China I: The Coming Conflict with America
Many American policymakers and Sinologists believe that China will inevitably become non-ideological, pragmatic, materialistic, and progressively freer in its culture and politics. Beijing, however, sees the United States not as a strategic partner but as the chief obstacle to its regional and global ambitions. Under cover of its current conciliatory mood, China acquires the wherewithal to back its aspirations regarding Taiwan and beyond with real power. America's number one objective in Asia must be to derail China's quest to become a 21st-century hegemon.
Richard Bernstein is a New York Times book critic and was Time magazine's first Beijing Bureau Chief. Ross H. Munro was Beijing Bureau Chief for the Toronto Globe and Mail and is Director of the Asia program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. This article is drawn from their recent book, The Coming Conflict with China.
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The Defense Department's new report on East Asia reads as if the Cold War is ongoing. For Japan, the report signals U.S. acceptance of its ruinous trade deficits. For other Asian nations, it signals the hollowness of American superpower pretensions. The report masks the failure of the Clinton administration's trade policy. By insisting Japan remain a U.S. protectorate, Washington encourages Tokyo's reactionaries. The real threat to Asian security is not China but U.S. distrust of Japan as a true ally. Cold War military power is irrelevant to the economic challenges posed by East Asia's dynamism. Someone should tell the Pentagon.
There is no "China threat," not because China is a benign giant but because it is too weak to challenge the balance of power. China can damage U.S. interests, but it does not require containment. The most striking aspect of Chinese foreign policy is its effort to promote stability. Indeed, China is easier to deal with today than ever before. The United States needs a policy to contend with China's ability to destabilize Asia, not a policy to deal with a future hegemon. China is a revisionist power, but for the foreseeable future it will seek to maintain the status quo-and so should the United States.
No, it is not a silly question -- merely one that is not asked often enough. Odd as it may seem, the country that is home to a fifth of humankind is consistently overrated as an economy, a world power, and a source of ideas. Economically, China is a relatively unimportant small market; militarily, it is less a global rival like the Soviet Union than a regional menace like Iraq; and politically, its influence is puny. The Middle Kingdom is a middle power. China matters far less than it and most of the West think, and it is high time the West began treating it as such.
