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China’s Growing Power and Influence in Asia: Implications for U.S. Policy”

Before the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission Hearing on: “China as an Emerging Regional and Technology Power: Implications for U.S. Economic and Security Interests” February 13, 2004 (University of California—San Diego)

* David M. Lampton is director of Chinese Studies at The Nixon Center and the George and Sadie Hyman Professor of China Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C.

China’s Influence Is Growing:
There have been six post-9/11 alterations in the regional and global security environments most significant for American interests and the prospects for continued U.S.-China cooperation, security and otherwise:

·China’s economic and diplomatic clout in Asia has dramatically increased since 1997, in the context of a Washington preoccupied elsewhere and a less economically potent Japan.China's increased power is reflected in the realms of economic power (remunerative), military power (coercive), and even ideas (normative), with the increase in economic influence being most dramatic. Further, in its diplomatic strategy in the region and the world beyond China is leading with its economic power, placing less emphasis on military power, with Taiwan being the principal exception in this regard. Nonetheless, American preeminence in Asia remains the central geopolitical and economic fact, a circumstance reflected in the PRC’s priority on maintaining productive relations with Washington.

·North Korean nuclear weapons programs have fostered Sino-American cooperation to a degree few would have predicted in November 2002, simultaneously strengthened U.S. cooperation with Japan, and have had the opposite effect with respect to Seoul-Washington ties. China’s diplomatic heft has gone up by virtue of its efforts to broker a non-disruptive resolution of the crisis.

·Japan gradually is assuming more responsibility for its own defense and beginning to provide limited “global, public security goods,” a development that is occurring with American blessings and Chinese wariness. Simultaneously, Japan is developing ever-deeper economic ties with the PRC and Beijing is not making an issue of Tokyo’s changing security role, though it is worried. The U.S.-Japan alliance is strong, in part as a hedge against a rising China, and, Chinese leaders have partially conceded that the U.S.-Japan alliance has given Beijing a “free ride” on security. The net is that China seems reconciled to a more “normal” Japan and the U.S.-Japan Security Alliance as long as neither are aimed at promoting the separation of Taiwan or containing China, concerns that never will be fully assuaged in Beijing.

·South Korean-Chinese economic (and to a lesser extent security) relations have grown with remarkable speed since the two nations established diplomatic ties in 1992. Today, Beijing and Seoul often have been closer on inter-Korean Peninsula issues than Washington and Seoul. The ROK-US alliance relationship is troubled, raising the issue of its long-term prospects.

·The War on Terror (here to include the war in Iraq and counter-proliferation policy) has fostered growing and important Sino-American cooperation. Cooperation in this domain has reduced some of the vigor with which Washington’s demands on China in some other domains (economic and civil rights) are pursued. Beijing was (and remains) very helpful in the War on Terror and it served minimal American interests by getting out of the way with respect to Iraq.

·With respect to Taiwan, the core friction in U.S.-China relations since 1950, micro-nationalism and competitive electoral politics have energized Taipei’s increasing efforts to assert autonomy. This threatens Beijing’s and Washington’s interests to the extent that a conflict in the Strait could ensue that neither capital desires. For now, this has produced Sino-American cooperation (perhaps limited and temporary) and generated growing friction between Washington and Taipei. American allies and friends increasingly are allergic to a Taiwan Strait conflict and Tokyo and Paris have urged restraint on Taipei in the run up to the March 2004 presidential elections, as did President Bush on December 9, 2003.

Cumulatively, the developments highlighted above reflect the comprehensive growth of Chinese power in the realm of money, coercive force, and ideas. What are the implications of China’s rise for American interests, broadly defined?

Implications for the United States:

It is inaccurate to say that Asia has become Sinocentric. The economic and military
power of America remains a central geopolitical and economic fact for every nation on
the PRC’s periphery. Moreover, China is not yet a balanced comprehensive power; its
coercive and normative power still weak compared to its growing economic muscle.
Also, China’s influence remains uneven around its circumference—strongest on the
Korean Peninsula, weakest (but growing) in Central Asia, and growing briskly
throughout East and Southeast Asia. Moreover, it is fashionable, but mistaken, to ignore
Japan’s current power and future potential because of its protracted national malaise.
And finally, at the same time that the PRC’s neighbors seek to gain from enhanced
Chinese capabilities, they also seek more distant balancers to hedge against Beijing’s
power.

While neither the United States nor others ought to overreact to China’s increased
power and influence, the success of Chinese policy does have implications for America.
The most important of these implications is that the principal directions in which Chinese
policy has moved (toward the use of remunerative and normative instruments, and away
from coercive power [except with respect to Taiwan]) are consistent with fundamental
U.S. interests. Washington ought not deflect China from its basic heading. Nonetheless,
rising Chinese power requires some adjustments, and perhaps profound changes, both in
U.S. policies of long-standing and those of more recent vintage. China’s rise has
implications for regional alliance and security structures, the kinds and mixes of power
America exerts in the region, and Washington’s ability to use sanctions and other
instruments of policy.

A key point is that Washington’s post-9/11 mix of power, in the eyes of many throughout
Asia, has overemphasized military strength and takes insufficient advantage of America’s
economic and potential normative muscle. Normatively, the United States now is less
attractive throughout Asia than it has been in the past, if almost any public opinion survey
is to be believed. Washington has become too distracted. Americans need to do more
listening throughout the region. Finally, Washington needs to place more emphasis on
multilateral security and economic relationships. As well, the difficulties visa issuance
are creating to economic and cultural exchange are a serious impediment to the effective
employment of American economic and normative power.

With respect to the realm of coercive power, perhaps the most dramatic consequence of

China’s rise has been the weakening of the U.S.-South Korea Alliance and the longerterm
effects that China’s growing strength may have on Washington’s other regional
alliances. While growing Chinese military power may strengthen the perceived need in
Japan, the Philippines, and perhaps Australia for alliance with Washington, the PRC’s
growing economic attraction and its currently benign foreign policy may simultaneously
lessen the perceived need for these pacts. Which of these contending forces prevails (the
China threat or China’s attractiveness) will depend greatly on how both Beijing and
Washington play their cards in the future. Thus far, Beijing has played them skillfully.

In the case of South Korea, the strains in the U.S.-ROK Alliance already are everywhere
apparent. Beijing’s economic attraction to Seoul, China’s greater leverage over North
Korea than any other outside power, and a U.S. policy toward Pyongyang that worries
South Koreans cumulatively have put China in the catbird seat. While it is far too early
to pronounce the death of the U.S.-ROK Alliance, restoring its vitality is going to require
changes. In the more distant future, Washington may have to consider whether a new
security framework (perhaps involving the six parties in Northeast Asia) is needed to
replace or supplement the traditional bilateral alliances in the region.

Turning to the Taiwan Strait, this is the one issue that, if mismanaged (by Taipei, Beijing,
and/or Washington), could produce a dramatic increase in the acquisition and use of
Chinese coercive power. The many deficiencies of Beijing’s policies toward Taipei,
combined with micro-nationalism on the island, create recurrent pressures on Taiwan to
assert autonomy in ways that are dangerous. Washington’s policy of deterrence has
helped restrain Beijing from either overreacting to Taipei’s actions or being proactively
coercive. But, Washington should be no less vigilant with respect to Taipei’s actions.
The ball on which Washington should keep its eye is stability and growth in the region as
a whole and encouraging Beijing to remain on the policy trajectory described above.

This likely will require U.S. administrations and the U.S. Congress to periodically be
firm with Taipei. President George W. Bush’s December 9, 2003 statement in front of
visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (“The comments and actions made by the leader of
Taiwan indicate that he may be willing to make decisions unilaterally to change the status
quo, which we oppose.”) is an example of what periodically may be required.

Even more fundamentally, as more and more American allies and friends in the region

develop positive stakes with the PRC, how supportive are they likely to be of an
American intervention in the Taiwan Strait? When Deputy Secretary of State Armitage
went to Australia in early 2002 and suggested that Washington expected Canberra to be
at its side in a Taiwan contingency, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser
said: “[The Australia-New Zealand-United States Defense Treaty] designed to achieve
Australian security is now being distorted potentially to embroil us in a conflict of
America’s choosing with another super power [China].”

The PRC’s rise also has important implications for the remunerative realm of U.S.
policy. Most fundamentally, as the PRC increasingly becomes an engine for