By Minxin Pei
China’s policy toward the United States is another example. A question few have asked about Sino-American relations is whether the U.S. is a threat to China or to the CCP. While there’s no question that competition for power will always be an element of Sino-American relations regardless of the nature of the Chinese regime, it’s also undeniable that such competition will be relatively benign and unlikely to lead to great power conflict had China been a democracy.
But since China is not a democracy, geopolitical rivalry is overlaid with intense ideological antagonism. From the perspective of the CCP, the United States, with its liberal democratic missionary spirit, isn’t simply a military superpower, but an existential political threat. Such threat perception has made mutual trust impossible and precluded many measures that would have enhanced Chinese national security (such as closer military-to-military relations and rules preventing incidents at sea or enhancing cyber-security). Most tellingly, today’s CCP seems to have a stronger distrust of the U.S. than the Soviet Communist Party. According to a former senior director for Asia on the U.S. National Security Council, Jeffrey Bader, the Soviet Union had a more developed and productive military-to-military relationship with the U.S. during the détente period of the Cold War than China does now.
Inevitably, the measures taken by the CCP to defend its regime security in the face of American power and influence lead to outcomes that undermine China’s national security, as Washington responds with a policy of strategic hedging and, most recently, a pivot toward East Asia. With the subsequent build-up of American forward deployment in the Western Pacific, strengthening of American security alliances in East Asia, and the establishment of new security relations with China’s traditional rivals such as India and Vietnam, one would have a hard time arguing that China’s national security has increased.
Unfortunately, the dominance of regime security over national security in autocracies is a permanent feature of international politics. What makes the Chinese situation unique – and more dangerous – today is that the stakes involved are far greater. If poorly managed, the pathological tensions between regime security and national security in Chinese foreign policy could doom the CCP’s self-proclaimed goal of “peaceful development.”
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richard
It is true that US has been a benign super power,this fact has been the conclusion of many Asian leaders who have direct experience with US,Europe,China and Russis.
My question is: would US stay as a benign power once it is over taken by China?when its economy decline and cease to be the sole super power of the world.
That is a very difficult question to answer.
Godfree Roberts
The USA spends more per capita on internal security than China, and more on external security, both calculated ppp.
China is far larger and more diverse than the US, and is surrounded by the largest, most violent, hostile military on earth. Yet it manages to keep security spending modest.
The US, by contrast, is bankrupting itself by overspending on “security”, as have every empire in history.
tnd
Thank you Professor Pei for your insight.
Your framework of realism vs. regime/national security tension makes alot of sense. Seems applicable to Vietnam, Iran, Burma, Pakistan, Russia, etc. Irony is that many of these regimes have relied upon nationalism to bolster regime legitimacy and then are forced to contain it later—-in these cases, it is the regime that is trying to act responsibly in the face of xenophobic nationalism (i.e. Belgrade Embassy bombing 1996).One could argue that (illiberal?) democracies can give rise to more aggressive international behavior.
I do think though, that the realist camp often under-estimates the role that ideologicial distrust plays as the root-cause of why China and the US are unable to cooperate for the sake of mutual interests. Autocracies, especially China, seem to be paranoid about their legitimacy.
Hideyuki
Don’t get it wrong. I love USA.China loves USA. USA is the best cemotsur and borrower. Chinese are businese minded people. They love money. Therefore, they love their cemotsurs and the persons who are paying back the loans plus interests.