‘Cybersecurity Law’.

6

The View from the Middle The Geopolitics of Chinese Strategy

One of the reasons why Chinese leaders may feel the need to devote a relatively large amount of attention to grand strategic planning is that China occupies a relatively challenging geographic position. From a long-term and theoretical point of view, one can note that the PRC suffers from a number of conditions which influential geopolitical thinkers such as Alfred Thayer Mahan would have viewed as handicaps, notably its need to balance maritime interests with a need to maintain long land borders. From a short-term and practical point of view, one can note that East Asia is a relatively volatile part of the world. America’s Central Intelligence Agency notes that the PRC is involved in approximately 13 territorial disputes with over nine of its neighbours.1 Therefore, one of the more revealing ways to assess the PRC’s grand strategy is to assess its leaders’ responses to geographically imposed issues. In this area as in others, Beijing appears to be reaping the rewards of coordinated long-term planning. The PRC has, for instance, taken steps towards compensating for such geographically imposed difficulties as its need to import oil from the Middle East. It has made some progress towards resolving territorial disputes diplomatically while signalling an increased readiness to resolve others through intimidation. This chapter discusses the PRC’s successes and remaining challenges of this nature in detail. Sense of Place When Chinese rulers contended with Central Asian nomads and Japanese pirates, China’s geographically imposed handicaps were obvious. In the international political environment, which has prevailed since the end of the Cold War, these handicaps have remained largely in the background. No capable state is currently inclined to use the PRC’s potential weaknesses against it in a deeply threatening way. Thus, Beijing has been able to move forward with its programme of economic and military expansion as if its nation’s ancient impediments were no longer an issue. Nevertheless, few would choose to rely solely on external conditions for prosperity and survival. Most would prefer, insofar as possible, to control DOI: 10.4324/9781315387383-6

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their own destiny. The previous two propositions are probably valid as axioms. Even if they do not apply universally, they are almost certainly relevant to the PRC. Statements by senior Chinese political and military officials reinforce the idea that China’s leaders see increasing their country’s capacity to exercise self-determination as a central policy goal.2 Therefore, the first step towards assessing the geopolitical dimension of Chinese grand strategy is to determine which of the geographical issues that undermined China’s self-determination in past centuries have the potential to return. One may reasonably assume that China’s leaders will design their grand strategy to overcome these issues wherever possible. There is, of course, no guarantee that Chinese policymakers perceive these matters in quite the same way as outside observers. Nevertheless, the consequences of China’s geographical position for commerce and military operations are visible enough for one to approximate what an effective Chinese grand strategy would need to consider. For those who wish to catalogue the geographical factors affecting Chinese grand strategy, the works of the 19th-century admiral and naval theorist Alfred Thayer Mahan offers a starting point. Mahan claims that seafaring is the key to both economic and military success. He goes on to propose six factors which determine a nation’s maritime potential.3 The admiral reminds readers to treat his propositions not as absolute laws, but as starting points for further discussion. Throughout the past two centuries, numerous well-regarded strategic thinkers have found that Mahan’s writings serve their intended purpose well. Moreover, Mahan’s six principles of sea power address issues which have loomed large in Chinese history. Thomas M. Kane defends Mahan’s relevance to contemporary China at greater length in his work Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power. According to Mahan, the first element of sea power is a country’s location on the globe.4 One of the main ways in which he sees this factor coming into play is that, in his view, island nations such as Britain and Japan enjoy a maritime advantage over states with long land borders. China currently has one of the longest land borders in the world. For most of its history, just as Mahan would have expected, defending those borders has consumed a considerable proportion of its national resources. One should also note that China’s position has affected its culture. This, in turn, has historically affected its leaders’ approach to grand strategy. One of the reasons why Confucian moralists found it natural to promote an agricultural society is that the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people were inland farmers. One of the reasons why emperors of the Qing dynasty perpetuated the later Ming rulers’ policies of restricting seafaring may be that the Qing rulers were invaders who drew political support from the landoriented peoples of Manchuria. Rebels against Qing rule took refuge offshore, and many of the inhabitants of China’s coastal regions cooperated with them. Thus, Qing authorities had some justification for perceiving

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maritime activity as a source of danger for the state, rather than as a crucial element of economic and military success. Although Mahan’s observation about land borders contains a considerable amount of truth, it need not determine a country’s destiny. The United States is also a continental nation. Nevertheless, Mahan devoted much of his career to urging his country’s leaders to consolidate America’s status as a sea power. America has done precisely that. America’s success does not, however, appear to be an exception to Mahan’s principle. To the contrary, when one examines the series of historical events which allowed the United States to emerge as a sea power, one sees that America initially faced many of the same geographical handicaps as China, and that American leaders systematically overcame them. Most dramatically, the United States conquered territory that allowed it to dominate its southern border. Through a less violent – if not entirely peaceable – process, it established friendly relations with Canada. When, like the Qing emperors, America’s federal government faced an insurrection which affected its coastal territories, it fought water with water, blockading the rebellious states and recapturing their ports. From a Chinese point of view, America’s experience must be encouraging. Nevertheless, China faces hurdles which the United States did not. Once US leaders secured the North American continent, sea routes to the world’s most lucrative markets opened before them. Chinese shipping, by contrast, must make a circuitous journey around Southeast Asia and through the Indian Ocean to reach Europe and the Middle East. As of the early 21st century, the PRC depended on Middle Eastern suppliers for much of its oil. Geography offers America’s opponents a handful of bases from which to harass US shipping. If Washington had failed to assert control over Cuba, Hawaii, Greenland, Iceland or the Aleutians at critical points in its history, it might have faced considerable difficulties. Nevertheless, by global standards, Washington’s most valuable shipping lanes are relatively clear. Beijing’s, by contrast, are hemmed in by the Korean peninsula, by Japan, by Russia’s Sakhalin Island, by Taiwan, by the Indonesian straits, by the Philippines and by one chain of smaller islands after another. Once in the Indian Ocean, China’s westbound ships must also pass such points as Sri Lanka, the Horn of Africa, the Straits of Hormuz and the capes of southern Africa to reach their usual destinations. Most of the geographical features which abut China’s preferred shipping lanes are currently outside Beijing’s political control. Many of the countries which do control these features enjoy close relations with the United States. Some, such as Taiwan and Japan, are militarily powerful in their own right. Moreover, the PRC’s relations with Taiwan and Japan are frequently cool. Since none of this stops the early 21st-century PRC from trading or deploying its naval forces, one might conclude that the potential obstacles to Chinese navigation are less important now than they might have been in other historical periods. This would, however, overlook two important

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points. The first is that, as previously noted, the PRC’s leadership appears determined to minimise its dependence on foreign powers and external conditions. The second is that, even in these forgiving times, Chinese sailors face material risks as they pass through the various straits and island chains which separate them from their country’s trading partners. One of these risks is piracy. Although the PRC’s military response to pirate activity off the Horn of Africa is well-publicised, its ships may be in even greater danger closer to home. According to the International Chamber of Commerce’s International Maritime Board (IMB), over one third of the pirate attacks reported in 2017 took place in Southeast Asia.5 This figure has been even higher in recent years. The British Chamber of Commerce in Singapore cites earlier IMB data indicating that 75% of all reported maritime piracy and robbery took place in Asia in 2014.6 Southeast Asian shipping lanes are critical to the PRC. The British Chamber of Commerce presents further evidence to indicate the scope of the problem. According to its data (taken from the One Earth Future Foundation), piracy costs the global economy between $7 billion and $12 billion per year.7 Although only a fraction of these losses affect the PRC directly, no nation with global trading interests can afford to be complacent about a threat of this magnitude. Moreover, pirates are not the only nonstate actors to prey on China’s shipping routes. As recently as 2010, the government of Singapore claimed that unspecified terrorists were plotting to attack oil tankers in the Indonesian Straits.8 In short, when one considers China’s geographical location, one finds that the PRC has points in common with other successful sea powers. Nevertheless, one also finds that it has distinctive handicaps. Mahan also considered it important to assess a country’s internal geography, the extent of its territory, the size of its seafaring population, its culture and the nature of its government. When one considers these factors, one comes to similar conclusions. With regard to internal geography and extent of territory, one observes that the PRC has long coastlines, navigable rivers, sheltered harbours, and industrial cities. With regard to population and culture, one observes that it is home to many million people with the skills and motivation to sustain a maritime economy. China’s problem is not that it lacks these resources but that it also contains inland agricultural regions which have historically been less oriented towards maritime commerce. To rule all of China effectively, a government must balance the needs of one region against another. This makes it difficult for any Chinese government to concentrate its resources on sea power. The early emperors of the Yuan (Mongol) and Ming dynasties were strong enough to overcome these difficulties. Both sets of rulers managed to govern China as a united empire, and both managed to maintain effective fleets. China’s contemporary government appears fully capable of emulating them. Nevertheless, from a Mahanian point of view, there is still cause for concern.

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Mahan’s final element of sea power, as noted above, was the character of the government. Although Mahan qualified his arguments, he was inclined towards the belief that sea power is most likely to endure when it arises from the inclinations of the people.9 This would seem to imply that sea power is most sustainable in societies where the people choose their leaders or, in other words, in democracies. The eventual fate of the Yuan and Ming fleets – the Ming royal court so feared the rise of a powerful merchant political class that they voluntarily burnt most of their fleet to the ground10 – seems to uphold Mahan’s arguments here. Geopolitics, like literary criticism, is a field in which seemingly incompatible theories may all produce useful insights. Where Mahan focused on the impact of sea power on history, the early 20th-century geographer Halford Mackinder frequently emphasised the importance of the land. Although Mahan illuminates issues of vital importance to 21st-century China, Mackinder does as well. A Mackinder-inspired analysis of the PRC in the early 21st century reinforces many of the conclusions one might reach by applying Mahan’s principles of sea power. Like Mahan, Mackinder developed his ideas continually over the course of his career and like Mahan, he was willing to adapt them to changing historical circumstances. The portion of Mackinder’s writings which emerges as relevant when one studies early 21st-century China is the part in his 1904 article ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’ in which he set out his reasons for suggesting that land power would soon eclipse sea power.11 Mackinder did not reject Mahan’s proposition that the most efficient way to move trade goods and military forces is by water. What he did do was suggest that as the technology of overland communication and transport improved, the relative advantage of sea power would decline.12 This led him to observe that the shortest routes between the various points of interest on a convex land mass such as a continent happen to be the overland ones, and that they converge at a central point. Improvements in land transportation increase the economic value of using those routes, along with the military value of controlling them. Mackinder famously identified a swathe of Russia and Central Asia as the so-called pivot area of Eurasia, adding that whoever controlled the pivot area was in a position to control the world.13 China is on the periphery of this fated region, but it may be close enough to take an interest. As of the early 21st century, it seems unlikely that any power will establish a universal world empire in a literal sense any time soon, whether that power controls Central Asia or not. Nevertheless, Mackinder’s original observation that overland routes tend to be shorter is irrefutable, and his observation that central positions tend to be valuable is valid as well. The Chinese word for China – zhongguo – translates as Middle Kingdom. China is, indeed, geographically central to the most populated and prosperous regions of Asia. Nevertheless, just as inconveniently placed islands and political divisions complicate its exercise of sea power, physical

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obstacles such as the Himalayas and independent states such as Myanmar hem it in on the land. Although mountains remain immovable, one would expect a Chinese grand strategy to aim at neutralising China’s handicaps and allowing it to realise the full promise of its geographical position. The Belt and Road Initiative One prominent way in which the PRC is addressing its geographical handicaps is through its global programme of infrastructure construction. Where islands, mountains and land masses complicate the PRC’s ability to reach markets and places of strategic interest, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and related projects promise China easier access. As Chapter 3 noted, these projects help Beijing overcome political obstacles as well as material ones. Thus, they help it to realise the potential of both its maritime resources and its relatively central geographical position on the globe. Perhaps the most visible way in which the PRC’s infrastructure projects help it to overcome geopolitical challenges is that they improve the security of its oil supply. As the PRC’s economy has grown, its demand for oil has greatly outstripped its domestic production. Thomas M. Kane and his colleague Dr. Lawrence W. Serewicz explored the emerging strategic significance of this issue as early as 2001 in an article for the journal of the US Army War College.14 The US Energy Information Administration reports that in 2017 the PRC replaced America as the world’s largest oil importer.15 This reliance on imported petroleum would have been a liability for any nation, and geographical factors might once have made it appear to be particularly dangerous for China. In recent decades, the majority of the PRC’s oil imports have come from the Middle East. Petroleum industry analyst Tim Daiss notes that the proportion of Chinese oil imports coming from the primarily Middle Eastern Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) reached a high of 67% in 2012.16 Not only has the Middle East itself been politically volatile during the early 21st century, but the PRC has historically relied on ocean transport to bring Middle Eastern oil to China. This is a costly process which forces Chinese tankers to pass through several of the most pirateinfested regions of the world. The tanker route would also be vulnerable in the event of war, particularly where it passes through the narrow waters around Indonesia. Chapter 3 introduced readers to the PRC’s programme of port and pipeline construction anchored upon Kyauk Pyu. This programme substantially improves the PRC’s ability to import Middle Eastern oil overland across Myanmar. As the South China Morning Post notes, this route is 5,000 miles shorter than the ones which China has relied on in the past.17 Moreover, the Myanmar pipeline avoids the most vulnerable sections of the ocean route. Reuters estimates that the Kyauk Pyu complex could ultimately supply 5% of the PRC’s petroleum needs.18 It is not, in other words, a panacea for

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the PRC’s oil transportation problem. Nevertheless, it allows the PRC to access substantial amounts of petroleum in a substantially more reliable fashion. Moreover, the PRC is taking other steps to reduce its dependence on the sea routes to the Middle East. One such step is to import oil from the Western Hemisphere. Ships carrying oil from the Americas to China have no need to pass through the Indonesian Straits. By 2019, the PRC was sourcing approximately 5% of its oil imports from Brazil, according to World Bank WITS data.19 This is a percentage point behind Angola, the PRC’s largest African supplier. China also imports billions of dollars’ worth of oil annually from Colombia and Venezuela, the commercial value of which accounts for roughly 90% of China’s imports from each country. Oil’s high import product share in each of these bilateral trade relationships suggests that the PRC’s economic strategy in the Western Hemisphere is motivated by a conscious effort to diversify its critical commodity supply chains. Another interesting trend reported by the US Energy Information Administration (EIA) is that Chinese consumption of crude oil from the United States more than tripled between the mid-2000s and 2017.20 However, as relations between China and the United States have soured in recent years, that number has declined precipitously. Nevertheless, China’s oil trade with the United States provides observers with an opportunity to test the Chinese government’s intentions. From a short-term financial perspective, China might have had a great deal to gain by importing oil from the United States. From 2010 onward, as the EIA reports, US government authorities have lifted regulations on petroleum exports.21 The EIA details how this has allowed US oil companies to exploit rising production, relatively low shipping costs and favourable price differentials to offer their product at competitive prices on the world market.22 From a Chinese business perspective, importing more oil from the United States would have forced Middle Eastern suppliers to contend with a new competitor in addition to serving many of the same geographical-strategic purposes as importing from Brazil. Nevertheless, Beijing had numerous reasons to view Washington as a rival, many of which came to the fore over the last half decade. In keeping with this section’s argument that China’s leaders have based their energy policies on long-term strategic goals, it makes sense that they have resisted becoming unnecessarily dependent on an American product. In 2018, they demonstrated at least partial success to this end. Reuters reports that that year, in response to American President Donald Trump’s decision to increase tariffs on PRC-made goods, Beijing retaliated with a surcharge that effectively priced US petroleum out of the Chinese market.23 As Reuters also notes, Beijing later relented.24 In 2020, imports spiked back up even further in the midst of ongoing trade negotiations between the United States and China.25 This may suggest that the PRC needs US oil more than its leaders initially wished to admit, but this is not the only

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possible interpretation. Journalists Florence Tan and Meng Meng note that although Chinese firms resumed purchasing US petroleum, it was not clear whether the oil was actually needed in China.26 It appears equally likely that the Chinese suppliers merely intended to sell the oil to other consumers on the world market.27 Overall, one may conclude that the PRC is willing to take advantage of US petroleum exports when it finds this to be advantageous, but that it remains prepared to disrupt those exports whenever more important policy concerns make that desirable. Meanwhile, the PRC has begun importing increasing volumes of oil from Russia over the past half decade. Reuters has published figures indicating that China sourced almost 15% of its imported oil from Russia in early 2018.28 According to Reuters, this represented a 23.4% increase over the previous year.29 Reuters also notes that this made Russia China’s largest oil supplier.30 Over the last several years, Russia has retained this position and since its invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022, China has only doubled down on their economic ties.31 The PRC’s military cooperation with Russia suggests that the governments of both countries perceive a long-term interest in supporting one another. Beijing’s oil trade with Moscow reinforces this hypothesis. One notes, to begin with, that the PRC imports far more oil from Russia than it buys from less friendly suppliers such as the United States. Even before Beijing’s so-called trade war with Washington, Reuters found the PRC importing almost three times more Russian oil than it bought from the United States.32 By 2020, the figure was closer to five times that.33 Meanwhile, analyst Tsevatana Paraskova finds that Russia appears to be giving the PRC priority over other paying customers.34 Her research shows that as Russian exports to China increased, its shipments to Europe declined approximately 19%. This, she finds, appears to have forced European customers to turn to other suppliers. One may assume that they faced disruption and expense in the process. This, in turn, suggests that those customers may be wary about buying from Russia in the future, and that Russian decision makers considered their relationship with the PRC important enough to risk losing European goodwill. Russia’s shocking invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 certainly supports this hypothesis. Russia and China are also building pipelines to facilitate their gas and oil trade. Reuters reports that the state-owned China Development Bank loaned Russian corporations $25 billion at low interest rates to begin the project.35 In 2016, China National Petroleum Corporation began work on a second pipeline project, as Chen Aizhu of Reuters reports.36 Xinhua adds that the second project, completed in 2018, doubled the capacity of the Sino-Russian oil pipeline infrastructure.37 Moscow and Beijing did not necessarily need pipelines to trade oil. Even before the first pipeline opened, a BBC article notes, China was already importing Russian petroleum by rail.38 The fact that the two countries – and especially the PRC – have invested so much in pipeline projects indicates, not

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merely a short-term economic decision, but a more enduring commitment to this trading relationship. This fact suggests that both parties have a high degree of confidence in their political relationship as well. Over the first two decades of the 21st century, the PRC has meaningfully reduced its dependence on the sea route around Southeast Asia to the petroleum-producing states of the Middle East. Thus, it has effectively ameliorated several of the most serious geographical problems which Mahan and others might have predicted that it would face in achieving its national goals. This has required a combination of diplomatic measures, infrastructure construction and trading policy. Although the problems could manifest themselves again in other ways – the PRC requires sea access to the Middle East for reasons which go beyond oil – Beijing’s efforts to improve its energy security stand out as a case study in the practical application of geopolitical theory, and as a success of Chinese grand strategy. Territorial Disputes Another way in which the PRC is addressing its potential geographical handicaps is by pressing its case in territorial disputes. The way in which the PRC advances its claims to territorial questions is, once again, consistent with the hypothesis that the Chinese leadership is thinking in terms of grand strategy. The PRC appears to prioritise disputed territory on the basis of its proximity to militarily and commercially important features such as shipping lanes. Moreover, the PRC, once again, brings a variety of policy instruments to bear to keep its opponents under pressure. The first reason to believe that the Chinese leadership prioritises disputed territories on the basis of their strategic value is that it does not seem to value all of them equally. If the Chinese leadership was motivated primarily by pride – or, more cunningly, by the desire to appeal to the Chinese population’s sense of pride – one might expect Beijing to chase every possible opportunity for success and resist every semblance of failure. The PRC has not, however, behaved in this fashion. To the contrary, it has approached many of its territorial disputes in a spirit of compromise. Journalist David Tweed has noted that the PRC has resolved 17 border disputes since 1949, occasionally conceding as much as half of the territory in question in order to gain a settlement.39 States may also cling to disputed territory when substantial numbers of their citizens share a common ethnic heritage with those in the contested region. In a similar fashion, governments may recognise an obligation to retain territories in which they have granted substantial numbers of inhabitants legal status as citizens. Beijing does, indeed, assume a degree of responsibility for the so-called overseas Chinese living outside the PRC.40 Nevertheless, many of the PRC’s most controversial attempts to assert its territorial claims have concerned islands which were, until recently, devoid of human population, and which remain poorly suited for human settlements. Indeed, the PRC has

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attracted attention and some criticism for artificially expanding some of these islands to make them marginally more inhabitable. Although the arguments that the PRC is pursuing its territorial claims primarily for reasons of prestige or out of concern for potential citizens are weak, the argument that the PRC is pursuing those claims primarily in order to improve its military and economic position is strong. The CIA’s World Factbook discusses 13 ongoing territorial disputes involving China. Of these, ten involve regions of demonstrable global strategic significance.41 An 11th involves North Korea, and although the disposition of the disputed islands in the Yalu and Tumen rivers may not have obvious implications beyond the immediate area, Beijing’s relationship with Pyongyang does.42 Three of the PRC’s border disputes involve India. In one, the CIA notes, the PRC interposes itself into the Kashmir region, which India also disputes with Pakistan.43 Beijing and New Delhi also contest ownership of the Himalayan region known as Arunachal Pradesh.44 Moreover, the PRC claims territory in Bhutan’s Doklam Highlands. As India’s Economic Times documents, India has signed a pair of treaties with Bhutan legitimising its right to take a military interest in the Doklam dispute.45 From the perspective of geopolitical theory, the Sino-Indian border disputes concern control over the crucial central ground. Not only are they located at the junctions between several countries in the region, but Mackinder’s earlier and more influential works place them within the so-called heartland of Eurasia.46 Mackinder’s theory suggests that as the PRC strengthens its control over them, it consolidates its ability to project power in all directions across the landmass. Mackinder’s heartland theory is, perhaps, excessively abstract. Nevertheless, when one looks at more tangible issues, one comes to similar conclusions. India’s wealth and military power gives it global influence. This makes its relations with the PRC globally significant as well. As it happens, Beijing and New Delhi are frequently rivals. Therefore, the outcome of their territorial disputes is strategically significant because the side which dominates the contested regions will gain – and be seen to gain – advantages over the other. One such advantage – as Mackinder would have predicted – is control over transportation routes. The Economic Times points out that India’s energy industry benefits considerably from its current ability to build gas pipelines crisscrossing Arunachal Pradesh.47 The same geographical factors which make these routes useful for transporting gas would make them equally useful for other commercial activities. Meanwhile, as Stuart Lau of the South China Morning Post notes, the PRC values the disputed region of Aksai Chin as one of the most convenient points from which to access Tibet.48 In a war, such routes would also be useful for moving military forces. Moreover, the PRC’s border conflict over Doklam takes place near the so-called chicken’s neck – a narrow strip of territory connecting India’s north-eastern states to the rest of India. Shaurya Karanbir Gurung of the

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Economic Times notes that these states host important Indian military bases and that, in the case of war, they would provide India with a jumping-off point for offensive land operations against China.49 India’s forces in the northeast are, however, dependent on road and rail networks running through the chicken’s neck. By retaining control of Doklam, the PRC preserves the option of interdicting those networks and thus crippling Indian forces which might otherwise strike into China. Another strategic reason why the Chinese leadership takes an assertive position in its border disputes with India and Bhutan may be that the contested regions are adjacent to Tibet and the PRC’s Xinjiang Province. Tibet and Xinjiang are commercially and militarily important to the PRC for the same general reasons as Doklam – they extend Chinese territory farther into Mackinder’s heartland, they occupy a central position amidst eight other states, they offer the PRC greater access to surrounding regions and, if lost, they could potentially offer Beijing’s enemies greater access to China. The Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline runs through Xinjiang, and both provinces have significant reserves of assorted natural resources. Tibet is home to one particularly vital and strategically important natural resource: water. Nine of the enormous rivers that supply freshwater to 16 Asian countries – ranging from Kyrgyzstan to Thailand – originate on the Tibetan Plateau. These include the Brahmaputra and Indus rivers, the water from which hundreds of millions of Indians depend on to survive. Should China develop sufficient water-related infrastructure on the Tibetan Plateau, it could assume unprecedented control over some of India’s primary sources of freshwater. Military and commercial concerns notwithstanding, one can easily extrapolate how China’s control over Tibet is an essential component of its thrust towards strategic dominance in Asia. In this context, it is also worth noting that the people of Tibet and Xinjiang are both ethnically distinct from China’s Han majority. Separatist movements are active in both provinces. Under these circumstances, the Chinese leadership may reasonably feel that making territorial concessions in that region would set an unfortunate precedent. Moreover, if the PRC was to lose access to the contested region of Aksai Chin, it would find Tibet physically more difficult to access. Just as the PRC is realising the theoretical geopolitical value of Myanmar by building pipelines, it is realising the theoretical value of Doklam, Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh by building roads. Both Beijing and New Delhi have taken these endeavours seriously. In 1962 the PRC’s roadbuilding efforts helped to precipitate a Sino-Indian war. In 2017, India deployed military forces yet again to prevent the PRC from building a new road in Doklam. Although the PRC temporarily suspended the project in an apparent attempt to defuse the incident, journalist Nyshka Chandran reports that Indian media sources claim that Indian troops confronted another Chinese road construction crew in Arunachal Pradesh scarcely four months later.50

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Two more of the PRC’s border disputes involve Myanmar. Previous sections have noted Myanmar’s value to China as a land route to the Indian Ocean. Since the PRC has enjoyed cooperative relations with Myanmar in the early 21st century, one might suppose that both sides would be eager to resolve their dispute. The state governments are not, however, the only actors in the conflict. The disputed regions are home to a number of independent groups opposed to Myanmar’s government. Since Naypyidaw perceives them as a threat – and since some of them, at least, clearly do engage in armed resistance against the Myanmarese regime – the state governments have no simple way to make peace. The PRC cannot easily distance itself from Myanmar’s anti-government forces either. As Enze Han of the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies has noted, some of the rebels and alleged rebels are ethnically Han Chinese and enjoy popular support within China.51 Even those who are not often have relatives on the PRC’s side of the border. Moreover, at least one of the rebel movements espouses MarxismLeninism. As Han notes, China’s Communist leaders have historically recognised them as ideological allies.52 In addition to that, there is extensive trade throughout the border region. Thus, the conflict affects the PRC’s economy. The conflict also drives people from their homes, and those people often seek refuge across the Chinese border. In short, the Chinese government is under some pressure to support Myanmar’s rebels. Nevertheless, Han sees the PRC taking an increasingly even-handed approach to Myanmarese conflicts.53 Such an approach is in keeping with the PRC’s strategic interest in maintaining stability in a country which provides it with such important ports, roads and pipelines. Han admits, however, that his argument is controversial. Some analysts, he notes, allege that the PRC maintains friendly ties with ethnically Han rebel groups in Myanmar’s Kokang region.54 If, indeed, the PRC favours Myanmar’s rebels, one might take this as a sign that the Chinese leadership is allowing such factors as ethnic loyalty and domestic public opinion to take precedence over grand strategy. There would, however, be other ways to interpret such a situation. Myanmar’s conflicts greatly complicate Naypyidaw’s relations with the rest of the world. This, in turn, forces Myanmar’s government to turn to the PRC for trade and other forms of support. Thus, although Beijing might find it inconvenient if Myanmar’s disputes were to escalate, a continuation of low-level conflict may be strategically beneficial for China. As of late, Beijing continues to play both sides of the conflict, showing increasing support for the military junta that forcibly seized power in Myanmar in 2021. The United States Institute for Peace, an independently administered think tank funded by the US government, explores this possibility that ongoing conflict may, in fact, be in China’s strategic interest. USIP analysts cite Myanmarese sources as alleging that the PRC is, indeed, using their

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country’s conflicts to maintain its influence.55 The USIP also reports that the PRC has offered to mediate in Myanmar’s conflicts while actively trying to prevent other countries from playing a similar role.56 Meanwhile, the USIP also finds that both Myanmar’s rebels and Myanmar’s government leaders typically welcome Beijing’s involvement in their dispute.57 If Beijing is seeking to make itself indispensable to all parties, it seems to be succeeding. In conclusion, the PRC’s precise role in Myanmar’s conflicts remains controversial. One may reasonably suppose that the PRC, like all other states, occasionally pursues inconsistent policies. Nevertheless, behind any inconsistencies remains the fact that the PRC’s efforts to resolve Myanmar’s conflicts work to its geopolitical advantage, and that, paradoxically enough, the continuation of the conflicts works to its advantage as well. The PRC seems to have found itself in a win-win situation, and although outsiders cannot know whether it arrived there by luck or design, one can observe that the ability to place oneself in this sort of fortunate position is a distinguishing feature of strategic skill. The CIA goes on to note the PRC’s territorial disputes in the South China Sea (SCS). Although the CIA focuses on four specific areas which have been the scene of international incidents, one should note that the PRC claims a so-called Exclusive Economic Zone encompassing virtually the entire body of water. This brings it into direct conflict with at least six states and indirectly affects all shipping passing the south-eastern corner of Asia. Beijing’s geopolitical reasons for pressing its claims in the SCS region could scarcely be more palpable. The CSIS China Power Project has compiled a database estimating the amount of trade which passes through the SCS in the second decade of the 21st century.58 CSIS research indicates that 21% of all global trade went through these waters in 2016.59 The PRC itself relies on the SCS for 39% of its commerce.60 One should also note that the CSIS estimate is conservative. As CSIS researchers note, the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development uses considerably higher figures, as do a wide range of other analysts.61 The fact that so much of China’s trade goes through the SCS makes this region exceptionally important, not only to China itself, but to other countries which wish to do business with China. Brazil, for instance, is emerging as one of the PRC’s more valuable trading partners. CSIS data indicate that over 23% of Brazil’s trade goes through the SCS.62 Germany has been one of the PRC’s most reliable commercial – and political – allies in Europe, and although a more modest 9% of Germany’s trade goes through the SCS, this commerce is worth $215 billion.63 By securing the SCS on its own terms, the PRC not only secures its access to those markets, it secures its business and diplomatic relationships with those countries. Not only is the SCS particularly important to China and its trading partners, it is also particularly important to several of the PRC’s potential rivals. This is partially – but only partially – due to the fact that those rivals themselves trade actively with China. CSIS data indicate that India routes

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over 30% of its trade through the SCS region.64 America’s commerce transiting the SCS is worth over $200 billion.65 Japan’s SCS trade is even more valuable at $240 billion.66 The more influence the PRC gains over the SCS, the greater its ability to pressure these countries. The commercial importance of the SCS indicates its potential importance to movements of military forces and subsequent logistical operations in a hypothetical large-scale war. Moreover, the SCS is rich in natural resources. Financial analyst Peter Pham cites figures suggesting that the region holds 28 billion barrels of oil, 260 trillion cubic feet of natural gas and 10% of the world’s fisheries.67 The fact that China relies so heavily on oil imports makes SCS oil particularly important to the PRC. Meanwhile, fisheries expert Rob Fletcher cites Rabobank research showing that China’s consumption of seafood increased by over 50% in the early 21st century, indicating another reason why the PRC’s government may find SCS resources exceptionally important.68 For these reasons, one would expect competent Chinese grand strategists to press their nation’s claims on the SCS using all the instruments at their disposal. The Chinese government appears to be doing exactly that. In the 1970s and 1980s, the PRC seized several disputed islands in the SCS from Vietnam. One may also note that the PRC prevailed in these conflicts by physically destroying Vietnamese troops and naval vessels occupying the contested region. These engagements were, in other words, bitterly fought. Although more recent confrontations in the SCS have typically been bloodless, the PRC has occupied several more contested geographical features by coup de main. One example of such activity took place between 1994 and 1995 when the PRC asserted physical control over the disputed Mischief Reef. Chinese fishermen, political activists and other putative civilians have often been the first to enter contested regions.69 On certain occasions, notably the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident, Chinese military forces have backed them up. The PRC has gone on to build artificial additions on several of the land features under its control. From a strategic point of view, this serves at least two functions. First, it makes the land features more usable as military bases. Although it was not initially clear that the SCS islands would be useful for this purpose, the PRC has made dramatic progress towards militarising them. As recently as 2016, such commentators as Lyle J. Goldstein of the US Naval War College could reasonably ask whether Chinese military preparations on the SCS islands were anything more than posturing.70 At that time, as Goldstein noted, only one Chinese military aircraft had ever been confirmed to have visited the PRC’s Spratly Island bases, and it had apparently been performing a medical evacuation.71 The PRC air forces had a larger presence in the SCS’s Paracel island chain, as Goldstein also noted.72 Over the half-decade that followed, the PRC steadily increased its military use of the land features. In 2018, the CSIS Asia Maritime Transparency

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Initiative (AMTI) published a report summarising Chinese activities in the SCS islands.73 This report noted deployments of transport aircraft, maritime patrol aircraft, electronic warfare equipment, anti-ship cruise missiles, antiaircraft systems, radar installations, fighter aircraft, surveillance drones, frigates, destroyers, amphibious landing ships and a wide range of logistical vessels.74 Approximately two weeks after issuing this report, the CSIS AMTI updated it to reflect the fact that the PRC had gone on to deploy bomber aircraft to the islands.75 The CSIS AMTI also noted that the PRC appears to be taking measures to conceal its assets on the islands from overhead reconnaissance.76 Goldstein remains correct in noting that the PRC’s island bases would be vulnerable in a large-scale war.77 Robert Farley of the University of Kentucky has followed Goldstein’s commentary with a 2018 piece reiterating the argument that the US Navy could overcome the PRC’s bases in a relatively short time.78 Farley himself, however, notes that the bases would threaten US forces for as long as they survived, and that they would complicate American operations at a time when the US Navy would presumably be contending with other dangerous elements of the PRC’s military establishment.79 After the surge of PRC deployments from 2016 onwards, one may reasonably compare the PRC’s island bases to its recently acquired aircraft carriers. Neither set of assets fully offsets the PRC’s military inferiority to the United States, but both increase its ability to threaten the United States with serious harm and both allow its forces to operate in significantly greater strength at significantly greater distances from the Chinese mainland. A second reason why it serves the PRC’s strategic interests to enhance the SCS land features is that the artificially expanded islands with their freshly developed infrastructure help Chinese businesses tap the resources of the region. The CSIS AMTI confirms that, just as the islands support military deployments, they also support expanded operations by the Chinese fishing fleet.80 A third way in which the expanded islands appear to support the PRC’s strategy is that they signal Beijing’s political resolve to enforce its claims. The SCMP reports that the PRC has settled over 1,000 people on Woody Island in the Paracels, and that Chinese travel agencies have begun offering cruises to the disputed islands.81 Although the SCMP also reports that approximately 75% of the people on Woody Island are military personnel, the presence of even a small civilian population has public relations value for the PRC, and allows Beijing to claim that actions taken to maintain its claims on the SCS are being taken on behalf of its citizens.82 Not only does the PRC deploy military forces on the SCS land features themselves, it frequently carries out air and naval exercises throughout the region. All of these exercises presumably improve the Chinese armed forces’ ability to fight for the disputed region. Some also seem to be timed for political effect. A prominent example of what appears to be a politically timed exercise took place in 2016. In the years following the 2012 Scarborough Shoal

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incident, the Philippines and several other Southeast Asian countries asked the Netherlands-based international organisation known as the Permanent Court of Arbitration to rule on certain aspects of the SCS territorial dispute. The PRC refused to participate in the arbitration proceedings and scheduled naval exercises to take place in the SCS during the days leading up to the ruling. Masayuki Masuda of Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies reviews statements by a Chinese naval commander and a member of China’s Naval Military Studies Research Institute prior to the naval manoeuvres.83 These Chinese representatives described the exercises as a regular event but explicitly noted that, that year, they were taking place at a significant moment. Later in 2016, as Masuda also notes, Russian vessels joined the Chinese navy for further manoeuvres in the region.84 This suggests that Moscow backs Beijing’s firm position in the SCS dispute. More generally, it testifies to the strength of the Sino-Russian entente, and to its value to Chinese grand strategy. Beijing has combined its military displays with attempts at diplomatic persuasion. When PRC representatives criticised the arbitration proceedings, Masuda notes, they commonly directed their most vitriolic rhetoric against the United States.85 Masuda persuasively interprets this as an attempt to avoid jeopardising the PRC’s ongoing efforts to improve relations with the Asian parties to the case.86 The PRC’s rhetorical tactics may have supported China’s diplomatic efforts in other ways as well. By inviting the world to blame the United States for the heightened tensions, Beijing was implicitly warning its Asian counterparts that it would be prudent for them to accept the invitation and disavow their own role in initiating the arbitration hearings. Over the long term, the PRC’s combination of threats and negotiation appears to have proven effective. Thomas M. Kane has explored the diplomatic impact of the 2012 Scarborough Shoal incident in a 2014–15 Parameters article.87 Although the United States and the Philippines rebuffed the PRC during the initial confrontation, Manila appears to have quietly sought accommodation with Beijing in subsequent years. Southeast Asian states have also proven willing to accommodate the PRC in the years following its emphatic rejection of the Permanent Court hearings. In 2018, Brunei and the Philippines signed memoranda of understanding with the PRC about joint oil and gas exploration in the disputed waters. These memoranda implicitly legitimised key elements of the PRC’s claims upon the region. Analysts Eufracia Taylor and Hugo Brennan discuss the memoranda and their significance in detail in an interview with The Diplomat’s Mercy Kuo.88 Vietnam refused similar overtures from the PRC. Taylor and Brennan note that the PRC reportedly responded by threatening to use force.89 Not only has the PRC claimed SCS territory directly, it has taken legal positions which indirectly help it to assert control over that region. Yu

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Harada and Seiya Eifuku explore this issue in an analysis prepared for Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS).90 As they note, international understandings about the concept of maritime territory differ from state to state and change over time. Many Asian states, including the PRC, interpret the law of the sea in ways that allow them to enforce territorial claims relatively robustly.91 The NIDS authors also note that the PRC has kept many of its specific claims about its legal rights in the SCS ambiguous.92 One may reasonably interpret this as a tactic which will allow Beijing to modify its demands to suit its political circumstances. This is not necessarily ominous – it means, among other things, that the PRC has retained the freedom to compromise. Nevertheless, it also means that the PRC is free to increase its demands if its leaders feel that they are in a strong enough position to get away with it. Moving north from the SCS, one finds Beijing involved in yet another maritime territorial dispute. The PRC contests significant portions of the East China Sea (ECS) with Japan. The Republic of China on Taiwan also has claims in the disputed region. Like the SCS dispute, the ECS dispute has repeatedly involved confrontations involving military forces. The ECS is strategically important for many of the same reasons as the SCS. Just as sea routes through the SCS connect the Pacific to the Indian Ocean, sea lanes through the ECS connect the countries of Northeast Asia. Like the SCS, the ECS is rich in both food and energy resources. In purely economic terms, the SCS is somewhat more significant. Nevertheless, in terms of political relationships, the ECS dispute has the potential to be, if anything, even more explosive. Both of the PRC’s rivals in the ECS dispute are wealthy and militarily capable. Both have had historically tense relations with mainland China. Both also enjoy close ties with the United States. Indeed, the US-Japan Security Treaty explicitly commits America to come to Japan’s aid in a war over ECS maritime territory. Therefore, it is noteworthy that the PRC has pursued its claims in the ECS with much the same combination of diplomacy and military pressure it has used in the SCS. In 2007, Beijing and Tokyo agreed to cooperate in mineral exploitation of certain sections of the disputed area.93 Nevertheless, both China and Japan patrol the ECS with armed vessels, and both have confronted the other side’s fishing vessels in the region. The CSIS/AMTI also notes that the PRC has equipped oil drilling rigs in the ECS with such features as helipads, giving them some value as military installations.94 One may note a parallel between Beijing’s use of these rigs to create fixed installations in the ECS and its more ambitious SCS-based efforts to transform small land features into permanent, usable islands. Moreover, in 2013, the PRC declared disputed ECS territory to be a so-called Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ), demanding that non-Chinese aircraft provides Chinese authorities with advance notification of any flights over that region. The CSIS/AMTI provides an introduction to this issue as well.95

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The PRC leadership’s decision to hint at a readiness to use force in the ECS indicates their confidence. It may also indicate their determination to assert their improvised position in the world. Moreover, the fact that the PRC has used many of the same tactics in two different disputes suggests that these methods are more than ad hoc responses to chaotic situations. Beijing appears to have what amounts to a doctrine for pressing its claims in maritime territorial disputes, and its methods have achieved at least some success. Korea In addition to its territorial disputes, the PRC has an interest in a number of other volatile geopolitical situations. One of the most ominous is the rivalry between the two Koreas. Of at least equal significance is Beijing’s own tense relationship with the Republic of China on Taiwan. Moreover, as PRC-based businesses expand their overseas operations, increasing numbers of Chinese citizens find themselves exposed to conflicts in Africa and the Middle East. The PRC has tended to handle such situations prudently. It has also consistently acted in ways which seem aligned with the goal of positioning itself as the arbiter in these various disagreements. This is congruent with what one can reasonably infer about the PRC’s grand strategy of increasing its ability to increase its influence and independence in the world. In the case of Korea and Taiwan, the PRC’s policies also appear to be in keeping with well-known Chinese geopolitical maxims. The traditional aphorism summarising China’s interest in the Koreas runs that if the lips are gone, the teeth will be cold (chunwang chihang). Korea is presumably a ‘lip’ protecting the ‘teeth’ of mainland China. The SinoJapanese War of 1894–95 and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 provide recent examples of what this saying might mean in practice. In both cases, Japanese naval forces achieved control over the seas around the Korean peninsula. This permitted Japanese land forces to use the peninsula as a point of entry into Manchuria (i.e., Northern China). These two wars were crucial steps in the process by which Japan assimilated considerable portions of China into its so-called East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. The consequences were ruinous for China. This helps to explain the PRC leadership’s willingness to wage war against a coalition including the United States and Great Britain to prevent the Korean peninsula from falling into the hands of its ideological enemies in the 1950s. In the political environment of the early Cold War, the Communist Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) presented itself as a relatively reliable partner for Communist China, and if the PRC found it impossible to bring all of Korea under its own influence, it had a clear interest in building up the DPRK as an ally against comparatively hostile forces on the southern half of the peninsula. As the PRC leadership transformed its economic system in the 1980s and 1990s, its political reasons for aligning itself with the DPRK became less

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obvious. The fact that Beijing was seeking to normalise its relations with the so-called international community even as Pyongyang belligerently reaffirmed its commitment to autonomy brought the PRC-DPRK relationship under increasing strain. Meanwhile, the DPRK government has not always been cooperative with its Chinese ally. As noted above, Beijing and Pyongyang have an ongoing territorial dispute. In 2013, the world saw an even more graphic example of PRC-DPRK friction when North Korean forces detained the crew of a Chinese fishing boat.96 Given these facts, it is not surprising that the PRC has shown itself increasingly willing to support its South Korean, American and Japanese trading partners against the DPRK. A turning point seemed to come in 2006, when the DPRK tested a nuclear weapon and the PRC joined its partners on the United Nations Security Council in passing Resolution 1718, calling on Pyongyang to curtail its weapons programme and imposing sanctions to punish the North Korean regime for non-compliance.97 Since then, the PRC has demonstrated some flexibility in its policies towards the DPRK. Those seeking a summary of Beijing’s 21st century relations with Pyongyang may wish to consult Eleanor Albert’s report for the Council on Foreign Relations.98 The PRC has, however, remained committed to maintaining the Communist government in Korea’s north. Official Chinese statements on Korean issues routinely remind the world of the DPRK regime’s legitimate security concerns. This phrase, ‘legitimate security concerns’, is something of a refrain. For an example of a document which uses the expression repeatedly, one might consult the Chinese government’s transcript of PRC Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang’s press conference of June 12, 2018.99 Given the fact that commentators in other countries routinely portray the North Korean regime and its policies in starkly negative terms, PRC officials’ seemingly mild reminder that Pyongyang’s concerns may be ‘legitimate’ is actually a powerful statement. At a time when the United Nations Security Council has issued resolutions ‘deploring’ the DPRK’s policies, the PRC is expressing a willingness to consider the North Korean point of view. Perhaps more significantly, by issuing a statement based on the assumption that the DPRK has legitimate security concerns, the PRC implicitly reaffirms its position that the DPRK regime itself is legitimate. China also provides the DPRK with material support in the form of commerce and humanitarian assistance. Albert cites data from the ROK Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency to indicate that the volume of trade between the PRC and DPRK rose from $0.49 billion in 2000 to a high of $6.86 billion in 2014.100 In 2018, Albert notes, the PRC cut its trade with North Korea sharply in compliance with the United Nations sanctions regime.101 Nevertheless, the rate of informal trade rose dramatically during the same period, and Albert interprets this as a sign that the PRC government may have been covertly ‘softening’ its restrictions.102 Meanwhile, Beijing has, on numerous occasions, called for the United Nations to ease its sanctions against the DPRK.103

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If one assumes that the PRC’s 21st-century policies are primarily based on economic concerns and day-to-day political expediency, its support for the DPRK seems excessive. The simple fact that Beijing shows some concern for Pyongyang is not in itself surprising. China has an obvious interest in preventing any kind of large-scale catastrophe from engulfing a neighbouring country and producing instability along its northern border. A new Korean War would almost certainly be catastrophic, and the sudden collapse of the DPRK regime might prove to be as well. Nevertheless, US president Donald Trump’s ‘fire and fury’ speech notwithstanding, the Pyongyang regime itself appears to be the most bellicose actor on the Korean peninsula. As of 2021, there is no immediate reason to fear for the DPRK government’s internal cohesion. To the extent that there is cause for concern, one might reasonably argue that Pyongyang’s determination to maintain unusually high levels of military spending during a time of continued economic difficulty is one of the greatest threats to its future stability. The DPRK government may well be its own worst enemy. If the PRC’s only reason for supporting the DPRK was to avoid catastrophe, China could afford to take a harder line against North Korea. Beijing’s consistent support for Pyongyang suggests that the PRC leadership sees positive value in maintaining the DPRK as a capable actor. Such an attitude would be compatible with the PRC’s policies in other international controversies, and thus with what we can infer about its grand strategy. Even when trade and harmonious diplomatic relations prevail, the PRC routinely positions itself to maintain a military check on its foreign counterparts. Thus, the PRC invests in developing a navy that can, at need, discomfit the United States. Thus, the PRC recurrently deploys armed forces to assert its positions in territorial disputes. The existence of the DPRK as a belligerent and well-armed nation helps to keep South Korea, Japan and, indeed, the United States militarily off-balance in a region of crucial strategic interest to any Chinese regime. In that way, the axiom about lips and teeth remains as relevant as ever. The aphorism about lips and teeth has a militant ring. It suggests that Chinese leaders should be quick to meet challenges in the so-called lips before they get any farther. One of the axioms which seems best to describe the PRC’s relationship with Taiwan, by contrast, suggests forbearance. In 1975, Mao Zedong opined that the PRC could wait 100 years to resolve the Taiwan question.104 As of the early 21st century, Beijing appears to be exhibiting the kind of patience Mao was talking about. Despite the increase in recent years of intimidation exercises carried out mostly by the PLA Air Force in Taiwan’s ADIZ, the relationship between mainland China and Taiwan is mostly peaceful. On a day-to-day basis, the PRC has treated the breakaway republic less as a military adversary than as a commercial ally. The republic, in turn, has reciprocated. Taiwan’s Bureau of Foreign Trade states that, in 2021, the PRC was the ROC’s single largest offshore trading partner.105 Indeed, the

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ROC’s volume of trade with the PRC was close to double the ROC’s volume of trade with any other individual nation.106 One may interpret PRC-ROC trade in a variety of ways. As Chapter 3 noted, widely accepted liberal belief systems suggest that trade is typically beneficial to all parties, and that it promotes relatively harmonious relations. Nevertheless, as Chapter 3 also noted, there are exceptions to these liberal principles. Virtually all governments occasionally attempt to structure trading relationships in ways which promote their political interests. The PRC leadership appears to use this tactic in a particularly deliberate and systematic way. It is reasonable to assume that some of the PRC’s motives for trading with the ROC are purely economic. It is also reasonable to suggest that PRC-ROC trade indicates a mutual wish for peaceful relations. Nevertheless, the ROC needs the PRC’s commerce more than mainland China needs trade with Taiwan. To this extent, the PRC’s policies of encouraging trade across the Taiwan straits increase Beijing’s influence over Taipei. Moreover, one must note that Mao left no doubt about his determination to recover Taiwan eventually. If one takes Mao’s 1975 remark literally, more than half of Taiwan’s time is now gone. Xi Jinping has also suggested that a deadline is approaching, declaring in a 2019 address that China cannot leave the Taiwan issue for another generation.107 Given the fact that the PRC has consistently sought military leverage in its other disputes, one would expect it to seek military leverage over the ROC as well. Therefore, it is not surprising that the PRC armed forces conduct frequent exercises in the Taiwan region. America’s Defense Department reports, for instance, that the PRC aircraft carrier Liaoning passed through the Taiwan Straits in an extended exercise taking place between late 2016 and early 2017.108 In 2018, the US DOD reports that the PRC Navy returned to the Taiwan region to conduct a large-scale live-fire drill involving multiple fleets.109 America’s DOD also alleges that the PRC has been deploying aircraft provocatively close to Taiwan with steadily increasing frequency.110 As early as January of 2022, the South China Morning Post reported that the PLA Air Force sent 52 aircraft into Taiwan’s ADIZ following a US-Japan naval drill that took place in the ECS.111 This pattern of increasing PRC air presence has been observed developing over the course of several years. Exercises and aircraft deployments seem calculated to attract public and diplomatic attention. Therefore, one may reasonably assume that the PRC leadership intends these activities to intimidate possible opponents, and perhaps also to influence domestic politics in Taiwan. Meanwhile, the PRC’s more general programme of upgrading its armed forces makes its warnings against Taiwan steadily more credible. As Chapter 4 noted, the PRC is placing special priority on upgrading its amphibious warfare capabilities. A campaign to reassert mainland Chinese control over the breakaway island would, of course, be an amphibious campaign.

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The PRC’s policies in the SCS, the ECS, the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Straits seem aimed at preserving the general state of peace while periodically escalating specific conflicts. This suggests that the PRC leadership intends to proceed cautiously. It also suggests that the PRC leadership hopes to take advantage of its increasing wealth and armed might to improve its position incrementally throughout a wide range of militarily and economically important regions. Moreover, it reinforces the point that the PRC’s leadership is committed to achieving direct control over its areas of interest, even when it has no obvious short-term need to do so. The fact that the PRC has pursued this approach relatively consistently and relatively successfully in such a wide variety of situations indicates both that the approach is deliberate and that the Chinese government is implementing it competently. As the PRC develops its commercial and diplomatic relationships beyond East Asia, it becomes increasingly entangled in African, Central Asian, South Asian, Latin American, Middle Eastern and Western affairs. True to the pattern it has established in East Asia, Beijing appears to place a high value on developing the means to intervene in overseas matters directly. Equally in keeping with its approach to East Asian affairs, Beijing has chosen to exercise its power projection capabilities even when they remain relatively modest, partially, perhaps, to give its military personnel field experience, and partially, perhaps to put potential antagonists on notice that the PRC is willing to use force. Two of the PRC’s most spectacular military and quasi-military operations have been its naval anti-piracy patrols off the Horn of Africa and its 2011 evacuation of what the SCMP reports to have been 35,860 Chinese nationals from civil unrest in Libya.112 In both cases, the PRC undertook operations which pushed its logistical capabilities to their limits. Scholar Yves-Heng Lim documents this point with regard to the anti-piracy patrols and the SCMP quoted a Beijing-based defence expert named Song Xiaojun to make this case with regard to Libya.113 Moreover, the PRC might also have achieved similar outcomes with less effort in both cases by asking for outside assistance. During the Libyan crisis, Shi Jingtao of the SCMP notes that the Philippines, Thailand and Bangladesh did exactly that.114 Nevertheless, the PRC acted directly. During the Yemeni crisis of 2015, Beijing not only rescued its own citizens, it helped to evacuate people from other countries. As Reuters reported, such well-established maritime powers as Great Britain were among the nations that accepted Chinese aid.115 Not only did the Yemen operation boost China’s prestige, it subtly revealed one of the more material benefits the PRC obtains by using its own forces in other operations. As China scholars Andrew S. Erickson and Austin M. Strange noted in a report to the Jamestown Foundation, the reason why the PRC was able to respond to events in Yemen in a timely fashion was that it already had ships deployed nearby for anti-piracy patrols.116 The anti-piracy operation provides the PRC with a pretext to maintain capabilities which

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allow it to intervene in a wide range of situations throughout a volatile region of great importance to virtually every nation in the world. Just as the PRC has used the anti-piracy operation to position warships on the western side of the Indian Ocean, it has put other measures in place to ensure that it will be able to act in its own interests beyond East Asia. In 2014, for instance, the Iraqi government agreed to place some of its own security forces under Chinese control.117 The PRC’s pattern of arms trading suggests that it may be taking steps to increase the chances that friendly states’ armed forces will use equipment which is interoperable with its own.118 Thomas M. Kane has explored these and related issues in more depth in the journal of the US Army War College.119 The final frontiers for Chinese geopolitical influence would appear to be North America and Western Europe. As previous sections have noted, the PRC frequently appears to approach potential conflicts assertively. In the second decade of the 21st century, US president Donald Trump has taken a confrontational approach as well, pressuring the PRC to change a number of policies by imposing punitive tariffs on Chinese goods. The PRC has responded in kind, leading to the so-called US-China trade war. Also noteworthy is the fact that, since 2019, the Canadian government under Justin Trudeau has taken a relatively hard line towards the PRC.120 Though Trudeau once appeared to favour strengthening Canada’s economic ties to China, US diplomats negotiating for a renewal of the North American Free Trade Agreement pressed Canada and Mexico to accept terms which could limit their options in trading with China. The new trade deal, titled the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement or USMCA, includes what has been referred to as a ‘poison pill’ clause that makes member states that wish to enter into any outside free-trade agreements with ‘non-market economies’ susceptible to expulsion from the USMCA. Analysts allege that the poison pill clause is no more than an anti-China clause, as China is the only major trade competitor that Washington considers to be a non-market economy.121 Nevertheless, both Canada and Mexico readily obliged to the terms. Conclusion The fact that the PRC is facing such concerted opposition in such an economically important part of the world unquestionably challenges its grand strategy. Chapter Eight will discuss this in more detail and explore the PRC’s ability to accommodate this development. For purposes of this chapter, one may simply note that, just as the PRC has been consistently assertive in its disputes with smaller nations, it has frequently responded to US and Canadian pressure in kind. Meanwhile, the PRC’s early 21st-century relations with European nations reinforce this book’s arguments that Beijing is actively seeking the ability to influence other governments individually and collectively, rather than merely pursuing economic development. Sino-European relations also reinforce

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this book’s argument that the PRC uses a combination of policy instruments to achieve objectives beyond those immediately and obviously under consideration. Notes 1 ‘China’, CIA World Factbook, accessed May 2022, https://www.cia.gov/theworld-factbook/countries/china/. 2 Such comments are reviewed in Thomas M. Kane, Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power (London: Frank Cass, 2002), 53–8. 3 Alfred Thayer Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783 (Boston, MA: S.J. Parkhill, 1890), 28–9. 4 Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power, 28–9. 5 ‘Maritime Piracy and Armed Robbery Reaches 22-Year Low, Says IMB Report’, International Chamber of Commerce, October 1, 2018, https://iccwbo.org/ media-wall/news-speeches/maritime-piracy-armed-robbery-reaches-22-yearlow-says-imb-report/. 6 Gerald Nee and Nazirah K. Din, Piracy in Southeast Asia, Clyde & Co LLP, accessed December 2, 2018. 7 Nee and Din, Piracy in Southeast Asia. 8 Neil Chatterjee, ‘Singapore Raises Security Alert After Malacca Threat’, Reuters, March 5, 2010, http://www.reuters.com/article/us-malacca-threat/singaporeraises-security-alert-after-malacca-threat-idUSTRE62335120100305. 9 Mahan, The Influence of Sea Power, 58. 10 Jim Edwards, ‘500 Years Ago, China Destroyed Its World-Dominating Navy Because Its Political Elite Was Afraid of Free Trade’, The Independent, March 8, 2017, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/500-years-ago-chinadestroyed-its-worlddominating-navy-because-its-political-elite-was-afraid-of-freetrade-a7612276.html. 11 Halford J. Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, The Geographical Journal 23, no. 4 (April 1904): 421–44, reprinted in The Geographical Journal 170, no. 4 (December 2004): 298–321, https://www.iwp.edu/wp-content/ uploads/2019/05/20131016_MackinderTheGeographicalJournal.pdf. 12 MacKinder, ‘Geographical Pivot’, 433-6. 13 Halford J. MacKinder, Democratic Ideals and Reality (London: Constable and Company, 1919), 194, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Index:Democratic_Ideals_ and_Reality_(1919).djvu. 14 Thomas M. Kane and Lawrence Serewicz, ‘China’s Hunger: The Consequences of a Rising Demand for Food and Energy’, Parameters 31, no. 3 (Autumn 2001), 63–75. 15 US Energy Information Administration, China Surpassed the United States as the World’s Largest Crude Oil Importer in 2017, February 5, 2018, https:// www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=34812. 16 Tim Daiss, ‘China’s Growing Oil Demand Has Created a Geopolitical Dilemma’, Oilprice.com, May 2, 2018, https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/ChinasGrowing-Oil-Demand-Has-Created-A-Geopolitical-Dilemma.html. 17 Catherine Wong, ‘Five Things You Should Know About China-backed Port in Myanmar’, South China Morning Post, May 9, 2017, http://www.scmp.com/ news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2093581/five-things-you-should-knowabout-china-backed-port. 18 Yimou Lee, Chen Aizhu, Shwee Yee, and Saw Myint, ‘Beset by Delays, MyanmarChina Oil Pipeline Nears Start-Up’, Reuters, March 21, 2017, https://www.

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The View from the Middle reuters.com/article/us-myanmar-china-oil/beset-by-delays-myanmar-china-oilpipeline-nears-start-up-idUSKBN16S0XF. World Integrated Trade Solution, Fuel Imports by China (World Bank, 2019), accessed November 2021, https://wits.worldbank.org/CountryProfile/en/ Country/CHN/Year/2019/TradeFlow/Import/Partner/by-country/Product/2727_Fuels/Show/Partner%20Name;MPRT-TRD-VL;MPRT-PRDCT-SHR;AHSWGHTD-AVRG;MFN-WGHTD-AVRG;/Sort/MPRT-TRD-VL/Chart/top10. US Energy and Information Administration, US Exports to China of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products, EIA Petroleum and Other Liquids (1993–2021), accessed June 22, 2022, https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/LeafHandler.ashx? n=pet&s=mttexch1&f=a. US Energy and Information Administration, U.S. Exports of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products Have More Than Doubled Since 2010, June 27, 2017, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=31812. EIA, U.S. Exports of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products. Florence Tan and Meng Meng, ‘Exclusive: China’s Unipec to Resume U.S. Oil Purchases After Tariff Policy Change – Sources’, Reuters, August 24, 2018, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trade-china-oil/exclusive-chinas-unipecto-resume-u-s-oil-purchases-after-tariff-policy-change-sources-idUSKCN1L90EY. Tan and Meng, ‘China’s Unipec’. Oceana Zhou, ‘China’s 2020 Crude Imports from US Surge 211% to 396,000 b/ d, Valued at $6.28 bil’, S&P Global Community Insights, January 20, 2021, https://www.spglobal.com/commodityinsights/en/market-insights/latest-news/ oil/012021-china-data-2020-crude-imports-from-us-surge-211-to-396000-bdvalued-at-628-bil. Tan and Meng, ‘China’s Unipec’. Tan and Meng, ‘China’s Unipec’. Chen Aizhu, Josephine Mason, and Pei Li, ‘Russia Remains China’s Top Oil Supplier as Pipeline Expands’, Reuters, February 24, 2018, https://www.reuters. com/article/us-china-economy-trade-crude/russia-remains-chinas-top-oilsupplier-as-pipeline-expands-idUSKCN1G808M. Aizhu, Mason, and Li, ‘China Remains’. Aizhu, Mason, and Li, ‘China Remains’. Frank Tang and Orange Wang, ‘China’s Imports from Russia Surge to New High, Defying US Calls to Cut Ties Over Ukraine War’, South China Morning Post, May 9, 2022, https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/ 3177046/chinas-imports-russia-surge-new-high-defying-us-calls-cut. Aizhu, Mason, and Li, ‘China Remains’. Daniel Workman, ‘Top 15 Crude Oil Suppliers to China’, World’s Top Exports, updated June 22, 2022, https://www.worldstopexports.com/top-15-crude-oilsuppliers-to-china/. Tsevatana Paraskova, ‘Russian Oil Turns Its Back on Its Biggest Customer’, Oilprice.com, May 1, 2018, https://oilprice.com/Geopolitics/International/ Russian-Oil-Turns-Its-Back-On-Its-Biggest-Customer.html. Robin Paxton and Vladimir Soldatkin, ‘China Lends Russia $25 Billion to Get 20 Years of Oil’’, Reuters, February 17, 2009, https://www.reuters.com/article/ uk-russia-china-oil-sb/china-lends-russia-25-billion-to-get-20-years-of-oilidUKTRE51G3S620090217. Chen Aizhu, ‘China to Complete Russia Oil, Gas Pipeline Sections by End 2018: Vice Governor’, Reuters, May 12, 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/uschina-silkroad-russia-pipelines/china-to-complete-russia-oil-gas-pipelinesections-by-end-2018-vice-governor-idUSKBN18819I.

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37 ‘China-Russia Oil Pipeline Begins Operating, Expected to Double Imports’, Xinhua, January 20, 2018, http://en.people.cn/n3/2018/0102/c90000-9310371. html. 38 ‘Russia-China Oil Pipeline Opens’, BBC, January 2, 2011, https://www.bbc. com/news/world-asia-pacific-12103865. 39 David Tweed, ‘China’s Territorial Disputes’, Bloomberg, October 3, 2018, https://www.bloomberg.com/quicktake/territorial-disputes. 40 Thomas M. Kane, ‘China’s “Power-Projection” Capabilities’, Parameters 44, no. 4 (Winter 2014–15), 35. 41 ‘China’, CIA World Factbook. 42 ‘China’, CIA World Factbook. 43 ‘China’, CIA World Factbook. 44 ‘China’, CIA World Factbook. 45 Dipanjan Roy Chaudhury, ‘Doklam Row: China Trying to Create Wedge Between India and Bhutan’, Economic Times, July 12, 2018, https://economictimes. indiatimes.com/news/defence/doklam-row-china-trying-to-create-wedge-betweenindia-and-bhutan/articleshow/60093783.cms. 46 Mackinder, ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’, 435. 47 ET Bureau, ‘OIL: Arunachal Pradesh Govt. to Lay 60 km Gas Pipeline’, Economic Times, July 23, 2009, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/ industry/energy/oil-gas/oil-arunachal-pradesh-govt-to-lay-60-km-gas-pipeline/ articleshow/4813197.cms. 48 Stuart Lau, ‘How a Road on China and India’s Border Led to the Two Powers’ Worst Stand-Off in Decades’, South China Morning Post, July 6, 2017, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2101578/how-road-chinaand-indias-border-led-two-powers-worst. 49 Shaurya Karanbir Gurung, ‘Behind China’s Sikkim Aggression, a Plan to Isolate the Northeast from the Rest of India’, Economic Times, July 12, 2018, accessed January 10, 2019, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/defence/borderface-off-why-china-tries-to-break-chickens-neck-to-isolate-northeast/articleshow/ 59420472.cms. 50 Nyshka Chandran, ‘There Are Signs of Another India-China Border Spat’, CNBC, January 4, 2018, https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/04/reports-of-chineseconstruction-in-indian-state-of-arunachal-pradesh.html. 51 Enze Han, ‘Border Conflict No Match for Sino-Myanmar Relations’, East Asia Forum, April 27, 2017, http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2017/04/27/borderconflict-no-match-for-sino-myanmar-relations/. 52 Han, ‘Border Conflict’. 53 Han, ‘Border Conflict’. 54 Han, ‘Border Conflict’. 55 USIP Myanmar Senior Study Group, China’s Role in Myanmar’s Internal Conflicts (USIP, September 14, 2018), https://www.usip.org/publications/2018/ 09/chinas-role-myanmars-internal-conflicts. 56 USIP Myanmar Senior Study Group, China’s Role in Myanmar’s Internal Conflicts. 57 USIP Myanmar Senior Study Group, China’s Role in Myanmar’s Internal Conflicts. 58 China Power Project, ‘How Much Trade Transits the South China Sea’, CSIS, accessed January 21, 2019, https://chinapower.csis.org/much-trade-transitssouth-china-sea/. 59 China Power Project, ‘How Much Trade’. 60 China Power Project, ‘How Much Trade’. 61 China Power Project, ‘How Much Trade’.

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The View from the Middle China Power Project, ‘How Much Trade’. China Power Project, ‘How Much Trade’. China Power Project, ‘How Much Trade’. China Power Project, ‘How Much Trade’. China Power Project, ‘How Much Trade’. Peter Pham, ‘Why is Tension Rising in the South China Sea’, Forbes, December 19, 2017, https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterpham/2017/12/19/why-is-tension-risingin-the-south-china-sea/#f4c28661fa4d. Rob Fletcher, ‘Chinese Seafood: Production and Consumption Predictions Released’, The Fish Site, January 11, 2018, https://thefishsite.com/articles/ chinese-seafood-production-and-consumption-predictions-released. Kane, ‘China’s “Power-Projection” Capabilities’, 30. Lyle J. Goldstein, ‘China’s Shiny New Air Bases in the South China Sea’, National Interest, November 28, 2016, https://nationalinterest.org/feature/ chinas-shiny-new-air-bases-the-south-china-sea-18530. Goldstein, ‘China’s Shiny New Air Bases’. Goldstein, ‘China’s Shiny New Air Bases’. AMTI, ‘An Accounting of China’s Deployments to the Spratly Islands’, CSIS, May 9, 2018, https://amti.csis.org/accounting-chinas-deployments-spratlyislands/. AMTI, ‘An Accounting’. AMTI, ‘China Lands First Bomber on South China Sea Islands’, CSIS, May 18, 2019, https://amti.csis.org/china-lands-first-bomber-south-china-sea-island/. AMTI, ‘An Accounting’. Goldstein, ‘China’s Shiny New Air Bases’. Robert Farley, ‘Are China’s South China Sea Bases Pointless?’, National Interest, February 18, 2018, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/are-chinas-southchina-sea-bases-pointless-24546. Farley, ‘Bases Pointless?’. AMTI, ‘An Accounting’. Reuters, ‘China’s Sinopec to Build Service Station on Woody Island in Disputed South China Sea’, South China Morning Post, December 15, 2015, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1891237/chinas-sinopecbuild-service-station-woody-island. Liu Zhen, ‘Three in Four People on Woody Island in Disputed South China Sea Are Chinese Military’, South China Morning Post, March 1, 2016, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/1919531/three-fourpeople-woody-island-disputed-south-china-sea. Masayuki Masuda, ‘China: Quest for a Great Power Role’, East Asian Strategic Review 2017, no. 1 (May 2017): 82, http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/ publication/east-asian/pdf/2017/east-asian_e2017_03.pdf. Masuda, ‘China: Quest’, 89. Masuda, ‘China: Quest’, 80–2. Masuda, ‘China: Quest’, 80. Kane, ‘China’s “Power-Projection” Capabilities’. Mercy Kuo, ‘The Geopolitics of Oil and Gas in the South China Sea’, The Diplomat, December 12, 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/12/the-geopoliticsof-oil-and-gas-in-the-south-china-sea/. Kuo, ‘Geopolitics of Oil’. Yu Harada and Seiya Eifuku, ‘Significance of the Freedom of Navigation and Related Challenges’, East Asian Strategic Review 2018, no. 1 (May 2018): 7–42, http://www.nids.mod.go.jp/english/publication/east-asian/pdf/2018/eastasian_e2018_01.pdf.

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91 Harada and Eifuku, ‘Significance’, passim. 92 Harada and Eifuku, ‘Significance’, 26–8. 93 Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Cooperation Between Japan and China in the East China Sea, Japan-China Joint Press Statement, June 18, 2008, https:// www.mofa.go.jp/files/000091726.pdf. 94 Zack Cooper, ‘Flashpoint East China Sea Potential Shocks’, CSIS AMTI, April 27, 2018, https://amti.csis.org/flashpoint-east-china-sea-potential-shocks/. 95 Cooper, ‘Flashpoint’. 96 Chris Buckley, ‘North Korea Seized Chinese Boat’, New York Times, May 19, 2013, https://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/20/world/asia/north-korea-seized-chinesefishing-boat.html. 97 United Nations, Resolution 1718 (October 14, 2006), https://undocs.org/S/RES/ 1718(2006). 98 Eleanor Albert, ‘The China-North Korea Relationship’, Council on Foreign Relations, March 13, 2019, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/china-northkorea-relationship. 99 Geng Shuang, Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Geng Shuang’s Regular Press Conference (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, June 12, 2018), https://www.mfa.gov.cn/ce/ceom//eng/fyrth/t1568234.htm. 100 Albert, ‘China-North Korea Relationship’. 101 Albert, ‘China-North Korea Relationship’. 102 Albert, ‘China-North Korea Relationship’. 103 Mercy Kuo, ‘China, Russia and US Sanctions on North Korea’, The Diplomat, November 13, 2018, https://thediplomat.com/2018/11/china-russia-and-ussanctions-on-north-korea/. 104 Mao Tse-tung, Memorandum of Conversation 124, Beijing, October 21, 1975, 6:25–8:05 PM, recorded in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1969–1976, Volume XVIII, China, 1973–76, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/ frus1969-76v18/d124. 105 Ministry of Economic Affairs Bureau of Foreign Trade, Trade Statistics, accessed June 4, 2022, https://www.trade.gov.tw/english/. 106 Ministry of Economic Affairs Bureau of Foreign Trade. 107 Peter Apps, ‘Commentary: Will China Go to War over Taiwan?’, Reuters, January 7, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-apps-taiwan-commentary/ commentary-will-china-go-to-war-over-taiwan-idUSKCN1P11IT. 108 US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2018 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2018), 8–9, https://media.defense.gov/ 2018/Aug/16/2001955282/-1/-1/1/2018-CHINA-MILITARY-POWERREPORT.PDF. 109 US Department of Defense, Annual Report to Congress: Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2019 (Washington, DC: Office of the Secretary of Defense, 2019), 23, https://media.defense.gov/ 2019/May/02/2002127082/-1/-1/1/2019_CHINA_MILITARY_POWER_ REPORT.pdf. 110 US Department of Defense, China 2019, 15. 111 Lawrence Cheng, ‘Taiwan Scrambles Jets After Beijing Sends 52 Aircraft to Island’s Air Defence Zone in Two Days’, South China Morning Post, January 24, 2022, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3164494/beijingsends-39-aircraft-taiwan-air-defence-zone-pushing. 112 Shi Jiangtao, ‘Lessons to Learn from Libya Evacuation’, South China Morning Post, March 5, 2011, https://www.scmp.com/article/739925/lessons-learnlibyan-evacuation.

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113 Yves Heng-Lim, China’s Naval Power: An Offensive Realist Approach (Farnham: Ashgate, 2014), 82; Shi, ‘Lessons’. 114 Shi, ‘Lessons’. 115 Megha Rajagopalan and Ben Blanchard, ‘China Evacuates Foreign Nationals from Yemen in Unprecedented Move’, Reuters, April 3, 2015, https://www. reuters.com/article/us-yemen-security-china/china-evacuates-foreign-nationalsfrom-yemen-in-unprecedented-move-idUSKBN0MU09M20150403. 116 Andrew S. Erickson and Austin M. Strange, Six Years At Sea … and Counting: Gulf of Aden Anti-Piracy And China’s Maritime Commons Presence (Washington, DC: The Jamestown Foundation, June 2015), 147, http://www. andrewerickson.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Erickson-Publication_AntiPiracy_China_Jamestown-Book_GoA-Mission_6-Years_2015_Final.pdf. 117 Thomas M. Kane, ‘China’s “Power-Projection” Capabilities’, Parameters 44, no. 4 (Winter 2014–15), 33. 118 Kane, ‘China’s “Power-Projection” Capabilities’, 34. 119 Kane, ‘China’s “Power-Projection” Capabilities’, passim. 120 Kirstin Huang, ‘Sino-Canadian Ties ‘at Freezing Point’, Says Chinese Ambassador’, South China Morning Post, May 24, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/ news/china/diplomacy/article/3011739/sino-canadian-ties-freezing-point-chineseambassador-says. 121 Josh Wingrove, ‘USMCA China Clause Latest Blow to Trudeau’s Asia Ambitions’, BNN Bloomberg, October 4, 2018, https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/ nafta-s-china-clause-is-latest-blow-to-trudeau-s-asia-ambitions-1.1147743.

7

The View from Above The Strategic Challenges of Governance, Regime Legitimacy and Party Rule in China

At the turn of the century, UCLA’s Barbara Geddes published a seminal piece demonstrating that, historically, the lifespan of authoritarian regimes – their durability – has depended substantially on whether it was led by the military, a strongman, or a single party.1 According to her data, military regimes tended to collapse more quickly than personalist regimes, which tended to collapse more quickly than one-party systems. Geddes found that the average lifespan of a one-party regime was roughly 25 years. In China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has nearly tripled that average, remaining in power for close to 75 years. Behind only Kim Jung-un’s Workers’ Party of Korea, the CCP is the world’s longest-lasting single-party autocracy that still remains in power. How has the CCP defied the odds and maintained its grip on power after all these years? Indeed, the CCP has only once come close to the prospect of collapse in 1989, when student-led protests calling for reform and democratisation gripped the nation and ended in the infamous Tiananmen Square catastrophe. Aside from this brief brush with death, however, the CCP has maintained a virtually uninterrupted political monopoly in China and has only seldom shown signs of internal disunity. In theory, as Yale’s Milan Svolik and others have argued, authoritarian regimes face two principal dilemmas.2 The first is the challenge of elite contestation and power sharing, wherein the leaders at the apex of an authoritarian political hierarchy must grapple with the countervailing ideas and aspirations of their peers and subordinates. Collapse of an authoritarian regime due to elite contestation is most classically expressed in the form of a coup d’état. The second dilemma authoritarian regimes face is the challenge of maintaining control over the masses which they govern. When authoritarian regimes and autocrats lose control over their constituencies, public dissatisfaction can rapidly cascade into popular revolutions or revanchist activist movements that blame elites for societal hardships. In either case, authoritarian regimes must come up with creative ways to manage these inherent risks if they are to survive. How the CCP has successfully persisted for so many years is a question that has been thoroughly investigated by scholars around the world. Experts DOI: 10.4324/9781315387383-7

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in Chinese politics, such as Andrew Nathan, have argued for years that the PRC’s authoritarian system owes its resilience to the cultivation of unusually persistent institutions that are not only responsive to the popular demands of the masses but also are amenable to a certain degree of intra-party democracy and regular turnovers of power.3 Others, like Joseph Fewsmith, have argued that institutionalisation is largely a facade and that factionalism has always been alive and well within the CCP.4 For Fewsmith, the CCP is a task-oriented, ‘mobilisational’ machine, the stability and resilience of which relies not on a legalist, Weberian-style bureaucracy, but on the top-down directives and the centralisation of power. In this way, the resiliency of the party has evolved to depend on a hierarchical system of leadership and strong-man rule, rather than a fixed institutional lattice. It is likely that Nathan and Fewsmith are both partially correct. Both centralisation and institutionalisation appear to have supported regime stability in China in the past and continue to do so according to the personalities and capabilities of China’s leaders and the contextual pressures that confront the CCP at any given time. In the post-Mao era, the party has experienced periods of high levels of centralisation as well as periods of low levels of centralisation. There are times when the party appears to act according to institutionalised rules and others when it is unmistakably guided by the hands of powerful, sometimes personalist leaders. Ultimately, however, China’s leaders appear to have developed a system that sufficiently limits elite contestation while managing the desires and expectations of the masses. For the past three quarters of a century, the CCP appears to have managed Svolik’s twin dilemmas of authoritarian rule. In support of this book’s core argument, this chapter aims to explore the ingredients of regime legitimacy that have permitted the CCP to effectively practise grand strategy over the past four decades. The first section is an assessment of the CCP’s effort under the Xi Administration to eradicate corruption, a disease that has undermined Chinese leaders for millennia. The second section examines how the CCP has earned legitimacy over the years by enhancing the quality of life for its constituents and attending to highpriority material matters. The third and fourth sections address the CCP’s ideological thrust and how it has been combined with party control to consolidate power over Chinese society. The final section analyses the advantages and disadvantages of robust nationalism in China and how China’s leaders have manipulated nationalist sentiment over the years to serve their broader strategic objectives. Corruption Corruption is one of the many challenges faced by the PRC’s leadership that has received significant attention in recent years. Defined simply, corruption involves the use of public office for personal gain. But, in practice, corruption is far from simple. Particularly in China, there are many unique and sometimes

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contradictory forms of corruption. Moreover, not all incarnations of corruption are as deleterious as others. To add to the complexity, the landscape of corruption in China has evolved considerably as China has advanced along its developmental path. Corruption is by no means a new or recent phenomenon in Chinese history. Periods during the reign of the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644), for instance, were notoriously corrupt.5 In those days, the imperial censorate – a supervisory branch of the emperor’s bureaucracy – was in charge of corruption oversight, but even this body was not immune to profiteering or ethical compromise. Centuries later, the rampant corruption within the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) party was a major reason for its defeat at the hands of the CCP in the Chinese Civil War. And as the CCP assumed power in the 20th century, corruption would spread through the ranks of the government, party and military as well. The key inflection point for corruption in modern China occurred during the Deng era, as a reaction to the dynamics of the ‘reform and opening’ policies that defined the period. As markets and economic engagement with the outside world expanded and complicated, opportunities for graft, rentseeking and illicit arbitrage skyrocketed. PRC government officials and party cadres were serendipitously positioned to profit as China opened up. During the initial experimental phases of liberalisation and a decade later during his southern tour, Deng Xiaoping defended market reforms in China by proclaiming the necessity to ‘Let some people get rich first’.6 Deng was almost certainly encouraging tolerance and patience in the face of the wealth inequality and geographical disparities that would inevitably arise as China’s economy became increasingly capitalistic and regionally variegated. But the ever-perspicacious Deng was also well aware of the rampant corruption triggered by his reforms. A rising economic tide did, in fact, lift hundreds of millions of Chinese out of poverty in the generations to follow, but the ‘some people’ that got rich first that Deng was referring to were often government officials, elites and members of the CCP. And although some of these privileged classes became wealthy by way of their own merits and energies, many others used the tools of corruption to enrich themselves. This corruption introduced numerous social maladies that would persist in China for decades beyond the Deng era. In the context of regime stability, the phenomenon of corruption presents problems along both axes of the authoritarian dilemma addressed in this chapter’s introduction. Corruption can trigger both elite contestation and mass unrest. On the one hand, corruption introduces a range of incentives that make political power directly connected to personal profit. In essence, the more politically powerful an official becomes, the more opportunities that official will have to pursue illicit, self-serving arrangements. This relationship between profit and power associates rank and status with tangible rewards and makes elite contestation more likely up and down the political food chain.

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Here, the taboo nature of elite corruption and the potential fall-out of corruption scandals provide political factions with opportunities to deplatform their rivals and jockey for power. The demise of Chongqing’s former Party Secretary, Bo Xilai, illustrates how a corruption scandal can be leveraged by some political factions to gain an advantage over others. In 2012, Bo was implicated in the murder of a British businessman and numerous corrupt ventures. But after the murder coverup and Bo’s financial ties were exposed, not only was Bo himself purged and later imprisoned, but the political movement that supported him – the Chinese New Left – was also discredited. In the years to follow, supporters of Bo such as the former security chief Zhou Yongkang became targets of anti-corruption efforts, and Bo’s rivals such as China’s current Vice Premier Wang Yang were elevated in political status.7 In contrast, looking from the bottom up, corruption presents the masses with a universally recognisable source of political grievance. Exploitation of public resources for personal gain contradicts the fundamental principles of governance and promotes popular distrust, resentment and political apathy. Corruption is also directly antithetical to the very socialist principles upon which the CCP initially campaigned for power and legitimacy. Herein lies the primary threat to the PRC’s regime stability born out of corruption. Indeed, corruption was one of the primary motivations for the nationwide protests that led to the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident.8 Yan Sun, who wrote about the issue two years after the Tiananmen protests, argues that corruption was the single most important motivating factor behind the popular unrest.9 According to Yan Sun, corruption and its social impact had become so pervasive and socially antagonistic in China that the issue of corruption became directly linked to the reform movement of the Deng era and inseparable from the CCP itself. Corruption became a unifying issue that brought together a diverse range of social groups and prompted them to call loudly for political transformation and regime change. The Tiananmen incident was brutally suppressed, but it imparted important lessons to China’s leaders in the CCP. Towards the end of the reform era under General Secretary Jiang Zemin, the central government began to crack down on corruption. Then Premier Zhu Rongji introduced a variety of administrative and structural reforms that limited graft and regulatory abuses of power by increasing financial oversight of banks and official financial transactions and forcing institutional separations between government agencies and the business sector.10 By 2011, Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer found that just 9% of its Chinese respondents had paid a bribe to access public goods or services that year, just two percentage points above France.11 However, perhaps the most extensive anti-corruption campaign in Chinese history has occurred under the rule of China’s current paramount leader, Xi Jinping. The campaign began almost immediately as Xi assumed office in 2012. With great zeal, Xi vowed to bring the long arm of the law to bear on

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both the ‘tigers’ and ‘flies’ of China’s political system – high ranking officials in the centre as well as local bureaucrats.12 Since then, the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) has investigated approximately three million officials and punished more than half of them.13 So many elites have been jailed in the campaign that the South China Morning Post reported in 2018 that the special prisons for high-ranking officials had become overcrowded.14 ChinaFile’s ‘Catching Tigers and Flies’ tool offers an interesting way to visualise and connect the dots between the CCDI’s public investigations, arrests and convictions of Chinese officials since the inception of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign.15 The Chinese public has mostly responded positively to Xi Jinping’s war against corruption. Despite some progress since the reform era, the majority of Chinese citizens still feel that corruption is a major political issue in their country. In this context, such a widespread and penetrating crackdown on national corruption – targeting both tigers and flies – has signalled to the masses that their leaders in Beijing are taking their concerns seriously. Indeed, from the beginning, Xi has rhetorically packaged his anti-corruption efforts in terms of political morality and enhancing the popular legitimacy of the government and the party. This ideological dimension has, in turn, improved the reputation of the CCP in the eyes of Chinese populists and those committed to social justice. But how effective has Xi’s top-down approach to resolving China’s corruption woes actually been? Transparency International’s data indicate that Xi’s punitive campaigns have achieved significant albeit limited results in tempering the overall perception of corruption in China. Between 2012 and 2022, China improved its corruption score by six points out of 100 and moved from 80th place to 65th place in terms of its global country rank.16 To the extent that one would expect anti-corruption efforts to reduce wealth inequality, the Gini index that measures inequality in China’s income distribution has only declined slightly over the past decade.17 These data suggest that simply eliminating corrupt officials en masse has only been moderately successful in remedying China’s corruption problem at a macro level. And yet, a more granular assessment of the anti-corruption campaign may show more promising results. Ting Chen of the South China Morning Post writes that Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign has led to significant decreases in corruption in China’s land market.18 This is good news, as China’s land markets have long been some of the most pervasive breeding grounds for corruption. Because all land in China is owned by the state, property markets operate on lease agreements that make it easier for the officials that regulate such transactions to profit when land changes hands. While improving the integrity of large markets such as the land market may not be immediately noticed by the average Chinese citizen, the distributional effects of such trends will ultimately trend towards decreasing economic inequality in the Chinese economy at large.

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Yuen Yuen Ang, a scholar from the University of Michigan who has studied Chinese corruption closely, argues that, despite the breadth and depth of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign, corruption will remain endemic to the Chinese political and economic system until meaningful, bottom-up reform takes place. Specifically, Ang is referring to breaking up the economic control of monopolistic, state-owned enterprises, balancing the fiscal inequities between local governments and the central government and developing a system of citizen-verified accountability mechanisms.19 In other words, Ang suggests that what China really needs to solve its corruption problem is a more balanced budget, economic liberalisation and a freer press. According to Ang, the reason corruption in China is so hard to stamp out, is because the type of corruption most entrenched in the Chinese system is also responsible for much of China’s economic growth. In her book China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption, Ang explores the role that ‘access money’ – a unique form of corruption which Ang likens to steroids – has played in China’s decades of unprecedented growth.20 Ang defines access money as rewards and kickbacks offered to government officials in exchange for exclusive economic privileges, such as cheap loans and monopoly rights. Corruption in the form of access money can be legal or illegal but all forms of access money serve to promote the interests of capitalists and their elite counterparts. Access money is like steroids because the capitalist enterprises that use access money to get ahead contribute substantially to economic growth, but the growth is often uneven, inefficient and systemically risky. Steroid users often appear a picture of health on the outside, even as their internal organs are failing. To truly reduce endemic corruption in China, therefore, Beijing may be forced to sacrifice some of the economic growth that is facilitated by access money. As stated earlier, such an effort would involve divorcing the state from the national economy in many areas. So far, Xi Jinping has opted to do just the opposite by further centralising the party’s control over the economy. Instead, Xi has chosen to tackle the issue of corruption from within, by putting the behaviour and networks of millions of officials under a microscope, rather than taking a systemic approach to remedy the root causes of access money-based transactions. This top-down approach also runs the risk of ossifying the PRC’s bureaucracy itself. In Ang’s work, she found that one of the most common statistical predictors of whether or not an official would survive an anticorruption probe was whether or not the officials above them in their bureaucratic patronage network had also been probed, and whether or not they had survived.21 This creates a paralysing dilemma for government officials and party cadres who now fear that attracting too much attention to themselves or their networks – even for successes – may cost them their livelihoods. Such an insecure environment promotes a climate of uncertainty and inaction, and stifles innovation. In recent years, Xi Jinping has complained that the PRC’s bureaucracy has become complacent and China’s

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leaders are lacking initiative.22 Ironically, it may be his very own anticorruption and centralising policies that have prompted the bureaucracy to stiffen. Despite Xi Jinping’s apparent ideological investment in his anti-corruption campaign, the absence of true systemic reforms has prompted many to highlight a separate possible motive behind his actions: the consolidation of political power. Many critics argue that the majority of the CCDI’s anticorruption investigations resemble political purges better than genuine efforts to root out immoral and malign behaviour in the party and government. For example, the prosecutions of Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang (discussed above), while perfectly legitimate on paper, may well be understood as convenient excuses to eliminate political rivals. Prior to his purge, Bo Xilai is rumoured to have been plotting a coup against Xi. And yet, it is not unreasonable to assume that many officials loyal to Xi Jinping and his camp have engaged in equally corrupt activities and perhaps continue to do so. But for political reasons, these officials will continue to be passed over for inspection by the CCDI. If Xi’s critics are right, it is worth noting that such a politically motivated anti-corruption campaign is, itself, another form of corruption. Jamil Anderlini of the Financial Times likens Xi’s anti-corruption drive to that of the Ming Dynasty censorate.23 Anderlini argues that, like the Ming royals, Xi’s anti-corruption initiatives are justified by vacuous allusions to moral purity and Confucian ethics, when in reality, the CCDI – like the Ming censorate – is institutionally subordinate to the paramount leader, Xi himself. And just as the Ming Dynasty censors used their positions of power to enrich themselves, some members of the CCDI are reported to be highly corrupt as well. If Xi’s anti-corruption efforts become overly politicised, the resulting backlash could pose problems at both ends of the authoritarian dilemma. The elites that heretofore remain unpurged but suspect that they may one day become targets could decide to band together to form a formidable faction against Xi Jinping’s camp and undermine the face of unity that the CCP has so assiduously cultivated. Concurrently, the masses could decide that the anti-corruption purges are part of a political facade and power grab that has failed to provide any meaningful improvements to their quality of life. Both scenarios would seriously diminish the party’s credibility and could potentially lead to political turmoil and regime change. To date, however, neither scenario has unfolded. The party shows no signs of growing factionalism and enough tigers – and many more flies – have been disciplined by the CCDI for the masses to have some faith in the genuine zeal behind Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption initiative. Whether Xi’s top down, authoritarian approach to rooting out corruption and instilling virtue will succeed is yet to be determined. But in the meantime, the CCP appears to be successfully juggling the social, political and economic threats posed by corruption in a calculated manner.

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Material Matters The CCP often boasts to the world of its unprecedented success in alleviating mass poverty. Indeed, state media reports that the PRC is responsible for lifting close to 800 million Chinese out from a state of destitution and ‘backwardness’ over the past half-century and successfully folding them into modern society.24 The PRC did not accomplish this feat alone, but such a humanitarian achievement nonetheless deserves recognition and celebration. Chinese individuals and families today enjoy more security and prosperity than at any point in the nation’s history. And as one might expect, the party gets most of the credit. Indeed, as Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation has uncovered in the longest-running longitudinal study of government legitimacy in China, popular approval of the CCP has risen to remarkable levels in the 21st century.25 In 2016, roughly 95% of the Chinese citizens who were represented in the Ash Center’s survey indicated that they were at least ‘fairly satisfied’ with the central government. This figure – while certainly susceptible to scrutiny and scepticism – translates to a near unanimous approval of the PRC’s leaders in Beijing. The CCP has stumbled politically on numerous occasions since it assumed power in 1949, but its ability to maintain widespread popularity among the masses is likely at least a partial reflection of the many ways in which the quality of life of the average Chinese citizen has improved over the years. But in the context of regime stability, improving the quality of life of one’s constituency can have some paradoxical negative consequences. Specifically, as the general quality of life in a society rises, so too do the material expectations of its members. And as material expectations rise, citizens often demand that their government become increasingly accountable and responsive to their needs. This is not to imply, as proponents of modernisation theory might, that as a society becomes more prosperous, its citizens will automatically expect greater levels of accountability in the way of political reform and democratisation. Rather, the subject at hand pertains more acutely to the material conditions of the masses. Rising expectations related to these material matters can create new political pressures that governments of poorer societies do not have to grapple with. This relationship between rising quality of life – material living standards – and increasing political expectations from the masses is particularly relevant in the context of a polity that has transitioned from a state of abject poverty to one of rapidly increasing economic dynamism and urbanisation. Such is the case of China over the past several decades. As China’s citizens have grown wealthier, they have also become more capable – in terms of time, resources, and know-how – to advocate for ever higher standards of living and improved governance. In many ways, these rising material expectations in China are the direct result of Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening agenda, under which the defining epigram was, ‘To get rich is glorious’. Accordingly, the PRC’s leaders

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have come to recognise that Chinese citizens don’t just appreciate improvements in their quality of life, but they expect them. Rising living standards are therefore built into the very structure of the CCP’s political legitimacy. This is part of the reason why Beijing continually promises high rates of GDP growth, even when it must rely on non-productive investments to meet its own ambitious standards. China’s citizens care about their quality of life, and their government has promised them improvements. It is therefore no surprise that material matters – or the lack thereof – are the primary source of social unrest and protest in China. Indeed, as The Economist has noted, the number of protests in China increased throughout the first decade of the 21st century, even as China’s citizens became increasingly wealthy.26 Data from China’s Ministry of Public Security (MPS) and various independent analysts indicate that the number of annual ‘mass incidents’ may have risen from around 40,000 in 2003 to nearly 180,000 by 2010. Afterwards, and as Xi Jinping came to power, the MPS stopped releasing official protest figures due to reputational concerns and social stability. However, despite the equanimous front that is often portrayed by Chinese state media, protests remain commonplace in China. That levels of protest and political unrest have increased even as China’s GDP continues to grow and levels of regime approval remain remarkably high is not a contradiction. This is because the target of most Chinese protests is not the core leadership in Beijing. Most Chinese citizens approve of their top leaders and generally support their system of government.27 Rather, because most Chinese protests concern matters of material welfare – standards of living – it is targeted at local governments and local brokers of power. This is not to say that China does not experience ideologically motivated protest that is directly critical of the CCP, its political philosophy, or its authoritarian leadership model – China does experience these forms of protest, and the sections to follow will address them. But the important takeaway is that the causes of most forms of social unrest are material matters and when these precipitate protests, while typically of a smaller scale, they too introduce implications for regime stability and survival. So, what are these material matters? The most visible category of material concerns that lead to popular protest in China have to do with economic conditions. Specifically, matters of remuneration or wages that directly affect the financial stability of large groups of individuals or workers have the potential to powder keg into social unrest and protest. Such wage-related concerns may arise suddenly from unexpected developments in local circumstances or from macroeconomic shocks that have immediately disruptive effects. Supplementarily, social unrest may result when the culmination of long-standing, dormant economic inequities bubble to the surface. In 2019, for example, hundreds of primary and middle-school teachers in China’s Sichuan Province protested in front of their municipal government’s

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petition bureau to demand higher wages.28 Here, the intent of the teachers and their colleagues was to eliminate the remuneration gap between public servants and teachers, a long-standing illegal and unjust disparity that resulted in lower pay for teachers. In 2020, ecommerce couriers across China protested against their employers – parcel delivery companies – demanding payment of excessively delayed arrears during the holiday season.29 Their concerns reflected the financial stress and neglect faced by many in China’s service sector. In 2021, amidst Beijing’s financial crackdown on the nation’s property sector, members of China’s wealthier class were found protesting in and around the corporate offices of several real estate giants, such as Evergrande, after the firms announced to retail investors that they would begin delaying payments on certain wealth management vehicles, signalling an impending default.30 In this case, it is evident that even macroeconomic policy that affects the personal finances of wealthier individuals can precipitate widespread social unrest. Because the material well-being of China’s citizens is protected implicitly within the party’s bargain with the masses for legitimacy, the PRC’s government often responds favourably to social unrest prompted by economic conditions. As the University of British Columbia’s Manfred Elfstrom explains in Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness, China’s leaders – at both the local and national government levels – often intervene on behalf of workers, leaning on companies to pay overdue arrears, improve working conditions and settle legal disputes.31 In 2021, for example, the Supreme Court of the People’s Republic of China delivered a long-overdue victory to workers by ruling that China’s proverbial 9-9-6 workweek – wherein employees are expected to work 9 AM to 9 PM, six days per week – exceeds the nation’s statutory cap on overtime (36 hours per month) and is therefore illegal.32 The 9-9-6 workweek – often associated with China’s technological sector but also present in many parts of its service sector – has been hailed for its role in catapulting certain Chinese firms to positions of global prowess at breakneck speeds. But it is also widely criticised for the exorbitant pressures and unhealthy lifestyle it has imposed on workers and their families. As China becomes increasingly wealthy, such radically onerous employment models are seen as increasingly antiquated. In the case of the 9-96 workweek, rising material expectations translated into public discontent and a targeted legal campaign whose demands were ultimately affirmed by China’s highest court. Here China’s leaders recognised that overly taxing workplace standards and their widespread unpopularity posed a credible threat to social stability. If the PRC’s courts did not respond favourably to the movement to overturn the 9-9-6 workweek, workers across China would have seen their leaders – and by proxy, the party itself – as unresponsive to their needs. This in turn would pose a threat to the legitimacy of the ruling regime. But the PRC’s leaders do not always choose responsiveness. Sometimes they choose repression. The diverse and often contradictory ways in which

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Chinese authorities respond to popular protests related to material concerns is highlighted by the PRC’s decades-long struggle with protecting its natural environment. Due largely to the sheer size of China’s population and the exceptionally rapid economic growth it experienced following the reform and opening period, China has wrestled with challenges of environmental degradation and depletion of an unprecedented scale. A study by Yin et al., published in The Lancet, revealed that well over a million deaths in China were attributable to air pollution in 2017.33 Water pollution is a problem of equal proportion. The Yangtze River which supports nearly half of China’s population, supplies 47% of its water and facilitates 42% of the country’s GDP, is so polluted in some areas that it is unfit for human touch. China Water Risk, a water-security research and advocacy group, has illustrated how wastewater and heavy metals from China’s paper, textiles, and chemical industries seep into regional water tables, leading to the emergence of hundreds of ‘Cancer Villages’ across China.34 Cancer Villages are defined by carcinogenic elements such as arsenic that, by way of polluted water, have infected the local community’s entire food chain, from bottom to top. These and many other environmental problems have plagued Chinese citizens since the beginning of the PRC’s rapid industrialisation. And in an effort to prioritise national economic growth, China’s leaders largely ignored their nation’s ever lengthening bill of environmental calamities until nearly a decade into the 21st century. But those who have been directly affected by rampant pollution and reckless industrial expansion have not always sat back idly. Particularly as standards of living and, consequently, material expectations have risen over the past several decades, so too have the amount of environmentally motivated protests. Chinese authorities are notorious for repressing environment-related protests, particularly when they jeopardise projects of high economic or political value to local leaders. High value projects are important to local government officials because they contribute to meeting the ambitious growth standards set by the central government and generate revenue for their strained budgets. In localities where corruption is pervasive, high value projects also serve to pad the pockets of the government officials and power brokers involved in the initiatives. It is therefore no surprise that popular resistance to environmentally threatening projects is often met with repression from above. In 2019, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in a suburb of Wuhan to protest the construction of a waste incinerator due to concerns over hazardous air pollution and the safety of nearby residents.35 The plant was to be located less than a kilometre from the nearest residential area, in violation of one of China’s loosely enforced proximity regulations that requires at least 1.5 km of separation between locals and environmentally risky facilities. Despite the plant’s potential to transform rubbish into energy, local residents had little faith that proper safety protocols were being followed or that the company behind the project was properly vetted by local officials.

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But protests were quickly met with comprehensive and sometimes violent repression. Activists report that numerous demonstrators, including elderly and youth citizens, were beaten and arrested.36 The New York Times reported that those who organised the protests were rounded up and disappeared in police vans, while on the streets, undercover cops dressed fictitiously in red tour-guide vests observed and followed protesters around the city.37 The protest movement was quickly censored in the media and on the internet as well. Organisers’ websites were blocked and social media posts about the protests were silently taken down. Authorities aimed to quash the protests directly, but more importantly, to limit their spread. Remarkably, after a week of repression, Wuhan municipal authorities agreed to pause the incinerator project until local residents could be properly consulted and given the opportunity to approve it.38 Suddenly, local government officials had turned 180° and were conceding, at least in part, to the demands of the protesters. In 2017, a strikingly similar plot surrounding a waste incinerator project unfolded in Qingyuan, Guangdong. Close to ten thousand protesters in Qingyuan were initially met with teargas, but only days later, the government cancelled their project as well. In 2012, Chinese authorities in Shifang, a city in Sichuan Province, halted plans to construct a 1.6 billion dollar copper refinery, after mass protests broke out over fears of poisonous emissions from the project.39 However, the announcement to stop the project came only after several episodes of violence and dozens of arrests. What explains these contradictory reversals in policy? One likely explanation has to do with the principle of deterrence. This pattern of repression followed by concession suggests that China’s government officials and party leaders are more concerned with the destabilising and contagion effects of protests than with the actual material demands of protesters. After all, when confronted with popular protest, authorities face an inescapable double bind: if they choose pure repression, and utterly ignore the demands of petitioners, they risk angering the masses and prompting further backlash. But if authorities choose responsiveness and immediately make concessions, they risk emboldening other social movements and encouraging future protests and instability. With these dialectical pressures at play, the seemingly paradoxical manner in which Chinese leaders respond to protests related to the material concerns of their constituents begins to appear less opaque. The manners in which the CCP manages protests in China are, in fact, highly variegated. As George Washington University’s Bruce J. Dickson explains in his recent book, The Party and the People: Chinese Politics in the 21st Century, the tools the CCP uses to respond to social unrest depend acutely on the nature of the unrest and, equally importantly, on the institutional capacity of local authorities.40 Dickson notes that municipal, city, and provincial governments with high institutional capacities are more likely to negotiate with protesters and respond to their demands. Those with weaker state capacities are more likely to repress and crack down on social unrest.

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This asymmetry is partly explained by the fear held by weaker governments that conciliatory policies will lead to unmanageable expectations and unrealistic demands for political accountability from the masses. In general, the protest management strategies employed by Chinese leaders range from hard repression to formal negotiation.41 Hard repression is manifested in efforts to punish and deter protestors through arrests, fines, or outright violence. Historically, some local governments in China have been known to go so far as to hire thugs and gangs to disrupt demonstrations and beat protesters. The ringleaders of protest movements are often imprisoned for long periods of time. One may note that China has one of the highest numbers of political prisoners in the world.42 Formal negotiation involves resolving protesters’ demands through legal or other institutionalised means. But Dickson argues that in the grey area between hard repression and formal negotiation there exists an array of alternative strategies. For example, the party sometimes follows a model of what Dickson calls ‘soft repression’, wherein the government may make threats at and intimidate activists, break up NGOs and partnerships, or deploy large-scale technological surveillance systems. Governments may also opt for ‘pre-emptive repression’ by tightening security around specific days of the year or rounding up activists before potentially destabilising announcements are made. Within each of these additional categories there are variations as well. The key takeaway is that Chinese responses to social unrest are diverse and nuanced, and most importantly, context dependent. But when it comes to protests related to material matters, the CCP appears most inclined to pursue a strategy that combines appeasement with deterrence. In this way, authorities maximise their flexibility by responding to the rising expectations of the masses at the same time as disincentivising further unrest. Given that repression – not appeasement – is often the default response to protest movements in authoritarian systems, the inclusion of responsiveness in China’s approach to matters of material concern indicates that the PRC’s leaders have thoughtfully considered the effects of each approach on regime stability over the medium and long term. The CCP understands that protests movements themselves act as important signalling mechanisms by which the masses can communicate their priorities to their leaders. Managing social unrest in China is therefore an integral component of the party’s approach governing in an authoritarian system. But can the party keep up with rising material expectations? The CCP today has a comfortable margin of popular support, but political attitudes can be illusory and fleeting. The implicit bargain for governmental legitimacy in China’s authoritarian system is tied to continually rising standards of living. But growth rates in all economies eventually slow, and China’s will too. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the fragility of the global markets upon which China’s continued development depends. Even if the PRC’s government continues to deliver improvements to its citizens, they may not be substantial enough to meet their recipients’ ever-growing

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expectations. In this context, China’s masses may demand something more: an entirely new system of representation and accountability. An Ideology for All? In The Party and the People, Dickson emphasises an important characteristic of the CCP’s relationship with China’s citizens in the 21st century: while the PRC’s leaders have in many ways become increasingly responsive to the rising expectations and demands of their constituents, they persistently refuse to become accountable to their citizens. The essential nature of accountability lies in its technical definition: the expectation of ‘account-giving’ – a responsibility that requires both practical answerability and a degree of moral liability for political events and social circumstances. Accountability therefore represents a redline for the party, because integrating liability and answerability into the PRC’s political system would require the creation of a mechanism for Chinese citizens to directly exercise genuine political power. And if such a mechanism existed, the party would be at risk of being deposed and its monopoly on power would collapse. The scenario above, of course, describes the way that democratic systems of governance function. At least in democracies that are procedurally democratic, leaders are, in fact, held accountable to their constituencies, typically by way of regular open elections. Such forms of procedural democracy are not particularly popular in China today, but they nonetheless pose an everpresent threat to the CCP. This is because, without representative accountability mechanisms, authoritarian regimes must always fight an upward battle to preserve and enhance their political legitimacy. In the context of the twin dilemmas of authoritarian rule, democracy represents one of the most prevalent ways in recent history in which authoritarian regimes have lost control of the masses and fallen from power. To substitute for political accountability, the CCP has carefully crafted and evolved its own philosophical and ideological platform upon which to govern: ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’. In broad terms, socialism with Chinese characteristics represents the somewhat elastic adaptation of orthodox Marxism-Leninism to the conditions of the Chinese nation and the requirements of the state at each moment in history. Socialism with Chinese characteristics has therefore evolved significantly in the post-Mao era, according to changing needs and priorities that China has confronted along its developmental path. In the Deng era, for example, reform and opening required the temporary subordination of Marxist-Leninist ideological purity to practical goals such as scientific development and economic growth. Under Xi Jinping, socialist ideals have returned to centre stage, though this time promulgated by an increasingly autocratic and centralised state. Under the umbrella of socialism with Chinese characteristics, China’s leaders have also developed a model for political accountability. Here, the CCP champions its own form of democracy, often referred to as ‘democracy

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with Chinese characteristics’. Democracy with Chinese characteristics is essentially a consequentialist redefinition of popular consent that derives its legitimacy not from procedure or the will of the people ex ante, but from post facto outcomes. In other words, it is the product, not the process that matters. In practice, therefore, the popularity of any given policy is irrelevant so long as its results are mostly favourable. As the preceding section illustrates, the legitimacy of the CCP has, for decades, rested on its ability to continually improve the quality of life for its citizens, not on whether or not China’s leaders were freely elected in an open poll. Since 1949, each of the PRC’s five paramount leaders have justified China’s political system to the Chinese people and to the outside world using unique socio-economic ideals and aspirations. The Diplomat’s Brian Wong describes these architectural justifications as ‘legitimation narratives’, which all authoritarian leaders depend on for popular support.43 For example, where Mao Zedong’s legitimation narrative was animated by the glory of the world’s largest peasant-communist revolution and energised by the thrust of Mao’s personal charisma, Hu Jintao relied on the principles of ‘scientific development’, social order and institutional virtue to legitimise his regime. Xi Jinping’s legitimation narrative appears, as his dedication to eradicating corruption suggests, on the bureaucratic merit, competence and professionalism of the CCP and, as Chapter 8 will investigate further, on the elevation of China’s global status. Democracy with Chinese characteristics can be understood as an amalgamation of these legitimation narratives, tailored to the present challenges that China faces. So long as the outputs of China’s political system are perceived by the masses as benevolent and oriented towards the improvement of their material conditions, the CCP will retain their support. Indeed, the policies implemented by the PRC’s leaders over the past several decades have performed impressively under this political system. So remarkable are China’s many achievements, the CCP has, in recent years, become increasingly vocal about the superiority of its output-democracy over Western models of procedural or processual democracy.44 For the party, unwavering faith in socialism with Chinese characteristics requires faith in the effectiveness of democracy with Chinese characteristics. And faith in the party is tantamount to a civic duty. And still, despite its seeming confidence in the superiority of outputdemocracy, the CCP has become more – not less – fearful of exposing Chinese society to other competing models of governance and political accountability. Why? The answer rests in the basic observation that outputs are subject to change and are therefore undependable. Alternative political ideologies – such as procedural democracy – are of such great danger to authoritarian systems because they require true systemic change. Whereas material matters can be addressed within the framework of an authoritarian system – leaders can flexibly balance responsiveness and repression – social movements that demand political reform are asking to fundamentally alter the system of

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governance itself. The CCP is well aware of this threat and has many historical reasons to take special, countervailing precautions. Politically and ideologically oriented protest movements are particularly alarming to China’s leaders – perhaps more than to the leaders of other countries around the world. This is because throughout modern and imperial Chinese history, protest and rebellion has been the most common mechanism of decisively transferring political power. More than two thousand years ago, the Dazexiang Uprising overthrew the Qin Dynasty and helped pave the way for the Han; in the modern era, the 1911 Xinhai Revolution put an end to dynastic rule and established the Republic of China; most recently, the Communist Revolution brought Mao Zedong and the CCP to power in 1949. The notion that rebellion is the principal mode of political transformation has been ingrained in the psyches of Chinese leaders for centuries. Harvard University’s Elizabeth J. Perry addresses this exact phenomenon in her 2001 article titled ‘Challenging The Mandate Of Heaven: Popular Protest in Modern China’. According to Perry, Chinese leaders have unique philosophical reasons to fear powerful protest movements, due to the Confucian concept of the ‘mandate of heaven’.45 The mandate of heaven states that Chinese leaders are bestowed with divine legitimacy – moral authority – simply by virtue of their sustained rule. In other words, political legitimacy is a function of successfully exercising political power, and not the other way around. Therefore, as Perry explains, Confucian tradition implicitly legitimates protest, revolution, and rebellion as means of capturing political power and thereby the mandate of heaven and the moral right to rule. This rationale imposes a winner-takes-all framework in which, on a metaphysical level, the only criterion required to justify a protest movement is the success of the movement itself. In this context, it is less surprising from a historiographical perspective that the CCP has so zealously repressed nearly every major political and ideological protest movement that challenges the party’s orthodoxy. Although protesters in 1989 believed they would win over the reformoriented factions within the CCP and become the standard bearers for the next ‘people’s revolution’ in China, their demands were too absolutist for Deng Xiaoping and other party leaders to embrace. Among other reforms, the student leaders of the Tiananmen protests demanded democracy, due process, a free press and free speech. They were asking for true political accountability. But, as explained above, true political accountability is incompatible with the CCP’s sustained grip on power. The Tiananmen movement was therefore brutally crushed. Even other less overtly political protest movements are suppressed by the CCP if they are believed to lack a limiting principle. The Falun Gong, a peaceful religious movement that proposed neither overthrowing the CCP nor embracing democracy, was ultimately stamped out in the 1990s because it introduced an ideology – an alternative philosophy of life – that threatened to replace the dominant orthodoxy of the Communist Party.

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Perhaps the most illuminating recent example of how the CCP manages threatening political protest movements is its treatment of the democracy movement in Hong Kong. Although Britain repatriated Hong Kong to China in 1997, the parties agreed that the city would be treated as a special administrative region (SAR) and its economic and political institutions would be left intact for 50 years. This gave birth to the ‘one country, two systems’ model that afforded Hong Kong an array of freedoms and privileges under the Basic Law of Hong Kong as long as it continued to recognise its place as part of China. In the two decades that followed, market-oriented Hong Kong developed an attachment to democratic principles and freedoms, cultivating a robust civil society, a free press, and one of the biggest financial hubs in the world. But this embrace of democratic norms put Hong Kong on a collision course with China’s increasingly authoritarian system. As Lindsay Maizland and Eleanor Albert of the Council on Foreign Relations explain, even as Beijing has attempted to assert increasing control over Hong Kong since the 1997 handover, a growing minority of Hong Kongers do not even see themselves as Chinese nationals.46 A poll by Reuters in late 2019 found that 17% of respondents at least ‘somewhat supported’ Hong Kong’s outright independence from mainland China.47 These pressures and others came to a head in 2019 over a seemingly innocuous extradition law, backed by Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing chief executive, Carrie Lam. The extradition law would have subtly yet influentially enhanced the CCP’s control over Hong Kong’s justice system, but the move was interpreted more broadly and symbolically as an attempt to further erode and undermine the ‘one country, two systems’ principle. Protests ensued, and in mid-June, the largest demonstration in Hong Kong’s history took place with nearly two million protesters.48 It is unlikely that Beijing expected Hong Kongers to react at the scale and with the intensity that they did. But as tensions rose and clashes with police turned violent, the CCP took advantage of the disorder to firmly assert its control in Hong Kong’s internal affairs. By the fall of 2019, Reuters reports, Beijing began to dramatically increase the presence of mainland troops in and around Hong Kong.49 These forces were composed of both PLA soldiers and contingents of the People’s Armed Police (PAP), the CCP’s internal security-oriented paramilitary force. In the summer of 2020, at the CCP’s bidding, China’s parliament passed and subsequently pushed through Hong Kong’s government a new National Security Law that grants mainland authorities sweeping and intentionally vague law enforcement and judicial powers aimed at targeting dissent, subversion and foreign collusion against the PRC and quashing pro-democracy and pro-secessionary movements. In reference to the law, former pro-democracy member of the Hong Kong’s legislative council Dennis Kwok stated, ‘This is the end of Hong Kong’.50 That PAP forces were included in the surge of mainland Chinese troops that entered Hong Kong as protests turned violent suggests that the PRC’s leaders viewed the Hong Kong protests as a matter of regime stability as

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early as the fall of 2019. Indeed, by then, the demands of the protest movement’s leaders had elevated from the simple request to withdraw the pro-CCP extradition legislation to the far more aspirational demand to implement universal suffrage for the election of both Hong Kong’s legislative and executive branches of government.51 The protests had transformed into a highly volatile pro-democracy movement. In response, the CCP reacted in the only manner it knows when confronted with political and ideological unrest that challenges its governing philosophy and legitimacy: with complete and comprehensive repression. As pro-democracy activists feared, the enforcement of Beijing’s National Security Law has led to a significantly more illiberal Hong Kong. By October of 2021, Bloomberg reported that more than 150 people had been arrested under the National Security Law and accused of offences relating purely to their political statements and activities.52 The pro-democracy newspaper Apple Daily was essentially shuttered by Hong Kong police and several of its top executives were arrested. As Freedom House’s Angeli Datt explains in written testimony for the US-China Economic Security Review Commission (USCC), the National Security Law has introduced unprecedented levels of journalistic suppression, internet censorship and media sponsored propaganda in Hong Kong.53 Journalists have been targeted and arrested; websites have been blocked; Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK), a respected independent broadcasting network akin to Britain’s BBC, has been co-opted by the government and transformed into an outlet for pro-establishment, pro-CCP proselytism. Due to crackdowns on dissent, international rights organisations such as Amnesty International have left Hong Kong altogether.54 One might argue that Beijing’s core objective in enforcing the National Security Law is to better acclimate and acquaint the people of Hong Kong to life under authoritarian rule – to democracy with Chinese characteristics. International rights organisations, for example, do not operate in mainland China. The ‘one country, two systems’ model is guaranteed by the handover agreement until 2047, but the PRC’s leaders have undoubtedly considered the advantages of reducing – sooner rather than later – the gap between Hong Kong’s model of public discourse and civil society and those of mainland China. In most of China, the activities of civil society actors are closely monitored and managed. As in the case of protest movements, non-governmental organisations (NGO) and activist groups are treated differently according to their qualitative objectives and their approaches to change-making. Apolitical, issue-focused NGOs that pursue solutions to material matters are widely accepted and often directly supported by Chinese authorities. These NGOs work to fill gaps in governmental capacity, by providing niche services for specific demographics such as women and workers. Most issue-focused NGOs therefore serve to enhance standards of living and perceptions of local leaders and therefore typically have no trouble properly registering with authorities or

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cooperating with the state. Somewhere between one and one and a half million of such organisations operate across China.55 However, anti-regime, pro-democracy actors in civil society face extreme repression. Domestic NGOs with politically revisionist missions are, for all intents and purposes, blacklisted by the PRC’s government and do not operate in the public domain. Certain foreign NGOs have worked in the past to promote liberal values and democratisation in China, but, in recent years, such objectives have become increasingly challenging to pursue. In 2016, the National People’s Congress passed the Foreign NGO Law which imposed an array of bureaucratic hurdles and oversight and reporting requirements for international NGOs hoping to operate in China. Under the law, as the South China Morning Post’s Nectar Gan reports, foreign NGOs must register with the MPS and find a government sponsor to support and supervise their activities.56 Additionally, foreign NGOs must receive official permission to execute each project they have planned and, in the case of suspected foul play, the law permits government officials and police to question workers, perform internal inspections and seize assets. Before the implementation of the law in 2017, roughly 7,000 foreign NGOs operated in the PRC.57 Researchers estimate that by 2021, only 10% have been able to successfully register and resume their activities. The PRC’s strict regulation and repression of foreign NGOs is rooted in the party’s fear that international civil society actors and Western values directly undercut the legitimacy of China’s political system. In 2013, the CCP circulated an internal communique – often referred to as Document Number Nine – that specifically named civil society as one of seven Western political constructs designed to subvert the party’s control and challenge the practical, theoretical and philosophical validity of socialism with Chinese characteristics.58 It is less surprising then that the PRC’s leaders have taken steps over the years to limit the influence of civil society actors in China. One additional social force that is sometimes seen by the PRC’s leaders as a challenge to the party’s orthodoxy is religion. Religion has a long history in China and has experienced varying levels of recognition, tolerance and repression over time. The party is wary of religion due to its historic role in a plethora of transformative political movements and revolutions around the world, but it has nevertheless tolerated various mechanisms and formats by which religious people can go about practising their faiths in China. In general, as long as places of worship and their congregations maintain a low profile, avoid political activism and eschew international ties, religious activities are tolerated by authorities. Institutionally, the CCP only recognises five official faiths – Buddhism, Taoism, Protestantism, Catholicism and Islam – and each is managed and regulated by its own quasi-governmental association.59 The common theme that connects the CCP’s approach to religion, civil society and politically motivated protest movements is the belief in the ideological superiority of socialism with Chinese characteristics and the countervailing threat posed by dissent, Western ideas, and revisionist movements. The

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following section explores how the CCP has dramatically increased its presence in Chinese society over the past decade to promote its governing philosophy and enhance its top-down control. The Panacea of Party Control Until somewhat recently, those who follow Chinese politics closely have made a range of predictions about which direction the Xi Administration would take China. Would Xi continue along the path of calculated reform and liberalisation pioneered by Deng Xiaoping and continued by Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, or would he instead choose political retrenchment and backsliding? Would China become increasingly capitalist or would socialist ideals and the principles of Marxism-Leninism reassert themselves in the everyday lives of Chinese citizens? Or would Xi take the country and the party in an entirely new direction? At the time of this writing, the direction that the Xi Administration has chosen for China is decidedly more authoritarian and autocratic than its predecessors. Furthermore, while certain structural conditions have stymied a truly transformative shift in public policy, the Xi Administration has made numerous economic commitments that reflect a return to some of the PRC’s foundational socialist ideals. For some time, socialism with Chinese characteristics appeared to be a euphemism for staterun capitalism. Today, Marxism-Leninism may be making a comeback. Many analysts trace the origins of this shift to the 2008 global financial crisis. Indeed, the events of 2008 and 2009 sent shockwaves through the CCP and frenzied the nation’s media and intelligentsia. Ideological stalwarts within and outside of China’s communist regime began to wonder if the historic catastrophe, promulgated by the wealthiest market economy in human history, could be the long-anticipated coup de grace for global capitalism. For more than a century, Marxist-Leninist leaders and intellectuals have anticipated the implosion of global capitalism, predicting that the very instruments of its ascent – big banks, wealth inequality, unbridled financial interconnectivity – would trigger its inevitable collapse. Global capitalism did not, in fact, self-destruct, and the Western powers that precipitated the 2008 financial crisis did not begin their transition to a communist economic model. But the domestic social and political effects of the crisis were broad and penetrating in China. The communist regime in China and its favoured economic system – which weathered the demand shocks imposed by the crisis remarkably well – were in many ways vindicated in the eyes of the Chinese public. The PRC’s leaders determined that a system that relied upon unbridled capitalism was fundamentally unstable. Only top-down party control would foster a sustainable economic model and, crucially, regime stability. Under Xi Jinping, the presence of the CCP has expanded dramatically into nearly every corner of modern Chinese society. The party is a present authority in industry, technology, schools, banks, hospitals, religious institutions, and

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China’s online messaging and social media platforms. Important business dealings must adhere to party guidance and any government action of real consequence requires prior approval from the party officials in charge. As Yukon Huang of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has noted, all of China’s state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and banks are led by individuals hand selected and puppeteered by communist party cells within each company.60 Nowhere is the trend towards a deepened party presence more evident than in China’s education sector. For one, China’s top universities, many of which attract some of the sharpest minds from all around the world, fall directly under the purview of the CCP’s Central Committee. The CCP’s CCDI periodically administers in-house probes of the nation’s higher education institutions to assess their fidelity to the party and degree of ideological commitment to socialist ideals.61 But even in China’s primary schools, a plurality of teachers are members of the CCP and party organs are responsible for formulating and enforcing curriculum related to ideology and politics.62 Ideology and politics may seem like lofty topics to be taught in primary schools, but the subjects have nevertheless become increasingly central to the early education of Chinese youth, albeit in simplified forms. In 2021, Xi Jinping further consolidated control over China’s education system by outright banning most forms of private tutoring.63 Ostensibly, the decision was made to alleviate some of the learning pressures placed on students and financial burdens tolerated by parents in China’s hyper competitive academic environment. But one might also observe that banning third-party academic instruction allows the party to more fully oversee, centralise and regulate the content and instruction of its nation’s students. For those institutions or organisations that do not fall under the direct control of the CCP, such as certain private companies or NGOs, a strategy of co-optation is preferred. Co-optation is a key feature of the Marxist-Leninist praxis that requires the ruling party to become diffuse and exercise political influence over both the government and society. Theoretically, co-optation permits the party to ‘fold in’ some of China’s most powerful actors, rather than expend exorbitant resources on regulating or perhaps coercing these entities into obedience. In practice, co-option takes the form of facilitating or manufacturing party loyalty within an otherwise apolitical entity. Most commonly, this process involves granting honorary political positions or special political access to elites. Co-option occurs in the private sector on the boards of tech companies, in academia among think tanks, and even in civil society, where many NGOs and activist organisations have tacit if not outrightly visible ties to the CCP. The degree of totalitarian control exhibited by the CCP of today is certainly less personally invasive than the most extreme periods of the Mao era, when the party could dictate things like when and to whom one could marry. But this is because the nature of authoritarianism in contemporary China has shifted and morphed to align with the party’s modern challenges and, more

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precisely, Xi Jinping’s personal priorities. Today’s CCP has fortified the commanding heights in Beijing by inserting powerful party cells somewhat ubiquitously across Chinese institutions and by manipulating the Chinese polity through advanced surveillance. In particular, nearly every form of consumable media in China is subject to strict censorship. From instant messaging platforms to freelance journalism, the PRC’s government reserves the right to surveil and remove content at will and, if necessary, take remedial action against its owner. From where is this authority derived? The right to free speech is enshrined in Article 35 of China’s constitution, but Article 51, which prohibits the exercise of freedoms and rights that ‘infringe upon the interests of the State, of society or of the collective, or upon the lawful freedoms and rights of other citizens’ casts a long shadow.64 Foundational legislation, such as the 1993 State Security Law and other criminal codes expressly forbid any actions which might endanger the ‘security, honour or interests of the State’.65 Such stipulations, of course, are interpreted by the party and its regulatory institutions to the extreme. Public criticism of the CCP on social media platforms, for example, may land a user’s account suspended within minutes of posting. Under the Xi Administration, China’s leaders have become increasingly allergic to one particular genre of reprobate ideas: those of the ‘Western’ variety. Document Number Nine, the internal party communique mentioned above that was leaked in 2013, targeted more than just civil society actors. Most notably, Document Number Nine directed party leaders to take a more proactive role in shaping China’s ideological sphere and explicitly warned against seven dangerous political formulations, including the support of a free and independent press, Western democracy and ‘universal values’.66 Document Number Nine, which was reflective of the political sensitivities of both Xi Jinping himself Wang Huning – the fourth-ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) and China’s most influential ideological and political theorist – provided a framework by which the CCP could best direct its censorship efforts. In practice, the CCP’s Propaganda Department maintains a tight grip on China’s major media outlets and the government employs millions of internet monitors responsible for flagging improper web activities to state authorities.67 Discussion of controversial political issues is discouraged in China and without access to a virtual proxy network (VPN) or foreign contacts, it is unlikely that the average Chinese citizen will consume information outside of the CCP’s preferred narrative. Perhaps the most repressive incarnation of party control in China has unfolded in Xinjiang, China’s largest autonomous region in the northwest. In Xinjiang, the CCP has led a protracted deradicalisation and sinicisation campaign against the region’s Muslim inhabitants for decades, the intensity of which has heightened under Xi Jinping’s tenure. Some international news organisations report that, beginning in 2017, central and provincial government authorities forcibly detained as much as 1.8 million Uyghurs,

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Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities in re-education camps in an effort to erase and brush over what the CCP deems to be the deleterious cultural imports of Islamism and separatism.68 Meanwhile, the region’s population centres were transformed for several concurrent years into tightly controlled police-states, complete with barbed wire, extra-judicial arrests and 24/7 surveillance. International condemnation of the CCP’s actions in Xinjiang has been widespread, and in 2019 and 2020, China’s leaders began scrapping the re-education camps and removing the most visible identifiers of state control. The Associated Press reported in late 2021 that life in Xinjiang appeared to have returned to some semblance of normality.69 And yet, the presence of the state – and the party – were still palpably felt in daily interactions with locals and in the absence of certain cultural and religious customs and landmarks that characterised the region in the past. While this section will not attempt to fully contend with the controversial and fraught state of affairs in Xinjiang, it suffices to say that the state of control that manifested in the northwestern province over the past half-decade is largely unmatched around the world and reveals the full administrative and coercive means at the disposal of the CCP in contemporary China. The lengths to which the party has gone to consolidate its grip on Chinese society in recent years begs the question: what are the actual advantages of increased party control? There are many plausible answers to this question but three stand out: First, strengthening the party’s grip on both proximal and distal sectors of Chinese society enhances the CCP’s short and medium-term regime security. On the one hand, the ability to flexibly manage all the key sectors of the national economy and manipulate the resources of powerful social and political stakeholders in support of a common cause allows the CCP to rapidly affect change on behalf of the Chinese people. When the government is seen to increase the quality of life for its citizens, support for the party increases. On the other hand, the depth and diffusion of control exercised by party leaders allows Beijing to deter and stamp out any opposition to its rule, wherever it may arise. Be it discontent stemming from the government’s management of the business sector or the emergence of rebellious civil society actors, the CCP enjoys the resources and manpower to either resolve or suppress issues before they become politically destabilising. Second, amplifying the party’s presence in the day-to-day lives of Chinese citizens and promoting the core tenets of socialism with Chinese characteristics both within the party and among the citizenry – young and old – may well have the effect reducing factionalism and cultivating greater ideological commitment and fidelity to the party among the masses. Indeed, one of Xi Jinping’s greatest fears is to end up like the USSR’s Mikhail Gorbachev, whose ideological concessions led to the defeat of Soviet Communism.70 As the Washington Post’s Simon Denyer explains, while Xi’s predilection for top-down control is likely informed by the chaos he witnessed during the

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Cultural Revolution, his devotion to socialism with Chinese characteristics as an ideological orthodoxy and his commitment to repelling certain contagious Western ideas are a product of how he understands the causes behind the collapse of the Soviet Union.71 For Xi, the Soviet Union lost its ideological integrity, without which capitulation became inevitable. Therefore, in China, maximisation of the party’s social influence and the meticulous instruction of its ideas are deployed like flood walls, standing in the way of a similar fate. Granted, too overbearing of a party presence may foster resentment and have a corrosive effect on its influence. But as of now, the CCP has shown confidence in the marketability, adaptability and resilience of its ideas. Becoming a member of the party today is often seen as a prestigious honour and involves a rigorously competitive joining process.72 In this way, the CCP – as a Leninist vanguard of socialist principles – has demonstrated considerable success in paving an ideological foundation of support in the hearts and minds of the Chinese polity. Lastly, the broadening of the party’s reach and the centralisation and personalisation of power in the hands of Xi Jinping allows Xi to fully dictate the manifestation of his legacy as China’s fifth major postrevolutionary leader. One should not underestimate the influence of Xi’s personal ambitions in shaping the broader trajectory of China as a nation. Xi has gone to considerable lengths already to elevate his status in party history and doctrine to a level on par with Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong, the PRC’s heretofore most transformational leaders. Should Xi Jinping achieve the loftiest goals of his ‘China dream’ – such as the reunification of China with Taiwan and seizing, as a nation, the status of the world’s preeminent economic and technological superpower – his legacy would, undoubtedly, be recorded as one of civilisational proportions. For Xi, exceptionally high levels of party control are necessary ingredients of such an agenda. Ultimately, whether or not doubling down on autocratic control and an assertive form of Marxist-Leninism is a wise choice for the party’s longevity remains to be seen. During the Deng Xiaoping era and afterward, Beijing stepped backwards and loosened its grip at times, allowing China’s political bureaucracy, markets and society to evolve somewhat independently. In many ways, the Deng era challenged the core Leninist notion of inseparability between the party and the government. China prospered under Deng’s leadership. But after the global financial crisis and most visibly under the rule of Xi Jinping, the CCP has reasserted itself as the sole source of political authority and national decision making in China. And crucially, the reintegration of the party into Chinese government and society over the past decade or so appears to have been carried out relatively smoothly. The CCP today enjoys an arguably unprecedented degree of stability and control.

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Doubled-Edged Nationalism An additionally important social and political force in the PRC is nationalism. Definitions of nationalism vary. Some interpret nationalism at face-value, as a type of strong, collectivist love for one’s nation. Others view nationalism as a more technical, zero-sum phenomenon, defined by the prioritisation of one’s own country’s interests over those of other countries in the international system. In China, like in most countries, nationalist sentiments are neither solely about love of country nor stacking one’s chips against international neighbours, but, more practically, exist somewhere along a spectrum which includes and combines features of each notion. Chinese citizens are proud of their country and care deeply about its future; but this does not mean that Chinese nationalists require that China’s aspirations and ambitions be achieved at the expense of its international neighbours or competitors. In either case, this section aims to explore the important effects of Chinese nationalism on the legitimacy – or illegitimacy – of the CCP and how the PRC’s leaders have strategically responded to the threats and opportunities posed by nationalism. Indeed, nationalism is a double-edged sword. If the CCP acts in a way that is perceived to benefit China or the Chinese people or advantage China over its peers in the international system, it will earn the approval of China’s nationalists; if the CCP acts in a detrimental way or makes weak or conciliatory moves internationally, it will certainly come under fire from China’s most zealous advocates. Here, the CCP – and authoritarian regimes in general – is confronted with a precarious balancing challenge in its quest for legitimacy: assertive, nationalistic manoeuvres offer a useful tool to build popular support but stoking the flames of nationalism too high reduces policy-making flexibility by making concessionary or deferential manoeuvres politically unpalatable. Furthermore, attempts to manage and calibrate nationalism – by way of cultivation, repression or neutral tolerance – are muddied by the inherent volatility of nationalist sentiments. Latent nationalism is difficult to measure because nationalist sentiment often fluctuates in connection with discrete issues or events. And yet, China is widely recognised as one of the most nationalistic countries in the world. In Wenfang Tang and Benjamin Darr’s 2012 study of Chinese nationalism, the authors indicate that by 2008, China was the most nationalistic country in the world.73 Tang and Darr measured nationalistic sentiment using indices of answers to several Likert scale survey questions, drawing from respondents’ level of agreement with statements such as, ‘I would rather be a citizen of my country than of any other country’. On average, Chinese citizens overwhelmingly responded to such questions in the affirmative, beating out the second most nationalistic country in the data set – the United States – by four percentage points. It is difficult to measure the persistence of these sentiments using more recent data, but noting the absence of any truly transformative political events in recent years, it would not be unreasonable to assume nationalism remains high in China today.

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Evidence of adversarial nationalism, targeted at the United States and the ‘West’ has also increased in recent years. Particularly among Chinese youth, the past half-decade of souring US-China ties and the perceived mistreatment of China throughout the COVID-19 pandemic has instilled a defensive, oppositional posture in China towards much of the international community. On Chinese social media platforms and internet chat forums, youth nationalists can be seen in droves, waging wars of words with critics of China overseas as well as sceptics of China at home.74 Chinese youth have also become prouder and more self-assured. A study by the Global Times Research Center, an affiliate of Chinese state media, found that between 2016 and 2021 the percentage of young Chinese citizens that look up to the West fell from 37.2% to 8.1%, and those that look down on the West grew from 18.4% to 41.7%.75 The Global Times’ survey suggests that these shifts have much to do with domestic perceptions of China’s superiority in the areas of public safety and human rights. Where does Chinese nationalism find its origins? Taking a primordialist perspective, one might argue that Chinese nationalism is simply an extension of China’s civilisational history – the intergenerational persistence of ideas and values. As Tsinghua University’s Li Zhaojie has explained, the traditional Chinese view of world order was fundamentally anti-egalitarian and positioned China at the apex of a global hierarchy.76 In the dynastic era, China’s success in exporting Confucian principles and establishing a deferential tributary system – all while absorbing its invaders and conquerors over the course of the millennia – instilled a sense of cultural supremacy and ‘sinocentrism’ in Chinese civilisation. For thousands of years the Chinese considered their culture to be the most ‘civilised’ on Earth, and the cultures of others barbaric. Therefore, as China returns to a position of global primacy in the 21st century, it is no surprise that some may draw upon the attitudes of the past to inform their present-day worldview and sense of national pride and devotion. Another explanation is that recent events and history explain Chinese nationalism. As the previous section explained, the 2008 financial crisis was a truly formative moment for both party elites and laypersons in China. Initially, Beijing was considerably nervous about how the effects of a global demand shock would play out in the Chinese economy. State media sought to encourage confidence and resilience in the masses.77 But as the ability of China’s central government to circumvent the crisis with massive fiscal stimulus and credit liberalisation became apparent, Chinese producers and consumers steadily adopted a newfound sense of confidence in their leaders. On a deeper level, this translated into a deeper faith in the PRC’s political and economic system. While the United States dug its way out of one of the most painful recessions in its history, China’s GDP continued to grow at an average rate of 9.8% between 2008 and 2011.78 For some, confidence began to evolve into triumphalism. The 2008 crisis signalled the beginning of the West’s decline relative to China’s rise and imparted a sense of national pride and ensuing greatness.

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America’s and much of the West’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic further cemented China’s intuitions about the West’s decline, and at various junctures, fanned the flames of adversarial nationalism as well. On the one hand, China entered the late stages of the pandemic convinced that its ‘zeroCOVID’ strategy had produced superior health results to any of the policy measures deployed in Europe or North America.79 By mid-2022, the death toll in the United States surpassed one million people, while China – though it never made its official data available for public verification – claimed to have limited its aggregate death toll to the mere thousands.80 These facts were routinely propagandised and marketed to the Chinese public as a source of national pride and eminence in the international domain. The popular protest, collapse and abandonment of China’s zero-COVID policy at the end of 2022 was therefore a rude awakening to those who believed China could avoid the virus forever. By early 2023, official death tallies climbed to over one hundred thousand, according to government figures reported to the World Health Organisation (WHO).81 But independent Western media outlets, such as the New York Times, have claimed that the figures produced by the PRC’s government are almost certainly deflated. Writing for the Times, James Glanz and colleagues assess using several distinct models that China’s true COVID-19 death toll is likely between one and one and a half million.82 Still, verifiable statistics are hard to come by and reports of widespread use of early treatment medication suggests that the PRC may have weathered its first nationwide wave of the virus better than its peers.83 Even if the PRC’s health officials have wilfully obfuscated the full extent of their nation’s losses, it is hard to imagine – and still harder to prove – that China’s true COVID-19 death rate has come anywhere close to those of the world’s other leading economies.84 Even accepting Glanz and colleague’s most pessimistic estimate, the PRC’s death rate per capita would be three times lower than that of the United States.85 And yet, in place of the respect and approval that Beijing feels it deserves for its ostensibly effective handling of the pandemic, China has been the object of unprecedented levels of criticism and incrimination since the advent of the virus. Throughout 2020, for example, ‘draconian’ was the favoured adjective used by major news outlets around the world, such as Time Magazine, to characterise China’s notoriously strict lockdown policies in major cities such as Wuhan and Shanghai.86 Indeed, these onerous mandates were among the principal catalysts of the popular protests that led to the abandonment of zero-COVID. From the perspective of the PRC’s leaders, however, these measures were simply what they deemed necessary to save millions of lives and maintain social order. Even more antagonistically, many prominent thought leaders and politicians in the West have embraced the narrative that COVID-19 itself was leaked from a Chinese laboratory and was not the product of an evolutionary – and purportedly unanticipated – leap from animal to human. According to reporting by the Wall Street Journal, the US Federal Bureau of

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Investigation (FBI) and Department of Energy have made the same intelligence-driven assessment.87 China’s most radical critics in Western governments and media go so far as to claim that the virus was designed and released intentionally by the CCP. It is not surprising then that when Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison called for an international investigation into the origins of COVID-19, Chinese leaders were apoplectic. The PRC has consistently repudiated accusations of foul play surrounding the pandemic. In response, and despite the historically close economic ties between China and Australia, Beijing decided to punish Australia for its leadership’s provocative rhetoric by imposing biting, retributive sanctions on several major Australian industries. Among other protectionist measures, China applied anti-dumping tariffs to the tune of 80.5% on Australian barley exports and tariffs of up to 212% on Australian bottled wine.88 In the eyes of the CCP and much of the Chinese public, Morrison’s comments were tantamount to an effort to publicly humiliate the PRC’s leaders and bring disgrace to their nation. Smelling blood, Chinese internet nationalists leapt into action as well, defending China’s honour and peddling anti-Western propaganda online.89 Indeed, adversarial nationalist, socially insulating and passive aggressive attitudes among the Chinese public are amplified – if not centrally substantiated – by the dominant historical narrative espoused by the CCP itself. This is the narrative shaped by China’s ‘century of humiliation’ which highlights the subjugation and abuse China suffered at the hands of the Western powers and Japan during the eighteen and nineteen hundreds. So prolific is the century of humiliation in texturing China’s national identity, it can be found thematically in the pages of official party documents and doctrine and cited ad nauseum in reporting done by Chinese state media. The result is a palpable sense of mistrust held by many Chinese for the political manoeuvres of other powerful countries, particularly the United States. International disputes involving China – whether in connection to territorial claims in the South China Sea or assigning responsibility for COVID-19 crisis – are often framed in the context of the century of humiliation as new efforts pursued by the West to contain China’s rise and arbitrarily limit its ambitions. It is not hard to imagine how such a framing might be exploited by the CCP to promote an emotional, nationalistic response from the general public. To the extent that nationalist sentiments can be taken advantage of to bolster popular support for the ruling regime (assuming the public sees their national leaders as mostly benevolent) the CCP has made considerable efforts to promote national pride and patriotism in all sectors of Chinese society. Still further, recent generations of Chinese leaders, including Xi Jinping, have attempted to define the party in the eyes of the public as the principal source of national pride. If successful, the most basic nationalist instinct – which is common to all countries – would be inextricably bound to support of the CCP itself.

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Beginning in the mid-1990s, the PRC implemented a nation-wide patriotic education initiative. Designed to increase national pride and cohesion, patriotic education was implemented in a sophisticated and institutionalised manner to ensure its lasting effect. New educational curricula, complete with official narratives on history and politics, were developed and instituted in Chinese schools. The government also produced, publicised and broadcasted a myriad of pro-China written works and visual media products and constructed a variety of museums and monuments across the country to commemorate important moments and figures from China’s modern history. Above all else, patriotic education in China over the past several decades has sought to instil a sense of greatness and unity among Chinese people of all backgrounds. It has also sought to foster a knee jerk feeling of resentment towards foreign interference in sovereign domestic affairs or broader national objectives. The cultivation of this second emotion relies primarily on the century of humiliation narrative. Taken in sum, it appears that China’s patriotic education campaign has seen considerable success. It would not be unreasonable to give partial credit to the initiative in producing the notably high levels of contemporary Chinese nationalism addressed at the beginning of this section. Xi Jinping has added an increasingly personalist flavour to patriotic education. In September of 2021, The Economist reported that new mandatory textbooks highlighting ‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era’ – Xi’s personal political philosophy – have been distributed throughout China’s education system, with initial iterations beginning in the first grade.90 The new textbooks focus on obedience to the party and reverence for its paramount leader to a degree unseen since the Mao era. But where Mao Zedong aimed to inspire anti-institutional revolution and stoke ideological fervour, Xi Jinping hopes to promote an unwavering faith in the competence and vision of the party and a sincere belief in the unrivalled superiority of socialism with Chinese characteristics. In the coming years, he may very well succeed to this end. But just as a patriotic constituency can be tapped for political approval, it can also force the ruling regime to overextend or compromise on its own strategic objectives. Cornell University’s Jessica Chen Weiss and several co-authors, who have written prolifically on the relationship between nationalism and regime control, have explored precisely this issue. In their 2022 study, they found that when China is faced with a foreign provocation or affront, the government will suffer from popular disapproval if it does not react with strength and toughness.91 For example, when the United States performed freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) unimpeded through the South China Sea in 2015 and 2016, public approval of China’s central government declined after each patrol. Though there is little evidence of instability within the CCP at present, a highly controversial display of weakness is one conceivable way to trigger factionalisation and infighting within the party itself or even large-scale popular unrest across the country. This dynamic

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illustrates how high levels of nationalist sentiment in China may actually constrain, rather than empower, the CCP’s policymaking latitude. Still further, in a moment when subtlety and withstraint are needed, nationalist masses may force the PRC to act rashly. The greatest political danger, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Charlie Lyons Jones, is for the PRC to slip into a more fascistic model of nationalist socialism.92 Already, the Xi Administration’s rhetoric surrounding ‘national rejuvenation’ and restoring China to its rightful position in the global pecking order, coupled with the CCP’s renewed focus on militarily intimidating Taiwan and enforcing cultural homogeneity in China’s autonomous regions, can be seen as a departure from the communist precepts upon which the PRC was founded and an embrace of a more hierarchical and militant political system. Indeed, the CCP’s ongoing cultivation of nationalism as a source of political legitimacy is hardly a surprise. After all, as a nation that has thoroughly embraced most features of a modern capitalist economic system, it is more difficult than it may have been in previous generations to generate popular support or build a political identity based on the principles of Marxism-Leninism. In this way, socialism with Chinese characteristics has become inextricably linked to the emotional forces generated by nationalism. But as long as the CCP has the means to effectively manage the occasionally fiery outburst of nationalist zeal from the Chinese public, the signalling effects of a popular nationalist mood can more often than not be manipulated to align with the government’s agenda. In 2013, Jessica Chen Weiss explored how the CCP reacted differently to two major nationalist protest movements in 1999 and 2001 to achieve desired results.93 In 1999, following the accidental NATO bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade, Serbia, Beijing endorsed popular protest and criticism against the United States to signal national resolve and strength. The government even helped to bus in protesters to demonstrate in front of the American embassy in Beijing. In 2001, however, when an American reconnaissance plane collided with a Chinese fighter jet off the shores of Hainan, China, resulting in the death of the Chinese pilot, the protests that followed were largely repressed by China’s central government in an effort to maintain harmony in US-China relations. At the time, China was close to securing membership in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and hoped to cultivate friendly ties with the newly inaugurated Bush Administration. In both cases, Beijing handled the emotion-laden, nationalistic moment in diplomatically tactful manner, consistent with its broader strategic objectives. Chinese nationalism today resembles what the late Michel Oksenberg might refer to as a combination of three types of nationalism: confident, assertive and emotional.94 China remains confident in the realisation of its long term objectives and engaged in the international political system, but in recent years has displayed increased assertiveness in implementing its irredentist agenda (e.g., in Hong Kong) and increased emotionality in response

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to foreign provocation (e.g., vis-à-vis Australia). But even though nationalism in China may manifest itself in different ways, many of which are adversarial, it has so far remained largely aligned with the CCP’s agenda. This suggests that the CCP has done well in shaping nationalist sentiment in China in the image of its own strategic objectives and, when needed, calibrated its own aspirations and endeavours to better align with the political and emotional desires of the public. For such a populous country, with a national identity that has evolved and complicated over the course of millennia, managing the threats and opportunities posed by nationalism to the regime in Beijing is no small task. In an era of global connectivity and as the number of bona fide ‘old guard’ leaders in China diminishes, the standard bearers for Chinese nationalism are the nation’s youth. Unlike their predecessors, younger generations of Chinese have only experienced their country’s rise. They did not experience mass poverty, the instability of rampant political factionalism nor the insecurity of war. Most believe that China is destined for greatness. As intended, this has created a robust political base upon which the CCP can pursue an ambitious, nationalist agenda. Conclusion Although the PRC appears to have practised grand strategy effectively for the past four decades, one should not assume that it will be able to pursue the same goals using the same methods forever. Indeed, there is a marginal possibility that the CCP will break up, or that it will undergo some sort of political metamorphosis. The former diplomat Roger Garside, in his recent book China Coup, predicts that the CCP will, in fact, experience a fundamental political upheaval and transformation in the near future, launching a transition to a more democratic system of governance.95 But much of the case Garside makes is circumstantial and speculative. At the time of this writing, there are no verifiable signs of internal fissures forming within the CCP. Beijing continues to wrestle with challenges posed by the spread of COVID-19, but there is little evidence that any sort of coordinated nation-wide unrest will threaten the core itself. Meanwhile, from his unassailable pulpit as the country’s paramount leader, Xi Jinping continues to strengthen the party’s position in society and carefully chart a path for China’s continued rise. In his debate with Joseph Fewsmith, mentioned in this chapter’s introduction, Andrew Nathan wrote that, ‘One can interpret the history [of the CCP] as a long story of the Leninist party-state straining to produce the kind of strong leader that it needs. If that was what it was trying to do, it seems to have succeeded’.96 In the context of regime stability, Xi Jinping appears to be both cognisant and responsive to the twin dilemmas of authoritarian rule. Xi Jinping and his allies have used an extensive anti-corruption campaign to eliminate sources of elite contestation, while, at the same time, signal to the masses that the

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CCP genuinely cares about the professional merit and personal integrity of China’s military, government and party leaders. In parallel, the CCP has enhanced its grip on Chinese society, both in terms of operational and ideological control. This has allowed the party to more effectively steer the direction of China’s development while encouraging obedience – if not loyalty – to the principles of socialism with Chinese characteristics. By managing material expectations over the course of decades in a manner that is both responsive to the growing needs of its citizens and deterrent of excessive, politicised demands, the CCP has earned the popular support of the masses. China’s leaders have learned how to manipulate and respond to groundswells of nationalist pride and zeal and have made substantial efforts to muddy the distinction between love of country and love of party. In assessing the resiliency of the CCP as an outlier in the history of modern authoritarian regimes, this chapter suggests that the party has been largely successful in charting its evolutionary trajectory. Most notably, neither internal concerns nor party politics have yet forced China’s leaders to compromise their global aspirations. This indicates that the CCP – the principal architect of Chinese grand strategy – is operating – at least for now – ‘according to plan’. Chapter 8 will explore the strategic position and challenges faced by the PRC in the realm of diplomacy and foreign policy. Notes 1 Barbara Geddes. ‘What Do We Know About Democratization After Years?’, Annual Review of Political Science 2, no. 1 (1999): 115–44. 2 Milan W. Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012), passim. 3 Andrew J. Nathan, ‘China’s Changing of the Guard: Authoritarian Resilience’, Journal of Democracy 14, no. 1 (2003): 6–17. 4 Joseph Fewsmith and Andrew J. Nathan, ‘Authoritarian Resilience Revisited: Joseph Fewsmith with Response from Andrew J. Nathan’, Journal of Contemporary China 28, no. 116 (2019): 167–79. 5 Shawn Ni and Van Pham, ‘High Corruption Income in Ming and Qing China’, Journal of Development Economics 81, no. 2 (2006): 316–36. 6 Isabel Hilton, ‘China’s Economic Reforms Have Let Party Leaders and Their Families Get Rich’, The Guardian, October 26, 2021, https://www.theguardian. com/commentisfree/2012/oct/26/china-economic-reforms-leaders-rich. 7 Yuwen Wu, ‘Profile: China’s Fallen Security Chief Zhou Yongkang’, BBC, October 12, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-26349305. 8 Christopher Bodeen, ‘A Look at Key Events in the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests’, AP News, May 30, 2019, https://apnews.com/article/china-beijing-tiananmensquare-international-news-asia-pacific-d7944725cf6a4abe88ba3f706c3cbbaa. 9 Yan Sun, ‘The Chinese Protests of 1989: The Issue of Corruption’, Asian Survey 31, no. 8 (1991): 762–82. https://doi.org/10.2307/2645228. 10 Zhenzhen Chen, ‘Wen’s Reforms: Following in the Footsteps Of Zhu Rongji’, Jamestown Foundation China Brief 4, no. 18 (September 2004), passim, https:// jamestown.org/program/wens-reforms-following-in-the-footsteps-of-zhu-rongji/. 11 Transparency International, Global Corruption Barometer (2010/2011), https:// www.transparency.org/en/gcb/global/global-corruption-barometer-2010-11.

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12 Tania Branigan, ‘Xi Jinping Vows to Fight ‘Tigers’ and ‘Flies’ in Anti-corruption Drive’, The Guardian, January 22, 2013, https://www.theguardian.com/world/ 2013/jan/22/xi-jinping-tigers-flies-corruption. 13 Yiwei Hu, ‘In Numbers: China’s Anti-Graft Campaign After Achieving Sweeping Victory’, CGTN, January 16, 2020, https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-01-16/Innumbers-China-s-anti-graft-campaign-NikJlOTb8s/index.html. 14 Choi Chi-yuk, ‘Exclusive: Xi Jinping’s Anti-graft Drive Has Caught So Many Officials That Beijing’s Elite Prison Is Running Out of Cells’, South China Morning Post, February 14, 2018, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policiespolitics/article/2133251/xi-jinpings-anti-graft-drive-has-caught-so-many. 15 China File, Visualizing China’s Anti-Corruption Campaign, https://www. chinafile.com/infographics/visualizing-chinas-anti-corruption-campaign. 16 Transparency International, Corruption Perceptions Index: China, https://www. transparency.org/en/cpi/2022/index/chn. 17 ‘Gini Index: Inequality of Income Distribution in China from 2004 to 2021’, Statista, accessed February 2023, https://www.statista.com/statistics/250400/ inequality-of-income-distribution-in-china-based-on-the-gini-index/. 18 Ting Chen, ‘Has Xi Jinping’s Anti-corruption Campaign Been Effective? China’s Land Transactions Provide One Answer’, South China Morning Post, August 20, 2020, https://www.scmp.com/comment/opinion/article/3097830/has-xi-jinpingsanti-corruption-campaign-been-effective-chinas-land. 19 Yuen Yuen Ang, ‘The Robber Barons of Beijing: Can China Survive Its Gilded Age?’, Foreign Affairs 100 (2021): 30, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ asia/2021-06-22/robber-barons-beijing. 20 Yuen Yuen Ang, China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020), passim. 21 Chaguan, ‘To China’s Rulers, the Cupidity of Officials Is a Political Crisis’, The Economist, June 25, 2020, https://www.economist.com/china/2020/06/25/tochinas-rulers-the-cupidity-of-officials-is-a-political-crisis. 22 DD News, ‘Chinese President Xi Jinping Criticizes Officials for Lack of Initiatives, Asks Why They Wait for Orders from the Top’, News On Air, July 12, 2021, https://newsonair.com/2021/07/12/chinese-president-xi-jinping-criticizesofficials-for-lack-of-initiatives-asks-why-they-wait-for-orders-from-the-top/. 23 Jamil Anderlini, ‘Xi Jinping’s Anti-corruption Drive Mimics a Ming Obsession’, Financial Times, December 6, 2017, https://www.ft.com/content/39860d76d9b3-11e7-a039-c64b1c09b482. 24 ‘How China Has Lifted Nearly 800 mln People Out of Poverty’, Xinhua, April 6, 2021, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2021-04/06/c_139862741.htm. 25 Edward Cunningham, Tony Saich, and Jesse Turiel, ‘Understanding CCP Resilience: Surveying Chinese Public Opinion Through Time’, Harvard Kennedy School Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation (2020), 1–14, https://ash. harvard.edu/files/ash/files/final_policy_brief_7.6.2020.pdf. 26 ‘Why Protests Are So Common in China’, The Economist, October 4, 2018, https:// www.economist.com/china/2018/10/04/why-protests-are-so-common-in-china. 27 Cunningham, Saich and Turiel, ‘Understanding CCP’, 3. 28 Alice Yan, ‘Hundreds of Teachers Protest in China over Poor Pay’, South China Morning Post, May 22, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/ 3011372/hundreds-teachers-protest-china-over-poor-pay. 29 Masha Borak, ‘Couriers in China Protest Late Wages During an E-commerce Boom Resulting from the Covid-19 Pandemic’, South China Morning Post, October 23, 2020, https://www.scmp.com/tech/e-commerce/article/3106821/ couriers-china-protest-late-wages-during-e-commerce-boom-resulting.

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30 ‘Furious Investors Test China’s Resolve to Crack Down on Property’, Bloomberg, November 11, 2021, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-11-11/ china-evergrande-crisis-furious-property-investors-demand-government-action. 31 Manfred Elfstrom, Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2021), passim. 32 Bill Chappell, ‘Employers Can’t Require People to Work 72 Hours a Week, China’s High Court Says’, NPR, August 30, 2021, https://www.npr.org/2021/08/30/ 1032458104/12-hour-6-day-996-work-schedule-illegal-china-deaths-tech-industry. 33 Peng Yin, Michael Brauer, Aaron J. Cohen, Haidong Wang, Jie Li, Richard T. Burnett, Jeffrey D. Stanaway et al., ‘The Effect of Air Pollution on Deaths, Disease Burden, and Life Expectancy across China and Its Provinces, 1990–2017: An Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study 2017’, The Lancet Planetary Health 4, no. 9 (2020): e386–98. 34 Feng Hu and Debra Tan, No Water, No Growth: Does Asia Have Enough Water to Develop?, China Water Risk (September 2018), 104, https://www.chinawaterrisk. org/resources/analysis-reviews/no-water-no-growth-does-asia-have-enough-waterto-develop/. 35 Keith Bradsher, ‘Protests Over Incinerator Rattle Officials in Chinese City’, New York Times, July 5, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/05/world/asia/ wuhan-china-protests.html. 36 Luo Ding, ‘Wuhan: Police Crackdown on Anti-pollution Protests’, Chinaworker.info, July 7, 2019, https://chinaworker.info/en/2019/07/07/20754/. 37 Bradsher, ‘Protests’. 38 David Stanway, ‘China City Puts Incinerator Project on Hold After Protests State Media’, Reuters, July 8, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-chinaenvironment-protests/china-city-puts-incinerator-project-on-hold-after-protestsstate-media-idUSKCN1U401H. 39 Ben Blanchard, ‘China Stops Copper Plant, Frees 21 After Protests’, Reuters, July 3, 2012, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-pollution-protest/chinastops-copper-plant-frees-21-after-protests-idUSBRE86205C20120704. 40 Bruce J. Dickson, The Party and the People: Chinese Politics in the 21st Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 126–61. 41 Dickson, The Party and the People, 139. 42 Congressional-Executive Commission on China, Political Prisoner Database, https://www.cecc.gov/resources/political-prisoner-database 43 Brian Wong, ‘Why Is China Insisting It Is a Democracy?’, The Diplomat, December 11, 2021, https://thediplomat.com/2021/12/why-is-china-insisting-itis-a-democracy/. 44 Chaguan, ‘China Says It Is More Democratic Than America’, The Economist, December 4, 2021, https://www.economist.com/china/2021/12/04/china-says-itis-more-democratic-than-america. 45 Elizabeth J. Perry, ‘Challenging the Mandate of Heaven: Popular Protest in Modern China’, Critical Asian Studies 33, no. 2 (2001): 163–80. 46 Lindsay Maizland, ‘Hong Kong’s Freedoms: What China Promised and How It’s Cracking Down’, Council on Foreign Relations, updated May 19, 2022, https://www. cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown. 47 James Pomfret and Clare Jim, ‘Exclusive: Hong Kongers Support Protester Demands; Minority Wants Independence from China - Reuters Poll’, Reuters, December 31, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-pollexclusive/exclusive-hong-kongers-support-protester-demands-minority-wantsindependence-from-china-reuters-poll-idUSKBN1YZ0VK. 48 ‘Hong Kong Protest: ‘Nearly Two Million’ Join Demonstration’, BBC, June 17, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-48656471.

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49 Greg Torode, James Pomfret, and David Lague, ‘China Quietly Doubles Troop Levels in Hong Kong, Envoys Say’, Reuters: The China Challenge, September 30, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/china-army-hongkong/. 50 ‘This Is the End Of Hong Kong’, Warns Legislator, As China Proposes New Security Law | NBC News’, NBC News, May 21, 2020, 0:00–1:00, https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=vAAuRMsWU50&ab_channel=NBCNews. 51 Editors, ‘What Are the Five Key Demands of Hong Kong?’, Sup China, October 23, 2019, https://supchina.com/2019/10/23/what-are-the-five-key-demands-ofhong-kong/. 52 Kari Soo Lindberg, Natalie Lung, and Pablo Robles, ‘How Hong Kong’s National Security Law Is Changing Everything’, Bloomberg, October 5, 2021, https:// www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2021-hong-kong-national-security-law-arrests/# :~:text=More%20than%20150%20people%20have,former%20student %20leader%20Joshua%20Wong. 53 Angeli Datt, ‘The Impact of the National Security Law on Media and Internet Freedom in Hong Kong’, Freedom House, October 19, 2021, https://freedomhouse. org/article/impact-national-security-law-media-and-internet-freedom-hong-kong 54 ‘Amnesty International to Close Its Hong Kong Offices’, Amnesty International, October 25, 2021, https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/10/amnestyinternational-to-close-its-hong-kong-offices/. 55 Dickson, The Party and the People, 102. 56 Nectar Gan, ‘Why Foreign NGOs Are Struggling with New Chinese Law’, South China Morning Post, June 13, 2017, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policiespolitics/article/2097923/why-foreign-ngos-are-struggling-new-chinese-law. 57 Mark Schaub and Serena Guo, ‘Management of Non-Registered NGOs in China’, China Law Insight, August 23, 2021, https://www.chinalawinsight.com/ 2021/08/articles/ngo/management-of-non-registered-ngos-in-china-2/#_ftn8. 58 ‘Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation’, ChinaFile, November 8, 2013, https:// www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-translation. 59 Dickson, The Party and the People, 164. 60 Yukon Huang, ‘The Truth about Chinese Corruption’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, May 29, 2015, https://carnegieendowment.org/2015/05/29/ truth-about-chinese-corruption-pub-60265. 61 William Zheng, ‘China’s Top Universities Told to Stop Slacking Off on Communist Party Ideology’, South China Morning Post, September 7, 2021, https://www. scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3147779/chinas-top-universities-told-stopslacking-communist-party. 62 Jane Cai and He Huifeng, ‘China Targets Primary Schools in Drive to Instill Love for Communist Party in Children’, South China Morning Post, December 4, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3158392/china-targetsprimary-schools-drive-instill-love-communist. 63 ‘China Bans Private Tutors from Giving Online Classes’, Reuters, September 8, 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-says-private-tutors-will-notbe-able-offer-classes-online-2021-09-08/. 64 Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, The National People’s Congress of the PRC, http://www.npc.gov.cn/zgrdw/englishnpc/Constitution/2007-11/15/ content_1372964.htm. 65 State Security Law of the People’s Republic of China, President of the PRC, http://www.china.org.cn/english/China/218754.htm. 66 ‘Document 9: A ChinaFile Translation’, ChinaFile, November 8, 2013, https:// www.chinafile.com/document-9-chinafile-translation. 67 Hunt and Yu, ‘China “Employs 2 Million People to Police Internet”’.

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68 ‘Secret Documents Reveal How China Mass Detention Camps Work’, AP News, November 25, 2019, https://apnews.com/article/china-cables-ap-top-newsinternational-news-china-race-and-ethnicity-4ab0b341a4ec4e648423f2ec47ea5c47. 69 Dake Kang, ‘Terror & Tourism: Xinjiang Eases Its Grip, But Fear Remains’, AP News, October 10, 2021, https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemiclifestyle-china-health-travel-7a6967f335f97ca868cc618ea84b98b9?utm_source= Twitter&utm_campaign=SocialFlow&utm_medium=AP. 70 Katsuji Nakazawa, ‘Xi’s Gorbachev Obsession Put China on a Soviet Path’, Nikkei Asia, July 30, 2020, https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-upclose/Xi-s-Gorbachev-obsession-put-China-on-a-Soviet-path. 71 Simon Denyer, ‘Twin Historic Traumas Shape Xi Jinping’s China Presidency’, Washington Post, March 2, 2015, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_ pacific/twin-historical-traumas-shape-xi-jinpings-china-presidency/2015/03/02/ b4074516-b2f0-11e4-bf39-5560f3918d4b_story.html. 72 Jane Cai and Qin Chen, ‘Explainer | Joining China’s Communist Party: How and Why So Many People Do It, ‘Secret’ Members and Expulsion’, South China Morning Post, May 20, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/ 3134071/why-do-so-many-people-join-communist-party-china. 73 Wenfang Tang and Benjamin Darr, ‘Chinese Nationalism and Its Political and Social Origins’, Journal of Contemporary China 21, no. 77 (2012): 816. 74 Jun Mai and Amber Wang, ‘China’s Generation N: The Young Nationalists Who Have Beijing’s Back’, South China Morning Post, August 29, 2021, https://www. scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3146785/chinas-generation-n-youngnationalists-who-have-beijings-back. 75 Yang Sheng, Cao Siqi, and Chen Qingqing, ‘GT Survey Shows 90% Say China Should Not Look Up to West; Experts Say Confident Chinese Won’t Tolerate Foreign Provocations’, Global Times, April 19, 2021, https://www.globaltimes. cn/page/202104/1221496.shtml. 76 Li Zhaojie, ‘Traditional Chinese World Order’, Chinese Journal of International Law 1, no. 1 (2002): 20–58. 77 Kathrin Hille, ‘Chinese Media Put Positive Spin on Crisis’, Financial Times, December 8, 2008, https://www.ft.com/content/1048c558-c54e-11dd-b516000077b07658. 78 ‘GDP growth (annual %) – China’, World Bank Data, available online at https:// data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=CN. 79 Zhang Hui, ‘Experts Slam Foreign Media Criticism of China’s ‘Zero COVID-19’ Strategy as Fujian Registers 150 Infections in 4 Days’, Global Times, September 14, 2021, https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202109/1234267.shtml. 80 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-permillion-inhabitants/. 81 World Health Organization, WHO Coronavirus (COVID-19) Dashboard: China, accessed February 26, 2023, https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/cn. 82 James Glanz, Mara Hvistendahl, and Agnes Chang, ‘How Deadly Was China’s Covid Wave?’, New York Times, February 15, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/ interactive/2023/02/15/world/asia/china-covid-death-estimates.html. 83 ‘Delivery of 170,000 Bottles of Azvudine Tablets During Spring Festival to Help Rural Areas Weather the Epidemic’, PR Newswire, January 31, 2023, https://www. prnewswire.com/news-releases/delivery-of-170-000-bottles-of-azvudine-tabletsduring-spring-festival-to-help-rural-areas-weather-the-epidemic-301734395.html. 84 Alex Lo, ‘Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics about China’s Covid-19 Death Toll’, South China Morning Post Opinion, January 13, 2022, https://www.scmp.com/ comment/opinion/article/3163283/lies-damned-lies-and-statistics-about-chinascovid-19-death-toll.

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85 Glanz, ‘How Deadly’. 86 Amy Gunia, ‘China’s Draconian Lockdown Is Getting Credit for Slowing Coronavirus. Would It Work Anywhere Else?’, Time Magazine, March 13, 2020, https://time.com/5796425/china-coronavirus-lockdown/. 87 Michael R. Gordon and Warren P. Strobel, ‘Lab Leak Most Likely Origin of Covid-19 Pandemic, Energy Department Now Says’, Wall Street Journal, February 26, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/covid-origin-china-lab-leak-807b7b0a. 88 Saheli Roy Choudhury, ‘Here’s a List of the Australian Exports Hit by Restrictions in China’, CNBC, December 17, 2020, https://www.cnbc.com/2020/ 12/18/australia-china-trade-disputes-in-2020.html. 89 Bill Birtles, ‘China’s Most Belligerent Journalists Used to Be the Ones Doling Out Insults Online. Now They’re the Targets’, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, June 22, 2021, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-06-19/cancel-culture-comesto-chinas-global-times-tabloid/100220756. 90 Chaguan, ‘Xi Jinping Thought, for children’, The Economist, September 2, 2021, https://www.economist.com/china/2021/09/02/xi-jinping-thought-for-children. 91 Allan Dafoe, Samuel Liu, Brian O’Keefe, and Jessica Chen Weiss, ‘Provocation, Public Opinion, and International Disputes: Evidence from China’, International Studies Quarterly 66, no. 2 (2022): sqac006. 92 Charlie Lyons Jones, ‘Xi Jinping’s Conception of Socialism’, Australian Strategic Policy Institute, February 19, 2021, https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/xi-jinpingsconception-of-socialism/. 93 Jessica Chen Weiss, ‘Authoritarian Signaling, Mass Audiences, and Nationalist Protest in China’, International Organization 67, no. 1 (2013): 1–35. 94 Michel Oksenberg, ‘China’s Confident Nationalism’, Foreign Affairs 65, no. 3 (1986): 501–23. 95 Roger Garside, China Coup: The Great Leap to Freedom (Oakland: University of California Press, 2021), passim. 96 Joseph Fewsmith and Andrew J. Nathan, ‘Authoritarian Resilience Revisited: Joseph Fewsmith with Response from Andrew J. Nathan’, Journal of Contemporary China 28, no. 116 (2019): 167–79.

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Every Action … Foreign Policy and Diplomatic Challenges to Chinese Strategy

In most cases of competing international interests, China has sought to realise its strategic goals by diplomatic means. But as the late Thomas Schelling argued convincingly throughout his career, diplomacy itself is inseparable from the coercive forces that undergird international relations.1 Ultimately, deterrent and compellent pressures are what motivate involuntary changes in a nation’s behaviour. These basic insights inform many of the Realist principles that dictate the competitive nature of international relations. For the PRC, the fact that its foreign competitors and neighbours may form alliances, build up their own armed forces and take other steps to counter it poses a rising challenge. The PRC’s ability to continue practising grand strategy effectively hinges on its response to these evolving dynamics. Additionally, the PRC may be constrained by its own inadequacies as it seeks to court the favour of the international community. This chapter aims to build on Chapter 7 by assessing some of the principal obstacles China faces in the foreign policy domain and how it might seek to overcome them. The first section sets a baseline by describing in broad terms the core planks of China’s foreign policy vision. The second section explores perhaps the most daunting barrier facing China’s foreign policy agenda: geopolitical counterbalancing and containment by foreign nations. The third section addresses the PRC’s limitations in the realm of ‘soft power’ and the strategic perils of its increasingly abrasive and militant style of diplomacy. The final section examines how China has hedged against these challenges by cultivating exceptionally close and asymmetrically advantageous relationships with a variety of key allies and neighbouring states. China’s Foreign Policy Vision Chapter 3 argued that the essence of Deng Xiaoping’s Sixteen-Character Statement, which guided China’s leaders to combine the military and the civil, has informed much of the PRC’s grand strategy over the past several decades. This is particularly evident in the way in which the PRC has harmonised its commercial and security-related objectives. As Chapter 4 illustrates, Beijing has been notably successful in taking advantage of its growing DOI: 10.4324/9781315387383-8

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wealth to develop, expand and refine its military capabilities. And yet, one might observe that combining the military and civil is hardly a grand strategic objective in and of itself. China has, in the 21st century, become increasingly powerful. Many consider China to be a ‘great power’. But power is only useful so long as it functions as a means to an end. For the purposes of this chapter, this observation begs the fraught and often controversial question: In the realm of diplomacy and foreign affairs, what exactly are the PRC’s desired ‘ends’ and how should one interpret them? One way of assessing Beijing’s diplomatic and foreign policy objectives is by examining the publicly stated policies and national objectives expressed by China’s top leaders. In 2017, at the CCP’s Nineteenth Party Congress, China’s current paramount leader, Xi Jinping, stated that Chinese foreign policy was entering a new era of ‘major-country relations’ and ‘majorcountry diplomacy’.2 Many have debated what precisely was meant by these terms. However, most agree that Beijing’s self-characterisation as a ‘major country’ suggested that Chinese foreign policy would become noticeably more assertive. This interpretation is supported by the popularisation of the ‘China Dream’, Xi Jinping’s more inward facing policy vision that seeks the full ‘rejuvenation of the Chinese nation’ and the realisation of a modern, prosperous, socialist society by the PRC’s 100th anniversary in 2049. Though the China Dream has yet to be achieved and China still considers itself a developing country in some respects, the PRC’s leaders believe that the depth and breadth of China’s global interests and international ties justify a more directive role in shaping the world.3 Foreign policy as a ‘major country’ will involve transitioning from a passive stakeholder in the world order to an active creator of international rules and institutions and a producer of public goods. The PRC’s self-characterisation as a major country represents a noteworthy departure from the way China has described itself in the postrevolutionary era. When Deng Xiaoping travelled to the United States and Japan in the late 1970s, following the Cultural Revolution and the death of Mao, he marvelled at technological advancement of the American and Japanese societies and frequently juxtaposed their progress with the poverty and backwardness he saw at home.4 With this humility, Deng sought to foster friendship between China and its foreign counterparts and build a harmonious international environment that would serve as an incubator for China’s economic flourishment. In 1990, after the Tiananmen catastrophe, Deng laid out his prescription for China’s future engagement in international affairs. Often referred to as his ‘Twenty-Four Character Strategy’, Deng advised: ‘Observe calmly; secure our position; cope with affairs calmly; hide our capacities and bide our time; be good at maintaining a low profile; and never claim leadership’.5 Under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, the PRC’s foreign policy evolved subtly and was modified where necessary to suit the country’s changing needs and broadening ambitions. But Beijing mostly adhered to the deferential principles articulated in Deng’s Twenty-Four

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Character Strategy.6 Only at the end of the first decade of the 21st century and under the Xi Administration has China’s foreign policy approach become palpably more confident, assertive and energetic. One may note that there are multiple ways to interpret Deng’s Twenty-Four Character Strategy. Indeed, the Chinese epigrams that make up the original statement themselves are idiomatic and require context and certain etymological assumptions to extract their meaning. Some argue that Deng’s strategy was an endorsement of introspection, national modesty and caution. For example, the phrase ‘hide our capacities and bide our time’ – taoguang yanghui – could also be translated to something along the lines of ‘avoid the limelight and live in seclusion’.7 Others – particularly adversarial pundits in the West – see Deng’s strategy as a grand ploy to deceive the international community. Under their interpretation, ‘biding time’ and ‘maintaining a low profile’ was what allowed the PRC to build up its national power without painting itself as a threat or revealing its more revisionist plans.8 Sunzi might characterise this approach as winning without fighting. In reality, the true intent behind Deng’s Twenty-Four Character Strategy likely lies somewhere in between pacific humility and conniving ambition. However, from the perspective of grand strategy-making and in keeping with the core argument of this book, one may note that it would make little sense for China to plan to be passive forever. In fact, the foreign policy vision presented by Xi Jinping in his speech in 2017 appears quite active. In particular, Xi emphasises China’s burgeoning role in shaping a ‘global community with a shared future for mankind’.9 Though Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, was the first to speak of a community with a common destiny in the international context, Xi has updated this model to account for China’s enlarged role in the world. For China’s leaders, fostering a global community with a shared future involves deepening international cooperation and promoting peace through bold initiatives such as the BRI and by working via bilateral and multilateral mechanisms to close the gap between rich and poor countries. Beijing appears to be seeking a more harmonious and collaborative future for the world. But as a newly christened ‘major country’, one should expect the PRC to prioritise its own interests whenever possible. Indeed, of paramount importance to China’s leaders are the principles of national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Xi Jinping has said as much in almost all of his major speeches. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, headed by Foreign Minister and State Councillor Wang Yi, regularly affirms these commitments as well.10 In practice, the preservation of national sovereignty and safeguarding of territorial integrity involve two concomitant policy objectives for China: (1) the cultivation of comprehensive national power sufficient to resist foreign intervention or coercion and (2) the resolution of any ongoing territorial disputes in its favour. Chapters 3 and 4 addressed the PRC’s successes in the first area. But in the second area, Beijing has been left with much to be desired. Chapter 6 admits

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as much. Indeed, one of the PRC’s principal foreign policy goals is to assert sovereignty over the various contested territories around its borders that are believed to be the rightful possessions of the Chinese nation. In 2018, Xi Jinping famously stated, ‘We cannot lose even one inch of the territory left behind by our ancestors’.11 This foreign policy objective is an age-old struggle for Chinese civilisation, the history of which is replete with territorial disputes. China shares land borders with 14 foreign states – the most of any country in the world – and could be considered close regional or maritime neighbours with another five or ten. With a majority of these neighbours, China has, at various moments in its long history, militarily or diplomatically contested territory. Though the PRC has made various efforts to settle its land and maritime disputes since the latter years of the Mao era, several disputes remain unresolved. Given the salience in China’s national memory of the Century of Humiliation – in which various parts of the PRC were carved away and occupied by imperialist foreign powers – it should be of no surprise that China is committed to resolving these disputes in its favour. The following paragraphs offer a review of the territorial disputes most central to China’s evolving foreign policy vision. To its north, the PRC contends with two major powers: Japan and Russia. With Japan, the PRC disputes ownership of the Senkaku Islands, a small set of uninhabited islets, rocks and reefs in the East China Sea. Located roughly 100 miles northeast of Taiwan, China refers to the islands as the Diaoyutai, which translates as ‘the fishing islands’. Since the 1895 Treaty of Shimonoseki – signed after Japan defeated China in the First Sino-Japanese War – the islands have been administered by Japan. However, according to the PRC, the Diaoyutai were first discovered and claimed by the Ming Dynasty in the 14th century and must therefore be considered an inherent part of China’s ancestral territory.12 Beijing argues that the Diaoyutai should have been returned to China in the Treaty of San Francisco, which reversed the Treaty of Shimonoseki and saw the return of Chinese territory previously occupied by Imperial Japan. The sensitivity of issue was revealed in 2012, when, after the Japanese Government purchased several of the disputed islands from their former private owner, mass protests of nationalistic zeal erupted across China, leading to violence and vandalism in several cities.13 However, from a strategic perspective, it is unlikely that China’s leaders are primarily concerned with the islands’ nationalist appeal. Indeed, control over the Diaoyutai might be considered relatively trivial if it weren’t for their proximity to important shipping routes as well as substantial reserves of oil, natural gas and fish. In the event of a resolution, the owner of the islands would be afforded direct control over the twelve miles of territorial sea surrounding the archipelago in addition to the ability to project power further into the hundreds of square miles of international waters that fall within China and Japan’s overlapping maritime economic zones. One may note, as proponents of the Japanese position often do, that the PRC only began to express interest in the Diaoyutai after a 1968 UN survey of the

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surrounding areas revealed the presence of significant petroleum reserves.14 In 1972, Premier Zhou Enlai practically conceded this point when he told Japanese Prime Minister Tanaka at a bilateral summit that control over the islands had become an issue ‘because of the oil out there’.15 Today, the legal debate on the matter remains fraught and nuanced. However, the chronology of the PRC’s actions, taken in concert with its historic development priorities, suggests that, beyond the irredentist agendas of certain domestic interest groups, the PRC considers the Diaoyutai important for highly tangible reasons such as resource extraction and maritime control. Chinese coast guard vessels are known to frequently patrol the waters surrounding the Diaoyutai and, in 2021, a law was passed permitting them to fire on foreign vessels in disputed waters.16 With Russia, the PRC officially resolved its territorial disputes in 2008, after multiple agreements made throughout the preceding decades were finally ratified.17 Since the early 2000s, relations between Russia and China have warmed exponentially. However, one should be cautious in assuming that the PRC will remain satisfied with their current arrangement forever. The Russian Empire was, after all, one of the Qing Dynasty’s major antagonists during the Century of Humiliation. In 1858 and 1860, respectively, internal pressures forced China to accede to the terms of the Aigun and Peking treaties, which transferred large swathes of territory in Qingruled Manchuria to the Russian Empire. A century later, in 1969, fighting between the Soviet Union and the PRC in this same region drove the two nations to the brink of nuclear war.18 Today, as a latter section of this chapter will discuss further, Russia is much weaker than it used to be and highly dependent on the PRC economically. Should the PRC continue to grow in relative strength, it may seek, at some point in the medium to long term, to amend the status quo boundaries and reclaim its lost territory. One may note that Mongolia, which could be considered a buffer state between China and Russia, was once part of the Qing Dynasty as well. To its west, China’s principal adversary is India. With India, the PRC currently prosecutes two major border disputes, one in Xinjiang’s far western region of Aksai Chin and the other in the Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, located along Tibet’s southern border. For China, the contest for these territories follows a familiar story. Both pieces of territory were stencilled into the borders of present-day India by international agreements, made without consulting the Chinese, during the periods of weakness and instability that accompanied the collapse of the Qing Dynasty and China’s revolutionary years.19 In 1962, the PRC and India went to war in Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh, with the Chinese making modest gains. In the decades to follow, additional clashes between Chinese and Indian border forces ensued, the bloody nature of which led to a confidence building agreement in 1996 that outright banned the use of conventional military weaponry along the front lines.20 Despite this agreement, a hand-to-hand brawl, featuring make-shift clubs and other melee weapons, broke out in

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2020 along the disputed border in Aksai Chin, leaving at least 20 Indian soldiers dead.21 As recently as the end of 2022, nonfatal clashes between Chinese and Indian border troops were ignited in Arunachal Pradesh.22 According to CSIS researchers, the PRC has significantly expanded its air and ground infrastructure in support of its military assets in Tibet and Xinjiang over the last five years.23 Dozens of new and upgraded airports and heliports are now scattered across Tibet’s western frontier, many in close proximity to Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. Foreign Policy’s Jack Detsch reports that the US Department of Defense has also expressed concern about build-ups of Chinese planes, equipment and weaponry in Tibet and Xinjiang throughout 2021.24 Though the precise intent behind these manoeuvres will likely remain a mystery to outside observers, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the threat posed by India is one of Beijing’s primary motivations. China’s leaders undoubtedly see India as a worthy adversary. Their added investment in military infrastructure in the far West and the relocation of various warfighting platforms to the region suggests that they continue to see a flare-up along the border as a volatile national security concern. One may also observe that, for China, bringing its forces to bear on its western front could have the effect of intimidating India’s leaders and deterring its increasingly nationalistic neighbour from acting rashly. To its south, the PRC’s ongoing territorial disputes are centred in the maritime domain, in the SCS. Home to seven Southeast Asian nations, the SCS has been contested for centuries. However, although the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam of today each claim overlapping sectors of the SCS – including many of the island features within – extending from their respective coastlines, the PRC – and Taiwan for that matter – claims nearly the entire region for itself. Since the middle of the 20th century, both the PRC and ROC have claimed complete sovereignty over the SCS, cordoning off the region on their official maps with the now infamous ‘ninedash line’.25 Under Xi Jinping, the PRC has taken an increasingly domineering approach to this maritime contest. As noted in Chapter 6, beginning in 2013, the PRC began an unprecedented island-building and land reclamation initiative which has seen the transformation of shallow reefs in the Paracel and Spratly islands into operational military bases. The South China Morning Post reported in 2021 that China’s three primary island outposts in the Spratly network have been outfitted with runways, missile storage depots and advanced radar systems.26 Beijing has also made plans to establish an air defence identification zone (ADIZ) over parts of the SCS, though it is unknown when it might go into effect.27 On top of its efforts to militarise the SCS, many accuse the PRC of employing ‘grey zone tactics’ – coercive actions short of direct conflict – to limit the sovereignty and economic rights of its neighbours in the region. Vietnam and the Philippines, in particular, have complained on numerous occasions about the harassment of their private fishing vessels by China’s coast guard and of PRC ‘swarming’ operations in

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which up to several hundred Chinese vessels assemble and occupy the waters near a disputed islet, shoal or fishery. The SCS is one of the most strategically significant maritime zones in the world. In 2016, researchers from CSIS estimated that roughly $3.4 trillion of global trade and a third of global shipping passed through the SCS.28 For China, this includes 80% of its oil imports. Substantial oil, natural gas and mineral reserves exist in the SCS as well.29 With such exposure and potential gain, it is no surprise that China seeks to secure a dominant grip on the region and its resources. That China has ramped up this territorial dispute with so many of its neighbours – all of which have in one way or another rebuffed China’s claims and could one day choose to unite their forces in a more effective manner – further suggests that the SCS is at the core of the PRC’s regional ambitions. To its east, however, the PRC is confronted with arguably its paramount foreign policy concern: Taiwan. For China, reunification with Taiwan is a territorial dispute of existential proportions. Every Chinese leader since Mao has made reunification with Taiwan a top priority, though none have succeeded. For many Chinese, the existence and nominal independence of the Republic of China – separate from mainland China – is a poignant reminder of the Chinese Civil War, a black mark on the PRC’s international reputation and, owing to the military and diplomatic backing Taiwan receives from the United States and its allies, a modern archetype of the foreign interventionism that animated China’s Century of Humiliation. Though relations between the PRC and Taiwan have only grown more strained over the last decade, Beijing frequently reaffirms its commitment to a ‘peaceful’ solution.30 Others, however, have hinted that Taiwan’s time is running out.31 Australian policy analyst Linda Jakobson argues that Xi Jinping is personally obsessed with the Taiwan issue and is committed to overseeing reunification with the island in his lifetime.32 To complement, in the last several years, the PLA has substantially ramped up the size and number of Taiwan-focused training and intimidation exercises performed around the island and shows little signs of letting up.33 One would be wise to note that such escalations in rhetoric and military posturing may prove difficult for China’s leaders and the Chinese Communist Party to back down from. Beijing’s increasingly omnidirectional assertiveness indicates that now, more than ever since a more patient tone was struck in the Deng era, the PRC is prepared to retake Taiwan by force. Beyond its efforts to assert its will in territorial matters, China, under Xi Jinping, has taken a generally quite maximalist approach to its foreign relations in East Asia. This maximalism is best exemplified by China’s initiative in enhancing its economic position in the region. In 2022, for example, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) – a trade pact in which the PRC is the largest member, designed by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – came into effect. Composed of 15 member states, RCEP is now the world’s largest free trade agreement, China’s first free trade deal with Japan and will account for

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roughly a third of China’s foreign trade value.34 The goal of the agreement is to bring tariffs on more than 90% of merchandise traded between members of the block to zero. Here, in joining RCEP, China’s leaders have signalled that, in its effort to build a community of shared destiny, Beijing intends to pay special attention to the community in its own backyard. The PRC has taken a similar approach under the Belt and Road Initiative. Data from the Green Finance & Development Center indicate that East Asia has been the largest regional recipient of investment under the ambitious programme.35 This, even as some of Beijing’s most grandiose, transnational infrastructure projects – such as its planned Southeast Asia railway network – have yet to be completed.36 These projects will continue to demand Beijing’s focus and funding for many years to come. Even smaller players, such as the Pacific Islands, have been on the receiving end of China’s full court press as of late. In 2022, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi embarked on a historic diplomatic tour of the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Samoa, Fiji, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Timor Leste in an effort to deepen China’s economic and security ties to the island nations.37 International media reports indicate that Foreign Minister Wang Yi and the representatives from the Pacific Island nations failed to reach an overarching agreement on the level China had hoped.38 However, the US Institute of Peace’s (USIP) Jennifer Staats notes that Beijing remains committed to expanding its influence in the region and the Pacific Islands remain enthusiastic about Chinese engagement, particularly in the areas of infrastructure investment, trade and development assistance.39 In analysing the trends described above, it would not be unreasonable to argue that the PRC is currently in pursuit of a more dominant and influential role in East Asia. Stanford University’s Oriana Skylar Mastro more candidly assesses that regional hegemony is the PRC’s objective.40 The confluence between what China’s leaders are saying – that they have entered into a new era of ‘major country’ relations – and what they are doing – pursuing an increasingly assertive, ambitious and energetic foreign policy agenda in the region – suggests she may be right. In particular, Beijing’s goal of resolving all of its territorial disputes in its favour will require the ability to sustainably project diplomatic and military power at its adversaries – in all four cardinal directions – until a satisfactory arrangement is decided either by negotiation or by force. If the PRC tries to resolve all these matters at once, it will spread itself thin. One may also note that Beijing has not set a firm timeline for when it hopes to prevail in these matters and is therefore susceptible to changes in the region’s balance of power and in the strength of its neighbours. Hence, if hegemony is defined simply as the ability to assert one’s will over others, then hegemony may be precisely the recipe Beijing requires to fully realise its foreign policy objectives in the region. Hegemony, imprecise though the term may be, is closer to the rule than the exception in Chinese history. As Tsinghua University’s Li Zhaojie has explained in great detail, China was the dominant power in East Asia for

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most of its 5,000-year history.41 Zhaojie describes China’s diplomatic praxis in its dynastic years as manifesting in the form of a hierarchical ‘tribute system’ in which member states exchanged taxes and fidelity to the imperial court for economic benefits and political protection.42 China played the role of a patriarch in a family of nations, rewarding those which voluntarily adopted the Chinese legal system, cultural norms and morals. From this position, China exercised substantial influence on the distribution of power in East Asia. Geographic isolation is the principal reason for China’s uninterrupted dominance. Even under the Han Dynasty, which stretched far to the west into Central Asia, and under the Tang Dynasty during the Silk Road era, contact between China and other major powers – such as the Roman Empire – was irregular at best. Former American diplomat Chas W. Freeman, Jr. has argued that this historical isolation, coupled with the discourse of imperial control, inevitably produced a sense of superiority in the Chinese psyche.43 Even in cases of far-away states, where the relationship between the Chinese imperial court and its vassals was largely theoretical, the ideology of empire and political hierarchy persisted. The persistence of this ideology undoubtedly contributed to the shock the Chinese civilisation experienced during the Century of Humiliation. Repeated defeat and subordination at the hands of foreign powers shattered millennia-old intuitions about Chinese political superiority and left scars that powerfully animate Chinese foreign policy to this day. This is not to say that the policy priorities of the PRC are predetermined by its primordial history. Rather, like in all countries, the legacies of China’s past play a powerful role in shaping the way it views itself and the way it understands the outside world. In fact, much of China’s foreign policy vision could be interpreted as an effort to recapture the essence of its historic role in East Asia. The PRC’s desire to be at the centre of Asia’s economic development and a promoter of global economic interconnectivity parallels the benevolent suzerainty that China tried to cultivate with many of its neighbours throughout history. China’s commitment to resolving its territorial disputes in its favour reflects the dominance hierarchy and deference from subordinate states expected by its dynastic ancestors. According to Norwegian historian Odd Arne Westad, the CCP perceives its own raison d’etre as inseparable from its historic mission to reverse the effects of the Century of Humiliation and restore preeminence to the Middle Kingdom.44 In this context, the goal of national rejuvenation articulated repeatedly in Xi Jinping’s China Dream should be understood both in the absolute terms of building a prosperous and modern Chinese society at home and in the relative terms of reclaiming China’s historic dominance – perhaps hegemony – in East Asia. Taken in sum, it appears that the PRC’s foreign policy vision is comprised of three principal objectives: regional dominance or hegemony in East Asia, the resolution of territorial disputes in its favour and the deepening of

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international cooperation and harmonisation in a community of shared destiny that supports both continued Chinese development and the interests of its many willing partners. These are ambitious goals and are by no means forgone conclusions. The following sections explore the primary constraints China faces in achieving these ends. Backyard Counterbalancing Just because the PRC’s leaders believe in the benevolence of the China Dream and their vision for East Asia does not mean that the international community agrees. Indeed, Beijing’s plans are often at odds with the interests and priorities of its neighbours in the region. In an increasing number of cases, Beijing’s plans are explicitly at odds with the interests and priorities of the United States. In its efforts to continue practising grand strategy effectively in the 21st century, the PRC must contend with those states which see the proliferation of Chinese power as a threat. These states, according to Realist logic, will seek to ‘counterbalance’ an increasingly ambitious and assertive China by investing greater resources in their own national strength as well as seeking international coalitions from which to present a united front. Over the last decade, these manoeuvrings have become increasingly visible, particularly in China’s backyard. One of the most antagonistic examples of counterbalancing in action is the United States’ commitment to routinely sailing American warships through the Taiwan Strait. Despite its official adherence to the PRC’s ‘oneChina policy’, the United States maintains that the middle portion of the channel separating Taiwan from mainland China is part of international waters.45 According to the US Congressional Research Service (CRS), the US Navy conducts transits of the Taiwan Strait roughly once per month.46 These Taiwan Strait transits are part of a long list of ‘freedom of navigation operations’ – FONOPs – that the US Navy conducts around the world to, ostensibly, ensure unimpeded access to international sea lines of communication and uphold the maritime rights of innocent vessels. One may note that close American allies, such as the UK and Canada, are also known to send warships through the Taiwan Strait on occasion, most recently in 2021. America’s close relationship with Taiwan, enshrined in the 1979 Taiwan Relations Act, is the source of much rancour between the United States and China. The presence of the US Navy’s 7th Fleet, located nearby in Yokosuka, Japan also contributes to Sino-American tensions. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has maintained an outsized presence in East Asia, which, in Beijing’s eyes, reflects a policy of containment from Washington. This perception is not without substantiation. Without American arms sales and multiple instances of strategic interference – in the 1954, 1958 and 1996 Taiwan Strait crises – it is much less likely Taiwan would have maintained its independence over the last 73 years. Even during the period of rapprochement between the United States and China under the Nixon and

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Carter administrations, and most recently under the Obama Administration, America’s Congress maintained steadfast support for Taiwanese selfdetermination. As US-China relations have further soured in the last decade, Congressional support for Taiwan – and hawkishness towards China – has only grown more robust and bipartisan. Speaker of the US House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi’s incendiary visit to Taipei in August of 2022 is one recent example of this trend. America’s executive branch has reflected a similar disposition. Under the Trump Administration, the United States struck a substantially harder line in its relationship with Beijing. In 2022, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who was personally sanctioned by the PRC after leaving the White House, went so far as to call explicitly for the recognition of Taiwanese sovereignty.47 The Biden Administration’s approach to the Taiwan issue, so far, appears more similar than dissimilar to that of the Trump Administration. On four separate occasions during his first two years in office, President Biden has verbally committed – apparently unintentionally – to defend Taiwan militarily in the event of an attack from the PRC. Biden’s comments contradict America’s longstanding policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ on Taiwan, under which US officials have avoided explicitly confirming or denying whether or not the United States would use force to protect the island in the event of an invasion. After all four of Biden’s comments, representatives in the Administration took steps to qualify, ‘walk back’ and portray them as honest ‘gaffes’.48 While it is certainly possible that President Biden unwittingly mischaracterised Washington’s Taiwan policy on all four occasions – it would be far from the first time an American official misspoke on the topic of the US-China-Taiwan relationship – it is also quite possible that President Biden’s alleged slip-ups reflect a real evolution in Washington’s strategic thinking on Taiwan. As the Council on Foreign Relations Richard Haas and David Sacks astutely note, if the United States truly intends to militarily back Taiwan against a PRC attack, a policy of ‘strategic clarity’ – not ambiguity – may provide American policymakers with a more stable foundation from which to deter Chinese aggression.49 Perhaps the Biden Administration agrees with Haas and Sacks, but is not yet ready to publicly endorse such a controversial policy. America’s military presence in the SCS further legitimates Beijing’s theory of containment. The US Navy regularly performs FONOPs in the SCS, sometimes in close proximity to territorial waters claimed by the PRC in the Spratly and Paracel island networks.50 The US government outright rejects China’s sovereignty claims in the SCS, calling them ‘unfounded, unlawful, and unreasonable, and without legal, historic, or geographic merit’.51 According to the US Naval Institute (USNI), as many as two full US Navy carrier strike groups routinely perform training exercises in the SCS.52 The USNI publishes on its website the location of America’s naval fleets on a weekly basis.53 Though US defence officials undoubtedly believe they are providing a public service by policing international waters and checking

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Chinese expansionism, the PRC’s government invariably characterises US operations in the region as infringing on China’s national sovereignty and limiting the aspirations of the Chinese people. In this context, it is no surprise that many of the PRC’s leaders perceive America’s presence in East Asia as the principal barrier to achieving their foreign policy vision. The United States denies that it seeks to contain China and rejects Beijing’s frequent accusation that Washington is seeking a new ‘cold war’ with China. And yet, it is difficult to ignore the fact that the United States is the most powerful nation standing in the way of the PRC triumphing in its territorial disputes as well as realising its broader hegemonic aspirations in the region. In 2022, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken described the Biden Administration’s China policy as aiming to ‘shape the environment around Beijing’ in order to win what it sees as an epochal ‘contest’ between the United States and China.54 In The Long Game (mentioned in this book’s introduction) Brookings’ Rush Doshi, who served as the Director for China on the Biden Administration’s National Security Council (NSC), explicitly argues that the United States and China are on a collision course as China endeavours to displace the United States as the preeminent global power.55 With individuals like Doshi influencing the formulation US foreign policy at the highest levels of government, it is easier to understand Beijing’s wariness towards Washington, at least in principle. The self-reinforcing and oppositional nature of Beijing and Washington’s perceptions of each other appears to have produced a vicious circle in their diplomatic relations. While the United States sees the PRC as its most likely strategic adversary in the 21st century, the PRC sees the United States as an already mature threat to its core national interests. It is difficult to determine which adversarial intuition came first. Regardless, what is clear is that tensions between China and the United States can only serve to degrade the interests of those Chinese leaders who hope to pursue a coherent foreign policy strategy. Yet the United States is not alone in its apparent efforts to counterbalance the PRC in East Asia. Multilateral agreements and coalitions – as international relations theorists of the Realist ilk have long predicted – have also developed in response to China’s increasingly assertive and expansionist foreign policy tack. Perhaps the most comprehensive of these formulations, in terms of both total national power and geographic coverage, is the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, often colloquially referred to as the ‘Quad’. Spearheaded in 2007 by then Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the Quad brought together the United States, India, Japan and Australia in a multilateral strategic dialogue and security initiative aimed initially at promoting democratic norms throughout Asia. Over the years, this lofty proposition has evolved and refocused not on governance in Asia, but on preserving what members of the Quad refer to as a ‘free and open IndoPacific’. The diplomatic heft of all four member countries has afforded the Quad an influential platform from which to denounce what it perceives as

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Chinese aggression in East Asia. To the minds of the PRC’s leaders, a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’ has long been understood as a euphemism for containment. The Quad represents a potentially formidable security block designed to hem in the PRC’s geopolitical ambitions and improve the military coordination of its regional competitors. The Quad is a diplomatic juggernaut, but its real teeth are seen on the open seas. Every year, members of the Quad participate in the highly integrated and advanced Malabar naval exercise. Originally initiated by the United States and India in the 1990s, Exercise Malabar reveals the potential strength and strategic impact of the Quad coalition. Exercise Malabar typically takes place in the Indian Ocean and features a broad array of large-scale fleet exercises, such as aircraft carrier manoeuvres, amphibious operations, anti-submarine warfare simulations, communications drills and combined aviation testing.56 The goal of the exercise is to develop proficiency in combined naval operations and demonstrate a robust warfighting capability in international waters. Exercise Malabar therefore functions as a powerful signalling mechanism and deterrent to potential regional adversaries, such as the PRC. Should conflict between the PRC and members of the Quad in fact break out, a united front in the Indian Ocean would present serious challenges for China’s leaders. Close to 80% of the world’s seaborne trade passes through the Indian Ocean, including 80% of the PRC’s oil imports.57 In a 2022 lecture delivered to US Army officers at Fort Benning, Georgia, American geopolitical analyst Peter Zeihan argues that cutting off China’s commercial access to the Indian Ocean would effectively cripple its production capacity within months.58 A united and proficient Quad force certainly has the potential to defeat China’s navy at sea. Beijing is almost certainly aware of this prospect and undoubtedly alarmed by it. One may note that China’s vulnerability in the Indian Ocean is one of the primary motivations for its seaport construction campaign outlined in Chapter 3. It is also a likely driver behind the PRC’s dramatic naval expansion in recent years. In this way, the Quad can be understood as a counterbalancing force that may continue to force the PRC to adjust and recalibrate its strategic aims. Yet there are those – including representatives from the PRC’s government in the past – that have argued that the Quad is somewhat of a paper tiger. As CNN’s Nectar Gan aptly notes, the Quad is not a formal alliance.59 Rather, the Quad is mostly the product of America’s bilateral defence pacts with Japan and Australia and its imperfect security partnership with India. Japan, India and Australia do not, in fact, maintain bona fide treaty alliances with each other. Australia has pulled out of the Quad in the past and India is sometimes reluctant to treat the grouping as more than one of its numerous cooperative partnerships in the region. In this way, as Heather Byrne and Sameer Lalwani of the Stimson Center contend, despite Washington’s desire to portray the Quad as an increasingly integrated military alliance, it may be better characterised as a more broadly disposed strategic coalition, still untethered to a singular mission or adversary.60

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Nevertheless, the tendency to downplay the strategic significance of the Quad has more and more fallen out of favour. Indeed, alignment between its members has continued to deepen in recent years. In 2020, for example, India and Japan signed a military logistics cooperation agreement that grants reciprocal access to each other’s bases for resupply and servicing purposes.61 (Although the Japanese navy is already quite capable of projecting power on the high seas, it is worth noting that access to Indian military installations would represent a substantial force multiplier in the event of extended multilateral operations in the Indo-Pacific.) In the same year, India joined the United States in an imagery and geospatial intelligence-sharing pact allowing for the exchange of sensitive maps and overhead surveillance products.62 In 2022, Japan and Australia ratified a defence cooperation framework to increase training and operations coordination and signed a landmark intelligence-sharing agreement aimed explicitly at countering China.63 Also recently, the Quad unveiled a new satellite-operated maritime monitoring mechanism designed to strengthen law enforcement efforts aimed at countering illegal fishing and other maritime malfeasance.64 The increasingly coherent front presented by the Quad appears to have quieted those in Beijing who once downplayed the importance of the grouping. In fact, China’s leaders seem to have pivoted 180° in their messaging. Alluding to America’s so-called ‘cold war’ mentality, Beijing now lambasts the Quad as Washington’s attempt to build an ‘Asian NATO’ to encircle China. This change in tone – from dismissiveness to agitation – suggests that the PRC’s government is more seriously concerned about the Quad than it may be willing to admit publicly. The Quad has attracted counterbalancing partnerships from outside its four member states as well. in 2019 and 2021, for example, Quad navies joined the French navy in the Indian Ocean for France’s own ‘La Perouse’ exercises.65 These exercises demonstrated the Quad’s ability to flexibly incorporate outside partners into its strategic framework. Indeed, it is worth considering the possibility that additional East Asian countries will try to join or more closely align themselves with the Quad in the future. The Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei are already reliable participants in America’s Rim of Pacific (RIMPAC) event, a maritime warfare exercise hosted by the US Navy in Hawaii on a biennial basis.66 The war games held at RIMPAC are the largest of their kind in the world and increasingly focus on securing a ‘free and open Indo-Pacific’. Although the Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei are only four of dozens of participants, RIMPAC represents an avenue by which increased cooperation and integration into US counterbalancing efforts could be facilitated in the coming years. Indeed, the member states of ASEAN – an organisation originally formed to hedge against great power competition in Southeast Asia – are increasingly torn between their alignments with the United States and China. A 2022 survey conducted by ISEAS-Yusof Ishak, a Singaporean research

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institute, indicates that seven out of ten members of ASEAN – Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore and Thailand – would align themselves with the United States over China, if forced to choose.67 ISEAS-Yusof Ishak’s poll also found that less than a third of ASEAN’s members think China will ‘“do the right thing” to contribute to global peace, security, prosperity, and governance’.68 Those that did say they trusted China highlighted the PRC’s economic interconnectivity in the region and its potential for global leadership. However, those that said they distrusted China – the majority of ASEAN nations – overwhelmingly pointed to the threat posed by the PRC to their national sovereignty and interests. ASEAN has long sought to be an independent advocate for the rights of its ten member states. An increasingly domineering China, however, has prompted them to diversify their counterbalancing options. Vietnam is one example of this subtle shift in Southeast Asian allegiances. In 2011, Vietnam surprised many onlookers when it welcomed an offshore visit from the USS George Washington, an American aircraft carrier.69 Tensions in the SCS between China and Vietnam were just beginning to heat up at the time and Hanoi was keen to show Beijing that it would not stand by idly – even if that meant sidling up to its former bitter enemy, the United States. In 2018, the USS Carl Vinson, another aircraft carrier, arrived in Danang for a week-long port call, marking the first time since the fall of Saigon in 1975 that a large contingent of American troops returned to Vietnamese soil.70 In 2020, it was the carrier strike group led by the USS Theodore Roosevelt.71 Though there is nothing inherently remarkable about American ships making port calls in Vietnam – Vietnamese ports process tens of thousands of vessel calls every year – the fact that US aircraft carriers – one of the most powerful weapons platform on earth and the embodiment of America’s global reach – were received so graciously is not insignificant from a historical perspective. To grasp why Vietnam’s conviviality towards the US Navy is meaningful in the context of China’s foreign policy grand strategy, it is important to understand that Vietnam’s experience in the latter half of the 19th century made it extremely wary of international entanglements and heightened its sensitivity to the perils of geopolitical ambition. First, the Vietnam War and America’s intervention exacted a monstrous humanitarian toll on Vietnam and thrust the nation into a state of disrepair. Buoyed by its victory over the South, however, Hanoi made the hubristic decision to invade Cambodia only three years later, leading to a costly ten-year occupation. Ironically from today’s perspective, in the early 1980s, it was Vietnam that ASEAN perceived as the principal security threat in Southeast Asia. Vietnam’s role as a regional aggressor and its heavy reliance on the Soviet Union resulted in a deleterious period of economic and diplomatic isolation that lasted until the early 1990s. Collectively, these experiences produced a generation of Vietnamese that would be much more cautious about their country’s foreign relations going into the 21st century.

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Against this backdrop, in 1998, Vietnam codified reforms in its foreign policy doctrine that expressly forbid forming military alliances with foreign states, hosting foreign military bases on its home soil and ‘aligning with one country against another’.72 These seminal restrictions are often referred to as Vietnam’s ‘Three Nos’, which serve to limit the potential volatility of its international relationships. ‘Aligning with one country against another’, of course, refers to the game of geopolitical counterbalancing. Indeed, in recent decades, Vietnam has been careful to remain neutral on most international issues and avoid falling into any one country’s sphere of influence. And yet, in the wake of growing Chinese influence and assertiveness, Vietnam appears to be seeking warmer ties with the United States as well as other regional and global actors. In addition to welcoming American aircraft carriers to station themselves at Danang – less than 200 miles from China’s Hainan Island and the disputed Paracel Islands – the US and Vietnam have strengthened their diplomatic ties and intensified their bilateral maritime security cooperation in recent years, with notable help from the US Coast Guard.73 Vietnam has also courted closer relationships with Japan, the European Union, Australia and India. Japan and Vietnam have inked multiple security cooperation agreements in recent years and, in 2021, Tokyo convinced Hanoi to begin importing defence equipment and technology from Japan.74 In 2022, The Times of India reported that India and Vietnam signed a military logistics support pact similar to the India-Japan agreement mentioned above.75 A harbinger of growing strategic alignment between Hanoi and New Delhi, the pact will allow access to each other’s military bases for repair and replenishment activities. Though none of the cooperative arrangements described above explicitly violate Vietnam’s Three Nos, the line between cooperation and counterbalancing is increasingly difficult to define. Vietnam’s 2019 Defence White Paper – its most recent – states that depending on circumstances and specific conditions, Viet Nam will consider developing necessary, appropriate defence and military relations with other countries on the basis of respecting each other’s independence, sovereignty, territorial unity and integrity as well as fundamental principles of international law, cooperation for mutual benefits and common interests of the region and international community.76 This clause appears to offer Hanoi a loophole to pursue certain counterbalancing arrangements. The Diplomat’s Derek Grossman and Dung Huyne agree, arguing that Vietnam’s defence policy is, in fact, more flexible than it may have been in the past.77 Vietnam’s actions seem to support this interpretation. Vietnam has also demonstrated willingness to rebuke China on its own. In 2014, for example, Vietnam led a successful pressure campaign to expel a Chinese oil rig in the SCS that illegally set up operations inside of Vietnam’s

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maritime EEZ.78 The Chinese energy company that operated the rig agreed to withdraw only after months of escalatory encounters between Chinese and Vietnamese naval security forces. That same year, anti-China protests in Vietnam responding to the PRC’s encroachments in the SCS resulted in dozens of Chinese deaths and prompted hundreds more to flee the country.79 More recent anti-China protests have taken place in 2018 and 2020. These events poignantly revealed to China’s leaders the state of Vietnamese domestic political sentiment. Indeed, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak’s survey data indicate that, as of 2022, 80% of Vietnamese elites were concerned about China’s growing political and strategic influence.80 Chinese-Vietnamese relations are at least five thousand years old. At many moments, Vietnam was subjected to Chinese imperial domination; in various others, Vietnam played the role of the aggressor. The London School of Economics’ Michael Yahuda describes the relationship between China and Vietnam in the modern era as that of a ‘bully’ and an ‘ingrate’.81 China and Vietnam share a long, often antagonistic history, but their geographical proximity, economic interdependence and ideological similarities have required that they maintain a working relationship. In fact, Vietnam classifies its relationship with China today as a ‘comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership’ – the very highest echelon of bilateral ties that Vietnam shares with any country in the world. And yet, it is precisely this lofty status that appears to be decaying. As a favourable diplomatic solution to Vietnam’s territorial disputes with China in the SCS has become increasingly elusive, Hanoi’s attempts to diversify its global partnerships appear much more genuine. While it is unlikely – though not implausible – that Vietnam will embrace the United States or any other global power to an extent that would trigger a diplomatic or military overreaction from the PRC, Vietnam does appear to be pursuing a counterbalancing strategy, however muted at times. Should Vietnam choose to break away from the PRC more forcefully, Beijing will find it all the more difficult to implement its foreign policy vision in Southeast Asia. Although the domestic politics and foreign policy stances of other Southeast Asian nations and members of ASEAN vary significantly, it is important to note that Vietnam is far from the only one that may seek to counterbalance the PRC. The Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia are all countries that likely fear an overly domineering China and have manoeuvred to hedge against that possibility in the future. In early 2023, for example, the US Department of Defence reached an agreement with the Philippines to stand up four new military installations on the Southeast Asian archipelago, likely to be located in the strategically critical regions of the country that face the SCS and Taiwan.82 Taking into consideration the controversial legacy left by American troops stationed in the Philippines in the 20th century, Manila’s decision to furnish additional military access to the United States (US armed forces already enjoy limited access to several military bases throughout the country) should not be taken lightly. Moreover, according to

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SIPRI’s Military Expenditure Database, the per capita defence budgets of all four countries mentioned above – the Philippines, Vietnam, Singapore and Indonesia – have increased significantly in the last decade.83 While defence budgets far from perfectly describe the political mood of a country’s foreign policy, one may note that rising military expenditures are almost certainly inconsistent with the PRC’s vision of building a community with a shared destiny. In this way, fostering a harmonious environment in its backyard may require the PRC to rethink some of its foreign policy priorities or at least adjust its timelines. The sheer size of China’s economy and the growing technological advancement of the PLA easily make the PRC the dominant power in East Asia. Its advantages, however, should not be equated with hegemony. In its efforts to implement its foreign policy vision, the PRC must wrestle with the structural problem of counterbalancing, including, but not limited to, the threat posed by America’s presence and influence in the Indo-Pacific, the formation of security blocks – such as the Quad – and country-by-country realignment and resistance to Chinese aspirations. These challenges only become more amplified as China’s foreign policy becomes more assertive. Counterbalancing, therefore, represents a significant barrier to the PRC’s ability to continue practising grand strategy in the future as it seems to have practised it in the past. Crystallising a foundational Realist intuition, American professor of foreign policy Christopher Layne once wrote that ‘the response to hegemony is the emergence of countervailing power’.84 This certainly seems to be the case in East Asia. The following section will explore one of the limitations to hegemony that arises not from outside competition, but from internal flaws – a lack of soft power. Tone Deaf While the renowned political scientist Joseph Nye is most often credited with introducing the term ‘soft power’ to modern academia and giving it semantic specificity, soft power – as a force in international relations – has existed for as long as humans have endeavoured to form interactive political units. Defined simply, soft power is the power of attraction and repulsion. In the context of modern international affairs, soft power can be understood as the sum of centripetal forces that make a nation and its political agenda attractive and marketable to other nations. Soft power is, of course, the diametric opposite of ‘hard power’. Whereas hard power functions by way of deterrence and compellence, soft power relies on a nation’s endogenous characteristics to co-opt outside actors and influence change. The discussion presented in the introduction of this book makes clear that practising grand strategy is mostly the stuff of hard power. Only hard power offers decision makers tools of cause and effect with which to exercise strategic initiative. Also noted in the introduction, however, is that strategy is not

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simply about operationalising existing power resources, but also about making and accumulating power. Soft power is one type of power the reservoirs of which are often left untapped by aspiring nations. In many ways, soft power can be flexibly spent, because it is endogenous and not subject to the same tangible resource constraints as hard power. Soft power can only be gained or lost as a result of changes to an actor’s international reputation or the flow of information between relevant actors. The challenge for most countries lies in the process of understanding the sources of soft power and accumulating enough of it to be of strategic significance. National leaders must also believe that soft power is worth accumulating in the first place. Addressing the sources of soft power, Joseph Nye originally argued that soft power is derived from three places: a country’s culture, its political values and its foreign policies.85 This formulation appears to have endured well over the last several decades. One may note, however, that modern technologies, such as the internet and social media, play an increasingly central role as interpretive mediums through which foreign audiences consume international cultures, political values and even foreign policies. As a result, the accretion and depletion of soft power has become increasingly dynamic in the 21st century. For the PRC, the accumulation of soft power has proven remarkably elusive. As the second most powerful country in the world and the epicentre of global trade, this is somewhat surprising. The practising of grand strategy does not necessarily require the use of soft power. That said, it is difficult to imagine a successful grand strategy – particularly a grand strategy with grandiose global designs – without it. Indeed, the PRC’s lack of soft power already limits its ability to realise its foreign policy vision. The following paragraphs explore some of the reasons the PRC is disproportionately weak in the realm of soft power. For one, the prevailing regime type in the PRC – a modern form of Maoist-Leninist communism, otherwise known as socialism with Chinese characteristics – is on average less attractive than its more liberal counterparts. Without making any normative judgements about any one political system or its values, it is important to recognise the inherent appeal of more freedom-loving, market-oriented, democratic societies. International opinion surveys have repeatedly shown that democracy is the most preferred political system among the citizens of the world.86 This may be in part due to the failure of 20th-century authoritarian regimes to produce comparatively positive outcomes for their citizens and may ignore the many ways in which the Chinese Communist Party has succeeded in this regard. Still, it is impossible to ignore that the regime type favoured by Beijing is largely undesirable among international audiences. According to Jessica Chen Weiss, the PRC’s leaders never designed their political model for export and, even if they did, the unique underlying conditions that enabled its successes in China are unlikely to exist elsewhere.87 In this way, the PRC is structurally limited in its ability to use its political system to generate soft power.

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Another reason China lacks in soft power has to do with its relatively poor human rights record. First, the PRC’s government has faced international criticism and contempt for decades surrounding its treatment of ethnic minorities. For more than half a century, the issue of Tibetan self-determination has tainted Beijing’s reputation around the world. More recently, the alleged human rights abuses committed against Muslim minority groups in Xinjiang have generated widespread outrage. Whether or not international media groups have covered these issues fairly and objectively is certainly open to debate. A fair-minded Chinese nationalist might argue that all countries wrestle with ethnic divisions and historical abuses of power. But soft power is a function of perception. As long as Beijing is seen to prioritise the rights of China’s Han majority over other ethnic groups, much of the international community will withhold trust and limit cooperation with the PRC. Second, many international audiences are repelled by the way the PRC’s government exercises control over its citizens on a day-to-day basis. As discussed in Chapter 7, the CCP plays an outsized role in China’s social, commercial, informational and religious fora and in the personal lives of everyday Chinese. Political discourse is taboo and widely suppressed; connection to the outside world – particularly by way of the internet – is almost entirely circumscribed; the Chinese surveillance state is considered to be one of the world’s most intrusive. In 1989, the Tiananmen Square tragedy revealed to the world the extent to which the PRC’s leaders would go to maintain control over the masses. While no such violent encounters between Chinese citizens and their government have occurred since then, the Communist Party has become no less powerful and Beijing no less capable of such action. These realities have infused a sense of wariness towards the PRC’s government not only among liberal-minded Chinese, but, importantly, on the part of foreign constituencies as well. Those who value unimpeded self-expression may find the Chinese system quite unattractive. From the perspective of accumulating soft power, one may simply note that it is easier to generate support for a foreign government that is admired by one’s citizens than for one they are fearful of. Surveys from Pew Research Center have documented this relationship as recently as 2022.88 Beyond impediments associated with the PRC’s political system and the repressive behaviours of its government, individual actors can also play a role in the generation and degradation of soft power. Indeed, perhaps the most visible reductions to Chinese soft power today come from the very people charged with marketing China’s interests to the rest of the world: China’s diplomats. Over the last decade or so, Chinese diplomats have struck an increasingly combative and antagonistic tone in their public discourse. This abrasive approach has frayed some of China’s bilateral relationships and, more generally, made China less attractive as an international partner. In other words, the behaviour of certain Chinese diplomats appears to have negatively affected the PRC’s ability to exercise soft power to its advantage.

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Bloomberg reporter Peter Martin addresses this issue directly in his recent book, China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy.89 Martin refers to China’s combative diplomats as ‘wolf warriors’, alluding to a blockbuster Chinese action film. According to Martin, militancy is hardly a new phenomenon in China’s diplomatic corps. After all, most of the PRC’s post-revolutionary diplomats, such as Zhou Enlai, were former members of the PLA. Even as they traded in their combat fatigues for collared shirts, many brought their military sensibilities with them to China’s foreign ministry. Over the years, the tone of Chinese diplomats has oscillated between charming and combative, depending on the overall disposition of the Chinese nation and the international climate confronting the PRC. During the Hu Jintao era, for example, Chinese diplomats were known to be quite congenial and courteous. Under Xi Jinping, however, ‘wolf warrior diplomacy’ has returned with a vengeance, but this time in an era of unprecedented Chinese influence and diplomatic reach. Perhaps the most widely recognised purveyor of wolf warrior diplomacy has been the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ (MFA) former spokesperson, Zhao Lijian. Zhao Lijian is an accomplished diplomat, but under normal circumstances his position and influence as a mid-level bureaucrat would be of little consequence.90 What catapulted Zhao to controversial stardom was his use of international media fora – in particular, Western social media platforms – to launch aggressive, inflammatory tirades against China’s critics and engage informally with foreign officials and pundits on the internet. Zhao’s big break took place in 2019 amidst rising international criticism directed at China’s treatment of Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang. Zhao took to Twitter, lambasting the mostly Western nations that had publicly denounced the PRC that year, but found himself in a one-on-one spat against none other than former US National Security Advisor, Susan Rice.91 Rice called Zhao a racist; Zhao called Rice an ignorant disgrace.92 In the ensuing days and weeks, their exchange was broadcasted around the world and Zhao Lijian became somewhat of an international icon – scorned by many, but equally revered by others. Zhao quickly found a home on Twitter. Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, Zhao was a stalwart defender of China’s conduct both at home and abroad. Zhao made it his personal mission to highlight the failures of Western governments to properly manage the virus and, in 2020, went so far as to suggest that COVID-19 was planted in China by the US military.93 As outlandish as some of his theories and arguments appeared, Zhao’s platform functioned as a bullhorn for China’s most unflinching advocates and those with a penchant for the hawkish and cynical. By the end of 2022, Zhao Lijian had more than two million Twitter followers. His Tweet history features as many satirical memes and anti-American comic clippings as official statements and press releases from the Chinese MFA. In early 2023, Zhao was removed from his influential pulpit as an MFA spokesperson and transferred laterally to a relatively obscure – though

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perhaps no less important – post in the agency’s Department of Boundary and Ocean Affairs.94 Still, there are several strange and surprising features of Zhao Lijian’s rise to prominence that deserve closer inspection. First, Zhao’s ambivalence towards the traditional diplomatic norms of self-discipline, professionalism and measured speech represents a noteworthy departure from the PRC’s past conduct. Chinese diplomats throughout history have at times made derisive speeches and lost their tempers in public, but rarely has a PRC official demonstrated an affinity for provocation, sarcasm and rhetorical spear-throwing as manifestly juvenile as Zhao’s. After Zhao’s Twitter rows in 2019, many predicted that China’s leaders would reign him in and perhaps even punish him. Instead, he was promoted, earning the title of Deputy Director of the MFA’s Department of Information.95 Why didn’t Beijing discipline Zhao for his unruly behaviour and instead amplify his voice for over three years? Has China’s diplomatic corps become entirely tone deaf? One possible explanation for the MFA’s seemingly counterintuitive response to Zhao’s wolf warrior diplomacy is that China’s top leaders have directly or indirectly endorsed a more militant brand of international discourse. Indeed, Xi Jinping himself has, at times, shown a penchant for abrasive language. At the CCP’s centenary in 2021, for example, Xi stated that foreigners attempting to bully or subjugate China would have their ‘heads bashed bloody against a Great Wall of steel’.96 Taking its cues from above, the MFA could simply be mirroring the increasingly assertive tone of its leadership in both the government and the party. Even more directly, China’s diplomats could be receiving official guidance from their superiors to sharpen their tone. In either case, wolf warrior diplomacy in this model would reflect the overall direction of China’s foreign policy establishment, even if it appears from a historical perspective to be an aberration. In the same vein, it is also possible that the proliferation of wolf warrior diplomacy is a type of premeditated litmus test deployed by Beijing to evaluate its standing in the world. Experimentation, after all, has long been an essential ingredient in China’s ability to effectively practise grand strategy. In the realm of international diplomacy, introducing a more combative and assertive tone may have the advantage of revealing which nations are willing to accede to China’s demands and which nations are willing to push back, hedge and cause trouble. The deterioration of bilateral ties between China and Australia since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic – which has featured numerous emotional outbursts from Chinese wolf warriors responding to Australian politicians – illustrates this point. China’s wolf warriors may have revealed Australia to be an uncooperative subject, but as this section argues, Chinese diplomats squandered some of their soft power in the process. If wolf warrior diplomacy is, in fact, merely a grand laboratory experiment of sorts, its continued employment suggests that the PRC’s top leaders are relatively unconcerned with the reputational damages they may incur.

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A second explanation for the MFA’s tacit empowerment of wolf warrior diplomats could be that the MFA itself is split on the issue. While Chinese diplomats are notoriously guarded and the closed nature of the PRC’s government offers little opportunity to gather intelligence on internal disagreements, the reactions from other prominent elements in Chinese society may illuminate some of the internal debate. As Minnie Chan reported for the South China Morning Post in 2021, various Chinese academics have spoken out in disapproval of Beijing’s increasingly combative posture, including one professor who shrewdly commented that wolf warrior diplomacy amounted to no more than an external reflection of internal propaganda.97 Such propaganda – unsurprisingly – plays much differently with audiences abroad than at those at home. Zhao Lijian’s lateral transfer and his replacement with the relatively innocuous Spokeswoman Mao Ning (little is written about her in the open source) may serve as evidence of either of the two theories presented above – that the CCP is experimenting with its diplomatic tone or that there are significant internal schisms within the Chinese MFA. One may note that, at the time of this writing, Zhao Lijian’s former superior and widely recognised wolf warrior, Spokeswoman Hua Chunying, remains prominent in Ministry’s Information Department, while the Ministry’s third and final spokesperson, Wang Wenbing, is lesser known and presents a much milder disposition. This mix of personalities suggests that wolf warrior diplomacy is not yet the modus operandi of the MFA’s publicly facing organs and may in fact be on the decline. Indeed, there is reason to believe that wolf warrior diplomacy is not the dominant or preferred approach among Chinese diplomats. Nick Atkinson of The Diplomat notes that the public media discourse proffered by the vast majority of Chinese diplomats is almost exclusively positive and constructive in nature.98 Nevertheless, it is the controversial, negative voices – those of the wolf warriors – that are the loudest and command the largest audiences as their provocative comments are shared across media forums. It is also this contagiousness that makes wolf warrior diplomacy so harmful to Chinese soft power. A second peculiarity related to Zhao Lijian’s three-year ascent in status and the rise of wolf warrior diplomats more generally has to do with media platforms on which they are most active. While Chinese diplomats certainly have an inward facing presence on Chinese television and internet forums, Western social media sites such as Twitter are blocked by China’s Great Firewall and are essentially inaccessible to internet users within the PRC. In light of this, there is something seemingly paradoxical about the abrasive and undisciplined communication styles displayed by Chinese wolf warriors on platforms that are not even accessible by their domestic audiences. As alluded to above, selfrighteousness and confrontationalism are unlikely to support Chinese efforts to market their political agenda to the international community. The defensive interactions between China’s wolf warriors and Western personalities that occur on blocked social media sites such as Twitter may well

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be rebroadcasted within China to generate domestic support. Nevertheless, the fact that these interactions initially take place on exclusively outward-facing platforms suggests that fomenting controversy may be the original and express intent of China’s leaders. This interpretation also implies that wolf warrior diplomacy may be the product of a strategic initiative even as it appears to be an institutional bug. If this is the case, Beijing is tacitly admitting that it either doesn’t believe in the soft power ramifications of its unhinged international discourse or that it is ambivalent to the soft power effects of wolf warrior diplomacy altogether. A third reason one might find strange the empowerment of China’s wolf warriors, both within and without the MFA, is that it seems to contradict the overarching trend towards institutional centralisation observed in China over the last decade. As Chapter 7 explores in detail, Xi Jinping has made considerable efforts throughout his tenure to reassert the role of the party as the central player in Chinese society and consolidate power under his own personal control. Therefore, to allow a mid-level bureaucrat such as Zhao Lijian to occupy such an outsized position of influence and international recognition appears fundamentally contradictory. A centralist approach would seek to elevate the status and influence of the MFA’s top leaders or defer to Xi Jinping himself on sensitive diplomatic matters. Instead, incendiary Tweets from Zhao Lijian or other wolf warriors have occupied international headlines in recent years. What motivates the wolf warrior? Given the often defensive posture assumed by China’s wolf warriors, it would not be unreasonable to argue that their behaviour is connected to the Chinese cultural concept of ‘face’ or ‘mianzi’. Face is commonly understood as some combination of pride, honour, dignity and prestige. In Chinese culture, face can be gained and lost. So central is the concept of face to the inner workings of Chinese society that it circumscribes nearly every type of relationship, ranging from the social norms that govern an interaction between complete strangers to the reputational concerns of big businesses and national leaders. To lose face is considered a social disaster. In this context, wolf warrior diplomacy, in some instances, can be best understood as an effort to ‘gain’ or ‘fight for’ face. Indeed, throughout the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, China’s ‘face’ was repeatedly attacked. While a younger China still committed to the conciliatory diplomacy of the Deng era may have taken the international criticism in stride, the more powerful China of today appears unwilling to take flak from its peers, not to mention from those states that it considers inferior. Beijing may see the preservation of face as a priority as China becomes increasingly powerful, even at the expense of its soft power and international standing. Nationalism is another likely motivating force behind the assertiveness and aggression displayed by China’s wolf warriors. The PRC has long been considered one of the most nationalistic countries in the world. However, in recent years, the PRC’s leaders have made a concerted effort to make loyalty

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to the party and the state itself emblematic of national pride. In this environment, it is less surprising that some of China’s diplomats have felt inclined to more vociferously defend their country than one normally might when the PRC’s leaders or national objectives are called into question. In 2020, MFA spokeswoman Hua Chunying argued that wolf warrior diplomacy is simply a reflection of the fact that China has matured as a proud world power and is unafraid to respond to what it perceives to be unreasonable international criticism.99 The Economist’s Beijing bureau chief, David Rennie, has put it in starker terms: ‘China would rather be feared than defied’.100 Indeed, wolf warrior diplomacy may be an antidote to obsequiousness, but it also influences tangible policy decisions with real world consequences. The fallout between the PRC and Australia is only one example. Beijing’s inability to stomach criticism from the Nordic countries – such as in the case of the muchdeteriorated ties between China and Norway – is another example. Even more recently, the fallout between the PRC and Lithuania illustrates the ineffectuality of wolf warrior diplomacy. After Lithuania revealed the opening of a Taiwanese Representative Office in its capital in 2021, Beijing tried to punish Vilnius by cutting imports of Lithuanian goods.101 Additionally, Chinese officials and state media were quick to condemn the Baltic state’s inflammatory decision.102 Alone, these actions would be consistent with past Chinese precedent in defending the oneChina policy. However, Lithuania’s pro-Taiwan manoeuvre also prompted various unseemly reactions from Chinese diplomats. Less than two weeks after the opening of the Taiwanese office became public, Zhao Lijian took to Twitter to accuse Lithuania of antisemitism and children’s rights abuses.103 These visibly unrelated issues were clearly raised to undermine Lithuania’s reputation, but they were mostly perceived as retributive and petty. Ironically, Beijing’s economic response largely fell flat as well. As The Wall Street Journal’s Nathaniel Taplin aptly notes, charitable export credits from the US and the EU rendered the PRC’s attempt at economic coercion basically harmless.104 Taken in sum, it would not be unfair to characterise Beijing’s overall management of the situation as somewhat amateurish. This was not the confident diplomacy that the international community might expect from a country of China’s size and influence. Writing for Foreign Policy, Tufts University’s Sulmaan Wasif Khan has argued that the nature of wolf warrior diplomacy is fundamentally antithetical to grand strategy.105 The development and practising of grand strategy requires careful planning, patience, deliberation and, at times, revision. In contrast, wolf warrior diplomacy reflects a knee-jerk, emotionally-triggered, defensive reaction that lacks any truly substantive objective. Wolf warrior diplomats seek to achieve an immediate rhetorical victory, without paying much consideration to medium and long-term effects. With this failing in mind, Khan argues that China’s wolf warriors have ‘killed’ the PRC’s grand strategy.106 This is perhaps an over-exaggeration, as diplomacy makes up only

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one component of a nation’s grand strategy. Furthermore, by sidelining such a controversial – and in many ways popular – figure as Zhao Lijian, Beijing may well have demonstrated its capacity to flexibly recalibrate and modulate its public affairs institutions. Nevertheless, one can be sure that without a constructive diplomatic approach, the PRC may find itself appreciably limited in its ability to practise grand strategy in the same way it has in the past. In the aftermath of the Tiananmen tragedy in 1989, when much of the international community rose up in condemnation of the PRC’s government, Deng Xiaoping advised his colleagues and successors on how to deal with international diplomatic pressures. Deng stated, First, we should observe the situation coolly. Second, we should hold our ground. Third, we should act calmly. Don’t be impatient. It is no good to be impatient. We should be calm, calm, and again calm and quietly immerse ourselves in the practical work to accomplish something – something for China.107 China’s leaders may do well to revisit this period in history and study the manner in which their predecessors carefully consolidated the PRC’s soft power and slowly extricated themselves from a seemingly inexorable malaise. Vassal States China’s leaders are undoubtedly aware of the many diplomatic and foreign policy challenges they face. One strategy the PRC has employed to diversify its international partnerships and hedge against inevitable shifts in regional and global power balances involves the cultivation of exceptionally close, asymmetrically dependent relationships with key neighbour countries. During China’s dynastic eras, these relationships were circumscribed by the ‘tribute system’ under which ‘vassal states’ volunteered their political subservience to the Chinese imperial court in exchange for peaceful relations, prestige and commercial opportunities. Since the triumph of the so-called Westphalian international order, outright vassalage between states has largely disappeared. Still, if one accepts that China’s grand strategy and its modern foreign policy vision are at least partially informed by its civilisational history, the development of quasi-vassal relationships between the PRC and those highly dependent states along its periphery is easier to understand on a theoretical basis. These relationships not only support a number of the PRC’s core interests, but they also serve as force multipliers for pursuing other interests beyond what direct bilateral ties may offer. One such asymmetric relationship exists between the PRC and Pakistan. China and Pakistan have been close strategic allies for decades. Pakistan was an important partner for China in resisting Soviet influence in Central Asia during the Cold War and is also a useful counter-balancing power against India. In the 1980s and 1990s, the PRC played an invaluable role in

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Pakistan’s nuclear and ballistic development programme, which dramatically enhanced the strategic significance of their alliance. Advanced commercial connectivity has also facilitated warm ties between the neighbours. A Pew survey from 2015 showed that 82% of Pakistanis hold favourable views of China.108 Yet a keen observer may note that Pakistan has become precariously intertwined with the PRC. Beginning in earnest in 2013, $60 billion worth of infrastructure projects commissioned under the widely heralded ChinaPakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) – one of the core planks of China’s Belt and Road Initiative – have catapulted Chinese banks and investors to the top of Pakistan’s balance sheets. USIP’s Uzair Younus notes that from 2013 to 2020, the percentage of Pakistan’s publicly guaranteed external debt owed to China nearly tripled from 9.3% to 27.4%, a figure equivalent to $24.7 billion or roughly 10% of Pakistan’s GDP.109 Chinese-built and Chinese-funded infrastructure built under CPEC have helped to substantially alleviate Pakistan’s systemic energy and electrification woes, improve its transport networks and create jobs. In exchange, Chinese companies and state-owned enterprises have come to own an outsized share of Pakistani industry and infrastructure, including key nodes in the financial and telecommunications sectors.110 This presents Beijing with a great deal of leverage over Islamabad. The PRC is also Pakistan’s principal supplier of arms. SIPRI states that between 2017 and 2021, 72% of Pakistan’s arms imports came from China.111 Pakistan’s acquisitions of Chinese systems range from conventional air, ground and naval platforms to missiles and UAVs. In 2021, China and Pakistan concluded an agreement under which the PRC would build four Type 054A/P (Jiangkai II) frigates and eight Hangor-class submarines for Pakistan, a move that will noticeably strengthen the Pakistan Navy.112 Defense News reported in 2022 that Pakistan purchased 25 of China’s highly advanced, multi-role J-10C fighter jets, in an effort, at least in part, to counter India’s air forces.113 Not only does Pakistan depend on the PRC to procure advanced weapons systems the production of which exceeds the capacity of Pakistan’s indigenous defence industrial base, the production chains for several key Pakistani systems are also shared and sometimes geographically separated between the two countries. For example, the JF-17 fourth-generation fighter jet – the main workhorse of Pakistan’s air force – is produced jointly between Chinese and Pakistani aerospace firms.114 The PRC’s integral role in the production of the JF-17 as well as its unrivalled influence in Pakistan’s defence sector more generally makes China indispensable to Pakistan’s defence establishment. If Pakistan were to pivot away from Chinese manufacturers, the overall interoperability of its weapons systems could be diminished and its ability to conduct repairs and acquire spare parts would become increasingly challenging. These factors make the PRC’s influence over Pakistan’s civilian and military leaders all the more robust.

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One should not conclude from the paragraphs above that Pakistan is necessarily a victim of Chinese overreach. Both Beijing and Islamabad benefit greatly from their deeply integrated partnership. Rather, the argument of this section is that Beijing benefits asymmetrically from Pakistan’s dependence on China, in a manner that complements the PRC’s grand-strategic aims. Pakistan is an essential counterweight to China’s India problem. As Chapter 3 discusses briefly, Pakistan presents China with certain strategic exploits – such as access to the Gwadar Port in West Pakistan – that offer potential solutions to the PRC’s energy vulnerability in the Indian Ocean. One may also note that Pakistan has played an important role in the past as a bridge between the PRC’s government and the Islamic world. Pakistan has largely cooperated with Beijing’s efforts to shelter its western front from the religious fundamentalism that has plagued its neighbours. Taken in sum, Pakistan has been and will continue to be an essential player in helping the PRC to realise its regional and global foreign policy aspirations. Another such player is the Southeast Asian nation of Cambodia. After roughly two decades of fruitful relations in the 21st century, Cambodia has wholeheartedly bought into the PRC’s vision for building a community with a shared destiny. In 2019, China and Cambodia signed a four-year action plan dedicated to this end and in 2022 a new free trade agreement between the two countries went into effect. ISEAS-Yusof Ishak’s poll of ASEAN nations (referenced above) found that more than 75% of Cambodian elites consider China to be a trustworthy partner.115 More than anything else, China’s influence in Cambodia is economic in nature. Between 1994 and 2019, roughly 22% of foreign direct investment came from China.116 Under BRI, China has invested extensively in Cambodia’s energy and agro-industrial sectors in addition to various large scale infrastructure projects. For example, Chinese developers and state-owned enterprises are involved in roughly $3 billion worth of international airport construction projects in multiple Cambodian provinces.117 China’s investors are not afraid to experiment either. The Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ), a tax-free manufacturing and shipping district established alongside Cambodia’s largest commercial port, has attracted scores of Chinese firms and created approximately 30,000 jobs. In 2021, total trade moving through the SEZ peaked at roughly $2.2 billion, a figure equal to nearly 10% of Cambodia’s GDP.118 Yet in the last decade, Cambodia’s external debt stocks have ballooned terribly from less than $5 billion in 2012 to more than $20 billion in 2022.119 As of the first quarter of 2022, more than 40% of Cambodia’s $9.8 billion in public debt stock was owed to the PRC, according to Cambodia’s Ministry of Economy and Finance.120 The next biggest lender is Japan, coming in four times less at 10%. As in the case of Pakistan, Cambodia’s commercial ties with the PRC have promoted economic growth and infrastructure development in many areas, but not without shouldering an enormous debt burden. Inevitably, Cambodia’s dependence

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on the PRC for finance and FDI has also afforded Beijing with political leverage over Phnom Penh. One area in which Beijing’s political influence is apparent is the arbitration of water rights and environmental accountability along the Mekong River. The Mekong River is in many ways the lifeblood of Southeast Asia, providing freshwater for agriculture, economic opportunity and the primary source of protein for tens of millions of Vietnamese, Laotians, Burmese, Thai and Cambodians. However, as the Stimson Center’s Brian Eyler accounts in his 2019 book, Last Days of the Mighty Mekong, the presence of 11 Chinese dams, located upstream along the portion of the Mekong River that runs along the PRC’s western border, has contributed to an environmental and ecological disaster downstream.121 In recent years, water levels have plummeted and fisheries have depleted in a manner that acutely impacts the citizens of Cambodia. And yet, the Cambodian government has demonstrated an extreme reluctance to seriously confront the PRC on the Mekong crisis. As Eyler and colleagues note in 2022, China has agreed to participate in several multiparty cooperation and dam-monitoring mechanisms, but progress is slow and data transparency is limited.122 Instead of pressuring the PRC for greater accountability, Cambodia’s leaders prefer to kowtow to Beijing, a habit recently exemplified by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen’s decision to publicly absolve the PRC from its role in supporting the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s.123 It is almost certainly the case that Cambodia’s outsized economic dependence on its Chinese benefactors has afforded Beijing with certain asymmetric advantages. For one, the PRC’s economic heft allows it to manipulate Cambodia’s business environment to its favour. In 2019, Reuters’ Prak Chan Thul reported on several cases of alleged deviousness in which Chinese manufacturers were accused of ‘transhipping’ and avoiding international tariffs by relabelling and laundering goods through the Sihanoukville SEZ (mentioned above).124 While it is impossible to know whether or not Cambodian authorities were aware of the malfeasance committed by Chinese companies in these cases, it would not be surprising if they were willing to temporarily ignore it. Influence over Cambodia’s government imbues the PRC geopolitical leverage as well. In 2019, China secured an agreement that granted the PLA exclusive access to a northern portion of Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base, located on the Gulf of Thailand.125 The Washington Post’s Ellen Nakashima and Cate Cadell note that the agreement was pushed through despite a clause in Cambodia’s constitution that prohibits foreign military presence on Cambodian soil.126 Fully aware that knowledge of Chinese military activities at Ream Naval Base may upset certain domestic political constituencies, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen has gone to considerable lengths to publicly deny the story and obfuscate the construction activities that have already taken place. Ultimately, however, China is the winner of this story,

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having secured unimpeded access to a port from which to collect intelligence and project its military forces deeper into Southeast Asia. Lastly, it would be prudent to note the diplomatic privileges Beijing has enjoyed as a result of its close ties with Phnom Penh. For one, Cambodia’s government under Hun Sen has been a consistent advocate of the one-China policy, objecting on numerous occasions to Taiwanese efforts to elevate bilateral ties. Additionally, in navigating its relationship with ASEAN – the political grouping with the broadest mandate in Southeast Asia – the PRC can often rely on Cambodia to advocate indirectly on its behalf or act as a spoiler against initiatives that threaten Chinese interests. Cambodia’s ability to exercise such influence is a feature of the consensus-based voting system built into ASEAN. Cambodia – or any of the other nine member states for that matter – has the ability to single-handedly scuttle any initiative proposed to the forum. Most notoriously, Cambodia has twice blocked majoritybacked efforts in ASEAN to condemn China’s expansive territorial claims in the SCS – once in 2012 and again in 2016.127 While it would be a mistake to see Cambodia’s seat in ASEAN as an unmitigated proxy vote for the PRC, Cambodia’s pro-Beijing orientation is more than just a coincidence. Indeed, the PRC’s partial capture of Cambodian politics has not gone unnoticed by the other members of ASEAN. In 2020, a former Singaporean diplomat suggested that Cambodia (and Laos) should be expelled from the group entirely, a move that would threaten to undermine ASEAN’s very founding principles.128 Absent such action, the PRC will continue to benefit diplomatically from its ties with Cambodia. More broadly, Beijing’s influence over Cambodia supports its overall foreign policy vision in Southeast Asia. Even as the PRC continues to struggle in the realm of soft power, the high degree of economic integration between Cambodia and China creates momentum towards building a community of shared destiny in China’s backyard. All the while, its economic leverage over Cambodia allows the PRC to reap asymmetrical rewards from unbalanced infrastructure projects, such as in the case of the dams it has built along the Mekong River. And, in the face of increasing international counterbalancing, China’s military cooperation with Cambodia – such as in the case of the Ream Naval Base project – has the potential to usefully advance the PRC’s geostrategic position in the region. As noted above, it would be unfair to describe Cambodia as a true Chinese vassal state; however, Cambodia’s overdependence on its northerly neighbour has facilitated a patron-client relationship in many areas that disproportionately serve the strategic interests of the PRC. Russia is another country that appears to be becoming increasingly susceptible to Chinese influence. Ironically, over the last century, Russia has been an instrumental player in the PRC’s rise. For much of the Mao era, Russia was China’s principal political and economic role model. As Chapter 4 explains, Russian arms transfers and technological expertise paved the way for the mass production of many of the PLA’s modern weapons platforms that

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underpin the PRC’s growing military might. And yet, over the course of the last two decades and most noticeably after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the power balance between Russia and China appears to have substantially reversed. Today, more than ever in recent history, the PRC has assumed the role of the benefactor and Russia, that of the beneficiary. To begin, in the last half decade, China has become Russia’s largest export market and a leading source of foreign capital. Since 2014, Reuters reports, bilateral trade between the two countries has increased by more than 50% and, in 2021, reached a record total of $146.9 billion.129 While Russian producers have certainly benefited from rising exports, they have also become increasingly beholden to the Chinese market. As data from the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) reveal, the PRC now represents over 15% of Russia’s export market.130 And while roughly 70% of Russia’s exports to China consist of raw materials and consumables, most of China’s exports to Russia are made up of finished capital goods.131 In this way, Russia is both selling low and buying high on the proverbial production value chain – a tell-tale sign of withering economic influence. Once an equal partner, Russia increasingly resembles one of the PRC’s many ‘resource appendages’ – developing countries that depend on Chinese imports to remain financially afloat. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022 has only furthered its dependence on the Chinese market. The OEC reports that between June 2021 and June 2022, Russian exports to China have increased by 56.3% year on year.132 As Western sanctions continue to target Russia’s energy exports – primarily petroleum and natural gas – Chinese manufacturers have softened the blow by absorbing some of Russia’s excess production at a discounted rate. Oil exports – which historically have made up more than half of Russia’s exports to China – rose by 55% in May of 2022, compared to the previous year.133 In March of 2022, Bloomberg reported that China was considering buying a stake in Russia’s state-owned gas company Gazprom.134 While no such deal has yet been reached, the existence of such discussions suggests that Beijing sees Russian energy giants as long-term partners and is responding to the geopolitical pressures placed on Moscow in a strategic manner. Additionally, Russia is increasingly seen as China’s junior partner geopolitically. Militarily, Russia’s nuclear arsenal remains the world’s largest, but China’s defence spending is roughly five times higher than Russia’s and many of its conventional weapons systems have surpassed their Russian counterparts in capability. By most measures, China is the more powerful country. While bilateral arms sales have historically flowed almost exclusively in one direction – from Russia to China – international media outlets reported in March of 2022 that Russia had begun requesting military aid from China, just three weeks after the start of its invasion into Ukraine.135 US intelligence indicated that the systems requested included relatively expendable platforms, such as surface-to-air missiles, logistics vehicles and drones.136 While there is

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no evidence at the time of this writing to suggest that China has supplied Russia with arms to directly fuel its war effort, the Wall Street Journal reports that exports of microchips and metal alloys required to build various weapons systems skyrocketed in the first half of 2022.137 Kathrin Hille of the Financial Times notes that, for at least five years, China has sold intermediary arms components and advanced dual-use systems to Russia as part of joint militarytechnical cooperation initiatives.138 Drawing upon publicly available customs data, Ian Talley and Anthony DeBarros of the Wall Street Journal elucidate how Chinese state-owned and private enterprises have continued to supply internationally sanctioned Russian defence companies with military-applicable dual-use technologies – such as quadcopter drones, radar components and fighter jet parts – throughout the war in Ukraine.139 On a broader scale, a keen eye might note that in geographical areas that Russia has historically considered parts of its sphere of influence, China has become increasingly active. One such area is Central Asia. Writing for War on the Rocks, Janko Scepanovic explains that, for over a decade, Russia has played the role of the ‘sheriff’ – security guarantor – in Central Asia and China that of the financier or ‘banker’.140 However, alongside the PRC’s growing commercial interests in Central Asia and its BRI investments in the region, Beijing has cultivated some of its own bilateral and multilateral security arrangements as well. Most notably, in 2016, the PRC, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan excluded Russia in the formation of a new anti-terrorism security framework called the Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism.141 The PRC has also facilitated numerous anti-terrorism training exercises between the People’s Armed Police – China’s domestic security forces – and special forces from Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.142 While Russia remains the dominant security partner for each of these countries, it would not be surprising if the PRC’s transition away from being a purely commercial actor in the region made those Russian leaders with a longterm, strategic understanding of Sino-Russian relations nervous about the shifting balance of power along some their most vulnerable borderlands. The Arctic is another part of Russia’s backyard in which China’s relative influence has grown. Despite its geographical distance from the Arctic, China has eagerly labelled itself a ‘near-Arctic state’ and has made a concerted effort to cosy up to the member states of the Arctic Council. Even as Russia has opposed the ‘internationalisation’ of the Arctic, Chinese investment in the region in the form of port projects and resource extraction infrastructure has grown.143 In 2016, for example, Chinese investors secured an agreement to build a 30-ton-capable deep water port alongside existing facilities in the Russian city of Arkhangelsk, accessible from the Northern Sea Route.144 Access to such ports brings China that much closer to realising its trade, scientific development and natural resource ambitions in the Arctic. Russia, meanwhile, appears less and less able to resist. China’s leaders may favour close ties with Russia for a plethora of reasons. Economically, Russia offers the PRC a dependable cornucopia of fossil

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fuels and raw materials with which to sustain its ongoing modernisation. Militarily, decades of arms sales and security agreements have facilitated a reliable partnership between China and Russia’s defence establishments, cooperation in Central Asia, and relatively harmonious relations along their shared borders. In recent years, however, one might discern that the most impactful dividends generated by the Sino-Russian relationship are to be found on the political front. Politically, the structural compatibility of Russia and China’s relatively centralised and authoritarian governance systems has led to the cultivation of close personal ties between their leaders – Vladimir Putin has been in office for the entirety of Xi Jinping’s leadership tenure – and served to legitimise each other in international fora, such as in the UN Security Council. Of equal importance for China, Moscow represents a natural ally in Beijing’s increasingly embattled competition with the United States and the West. That the PRC’s propaganda organs readily adopted Russia’s narrative surrounding its invasion into Ukraine, without any political imperative to do so, suggests that the PRC’s leaders have wholly embraced a strategy of not just economic and military alignment with Russia, but of political alignment as well. For these reasons, the PRC’s emergence as the dominant – and in some ways patron – partner in the Sino-Russian relationship auspiciously supports its foreign policy vision. Granted, the fate of the Sino-Russian relationship is by no means sealed and the ability of the PRC to effectively exploit its upper hand is yet to be fully determined. The long and often embittered history of Sino-Russian relations – throughout which Russia was often the dominant power – makes it unlikely that the Russian people would ever accept a truly subservient relationship with the PRC. Nevertheless, the growing leverage over Moscow presently enjoyed by China’s leaders will undoubtedly serve them if they continue to endeavour in policy formulation according to grandstrategic designs. In sum, this section argues that the cultivation of exceptionally close bilateral relationships characterised by high levels of one-directional dependence – a system of quasi-vassal statehood – has generated asymmetric advantages for the PRC that allow it to at least partially circumvent some of the challenges that face its foreign policy vision. In some ways, these relationships allow the PRC to, in effect, counterbalance the counterbalancers. One may also note that, for the PRC’s quasi-vassal states, their deep integration with China likely has the effect of magnifying Chinese soft power in ways that the rest of the world may not appreciate. These effects are not limited to Pakistan, Cambodia and Russia. Particularly in the developing world in Africa and Latin America, China has developed similarly robust, asymmetrical ties with willing countries. The prioritisation of these networks and relationships suggest that China’s leaders may be aware of their shortcomings and are actively compensating for them in creative ways.

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Conclusion Realist theories of international relations predict that any ambitious strategy will ultimately be met with resistance. The challenge for grand strategists, therefore, is to account for this inevitability and pre-empt contingencies with careful planning. However, even under the direction of the most clairvoyant of leaders, outside and – perhaps even more often – internal forces may compel a nation to adjust its grand-strategic approach. Such was the case in 1989, when the political atmosphere both within and without the PRC transformed overnight. In the following years, however, the PRC managed to disentangle itself from a state of international ostracisation, reorient itself and accomplish some of the most impressive feats of national growth in human history. It did so in part by following the direction of a folk adage first proposed by the revolutionary leader Chen Yun and later adopted by Deng Xiaoping: that of ‘crossing the river by feeling for stones’. So too must China’s leaders grasp for firm footing as they navigate the rocky terrain of foreign policymaking. While China appears to have developed a clear-eyed sense of its international priorities and foreign policy vision, its objectives are challenged by the counterbalancing efforts of its neighbours and global competitors and inhibited by its own somewhat faltering diplomatic tack. These obstacles needn’t spell the end of Chinese grand strategy, even if they do necessitate a certain degree of strategic adjustment or the formulation of adept counterplay. So far, the tangible actions of China’s leaders suggest that they remain committed to long-term goals and are thinking in terms of coherent, resilient strategy. Notes 1 Thomas Schelling, Arms and Influence (Yale University Press: 1966), passim. 2 Xi Jinping, ‘Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’, 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, October 18, 2017, https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/ china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2017-11/04/content_34115212.htm. 3 Shin Kawashima, ‘China’s Foreign Policy Objectives and Views on the International Order Thoughts Based on Xi Jinping’s Speech at the 19th National Congress’, Japan Review 3, no. 3–4 (2020): 54–63, https://www.jiia-jic.jp/en/ japanreview/pdf/07JapanReview_Vol3_No3-4_Shin_Kawashima.pdf 4 Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 304. 5 David Shambaugh, The China Reader: Rising Power (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 447. 6 Moritz Rudolf, The Belt And Road Initiative: Implications For The International Order (Singapore: World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., 2022): 51–2. 7 Huang Youyi, ‘Context, Not History, Matters for Deng’s Famous Phrase’, Global Times, June 15, 2011, https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/661734. shtml.

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8 Michael Losacco, ‘Assessing China’s Strategy to “Hide Capabilities and Bide Time”’, RealClearDefense, February 21, 2022, https://www.realcleardefense. com/articles/2022/02/21/assessing_chinas_strategy_to_hide_capabilities_and_ bide_time_817782.html. 9 Xi, ‘Secure a Decisive Victory’. 10 Wang Yi, ‘Striding Forward Holding High the Banner of Building a Community with a Shared Future for Mankind’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, January 1, 2021, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_ 665385/zyjh_665391/202201/t20220101_10478338.html#:~:text=The%20endeavor%20to%20build%20a,ecological%20conservation%20to%20digital %20governance. 11 ‘China Won’t Give Up ‘One Inch’ of Territory Says President Xi to Mattis’, BBC, June 28, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-44638817. 12 Gisela Grieger, Sino-Japanese controversy over the Senkaku/Diaoyu/Diaoyutai Islands: An imminent flashpoint in the Indo-Pacific?, European Parliamentary Research Service (July 2021), 2, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/ etudes/BRIE/2021/696183/EPRS_BRI(2021)696183_EN.pdf. 13 Alan Taylor, ‘Anti-Japan Protests in China’, The Atlantic, September 17, 2012, https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2012/09/anti-japan-protests-in-china/100370/. 14 ‘Senkaku Islands Q&A’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, accessed July 28, 2022, https://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/senkaku/qa_1010.html 15 Koichi Sato, ‘The Senkaku Islands Dispute: Four Reasons of the Chinese Offensive - A Japanese View’, Journal of Contemporary East Asia Studies 8, no. 1 (2019): 50–82, doi: 10.1080/24761028.2019.1626567. 16 Kyodo, ‘Chinese Ships Enter Japan Waters Near Senkaku Islands for First Time Since New Coastguard Law Kicked in’, South China Morning Post, February 6, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/east-asia/article/3120816/chinese-shipsenter-japan-waters-near-senkaku-islands-first?module=inline&pgtype=article. 17 Guo Shipeng, ‘China Signs Border Demarcation Pact with Russia’, Reuters, July 21, 2008, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-russia-border/china-signsborder-demarcation-pact-with-russia-idUKPEK29238620080721. 18 Robert Farley, ‘In 1969, Russia and China Nearly Went to Nuclear War’, National Interest, January 6, 2022, https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/ 1969-russia-and-china-nearly-went-nuclear-war-199000. 19 Russell Goldman, ‘India-China Border Dispute: A Conflict Explained’, New York Times, June 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/17/world/asia/ india-china-border-clashes.html. 20 ‘Agreement Between the Government of the Republic of India and the Government of the People’s Republic of China on Confidence-Building Measures in the Military Field Along the Line of Actual Control in the India-China Border Areas’, Government of the Republic of India and the Government of the People’s Republic of China (New Delhi, November 29, 1996), https://peacemaker.un.org/ sites/peacemaker.un.org/files/CN%20IN_961129_Agreement%20between %20China%20and%20India.pdf. 21 Goldman, ‘India-China’. 22 Khushboo Razdan, ‘Indian and Chinese Troops Clash at Disputed Border Days After US-India Joint War Games’, South China Morning Post, December 13, 2022, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3203054/indian-andchinese-troops-clash-disputed-border. 23 China Power Project, ‘How Is China Expanding Its Infrastructure to Project Power Along Its Western Borders?’, CSIS, accessed May 11, 2022, https:// chinapower.csis.org/china-tibet-xinjiang-border-india-military-airport-heliport/.

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24 Jack Detsch, ‘Pentagon Worries about Chinese Buildup Near India’, Foreign Policy, December 15, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/12/15/pentagonindia-china-border-buildup/. 25 Zhiguo Gao and Bing Bing Jia, ‘The Nine-Dash Line in the South China Sea: History, Status, and Implications’, American Journal of International Law 107, no. 1 (2013): 98–123. 26 Rachel Zhang, ‘Explainer: South China Sea: What Are Rival Claimants Building on Islands and Reefs?’, South China Morning Post, March 7, 2021, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3124309/south-china-sea-whatare-rival-claimants-building-islands-and. 27 Minnie Chan, ‘Beijing’s Plans for South China Sea Air Defence Identification Zone Cover Pratas, Paracel and Spratly islands, PLA Source Says’, South China Morning Post, May 31, 2020, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/military/ article/3086679/beijings-plans-south-china-sea-air-defence-identification-zone. 28 China Power Project, ‘How Much Trade Transits the South China Sea’, CSIS, accessed July 2, 2022, https://chinapower.csis.org/much-trade-transits-southchina-sea/. 29 AMTI, ‘South China Sea Energy Exploration and Development’, CSIS, accessed July 5, 2022, https://amti.csis.org/south-china-sea-energy-exploration-anddevelopment/. 30 Yew Lun Tian, ‘China Pledges Peaceful Growth of Taiwan Ties, But Opposes Foreign Interference’, Reuters, March 5, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/ china/china-pledges-peaceful-growth-taiwan-ties-opposes-foreign-interference2022-03-05/. 31 Tsukasa Hadano, ‘China Eyes ‘Armed Unification’ with Taiwan by 2027: Key Academic’, Nikkei Asia, January 32, 2022, https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/ International-relations/China-eyes-armed-unification-with-Taiwan-by-2027key-academic. 32 Linda Jakobson, ‘Unfinished Business: Xi’s Obsession with Taiwan’, Australian Foreign Affairs 14 (2022): 25–45. 33 Minnie Chan, ‘China Will Keep Escalating Military Intimidation of Taiwan, Experts Say’, South China Morning Post, November 13, 2021, https://www. scmp.com/news/china/military/article/3155908/china-will-keep-escalatingmilitary-intimidation-taiwan-experts. 34 Orange Wang, ‘RCEP: China Says World’s Largest Trade Pact Gives It ‘Powerful Leverage’ to Cope with 2022 Challenges’, South China Morning Post, December 31, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/ 3161601/rcep-china-says-worlds-largest-trade-pact-gives-it-powerful?module= perpetual_scroll_0&pgtype=article&campaign=3161601. 35 Christoph Nedopil Wang, ‘China Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Investment Report 2021’, Green Finance & Development Center, (FISF Fudan University: January 2022), https://greenfdc.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Nedopil-2022_ BRI-Investment-Report-2021.pdf. 36 Merics, Mapping the Belt and Road Initiative: This Is Where We Stand, Global China Inc. Tracker, June 7, 2018, https://merics.org/en/tracker/mapping-beltand-road-initiative-where-we-stand. 37 Bloomberg, ‘Wang Yi Says China Has No Geopolitical Intentions in Pacific Islands Relations’, South China Morning Post, June 1, 2022, https://www.scmp.com/ news/china/diplomacy/article/3179962/wang-yi-says-china-has-no-geopoliticalintentions-pacific?module=inline&pgtype=article. 38 Christian Shepherd, ‘China Fails on Pacific Pact, But Still Seeks to Boost Regional Influence’, Washington Post, June 1, 2022, https://www.washingtonpost.com/ world/2022/06/01/china-influence-pacific-deal-wang/.

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39 Jennifer Staats, ‘Four Takeaways from China’s Tour of the Pacific Islands’, USIP, June 9, 2022, https://www.usip.org/publications/2022/06/four-takeaways-chinastour-pacific-islands. 40 Oriana Skylar Mastro, ‘The Stealth Superpower: How China Hid Its Global Ambitions’, Foreign Affairs 98, 31, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/ china/china-plan-rule-asia. 41 Li Zhaojie, ‘Traditional Chinese World Order’, Chinese Journal of International Law 1, no. 1 (2002): 20–58. 42 Zhaojie, ‘Traditional Chinese World Order’, passim. 43 Chas W. Freeman Jr., ‘China’s National Experiences and the Evolution of PRC Grand Strategy’, in China and the World, ed. David Shambaugh (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 38. 44 Odd Arne Westad, ‘Legacies of the Past’, in China and the World, ed. David Shambaugh (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 32. 45 Reuters, ‘U.S. Rebuffs China by Calling Taiwan Strait an International Waterway’, US News, June 14, 2022, https://www.usnews.com/news/world/ articles/2022-06-14/u-s-rebuffs-china-by-calling-taiwan-strait-an-internationalwaterway. 46 Susan V. Lawrence and Caitlin Campbell, Taiwan: Political and Security Issues, Congressional Research Service Report: IF10275 (July 25, 2022), https:// crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10275. 47 Ben Blanchard, ‘U.S. Should Recognise Taiwan, Former Top Diplomat Pompeo Says’, Reuters, March 4, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/usshould-recognise-taiwan-former-top-diplomat-pompeo-says-2022-03-04/. 48 Jordan Fabian and Peter Martin, ‘Biden’s Latest Taiwan Gaffe Stokes Tensions With Beijing’, Bloomberg, May 23, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ articles/2022-05-23/biden-s-latest-taiwan-gaffe-hikes-suspicion-tensions-in-beijing. 49 Richard Haass and David Sacks, ‘American Support for Taiwan Must Be Unambiguous: To Keep the Peace, Make Clear to China That Force Won’t Stand’, Foreign Affairs, September 2, 2020, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ articles/united-states/american-support-taiwan-must-be-unambiguous. 50 Beijing Newsroom, ‘China Says It Warned Away U.S. Warship in South China Sea, U.S. Denies’, Reuters, January 20, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/ china/china-says-warned-away-us-warship-south-china-sea-2022-01-20/. 51 Ronald O’Rourke, U.S.-China Strategic Competition in South and East China Seas: Background and Issues for Congress, Congressional Research Service Report: R42784 (updated January 26, 2022), 17, https://sgp.fas.org/crs/row/ R42784.pdf. 52 Dzirhan Mahadzir, ‘2 U.S. Aircraft Carriers Now in South China Sea as Chinese Air Force Flies 39 Aircraft Near Taiwan’, USNI News, January 24, 2022, https://news. usni.org/2022/01/24/2-u-s-aircraft-carriers-now-in-south-china-sea-as-chinese-airforce-flies-39-aircraft-near-taiwan. 53 USNI News, Fleet and Marine Tracker, https://news.usni.org/category/fleettracker. 54 Antony J. Blinken, ‘The Administration’s Approach to the People’s Republic of China’, George Washington University, Washington, DC, May 26, 2022, https://www.state.gov/the-administrations-approach-to-the-peoples-republic-ofchina/. 55 Sarah Zheng, ‘China-US Relations: Is Beijing Working a ‘Long Game’ to Replace America as Dominant World Power?’, South China Morning Post, August 5, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3143778/china-usrelations-beijing-working-long-game-replace-america.

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56 Krishn Kaushik, ‘Explained: The Malabar Exercise of Quad nations, and Why It Matters to India’, The Indian Express, August 31, 2021, https://indianexpress. com/article/explained/malabar-exercise-of-quad-nations-why-it-matters-toindia-7472058/. 57 ‘China’s Expansion in the Indian Ocean Calls for European Engagement’, Merics, October 11, 2019, https://merics.org/en/analysis/chinas-expansionindian-ocean-calls-european-engagement. 58 ‘Peter Zeihan | The Changing Character of War | Maneuver Center of Excellence’, Fort Benning, March 7, 2022, 13:40, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=l0CQsifJrMc&ab_channel=FortBenning. 59 Nectar Gan, ‘China Is Alarmed by the Quad. But Its Threats Are Driving the Group Closer Together’, CNN, updated May 23, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/ 2022/05/23/china/quad-summit-china-threat-analysis-intl-hnk-mic/index.html. 60 Heather Byrne and Sameer Lalwani, ‘The Quad: Alliance or Alignment’, Stimson Center, April 10, 2019, https://www.stimson.org/2019/quad-allianceor-alignment-0/. 61 Sanjeev Miglani and Nigam Prusty, ‘India, Japan Seal Military Logistics Cooperation Pact’, Reuters, September 10, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/ article/us-india-japan-idUSKBN26118C. 62 Neha Arora and Sanjeev Miglani, ‘U.S. Warns of Threat Posed by China, Signs Military Pact with India’, Reuters, October 27, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/ article/usa-asia-india/u-s-warns-of-threat-posed-by-china-signs-military-pactwith-india-idUSKBN27C0OF. 63 Daniel Hurst, ‘Australia and Japan to Share Intelligence on China in Security Deal, Ambassador Says’, The Guardian, October 19, 2022, https://www. theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/oct/20/australia-and-japan-to-share-intelligence-on-china-in-security-deal-ambassador-says. 64 Park Si-soo, ‘Quad Nations Unveil Satellite-Based Maritime Monitoring Initiative’, Space News, May 24, 2022, https://spacenews.com/quad-nationsunveil-satellite-based-maritime-monitoring-initiative/. 65 Kunal Purohit, ‘India Joins French-Led Naval Exercise, Revealing Clues about Quad’s Plans to Contain China in Indo-Pacific’, South China Morning Post, April 4, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3128236/indiajoins-french-led-naval-exercise-revealing-clues-about. 66 Brad Lendon, ‘World’s Largest Naval Exercises to Include All 4 Quad Nations and 5 South China Sea Countries’, CNN, June 1, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/ 2022/05/31/politics/rimpac-navy-exercises-intl-hnk-ml/index.html. 67 Sharon Seah, Joanne Lin, Sithanonxay Suvannaphakdy et al., The State of Southeast Asia: 2022 Survey Report, ISEAS-Yusof Ishak: ASEAN Studies Center (February 16, 2022), 32, https://www.iseas.edu.sg/wp-content/uploads/2022/ 02/The-State-of-SEA-2022_FA_Digital_FINAL.pdf. 68 Seah et al., The State of Southeast Asia, 42. 69 ‘Vietnamese Officials Visit US Aircraft Carrier’, Taiwan News, August 14, 2011, https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/1679297. 70 Greg Torode and Mai Nguyen, ‘Vietnam Seeks to Pacify China as Landmark U.S. Carrier Visit Signals Warming Ties’, Reuters, March 3, 2018, https://www. reuters.com/article/us-usa-vietnam-carrier/vietnam-seeks-to-pacify-china-aslandmark-u-s-carrier-visit-signals-warming-ties-idUSKCN1GG03W. 71 Wyatt Olson, ‘USS Theodore Roosevelt Arrives in Vietnam, Becoming Second US Carrier to Visit Since the 1970s’, Stars and Stripes, March 4, 2020, https:// www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/uss-theodore-roosevelt-arrives-invietnam-becoming-second-us-carrier-to-visit-since-the-1970s-1.621313.

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72 Derek Grossman and Dung Huynh, ‘Vietnam’s Defense Policy of ‘No’ Quietly Saves Room for ‘Yes’’, The Diplomat, January 21, 2019, https://thediplomat. com/2019/01/vietnams-defense-policy-of-no-quietly-saves-room-for-yes/. 73 Michael F. Martin and Mark E. Manyin, U.S.-Vietnam Relations, Congressional Research Service Report: IF 10209 (updated February 16, 2021), https:// crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10209/12 74 Kyodo, ‘Amid China Worries, Japan-Vietnam Sign Defence Export Deal’, South China Morning Post, September 11, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/ southeast-asia/article/3148426/amid-china-worries-japan-vietnam-sign-defenceexport-deal. 75 PTI, ‘India, Vietnam Ink Military Logistics Support Pact & Vision Document to Expand Defence Ties’, Times of India, June 8, 2022, https://timesofindia. indiatimes.com/india/india-vietnam-ink-military-logistics-support-pact-visiondocument-to-expand-defence-ties/articleshow/92076188.cms. 76 Ministry of National Defence of Vietnam, 2019 Viet Nam National Defence, Defence White Paper, November 25, 2019, 24, http://www.mod.gov.vn/wps/wcm/ connect/08963129-c9cf-4c86-9b5c-81a9e2b14455/2019VietnamNationalDefence. pdf?MOD=AJPERES&CACHEID=08963129-c9cf-4c86-9b5c-81a9e2b14455. 77 Grossman and Huynh, ‘Vietnam’s Defense Policy’. 78 Kate Hodal, ‘Despite Oil Rig Removal, China and Vietnam Row Still Simmers’, The Guardian, July 17, 2014, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/17/ oil-rig-china-vietnam-row-south-china-sea. 79 Jonathon Kaiman and Kate Hodal, ‘Chinese Nationals in Vietnam Flee to Cambodia as Anti-China Riots Turn Fatal’, The Guardian, May 15, 2014, https://www. theguardian.com/world/2014/may/15/chinese-nationals-vietnam-riots-cambodia. 80 Seah et al., The State of Southeast Asia, 23. 81 Michael Yahuda, ‘China’s Relations with Asia’, in China and the World, ed. David Shambaugh (New York: Oxford University Press, 2020), 286. 82 Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, ‘US Secures Deal on Philippines Bases to Complete Arc Around China’, BBC, February 2, 2023, https://www.bbc.com/news/worldasia-64479712. 83 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, SIPRI Military Expenditure Database (2011–2021), https://milex.sipri.org/sipri. 84 Christopher Layne, ‘Offshore Balancing Revisited’, Washington Quarterly 25, no. 2 (2002): 237. 85 Jospeh S. Nye Jr., ‘Think Again: Soft Power’, Foreign Policy, February 23, 2006, https://foreignpolicy.com/2006/02/23/think-again-soft-power/. 86 Richard Wike, Katie Simmons, Bruce Stokes, and Janell Fetterolf, ‘Globally, Broad Support for Representative and Direct Democracy’, Pew Research Center, October 16, 2017, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2017/10/16/ globally-broad-support-for-representative-and-direct-democracy/. 87 Jessica Chen Weiss, ‘A World Safe for Autocracy: China’s Rise and the Future of Global Politics’, Foreign Affairs 98 (2019): 92. 88 Laura Silver, Christine Huang, and Laura Clancy, ‘Negative Views of China Tied to Critical Views of Its Policies on Human Rights’, Pew Research Center, June 29, 2022, https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2022/06/29/negative-views-of-chinatied-to-critical-views-of-its-policies-on-human-rights/?utm_source= AdaptiveMailer&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=22-06-29%20GLOBAL %20Views%20of%20China%20GEN%20DISTR&org=982&lvl=100&ite= 10172&lea=2139994&ctr=0&par=1&trk=a0D3j000011IDK1EAO. 89 Peter Martin, China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), passim.

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90 ‘Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, updated February 24, 2020, https://www.fmprc. gov.cn/mfa_eng/xwfw_665399/s2510_665401/zlj/ 91 Laura Zhou, ‘Former US National Security Adviser Susan Rice Calls Chinese Diplomat Zhao Lijian ‘a Racist Disgrace’ after Twitter Tirade’, South China Morning Post, July 15, 2019, https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/ article/3018676/susan-rice-calls-chinese-diplomat-zhao-lijian-racist-disgrace. 92 Zhou, ‘Former US National Security Advisor’. 93 Ben Westcott and Steven Jiang, ‘Chinese Diplomat Promotes Conspiracy Theory That US Military Brought Coronavirus to Wuhan’, CNN, March 13, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/13/asia/china-coronavirus-us-lijian-zhao-intlhnk/index.html. 94 John Ruwitch, ‘ A ‘Wolf Warrior’ Is Sidelined, as China Softens Its Approach on the World Stage’, NPR, January 12, 2023, https://www.npr.org/2023/01/12/ 1148176944/china-diplomacy-wolf-warrior-zhao-lijian. 95 Alex W. Palmer, ‘The Man Behind China’s Aggressive New Voice’, New York Times, July 7, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/07/magazine/chinadiplomacy-twitter-zhao-lijian.html. 96 David Crawshaw and Alicia Chen, ‘‘Heads Bashed Bloody’: China’s Xi Marks Communist Party Centenary with Strong Words for Adversaries’, Washington Post, July 1, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/chinaparty-heads-bashed-xi/2021/07/01/277c8f0c-da3f-11eb-8c87-ad6f27918c78_ story.html. 97 Minnie Chan, ‘Wolf Vs Panda: Is China at a Crossroads Over How to Spread Its Global Message?’, South China Morning Post, August 8, 2021, https://www. scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3144269/wolf-vs-panda-china-crossroads-over-how-spread-its-global. 98 Nick Atkinson, ‘China’s Wolf Warriors Aren’t the Majority of the Pack’, The Diplomat, March 23, 2022, https://thediplomat.com/2022/03/chinas-wolfwarriors-arent-the-majority-of-the-pack/. 99 William Langley, ‘China’s Wolf Warriors Are Like Simba from Lion King, Its Foreign Ministry Says’, South China Morning Post, December 11, 2020, https:// www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3113522/chinas-wolf-warriorsare-simba-lion-king-its-foreign-ministry. 100 Chaguan, ‘China Would Rather Be Feared Than Defied’, Economist, April 26, 2021, https://www.economist.com/china/2021/08/26/china-would-rather-befeared-than-defied. 101 Finbarr Bermingham, ‘Keeping Big Brothers at Bay: Why Lithuania Is Taking on China’, South China Morning Post, December 1, 2021, https://www.scmp.com/ news/china/diplomacy/article/3157869/keeping-big-brothers-bay-why-lithuaniataking-china. 102 Yang Sheng and Xu Yelu, ‘Lithuania ’Could Become Isolated’ Due to Unwise Provocation Against China’, Global Times, November 26, 2021, https://www. globaltimes.cn/page/202111/1239971.shtml. 103 Lijian Zhao
(@zlj517), ‘In #Lithuania, There Was Once Massacre of Jews in History. Today, Racism Remains a Grave Problem in the Country, with Jews and Other Ethnic Minorities Suffering Serious Discrimination’, Twitter, November 30, 2021, https://twitter.com/zlj517/status/1465649211051966469. 104 Nathaniel Taplin, ‘Lessons from Lithuania’s David-Goliath Clash With China’, Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2022, https://www.wsj.com/articles/lessons-fromlithuanias-david-goliath-clash-with-china-11657633482.

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105 Sulmaan Wasif Khan, ‘Wolf Warriors Killed China’s Grand Strategy’, Foreign Policy, May 28, 2021, https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/05/28/china-grandstrategy-wolf-warrior-nationalism/. 106 Khan, ‘Wolf Warriors’. 107 Ezra F. Vogel, Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 646. 108 Richard Wike, Bruce Stokes, and Jacob Poushter, ‘2. Views of China and the Global Balance of Power’, Reuters, June 23, 2015, https://www.pewresearch. org/global/2015/06/23/2-views-of-china-and-the-global-balance-of-power/. 109 Uzair Younus, ‘Pakistan’s Growing Problem with Its China Economic Corridor’, USIP, May 26, 2021, https://www.usip.org/publications/2021/05/pakistansgrowing-problem-its-china-economic-corridor. 110 S. Khan, ‘How Chinese Investments Are Capturing Pakistan’s Economy’, DW, February 8, 2021, https://www.dw.com/en/china-pakistan-investment-ties/a58734281. 111 Pieter D. Wezeman, Alexandra Kuimova, and Siemon T. Wezeman, ‘Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2021’, SIPRI Fact Sheet (March 2022), 6, https:// www.sipri.org/sites/default/files/2022-03/fs_2203_at_2021.pdf. 112 PTI, ‘Pakistan to Acquire 4 Chinese Frigates, 8 Submarines in Modernisation Push for Navy’, India Today, February 6, 2021, https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/ pakistan-to-acquire-4-chinese-frigates-8-submarines-in-modernisation-push-fornavy-1766465-2021-02-06. 113 Usman Ansari, ‘Pakistan Confirms Chinese ‘Firebird’ Fighter Acquisition’, Defense News, January 3, 2022, https://www.defensenews.com/global/asiapacific/2022/01/03/pakistan-confirms-chinese-firebird-fighter-acquisition/. 114 Charlie Gao, ‘How Tough Are Pakistan’s Chinese-Made JF-17 ‘Thunder’ Fighters?’, National Interest, December 8, 2021, https://nationalinterest.org/ blog/reboot/how-tough-are-pakistan%E2%80%99s-chinese-made-jf-17-% E2%80%98thunder%E2%80%99-fighters-197582. 115 Seah et al., The State of Southeast Asia, 42. 116 Kin Phea, ‘Cambodia-China Relations in the New Decade’, Diplomacy Publication 1, no. 1 (2020): 22. 117 Phea, ‘Cambodia-China Relations’, 21. 118 Hin Pisei, ‘SSEZ Trade Up 40% at $1.37B in First Half’, Phnom Penh Post, July 20, 2022, https://www.phnompenhpost.com/business/ssez-trade-40-137bfirst-half. 119 ‘Cambodia External Debt (2010–2021)’, CEIC, https://www.ceicdata.com/en/ indicator/cambodia/external-debt 120 General Department of International Cooperation and Debt Management, Cambodia Public Debt Statistical Bulletin (Ministry of Economy and Finance of Cambodia, 2022), 5, https://gdicdm.mef.gov.kh/en/2022/05/25/10578.html. 121 Brian Eyler, Last Days of the Mighty Mekong (London: Zed Books, 2019), passim. 122 Sarah Teo, Brian Eyler, Zhang Li et al., ‘Interests, Initiatives, and Influence: Geopolitics in the Mekong Subregion’, Asia Policy 17, no. 2 (April 2022): 9. 123 Charles Dunst, ‘Xi’s Fake History Lesson for Hun Sen’, Foreign Policy, March 10, 2020, https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/03/10/xi-jinping-fake-history-lessonhun-sen-china-cambodia-khmer-rouge/. 124 Prak Chan Thul, ‘U.S. Urges Cambodia to Probe China-Owned Economic Zone on Tariff Dodging’, Reuters, June 27, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/ususa-trade-china-cambodia/u-s-urges-cambodia-to-probe-china-owned-economiczone-on-tariff-dodging-idUSKCN1TT0F3.

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125 Jeremy Page, Gordon Lubold, and Rob Taylor, ‘Deal for Naval Outpost in Cambodia Furthers China’s Quest for Military Network’, Wall Street Journal, July 22, 2019, https://www.wsj.com/articles/secret-deal-for-chinese-naval-outpostin-cambodia-raises-u-s-fears-of-beijings-ambitions-11563732482?mod=e2tw. 126 Ellen Nakashima and Cate Cadell, ‘China Secretly Building Naval Facility in Cambodia, Western Officials Say’, Washington Post, June 6, 2022, https://www. washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/06/cambodia-china-navy-base-ream/. 127 Manuel Mogato, Michael Martina, and Ben Blanchard, ‘ASEAN Deadlocked on South China Sea, Cambodia Blocks Statement’, Reuters, July 25, 2016, https:// www.reuters.com/article/us-southchinasea-ruling-asean/asean-deadlocked-onsouth-china-sea-cambodia-blocks-statement-idUSKCN1050F6. 128 David Hutt, ‘Time to Boot Cambodia out of ASEAN’, Asia Times, October 28, 2020, https://asiatimes.com/2020/10/time-to-boot-cambodia-out-of-asean/. 129 Stella Qiu, Aizhu Chen, and Tony Munroe, ‘Factbox: China-Russia Trade Has Surged as Countries Grow Closer’, Reuters, March 1, 2022, https://www.reuters. com/markets/europe/china-russia-trade-has-surged-countries-grow-closer-202203-01/. 130 Observatory of Economic Complexity, Where Does Russia Export to? (2020), accessed July 20, 2022, https://oec.world/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/export/rus/ show/all/2020/ 131 World Integrated Trade Solution, Exports and Imports by Russian Federation, World Bank (2019), accessed July 18, 2022, https://wits.worldbank.org/ CountryProfile/en/Country/RUS/Year/2019/TradeFlow/EXPIMP/Partner/CHN/ Product/all-groups 132 Observatory of Economic Complexity, Country to Country: China-Russia, updated June 2022, https://oec.world/en/profile/bilateral-country/chn/partner/rus#:~:text= Historical%20Data&text=(%241.1B).-,During%20the%20last%2025%20years %20the%20exports%20of%20China%20to,exported%20%2449.3B%20to %20China. 133 Chen Aizhu, ‘China May Oil Imports from Russia Soar to a Record, Surpass Top Supplier Saudi’, Reuters, July 6, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/markets/ commodities/chinas-may-oil-imports-russia-soar-55-record-surpass-saudisupply-2022-06-20/. 134 ‘China Considers Buying Stakes in Russian Energy, Commodity Firms’, Bloomberg, March 8, 2022, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/202203-08/china-considers-buying-stakes-in-russian-energy-commodity-firms. 135 Edward Wong and Julian E. Barnes, ‘Russia Asked China for Military and Economic Aid for Ukraine War, U.S. Officials Say’, New York Times, March 13, 2022, https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/13/us/politics/russia-china-ukraine.html. 136 Kathrine Hille, ‘China Reverses Roles in Arms Trade with Russia’, Financial Times, March 29, 2022, https://www.ft.com/content/dc4bc03c-3d9d-43bd91db-1ede084e0798. 137 Brian Spegele, ‘Chinese Firms Are Selling Russia Goods Its Military Needs to Keep Fighting in Ukraine’, Wall Street Journal, July 15, 2022, https://www.wsj. com/articles/chinese-firms-are-selling-russia-goods-its-military-needs-to-keepfighting-in-ukraine-11657877403. 138 Hill, ‘China Reverses Roles’. 139 Ian Talley and Anthony DeBarros, ‘China Aids Russia’s War in Ukraine, Trade Data Shows’, Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/ articles/china-aids-russias-war-in-ukraine-trade-data-shows-11675466360. 140 Janko Scepanovic, ‘The Sheriff and the Banker? Russia and China in Central Asia’, War on the Rocks, June 13, 2022, https://warontherocks.com/2022/06/ the-sheriff-and-the-banker-russia-and-china-in-central-asia/.

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141 Joshua Kucera, ‘Afghanistan, China, Pakistan, Tajikistan Deepen “Anti-Terror“ Ties’, EurasiaNet, August 4, 2016, https://eurasianet.org/afghanistan-chinapakistan-tajikistan-deepen-anti-terror-ties. 142 Scepanovic, ‘The Sheriff and the Banker?’. 143 Jeremy Greenwood and Shuxian Luo, ‘Could the Arctic Be a Wedge Between Russia and China?’, War on the Rocks, April 4, 2022, https://warontherocks. com/2022/04/could-the-arctic-be-a-wedge-between-russia-and-china/. 144 Thomas Nilsen, ‘New Mega-Port in Arkhangelsk with Chinese Investments’, Barents Observer, October 21, 2016, https://thebarentsobserver.com/en/industryand-energy/2016/10/new-mega-port-arkhangelsk-chinese-investments.

9

Conclusion Precedents and Principles

One of the principal challenges of evaluating a nation’s grand strategy lies in communicating the essence of grand strategy itself in a manner that is both consistent with the literature on the subject and useful to one’s readership. These are muddy waters to wade through. As the introduction to this book notes, there are many well-established objections to the very existence of grand strategy, including those that object to the atomisation of complex nations into unitary state actors as well as those that highlight grand strategy’s various inadequacies when tested within the ivory towers of dominant international relations theory. Indeed, one must accept a degree of theoretical agnosticism in order uncover the analytical insights and real-world utility offered by the study of grand strategy. In this way, the evaluation of the PRC’s grand strategy made throughout this text seeks to provoke thought as much in the sceptical theoretician as in the pragmatic policymaker. The sceptical theoretician may yet complain, however, that much of the literature on grand strategy is wanting of consistency and compatibility. Indeed, not all scholars agree on what, exactly, grand strategy is or how it should be studied. Dr. Nina Silove, of ETH Zurich’s Center for Security Studies, argues that for decades scholars have studied grand strategy through one of three subtly distinct – though often conflated – prisms: ‘grand plans’, ‘grand principles’ and ‘grand behaviour’.1 As conceptual variants of grand strategy, ‘grand plans’ treats the subject as the formulation of detailed plans by national leaders; ‘grand principles’ refers to a set of persistent, organising principles that guide the actions of decision makers; and ‘grand behaviour’ focuses on observable and categorizable patterns of state behaviour. Depending on the prism through which one studies grand strategy, the implications of its practice in international relations may differ. However, even accepting Silove’s tripartite framework, one may note that there is nothing mutually exclusive about pursuing grand plans, grand principles and grand behaviours at the same time. Indeed, this book offers evidence of all three processes occurring in sequence or simultaneously in the Chinese context, such as in the case of the PRC’s practice of military-civil fusion. This observation further strengthens the core thesis that the PRC has, in fact, been successfully practising grand strategy. DOI: 10.4324/9781315387383-9

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Silove’s typology offers a useful tool for assessing what exactly scholars mean when they speak of grand strategy. But even when scholars agree definitionally and conceptually about the nature of grand strategy, the orientation of their work – or the overall purpose of their work within the broader literature – may still diverge substantially. This is precisely the observation Georgetown University’s Rebecca Friedman Lissner makes in her work titled ‘What Is Grand Strategy? Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield’, where she introduces yet another tripartite typology.2 According to Lissner, there are three established research agendas that cover most of the literature on grand strategy. The first treats grand strategy as a dependent ‘variable’ within the nexus of statecraft and often closely examines one or more of the powerful systemic incentives – such as domestic politics or entrenched cultures – that motivate national-level decision making. The second treats grand strategy as a ‘process’, focusing on the formulation and substance of statelevel strategic planning and the concomitant principles therein. This agenda is often the most analytically driven. Finally, the third agenda treats grand strategy as a ‘blueprint’ and seeks to market a grand-strategic prescription to policymakers. Though it may not be eminently obvious at times, the style of research conducted in this work – Chinese Grand Strategy in the 21st Century: According to Plan? – best aligns with Lissner’s second category of research agendas. According to Plan? treats grand strategy more as a procedural concept with important cultural, historical and institutional modulators than as an abstract, scientifically traceable variable. Indeed, in arguing that the PRC has pursued a relatively coherent grand strategy over the last several decades, this book has emphasised the thematic nature of Chinese national behaviour: the coordination of China’s developmental efforts, the consistency of various key decisions made by its leaders along the way, the PRC’s intentioned reactions to disparate internal and external pressures, and the social, economic and political forces that undergird Beijing’s ongoing national project. These features blend the theoretical basis for grand strategy as a process with the practical, contextual lessons of China’s evolution and the implications of its future aims. In this way, this book finds its home among the descriptive, analytical and explanatory works on grand strategy. And yet, one may argue that this text offers a prescriptive contribution to the literature as well – that others might learn something strategically valuable from the processes employed by the PRC’s leaders over the course of the last several generations. To be sure, the Chinese model of grand strategy cannot simply be copied and pasted by those states with similar strategic aspirations. But with attention to context, the elements of grand strategy applied by the PRC’s leaders may well inform other world leaders and governments about how they might more effectively harness state power. (Even so, it would be a mistake to associate this book with Lissner’s ‘blueprint’ category of grand strategy research agendas, as this work does not seek to influence policymakers in any particular manner.)

Conclusion 243 Even knowing the definitional status of this book and the orientation of its research agenda, the sceptical theoretician may level a final challenge: how does this volume contribute to the overarching literature on grand strategy? Discerning thinkers such as Leiden University’s Lukas Milevski might argue that examining the PRC’s grand-strategic praxis – despite contributing to the ever-growing corpus of China literature – does little to advance the theoretical basis for grand strategy itself. In The Evolution of Modern Grand Strategic Thought, Milevski contends that competing intellectual traditions over time and the undulations of an untethered academic milieu have produced a ‘standardless, incoherent concept’ when it comes to grand strategy.3 He may be right in several meaningful ways. And focusing exclusively on China in a relatively descriptive project may at times have the effect of isolating this work from its theoretical counterparts. However, Milevski also advocates for the rehabilitation of grand strategy as a universalisable concept.4 This work contributes substantially to this project by treating grand strategy as a concept that pertains not only to classical notions of military and state power but as one which interlocks inseparably with economic, technological and domestic socio-political dimensions. Here, According to Plan? seeks to advance the grand strategy literature towards a more integrated future in a manner that many mainstream works are unable to. Academic works pertaining to matters of contemporary relevance should be written to stimulate discussion about the future. So, what does the future hold for Chinese grand strategy? The following paragraphs seek to review the substantive arguments made within this text and, importantly, reflect on the prospects for the future of Chinese grand strategy. First, despite the domestic and international challenges to the PRC’s ability to persist with its current approach to long-term strategy, its leaders continue to affirm their commitment to the principles of modified Communism (socialism with Chinese characteristics) and national self-determination which have made up their official ideology throughout recent decades. As Chapter 7 explains, President Xi Jinping has ushered in an era of renewed reverence for the Chinese Communist Party, emphasising the centrality of its leadership and the professionalisation of its various organs. Efforts to stamp out corruption among leaders of all levels will likely continue to win favour among the Chinese public and deter factionalism within the party itself. Furthermore, despite the various sectoral challenges and financial woes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic, the PRC’s leaders may yet succeed in creating the wealthier and more egalitarian society that they claim to desire. As in previous decades, Beijing maintains control over a range of tools and levers with which to guide China’s society and economy. On a broader scale, many of the circumstances which originally prompted China’s leaders to adopt the current strategy remain in place. For one, despite all the changes in world politics, the PRC finds similar opportunities in its relations with the so-called global community to the ones which it found decades ago. Economically, China’s GDP remains largely driven by

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exports and capital investment.5 Its industrial sector remains dependent on raw materials from abroad. The optimisation of its international trade and financial relations, therefore, remains at the core of Beijing’s domestic and foreign policy considerations. Particularly in emerging areas of opportunity, such as securing strategic seaport-use agreements or the commercialisation of the Arctic, the PRC stands to gain as it has in the past from cooperation and harmonisation with the global community. The PRC also finds similar reasons to be wary of its potential international competitors and adversaries. The West – despite those who argue convincingly that its influence is in decline – remains the dominant force in international politics. Chapter 8 argues that, in particular, the United States and its various alliances and security arrangements present an external counterbalancing force that may limit the PRC’s ability to practise grand strategy as it has in the past. One may note, however, that such external pressures are part of what motivates the formation of clever, coherent strategy in the first place. The sheer volume of diplomatic and foreign policy contingencies that face the PRC’s leaders all but necessitates the continued employment of a strategic approach with a long time horizon. Meanwhile, as Chapter 6 explored directly, many of the PRC’s territorial disputes remain pressing, some increasingly so. Particularly in regard to the question of reunification with Taiwan, the events surrounding US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan in August of 2022 – which some onlookers have – perhaps prematurely – called the ‘Fourth Taiwan Straits Crisis’ – illustrate the persistence of these decades-old challenges. However, if one accepts that the PRC’s reaction to Pelosi’s visit qualifies as a fourth crisis in the likeness of its predecessors, then one may also note that China today enjoys considerably more latitude in deciding the level of aggression and assertiveness of its response than it did at the end of the 20th century. Researchers from CSIS AMTI, who followed the events proceeding Pelosi’s visit closely, note that in the days following the PLA fired dozens of ballistic missiles into exercise closure areas surrounding Taiwan and repeatedly flew fighter and bomber aircraft through Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ).6 These actions echo the PRC’s responses to the previous geopolitical crises. This time, however, the US Navy did not counter shortly afterwards by sailing an aircraft carrier through the Taiwan Strait as President Clinton ordered in March of 1996. In this way, the provocative nature of Pelosi’s visit served the PRC not only as a justification to train its armed forces against Taiwan in an increasingly intimidating and realistic manner, but as an opportunity to demonstrate its growing regional dominance to the world. Even so, with the Taiwan issue unresolved and the pressures of other territorial disputes still looming, it is not unreasonable to conclude that the PRC’s government will try to follow a roughly similar approach to the one it has been following, even as it encounters increasing levels of opposition in an increasing variety of forms. Emerging challenges may necessitate tactical recalibrations but are unlikely to derail China’s greater ambitions for the 21st century.

Conclusion 245 Indeed, while one must expect resistance in any project, the PRC’s leaders appear to be preparing to encounter it in their national policies. One of the main purposes of their strategy has almost certainly been to put their regime in a position from which it can deal more assertively with its opponents. As Chapter 3 describes, China has successfully harnessed its economic machinery to build the second most expensive military in the world. Chapter 4 explains how the PRC has professionalised and reconstituted its fighting forces and, as these efforts have only become increasingly creative over the last decade, developed some of the world’s most advanced warfighting capabilities. Chapter 5 reveals how the PRC has become a premier force in the cyber, information and intelligence domains, each of which it has exploited to achieve similar ends. Collectively, the PRC’s leaders have rejected the complacency observed in previous centuries in favour of an intentioned strategy that prepares their nation to solve its own problems and confront its potential adversaries from a position of strength. One must assume that they may soon need to do so. The 20th-century history of Germany and Japan provide vivid examples to suggest that the point at which a rising power begins to encounter serious obstacles is a dangerous one. Beijing is undoubtedly conscious of this risk and appears to have made considerable efforts to incentivise cooperation with the international community through mechanisms such as the Belt and Road Initiative. Additionally, the PRC and its rivals have handled their disputes prudently so far. If this happy situation is to continue, all who deal with the PRC may need to think more strategically as well. Notes 1 Nina Silove, ‘Beyond the Buzzword: The Three Meanings of “Grand Strategy”’, Security Studies 27, no. 1 (August 2017): 27–57. 2 Rebecca Friedman Lissner, ‘What Is Grand Strategy? Sweeping a Conceptual Minefield’, Texas National Security Review 2, no. 1 (November 2018): 53–73. 3 Lukas Milevski, The Evolution of Modern Grand Strategic Thought (London: Oxford University Press, 2014), 141. 4 Milevski, Evolution of Modern Grand Strategic Thought, 139. 5 ‘China GDP: Chinese GDP Component’, MacroMicro, accessed August 10, 2022, https://en.macromicro.me/collections/22/cn-gdp-relative/984/cn-gdp-percentage. 6 AMTI, ‘Tracking the Fourth Taiwan Strait Crisis’, CSIS, updated August 19, 2022, https://chinapower.csis.org/tracking-the-fourth-taiwan-strait-crisis/#china-2022white-paper-taiwan.

Index

863 Program 113, 114 1911 Xinhai Revolution 176 access money 166 According to Plan 242, 243 accountability: citizen-verified 166; environmental 226; mechanisms 166, 174; political 168, 173–176; technical definition 174 Advanced Persistent Threat One (APT-1) 111–113, 115, 118, 119, 125 adversarial nationalism 186, 187; see also nationalism air defence identification zone (ADIZ) 148, 151–152, 203, 244 Aksai Chin 141, 142, 202–203 Albert, Eleanor 150, 177 American Air University 101 American Chamber of Commerce 125 American Declaration of Independence 17 American Internet security companies 102 Ancient China on Postmodern War 21 Anderlini, J. 167 Aneez, Shihar 51, 53 Anthem hackers 116–117, 119–120 anti-corruption campaign 164–167, 191 anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) 72–73 Apple Daily 178 APT-10 113 APT-30 112 APT-40 112 APT-41 114 architectural justifications 175 armaments 1–2, 5–6 arms control in cyberspace 120–126 The Art of War (Sunzi) 18, 19, 71–72 Arunachal Pradesh, India 141–142

ASEAN 211–212, 227 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) 112, 204 Australia 188, 190, 209–211, 213, 219, 222 authoritarian regimes 161 authoritarian system 162 autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) 74 Babones, Salvatore 15 Bagley, T.H. 107 Basic Law of Hong Kong 177; see also Hong Kong BBC 139 The Beijing News 125 Bejtlich, Richard 121 Bellingcat 103 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) 50–51, 94, 112, 137–140, 205 Betts, Richard 9 Biddle, Tami Davis 8–9 Biden, J. 208–209 Bismarck, Otto von 15 black market 117 Blanchard, Ben 58 Bloomberg News 118, 120, 178 Bo Xilai 164, 167 Boyd, Henry 74 Brands, Hal 9 Brennan, Hugo 147 Brian Wong 175 British Chamber of Commerce 135 Brunei 203 Buddhism 179 Byrne, Heather 210 Callahan, Willaim 15 Cambodia 212, 225–227, 230

Index Cancer Villages 171 capitalism 40, 180 Catholicism 179 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) 42; Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative (AMTI) 145–146; China Power Project 144 Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) 165, 167 Central Military Commission (CMC) 47, 90 Century of Humiliation 206 Chan, Minnie 75 Chandran, Nyshka 142 chaos theory 5 Chaung Tzu (Zhaung Zhou) 18 Chen, Stephen 74 Chen Aizhu 139 China; see People’s Republic of China (PRC) China Aerospace Studies Institute 82 China and Pakistan relationship 223–225 China Communication Construction Company (CCCC) 52 China Coup (Garside) 191 China Daily 43 China Development Bank 139 China Merchant Port Holdings Company Limited (CM Port) 51–52 China National Petroleum Corporation 139 China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) 51, 224 China’s Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy (Martin) 218 China’s Gilded Age: The Paradox of Economic Boom and Vast Corruption (Yuen Yuen Ang) 166 China’s Naval Power: An Offensive Realist Approach (Lim) 10 China’s New Governing Party Paradigm: Political Renewal and the Pursuit of National Rejuvenation (Heath) 10 China-Tibet railway link 49 China Water Risk 171 Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 10, 14, 114, 123, 161–162, 176–178,

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188; approach to religion 179; Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) 165; in Chinese Civil War 163; Confucian teachings 14; international condemnation of 183; policymaking latitude 190; political legitimacy 169; in postMao era 162; relationship with China’s citizens 174 Chinese grand strategy: Daoism 17–20; economic policy 25–31; geopolitics of 132–155; origins of 14–38; regional politics 31–34; traditional self-understanding 15–24 Chinese Grand Strategy and Maritime Power (Kane) 72, 133 Chinese intelligence organisations 114, 117 Chinese New Left 164 Chinese-Vietnamese relations 214 Chorzempa, Martin 49 CITIC Group 55 Clausewitz, Carl von 4–5, 7, 18–19, 103, 104 Cold War 113, 132, 149 Cole, Bernard 45 Command Information System (CIS) 85 Communism 35–37 computer-assisted sabotage 106 Confucian ethics 167 Confucianism 23, 31 Confucian moralists 133 Confucius 17, 22, 24; and economic policy 25; views on merchants 25 conventional war 106 Corbett, Julian 7 Cornell University 189 corruption 162–167; in context of regime stability 163; defined 162; elite 164; motivations for nationwide protests 164; scandals 164 Council on Foreign Relations 104 counterbalancing 207–215 COVID-19 pandemic 173, 186–187, 219, 221 cyberattack 103; China and 107–111 ‘cyber offensive’ 103 cyber sovereignty 126 cyberspace: arms control in 120–126; PRC 102–107 Cyberspace Solarium Commission 106 cyberwarfare 101, 111

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Index

Daiss, Tim 137 Dao De Jing (Laozi) 17–18, 20, 22–23 Daoism 17–20 Darr, Benjamin 185 Data Security Law (DSL) 125 Datt, Angeli 178 DeBarros, Anthony 229 Debs, Eugene 17 Defensive Realists 6 democracy: with Chinese characteristics 174–175, 178; intra-party 162; movement in Hong Kong 177; procedural 174, 175; Western 182 Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) 149–151 Deng Xiaoping 35, 37, 40, 41, 46, 59, 163–164, 168, 174, 176, 180, 184, 198, 199, 200, 223, 231; military capabilities 67; on navy 69 Denyer, Simon 183 Department of Energy 188 Deriabin, Peter 107 Detsch, Jack 203 Diaoyutai 201, 202 Dickson, B. J. 172–173, 174 dilemmas 161 The Diplomat 111, 147, 213, 220 Di Qin 16 Document Number Nine 179, 182 Doklam dispute 141–142 Doshi, Rush 11, 209 doubled-edged nationalism 185–191 Earle, Edward Mead 1, 5–6 East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere 149 East Asian Strategic Review 50, 85 East China Sea (ECS) 148, 153 economic performance, of China 41–42 economic policy: Chinese grand strategy 25–31; and Confucius 25; King Wu of Zhou policies 26–31; Sima Qian on 25; Sunzi on 25 Economic Times 141–142 The Economist 169, 189, 222 Eifuku, Seiya 148 Elfstrom, M. 170 elite corruption 164 Enlai, Zhou 218 equitable marketing 26 Erickson, Andrew S. 153 ‘espionage activities’ 114

EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) 56 European Union 46, 53, 56, 213 TheEvolution of Modern Grand Strategic Thought (Milevski) 243 Exclusive Economic Zone 144 Exercise Malabar 210 Exim Bank (China) 51 Eyler, Brian 226 fait accompli 104 Falun Gong 176 Farley, Robert 146 Fedasiuk, Ryan 74 Fewsmith, Joseph 162, 191 Financial Times 50, 167 FireEye 121–122, 123, 126 First World War 106 Fletcher, Rob 145 Forbes, J. Randy 114 Foreign NGO Law 179 foreign policy of China 198–207 foundational socialist ideals 180 Fravel, M. Taylor 89, 93 Freedom House 121 freedom of navigation operations (FONOPs) 189, 208 Freeman, Chas W., Jr. 206 Fu Cong 93 Gady, Franz-Stefan 111 Gallagher, Kevin P. 45 Gan, Nectar 179 Garside, Roger 191 Geddes, B. 161 Geng Shuang 150 ‘The Geographical Pivot of History’ (Mackinder) 136 geographic isolation 206 geopolitics 136; Belt and Road Initiative 137–140; of Chinese Strategy 132–155; Korea 149–154; sense of place 132–137; territorial disputes 140–149 George Washington University 172 Germany: pro-China policies 56; trade with China 56 Glanz, James 187 Global Times Research Center 186 Godwin, Paul 45 Goldstein, Avery 10 Goldstein, Lyle J. 145–146 Google 118–120

Index Google hackers 119 Gorbachev, Mikhail 183 grand strategy: application to contemporary PRC 9–12; and creating power 8; defined 1; PRC practicing 1–2; theoretical case for 4–9; see also Chinese grand strategy Gray, Colin S. 101, 102, 104–106, 107, 112 Great Wall of China 29 Green Finance & Development Center 205 Grossman, Derek 213 Guevara, Che 35 Gulf War 46 Gunawardena, Dinesh 51 Gurung, Shaurya Karanbir 141 Gwadar, Pakistan 50–51 Haas, Richard 208 hacking 102, 106–118, 120–125 Hambantota port 51–52 Han, Enze 143 Handel, Michael 18–19 Han Dynasty 17, 28, 30, 48, 206 Han Feizi 24; and economic policy 25; views on merchants 25 Harada, Yu 147–148 hard power 3, 215–216; see also soft power Harvard’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation 168 Harvard University 176 heartland theory 141 Heath, Timothy 10 Heiduk, Felix 56 Hong Kong: democracy movement in 177; justice system 177; model of public discourse and civil society 178; National Security Law 177–178 Hoover Institution 113 ‘hop points’ 115 Hoxha, Enver 35–36 Hsiao, Russell 114 Hua Chunying 220, 222 Huang, Cary 55 Huang, Kristin 91 Hu Jintao 175, 180, 199, 200, 218 Hun Sen 226–227 Huyne, Dung 213 Hyer, Eric 9

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The ICT Productivity Paradox: Insights from Micro Data (Pilat) 46 ideologies 174–180; communist 35–37, 85; political 175, 181; of present regime 109 imperial censorate 163 India 141–142, 202–203, 209–211, 213, 223–225; as nuclear power 92; trade through SCS region 144–145 Indonesia 134–135, 137–138, 203, 211, 212, 214–215 Indonesian Straits 135 information and computer technology (ICT) 46–47 information warfare 101 information warfare (IW) 83–86 infrastructure construction: China-Tibet railway link 49; domestic infrastructure projects 48; PRC’s 48; in Sri Lanka 51–52; strategic benefits for China 50 Inside China’s Grand Strategy: The Perspective from the People’s Republic (Zecheng) 11 intelligence and China 111–117 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) 89–91 International Chamber of Commerce’s International Maritime Board (IMB) 135 international conflict 101 Internet: -based intelligence 103; and China 111–117; and computerassisted sabotage 106; criminals’ use of 119, 121; security legislation 125 Interpreting China’s Grand Strategy: Past, Present and Future (Swaine and Tellis) 11 intra-party democracy 162 ISEAS-Yusof Ishak 211–212, 214 Islam/Islamism 179, 183, 225 J-20 fighter 82 Jakobson, Linda 204 Jamestown Foundation 114, 153 Japan 188, 199, 201–204, 207, 209–211, 213, 225; corporate spending on high technology 44; National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS) 148; National Institute of Information

250

Index

Communications Technology 111; R&D budget in ICT 46; Russia territorial dispute with 88 Jefferson, Thomas 17 Jiang Jieshi 34 Jiang Zemin 164, 180, 199 Jinping, Xi 230 Johnston, Alistair Ian 23 Jones, Charlie Lyons 190 Kane, Thomas M. 47, 72, 78, 133, 137, 147, 154 Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline 142 Kent, Sherman 103 Khan, Sulmaan Wasif 222 Khrushchev, Nikita 68 Kim Jung-un 161 King, Angus 106 King Wen of Zhou 16 King Wu of Zhou 16, 20; Confucian critics of 29–30; economic system 26; military campaigns 28; policies 30–31; role of private merchants under 26; Sang Hongyang on policies of 26–27; system of taxation 26; technological solutions 28 Kissinger, Henry 14 Kitchen, Nicholas 7–8 Kopp, Carlo 81 Korea and China 149–154 Krulak, Charles 85–86 Kuo, Mercy 147 Kuomintang (KMT) party 163 Kwok, Dennis 177 Kyauk Pyu 137 Kyauk Pyu infrastructure projects 54–55 Lalwani, Sameer 210 Lam, Carrie 177 The Lancet (Peng Yin) 171 Laozi 17–20, 22, 23–24, 36; and economic policy 25; views on merchants 25 Last Days of the Mighty Mekong (Eyler) 226 latent nationalism 185 Latin America 57 Layne, Christopher 215 Legalists 20–21, 22 legitimacy 185 legitimation narratives 175 Lenin, V. 35–37, 40

Liaoning aircraft 75–76, 78 Libicki, Martin 101, 102, 104–105, 107, 110–111, 112 Li Keqiang 44 Lim, Yves-Heng 10, 78–79 Li Peng 59, 60 Li Si 22 Lissner, Rebecca Friedman 242 Li Zhaojie 186, 205–206 Logan, David 87 The Long Game 209 The Long Game: China’s Grand Strategy to Displace American Order (Doshi) 11 Lu Buwei 25 Luo Guanzhong 14 Luttwak, Edward 6 Machiavelli, Niccolò 5 Mackinder, Halford 136, 141 Mahan, Alfred Thayer 9, 33, 132–136, 140 mainstream media 109 Maizland, Lindsay 177 Major, David G. 114 Majumdar, Dave 74–75 Makers of Modern Strategy: Military Thought from Machiavelli to Hitler (Earle) 1 Malaysia 203, 211–212 Mandiant 111–113, 114–115, 117, 122, 123, 125, 126 Maoist-Leninist communism 216 Mao Zedong 34–35, 41, 45, 78, 151–152, 175, 176, 184, 189; Communism 35–37; nuclear capabilities of China 89–90 Martin, Peter 218 Marx, K. 35–37 Marxism-Leninism 143 Marxist-Leninist theory 35–37 Marxist theory 35 Masayuki Masuda 147 Mastro, Oriana Skylar 205 Masuda, Masayuki 85–86 material matters 168–174 McCauley, Kevin 79, 84–85 McKinsey and Company 43 media 118–120; mainstream 109 Meng Meng 139 Merkel, Angela 56 Middle East 134, 137, 140, 149 middle income trap 49

Index Milevski, Lukas 243 military reform: China 67–95; cuts from military 80–83; information warfare 83–86; joint training exercises 87–88; naval expansion 69–80; nuclear capabilities 89–94; Sino-Russian arms partnership 67–69; training programme 86–89 military regimes 161 military spending: China 41–42, 151; United States 42 military-technical revolutions (MTR) 83–84 Ming Dynasty 32, 163, 167 Ministry of Public Security (MPS) 169 Minnick, Wendell 82 Mongols 32 monopoly 26; and Confucian scholars 26 moral purity 167 Morgenthau, Hans 5, 6–7 Morrison, Scott 188 Mozi 22, 24 Myanmar 143; Chinese-sponsored infrastructure projects 54; foreign direct investment 54; Han rebel groups 143; Kokang region 143; monetary dynamics with China 54; Muslim Rohingya 54; reform movement 54 Myanmarese conflicts 143 Myitsone Dam project 54 Nakashima, Ellen 115–116, 119 Nathan, Andrew 162, 191 nationalism 221; adversarial 186, 187; cultivation of 190; defined 185; doubled-edged 185–191; latent 185; robust 162; types of 190 National Security Law, Beijing 178 National Security Law, Hong Kong 177–178 naval expansion, China 69–80 Neoclassical Realism 5 Neorealism 5 New York Times 106, 118, 119, 120, 172, 187 Nicaraguan canal project 57–59 non-governmental organisations (NGO) 178–179, 181 ‘non-market economies’ 154 North American Free Trade Agreement 154

251

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) 124 Norway 222 nuclear capabilities: ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) 91–92; China 89–94; military reform 89–94 nuclear war 101 nuclear weapons 107 Nye, Joseph 33, 215–216 Obama, Barack 121, 124 Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC) 228 Offensive Realism 6 Oksenberg, Michel 190 On China (Kissinger) 14 one country, two systems model 178 On War (Clausewitz) 4–5 Opium War 34, 45 OPM hackers 116–117, 119–120 Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) 137 Owens, William 71 The Pacific Islands in China’s Grand Strategy: Small States, Big Games (Yang) 10 Pakistan 50–51, 141, 223–225, 229, 230 Pakistan Navy 224 panacea of party control 180–184 Parameters 47 Paraskova, Tsevatana 139 parcel delivery companies 170 The Party and the People: Chinese Politics in the 21st Century (Dickson) 172, 174 patriotic cyberwar 110, 113–114 patriotic hackers 108–109 Pehrson, Christopher J. 10 Pelosi, Nancy 208, 244 Peng Yin 171 People’s Armed Forces Maritime Militia (PAFMM) 79 People’s Armed Police (PAP) 177 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) 67, 123; Strategic Support Force 112 People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) 70, 81–83 People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) 3, 69–71; attack submarines 74; foreign policy of China 71; nuclear submarines 74–75

252

Index

People’s Republic of China (PRC) 178–179; arms control in cyberspace 120–126; Belt and Road Initiative 112, 137–140; bureaucracy 166–167; corruption 162–167; and cyberattack 107–111; cyberspace 102–107; death rate per capita 187; economic performance 41–42; failure of traditional 34–35; financial relations with United States 40; foreign policy of 198–207; hacking media 118–120; and intelligence 111–117; and Internet 111–117; leadership and success 1; military reform 67–95; military spending 41–42; naval expansion 69–80; Naval Military Studies Research Institute 147; patriotic hackers 108–109; practicing grand strategy 1–2; rapid industrialisation 171; socialist system 107; State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) 59–61; stock market crash 2; traditional selfunderstanding 15–24; as world’s construction company 47–52 Perez, Evan 116 Perlroth, Nicole 118 Permanent Court of Arbitration 147 Perry, Elizabeth J. 176 personal identifiable information (PII) 117 Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) 125 Pham, Peter 145 Philippines 111, 134, 147, 153, 203, 211–212, 214–215 Piccone, Ted 57 Pilat, Dirk 46 PLAN Marine Corps (PLANMC) 87 PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) 90, 92 Plato 14 Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) 182 political accountability 174 political identity 190; China’s traditional concepts of 23–24 political ideologies 175 political sabotage 107 political thought: commonality between Chinese and American 17; traditional Chinese 23

Pompeo, Mike 208 Pottinger, Matt 113 The Pragmatic Dragon: China’s Grand Strategy and Boundary Settlements (Hyer) 9 pre-emptive repression 173 price stabilisation 26 procedural democracy 174, 175 productivity paradox 46–47 Protestantism 179 protest movements 173, 176–179, 190 Putin, Vladimir 230 Qiao Liang 107 Qin Dynasty 176 Qin Empire 21–22, 26, 29 Qing Dynasty 202 Quad 209–211, 215 Quadrilateral Cooperation and Coordination Mechanism 229 quasi-vassal statehood 230 Quayle, Danforth 14 Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) 178 Railway Gazette 51 RAND Corporation 11, 82–83 Rapid Reaction Forces (RRFs) 81 Realism 5–6, 8, 23 Red Honker Union 109 regimes: authoritarian 161; military 161 regime stability 163, 164 Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) 204–205 religion 179 Rennie, David 222 Republic of China (ROC); see Taiwan Republic of (South) Korea: China trade sanctions against 56–57; Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system 56–57 research and development (R&D): China’s 43–47; investment 43–44; military innovation 47; outsourcing of 43–47; spending 43, 46 Reuters 108, 122, 137, 139, 153 Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA) 46 Rice, Susan 218 Rim of Pacific (RIMPAC) 211 Rising to the Challenge: China’s Grand Strategy and International Security (Goldstein) 10

Index Roberts, Sam 106 ROK Korea Trade-Investment Promotion Agency 150 Romance of the Three Kingdoms (Luo Guanzhong) 14 Russia 201–202, 227–230; and PRC joint training exercises 87–89; territorial dispute Japan 88 Russo-Japanese War of 1904–05 149 sabotage 102, 106–107, 124, 126; of China’s socialist system 107; computer-assisted 106; political 107 saboteurs 106 Sacks, David 208 Samarasingh, Mahinda 51 Sang Hongyang 31–32; on economic policies of King Wu of Zhou 26–27; on military campaigns of King Wu of Zhou 28 Scarborough Shoal incident 145–147 Scepanovic, Janko 229 Schelling, Thomas 198 Science and Technology Commission 47 scientific development 175 Scott, Robert C. 113 Second World War 207 Semanticists 6 sense of place, and geopolitics 132–137 Serewicz, Lawrence W. 137 shadow security 101–126 Shang Dynasty 16 Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) 124 Shang Yang 23, 24 Shi Jingtao 153 Shinzo Abe 209 shipping 48 Sihanoukville Special Economic Zone (SSEZ) 225 Silove, Nina 241–242 Sima Qian 25 sinocentrism 186 Sino-Indian border disputes 141 Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95 149 Sino-Russian arms partnership 67–69; anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) 72; anti-ship missile technology 72; attack submarines 74; Sunburn anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) 72, 75 Sino-Russian relations 230

253

Sixteen-Character Statement 114, 122–123 Smeets, Max 104 socialism 35; with Chinese characteristics 174–175, 179–180, 183–184, 189–190, 192, 216; nationalist 190 Soesanto, Stefan 104 soft power 3, 219–221, 223, 230; accretion and depletion of 216; accumulation of 216, 217; defined 215; generation and degradation of 217; realm of 198, 216, 227; sources of 216 soft repression 173 Song Xiaojun 153 South China Morning Post (SCMP) 45, 51, 79, 88, 108–109, 118, 125, 137, 141, 152, 165, 179, 203, 220 South China Sea (SCS) 144–146, 147, 148, 153, 188, 203–204, 208, 212–214, 227 Soviet Union 34–35, 45–46, 67–68, 107, 184, 202 special administrative region (SAR) 177 Sri Lanka: China as source of credit 52–53; Hambantota port project 51–52; infrastructure projects by China 51–52; United National Party (UNP) 52 Stalin, Joseph 68 state-owned enterprises (SOEs) 59–61, 181 Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) 41, 68, 93 Strange, Austin M. 153 strategic ambiguity 208 Strategy (Luttwak) 6 String of Pearls: Meeting the Challenge of China’s Rising Power Across the Asian Littoral (Pehrson) 10 Sunburn anti-ship cruise missile (ASCM) 72, 75 Sung China 32; Mongol khans invasion of 32 Sunzi 18–19, 23, 24, 71–72; on arms capabilities of China 73–74; on economic policy 25 Svolik, M. 161, 162 Swaine, Michael D. 11 Taiwan 2, 43, 57, 70, 77, 78, 89, 134, 149, 184, 190, 201–204, 207–208, 214,

254

Index

222; ADIZ 151–152; Bureau of Foreign Trade 151; Department of Cyber Security 111 Taiwan News 111 Taiwan Relations Act 207 Taiwan Straits crisis 70 Talley, Ian 229 Tan, Florence 139 Tang Dynasty 206 Taoism 179 Taylor, Eufracia 147 ‘technology targeting’ 113 Tellis, Ashley 11 Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system 56, 88–89 territorial disputes 140–149 Thompson, Kenneth 5, 6–7 ThreatConnect 116–117, 126 Tiananmen Square incident 164 Tiananmen Square massacre 46 Tianlei Huang 49 Tibet 141–142, 202–203 The Times of India 213 Ting Chen 165 Transparency International’s Global Corruption Barometer 164 Treaty of Westphalia 24 Trudeau, Justin 154 Trump, Donald 138, 151, 154 Tsinghua University 205 Tweed, David 140 Ukraine 88, 111, 139, 228–230 UNESCO Institute for Statistics 43 United Nations (UN) 124 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development 144 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) 43 United Nations Security Council 150 United States (US) 185–190, 199, 204, 207–214, 230, 244; Army War College 137, 154; Central Intelligence Agency 132; Declaration of Independence 20; Defence Department 47, 86, 90, 113, 152; Department of Homeland Security 117; Department of Justice 117, 123; Energy Information Administration (EIA) 137–138;

Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) 112, 116; military spending 42; naval dominance 69–70; Office of Personnel Management (OPM) 115–116; PRC’s financial relations with 40; R&D budgets 44 United States Institute for Peace 143–144 University of British Columbia 170 University of Michigan 166 unmanned maritime vehicle (UMV) technology 74 unmanned underwater vehicles (UUV) 74 Unrestricted Warfare (Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui) 107 US-China Economic Security Review Commission (USCC) 113, 178 US-China-Taiwan relationship 208 US-China trade war 154 US Coast Guard 213 US Congress 113 US Congressional Research Service (CRS) 207 US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 187–188 US House of Representatives Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security 113 US Institute of Peace’s (USIP) 205 US-Japan Security Treaty 148 US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) 154 US Naval Institute (USNI) 88, 208 US Naval War College 145 US Navy 146, 207, 211 US Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) 76 USS Carl Vinson 212 US Senate Committee on Armed Services 113 USS George Washington 212 USS Theodore Roosevelt 212 VAE Inc. 116–117 Valimaki, Christina 45 van Creveld, Martin 5 vassal states 223–230 Vietnam 203, 212–214 virtual proxy network (VPN) 182 Waldwyn, Tom 74 Wall Street Journal 187, 229

Index The Wall Street Journal 118, 222 Waltz, Kenneth 6 Wan Gang 43–44 Wang Huning 182 Wang Jing 57–59 Wang Wenbing 220 Wang Xiangsui 107 Wang Yang 164 Wang Yi 200, 205 War on the Rocks (Scepanovic) 229 Washington Post 183 The Washington Post 115, 116, 117, 119, 121, 226 Watts, Barry 5 Weiner, Rachel 116 Weiss, Jessica Chen 189–190, 216 Welch, Robert 17 Wenfang Tang 185 Westad, Odd Arne 206 Western democracy 182 Western media organisations 118 Westphalian international order 223 What Good Is Grand Strategy? Power and Purpose in American Statecraft from Harry S. Truman to George W. Bush (Brands) 9 Wired 116 Wirtz, James J. 104 wolf warrior diplomacy 218 Workers and Change in China: Resistance, Repression, Responsiveness (Elfstrom) 170 Workers’ Party of Korea 161 World Bank WITS data 138 World Health Organisation (WHO) 187 World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO) 43 World Trade Organisation (WTO) 190

255

Wortzel, Larry 113, 114 Wray, Christopher 112 Wright, Thomas 40 Wun Nan 109 Wyne, Ali 40 Xiang Yu 21 Xi Jinping 40, 58, 85, 121, 124, 152, 164–166, 174–175, 180–184, 189–191, 199, 200, 201, 203, 204, 206, 218–219, 221, 243 Xinhua 139 Xinjiang Province, China 142, 182–183 Xi-Obama Agreement 121–122 Yahuda, Michael 214 Yang, Jian 9–10 Yan Sun 164 Yeltsin, Boris 68 Yemeni crisis of 2015 153 Yih-Jye Hwang 15 Yuen Yuen Ang 166 Yukon Huang 181 Yves-Heng Lim 153 Zecheng, Yi 11 Zeihan, Peter 210 ‘zero-day vulnerabilities’ 105 Zhao Lijian 218–220, 222, 223 Zhao Tingyang 15 Zheng He 32 zhongguo 136; see also China Zhou emperors 16–17; definition of good government 18; purpose of government 20 Zhou Enlai 202 Zhou Yongkang 164, 167 Zhu Rongji 164