TESTIMONY BY ARTHUR N. WALDRON
PROFESSOR OF STRATEGY AND POLICY
U.S. NAVAL WAR COLLEGE
BEFORE THE THE HOUSE NATIONAL SECURITY COMMITTEE ON SECURITY CHALLENGES: CHINA
MARCH 20, 1996
First, I thank this committee for the opportunity to testify this morning.
This spring, a few months short of the twenty-fifth anniversary of Richard Nixon's announcement that he would visit the People's Republic of China, worrying developments there and in the Asian region are forcing Americans to think again about China's future course and how that will affect us and our allies. Profound changes have taken place in China since the Nixon visit. Many are very positive: the economy has developed spectacularly, the standards of living of ordinary Chinese have been raised dramatically, and freedom of thought and speech, although still cruelly limited in the most public or official forums, is now incomparably greater in ordinary circumstances than it was.
Yet certain things hoped for have not happened. Internally, China remains a one-party dictatorship and its government insists it will remain so indefinitely; internationally, China has become something of a neighborhood bully in Asia, using advanced weapons purchased with newly-earned wealth to threaten and intimidate states from Japan and the Philippines to Taiwan, in an extremely crude manner. This last development in particular has given pause to the United States and China's neighbors. For it runs directly contrary to the consensus thinking that has guided American policy until very recently. This has effectively ruled out consideration of any future for China except a peaceful one focused on economic development. But developments starting with the South China Sea confrontations of last summer and continuing through the current Taiwan Straits crisis indicate a need for reconsideration. It is time to consider seriously the unwelcome possibility that China may become a regional threat, and the associated questions of what United States policies should then be, and what sorts of military will be required to support them.
My remarks this morning will make three major points. The first is that the fundamental crisis in China today is one of political legitimacy, and that it will be resolved over the next decade or so in a process of regime change that may be smooth or may be chaotic, but that will yield at the end a China having a very different political structure to what exists today. My second point is that the key to Chinese foreign policy, and hence to hostility or friendship with its neighbors and the United States, will be found in the course that this transformation takes. Finally, I will suggest that the United States must prepare simultaneously for two eventualities. In the short term I expect relations with China to become more conflictual, but in the longer term I expect a process in which hostilities and tensions will diminish.
Legitimacy and Governance
I start with governmental legitimacy, because this is the single most pressing problem facing the People's Republic of China today, yet it is one that many observers overlook. If we dig into Chinese history, we find that the concept of rule founded everything on morality. The king or ruler is above all a man of virtue; ultimately it is his virtue, reflected and refracted throughout society, that guarantees order and peace. Not only that, in traditional thought rule is conditional on virtue: a wicked king is a contradiction in terms, for no wicked man can in fact be a true king.
This conditional view of legitimacy is very different from the old Western idea of the divine right of kings, in which anyone possessing the right bloodline had an absolute right to rule--regardless of his personal merits. These are not mere antiquarian musings. The basic ideas of morality just mentioned are every bit as much a part of Chinese life today as Judeo-Christian concepts are in the United States, and judged by them the current leadership of the People's Republic of China comes off very badly. Not only is its ruling elite entirely self-perpetuating, operating without clearly specified constitutional structures and untouched by any electoral mechanism above the most local level; that ruling elite is also now known to have become perhaps terminally corrupt, appropriating benefits and wealth at every level from village to central committee--with the leading clans, such as those of ex-strongman Deng Xiaoping and current prime minister Li Peng, now having amassed foreign assets estimated in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Rule by such an elite is difficult to sustain in any society, and given the moral orientations just mentioned, perhaps particularly so in China. Indignation at wholesale corruption, and a desire that it should be purged by an opening of the system to general participation, was one of the driving factors in the 1989 democracy movement, and those grievances are still strongly felt. But the response of the ruling elite to the 1989 challenge is also significant. There was no consultation, no opening, not even an acknowledgment that the crowds of people had any legitimate rights--although many in the Chinese government argued for such a positive response. Instead tanks came and hails of bullets, to be followed by waves of arrests and steady strengthening of the forces of repression: the People's Armed Police, the security organs, the censors.
Today's Beijing government is very much the one that came to power then, after Tiananmen. It is currently pursuing a policy of authoritarianism coupled with patriotic and nationalistic mobilization, intended somehow to keep itself in power without ever actually facing its citizens in an election. Now all of this sounds very grim, like something out of Brezhnev's USSR, and it certainly can be, if you are a dissident like Wei Jingsheng or a Tibetan or anyone else unfortunate enough to attract the government's attention. But this is also only a partial picture. Other forces are also loose in China, and like a powerful tide they are eroding the foundations of this would-be dictatorship. Rapid growth and privatization of the economy means that hundreds of millions of Chinese are free of the old web of ration coupons and household registration and able to pursue their own goals. Openings in education, the media, and travel mean that millions of Chinese have been abroad--tens of thousands have studied just in the United States--while those remaining at home have rather good access to information. In rural areas, hundreds of millions of Chinese have participated in rudimentary elections. Globally, China is increasingly integrated, and dependent on the rest of the world for economic survival in a way unprecedented in the fifty years of Chinese communism.
We face, in other words, a China full of dynamism yet riddled with contradictions, in which society, economy, and government are pulling in many different directions simultaneously. This is not a situation that can persist indefinitely. Potentially it is highly volatile, and may be subject to an abrupt break or crisis--like that which swept the country in the spring of 1989. Yet many observers will tell you that the Chinese communist party, with its enormous police forces and the People's Liberation Army in reserve, will be able to keep the lid on indefinitely. I disagree. Straight-line projections of China's present into the future--whether it is party rule, or the ascendancy of current President Jiang Zemin, or even the rapidity of economic growth--are worse than useless. They will render us as unprepared to deal with China's real future, just as the projections of mainstream Kremlinologists did for the Soviet Union less than a decade ago. History shows no example of a state where economy, society, and intellectual life were transformed--as they are being transformed in China--but where political change does not follow.
So what I see when I look at China today is the approach of a dramatic period of regime change. A system as centralized as China's seeks to be cannot long accommodate a modern economy, with its associated profound social and economic shifts. Something will have to give. Many China specialists today do not accept this reasoning. They foresee a future China ruled as it is now by a single communist party and a single strongman at the top, but modernized in many other respects. I do not agree. Whether change will be chaotic or explosive or incremental or smooth, I cannot say--although the answer is important for the United States and the world--but that change is coming, on a scale comparable to that which swept Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union beginning in 1989, of that I have no doubt. Indeed, history since the beginning of the Twentieth Century bears me out.
Chinese have long been aware of the need to tailor government to social and economic reality, and the result has been a series of constitutions and regimes, all paying lip-service to democracy and some actually practicing some, but none ever succeeding fully. The current communist regime is the most recent of these, and it too bases its legitimation in theory on democratic process, although in fact, above the most local level, everything is orchestrated from the center. But communism in China, as elsewhere in the world, is now approaching its final curtain, The issue, therefore, is what will follow. Will China become a non-communist but still authoritarian state? Will it democratize? Or will it slip into a kind of low, or high-level chaos?
Foreign Policy
On the nature and timing of the change just mentioned depends in turn China's foreign policy, and that in turn will do much to set the course of Asian security affairs in the decades to come. If, as I expect, we manage to navigate the present period of tension and conflict without an actual war, then a strong possibility exists that inexorable liberalization within Chinese society will lead to a more moderate foreign policy. Indeed, a tough American policy now increases that possibility, by frustrating the aggressive factions and strengthening the hands of the Chinese moderates domestically. At present a weak central government in Beijing is attempting to keep everything and everybody in line by means of intimidation: we see it in the harsh sentences on dissidents and the foolish dismissal of the Dalai Lama's reasonable offers for negotiation and the fireworks display in the Taiwan Strait.
Behind all this lies the ancient concept of wei: awesomeness, a psychological quality, derived from force and its use, but far more extensive in its influence, that Chinese identify as crucial to anyone who would exert power, especially without other legitimacy. But as Chinese political theorists have long recognized, the attempt to centralize internally through force alone and without reference to de or virtue, leads inexorably to fissures in the country as individuals, classes, and regions disassociate themselves from the oppressive central power.
Foreign policy exacerbates the problem. The sort of full-perimeter attempt at control that Beijing is now engaged in--from Tibet to Taiwan--will not work. It is based at root on beefed up police at home and acquisitions of some modern weapons from Russia abroad, and depends on citizens absorbed in economic activity or neighbors unprepared to respond. But everything has its limit. The domestic situation in China is tense today, and disorder or strikes or intra-elite conflict are quite possible. Internationally, weapons acquisitions can be matched--indeed, Asian arms races are underway now that are doing just that--while surprise usually works but once.
Already China's neighbors are beginning to resist China, which means real trouble, for Beijing's capacity to coerce is in fact largely symbolic and strictly limited. One crisis--like that in the Taiwan Strait--already absorbs and preoccupies the system; two, say one on the coast and one in Muslim Inner Asia, will stretch things terribly, and this is not to mention possible associated domestic protests; three will mean total overextension--and most likely a change of regime, engineered from within. I expect that any new regime, even if it is not democratic, will seek to disencumber itself--rather as European colonial powers did after World War II--of claims and territories having no crucial importance, identifying vital interests and letting the rest go. That will probably mean negotiated compromise settlements with Tibet, Taiwan, and the Muslims, and a new and cooperative approach to neighbors on issues like the South China Sea. If France can leave Algeria, then certainly China can arrive at a Tibetan policy all can accept. If it is democratic, a new Chinese regime is likely to be even more congenial, although as recent experience in Europe and Russia shows, fledgling democracies are vulnerable and potentially troublesome creatures.
I believe that within the next decade China will begin moving in the direction of legality, constitutionalism, and popular participation in government, and that this development, more than any other, will create a fundamentally optimistic future for Asia. But China may not move in these directions at all, or at least not in the short run, and that will mean real danger, for China will then be a well-armed and economically powerful state, but like a dinosaur, having a totally inadequate brain. Through error or intention, such a China will be a problem for Asia, and will spur a whole series of negative developments--arms races, nuclear proliferation, and a general increase in political tension. Such a China may be called an ascending power, and will be perhaps statistically, but it will not be a stable power, or one likely to last. Here the immediate facts are not encouraging. China is a well-educated and technologically-sophisticated country, that has already developed world-class nuclear and missile programs. Now it is pouring money into a wide range of technologically-sophisticated military acquisitions, as well as devoting its own substantial technical resources to military modernization. Far better communications systems, excellent anti-aircraft missiles, fighter planes that come from the top of the old Soviet inventory, and ultra-quiet diesel submarines, are among the most important systems entering the Chinese inventory.
If we project developments forward, it is quite possible to foresee a China in twenty years' time possessing a very large and extremely sophisticated military that would threaten not only U.S. allies and interests in Asia, but also the United States itself. It is important for the United States to consider this possibility and to make contingency plans to deal with it should it arise. Certainly we must not dismiss it and run the risk that if and when it does appear, our forces will be inadequate. But on the other hand, we should not overstate either China's capacity to become a military superpower, or the likelihood that China will become a long-term adversary. A host of factors, China's own interests not least, argue against that possibility--although they do not guarantee against a period of real tension. Successful "ascending powers" rise not because they are heavily armed, or bludgeon and intimidate their neighbors, but because they have strong institutions that mesh with and complement their neighbors', and operate cooperatively. Napoleon used his military genius to conquer Europe and create a French empire, but it collapsed in ruins, attacked by its erstwhile victims, while the emperor was only in his fifties. After 1890, Germany, by all rights and endowments the natural great power of Europe, was twice devastated by entirely unnecessary wars brought on by its own diplomatic arrogance and trust in force. The United States, by contrast, enjoys influence and power in both Europe and Asia not least because, whatever the frictions may be, we and our allies share values, are democratic, and refrain from mutual threat and intimidation.
The negative example that best illuminates China's current situation is, to my mind, the experience of Germany in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Germany then, like China today, was a young power, sensitive about status and slights. It was not democratic: unification under Prussian auspices had meant the crushing of the once-powerful liberal German patriotic movement. Partly for this reason--the need to burnish legitimacy--Berlin was eager to show its people that it could be a "great power." But emergence as such into a balanced diplomatic system like that of late nineteenth century Europe was fraught with peril, as Otto von Bismarck, the chancellor, recognized. His policy, therefore, until 1890 when he was dismissed, was to avoid provocations, reassure neighbors, and divide potential adversaries. The result--even with two small and one fairly important war--was a period of general peace. After Bismarck was dismissed, however, the Kaiser and his advisers embarked on a program of national assertion, based on jealously of England and the vague demand for a "place in the sun" that quickly stirred conflict. Just as China today is buying advanced fighters and submarines that have little conceivable use except as tools of intimidation and aggressive war, so Berlin embarked on the building of a High Seas Fleet aimed precisely at intimidating Britain and frightening her away from participation in any European war (this was the famous "risk fleet" concept). Just as China today is provoking confrontation with neighbors--as in last year's incident when the disputed Mischief Reef in the Spratlys was occupied militarily by China--so Berlin sought confrontations, as with France over Morocco.
The German calculation, chillingly like what I take the Chinese to be now, was either that the other Powers would back down in a direct confrontation, or that Germany would win a lightning victory by dint of operational brilliance. The outbreak of World War I--and Britain's rapid decision to join in--disproved the first part of that calculation; four years of tragic bloodshed ending in German defeat disproved the second. Unfortunately, the next few years look to see a Chinese repeat of the failed Wilhelmine German experiment. A vulnerable central government turns to patriotism and foreign policy to bolster popularity at home; it modernizes its military forces, making excellent use of the latest technologies; it seeks some small easy victories, but underestimates its adversaries, and encounters checks and humiliating reverses. A coalition forms against it. In the case of Germany, a final miscalculation--over disciplining Serbia--brought on world war. But that need not be the case with China.
American Policy
Germany's false calculations on the eve the First World War were produced above all by a failure of the German military to take seriously the possibility that Britain would enter a continental war in support of her interests--there were no binding alliances--in Europe. Much the same impetus can be seen in China's clear intention to divide the United States from its Asian allies, and the conviction--widespread until the beginning of the most recent Taiwan Straits crisis--that in the end the United States would stand aloof. To keep the peace in Asia, the United States must keep its alliances strong. We are already seeing how a China that behaves like Wilhelmine Germany is producing an Asian coalition to oppose it. The United States is currently being drawn into a deterrent role against China in the Taiwan Strait; Southeast Asian states are talking about linking up with Japan; India, China's true peer competitor, looks at Beijing's general policy direction--and at specific actions in the Indian Ocean--with suspicion, and cautiously seeks allies. Russia, with Israel currently one of China's major sources of advanced weaponry, also worries about the future of the Russian Far East and the borderlands. Arms sales are rising in Asia.
In the 1970s, when China abandoned her international isolation, only the USSR was her clear adversary and the rest of the world were eager to become friends. Today many of those would-be friends are reconsidering. I suspect that the same charges of diplomatic incompetence that were laid against Bismarck's successors may soon be leveled against the hard-liners driving Beijing's current policy. It was said in the 1910s that when Bismarck was in charge, Berlin had no credible European enemies, but that by the eve of World War I, Germany was surrounded by hostile states. This was not the result of inexorable historical forces, but rather of incompetence and miscalculation. It could have been otherwise. I hope China will learn the lesson.
Because the United States is, in Asia as in Europe, the indispensable leader in security affairs, it is very important for us to recognize and to address these developing problems in East Asia. Our policy must have two parts: military deterrence of China, and cooperation with our allies. I expect these problems to be short term. If China changes, we will naturally modify our policies. But we must not nourish unrealistic hopes and must stay the course as long as necessary. Militarily, this means we ought to begin to consider the possibility of substantial tension in maritime Asia, perhaps for some time. Japan, Taiwan, and the states of Southeast Asia all might be involved in one way or another, but even if they play major military roles, the United States will probably need more force in that part of the world than it possesses now. We must forge strong alliances with our friends--and particular with Tokyo. We must not allow these relationships to be split--for Sun Zi says, "first, attack his alliances" and Beijing still reads Sun Zi. Our State Department and Department of Defense must spend proportionally more time on Asian issues. We must not imagine that simple blanket solutions are possible--and in particular not imagine that some sort of arrangement with a China that has not yet changed can serve our long term interests. I suspect that our role in Asia is going to begin to look like the one we played in Europe before the end of the USSR.
We must also be aware of another looming danger. Most of our attention has traditionally focused on Asia's sea frontiers. But with the breakup of the Soviet Union, land borders in Eurasia have become fluid and possibly conflictual. Russia, India, Kazakhstan, Xinjiang, Tibet, Mongolia, and other regions are no longer geopolitically frozen. So we must also start thinking about what I call a "Major Eurasian Contingency"--that is to say, some sort of conflict developing on the inner frontiers of China and her neighbors. Either case will demand a stronger and differently configured American military force to the one we have today. We must question, and most likely set aside, the optimistic projections on which current structures are based--the ones that, like British and other calculations in the inter-war period, assume no major conflict for ten or twenty years. But military preparation is best thought of as insurance; somehow we like it the best if in fact we never need to use it.
The next several years will be an important test for the United States in Asia. China, Russia, India, and other states--including our allies and friends--will be sizing us up, to see whether we have the resolve to face threats and deter them, and the diplomatic skill in peacetime to manage friendships and alliances having complex political and economic, as well as security dimensions. If the answers are yes, and our alliances remain strong, then we may move in Asia, as we did in the European Cold War, from the equivalent today of the hair-raising Berlin Crises of the 1950s and 1960s, to some future equivalents of Ostpolitik and Detente, capped off, perhaps, by genuine liberalization in China. But if we flinch, then Asia will become a security free-for-all, like Europe in the first half of this century, with every state arming, none truly allied, and none able to find the way to peace. Domestic politics will tempt us powerfully toward the second option. But American national interest demands we follow the first.
Thank you.
-USN-
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