“We are not dealing with the China of the 1990s or
even the 2000s, but a completely different animal that represents a clear
challenge to our democratic values”.
Francis Fukuyama
One China, One System
One China, Two Systems? No, One
China, One system. For President Xi Jingping the 1947-29 Chinese Communist
Revolution will not be complete until Hong Kong and Taiwan are brought fully
under Beijing’s writ. Xi’s senses the moment might be fast approaching when the
‘correlation of forces’ are sufficiently in his favour for him to forcefully
unify China. The imposition of National Security Legislation over Hong Kong by
Beijing could well be but the beginning of the forced unification of China. Indeed,
Chinese military exercises near the Taipei controlled Paratas/Dongsha islands
could also signal stage two of the Plan is coming soon. This would involve the
forced unification of Taiwan with Mainland China far earlier than the stated
date of 2049, the centennial of the Communist Party’s seizure of power.
Critically, President Xi’s power
exploitation of the COVID-19 crisis has shone a light on how Beijing really
sees power and its determination to extend its writ across China, East Asia,
and much of the rest of the world. There was something tragically quaint about
Chris Patten bleating this week about a new dictatorship in Hong Kong. Britain’s last governor of Hong Kong would
have suspected even in 1997 at the time of the Handover that Beijing would at
some point move to impose Chinese sovereignty over the Special Administrative
Region long before the fifty years agreed. Like so much of British foreign and
security policy these days the Handover was merely a device for a Britain in
retreat to save face.
Xi’s rise to power
Fukuyama is right; Xi’s China is
not the China of his predecessor Hu Jintao. The process of projecting power
abroad is changing the very nature of the Communist Party, which now relies for
its power base more on Han Chinese nationalism than ideology.
Whilst Hu was never more than
primus inter pares, Xi is distinctly primus. In the wake of the Communist
Party’s brutal 1989 suppression of the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square Beijing
opted to re-build social cohesion by focussing on economic growth. The policy was overseen by a cautious oligarchy
which was focused on China’s domestic stability. Whilst it proved spectacularly
successful it also led to a period of relative calm in China’s foreign
policy.
All that changed in November 2012
when Xi Jingping became General Secretary of the Party. For eight years Xi has focussed
on three policy goals. First, consolidation of his own power and that of the
Party through anti-corruption drives and the establishment of greater
censorship. Second, a more aggressive
policy of forced unification and military expansionism, particularly in and
around the South China Sea. Third, the development of the People’s Liberation
Army into a power projection force. The latter policy was accelerated in March
2018 when this Princeling of the Party became the de facto President-for-Life.
As President-for-Life Xi has far
more in common with the Chinese emperors of old or Mao Zedong in his later
years, than either Marx or Lenin. Indeed, under Xi the Chinese Communist Party
is fast becoming a Chinese Nationalist Party, which is historically ironic
given that it was the Communists that in 1949 defeated Chiang Kai Shek and the
Chinese Nationalists (Kuomintang) at the end of (Part One?) the Chinese
Communist Revolution. Chiang Kai Shek and the Nationalists retreated onto the
island of Taiwan and have been there ever since.
Kow-towing to history
How the Han Chinese see the world
and China’s place in it is thus central to any understanding of Beijing’s
contemporary foreign and security policy. The Han Chinese represent some 92% of
the Chinese population and a shared culture and historical narrative that dates
back some four thousand years. They tend
to be deeply patriotic, bordering on the nationalistic, with a particular view
of Chinese history and the role of foreigners in it. Central to the Han Chinese
world view is the idea of the Middle Kingdom or Central Kingdom that goes back
to their origins as a series of communities clustered around the Yellow and
Yangtse rivers. For many Han Chinese it
is the emergence of Imperial China and the Xia dynasty in the third century BC
which fires the imagination. Thereafter,
China was at the forefront of technology, economy and philosophy for centuries.
This glorious (and often
glorified) epoch of Chinese history sits in stark contrast to the humiliation
the Chinese suffered at the hands of foreigners, mainly the West, from the
mid-eighteenth century to the recent past. Indeed, there is a profound shared
and collective sense of China having been mistreated and disrespected by European
imperialists, Japan and US. Several tragic events stand out for the Chinese.
The so-called ‘unequal treaties’ when Imperial Britain forced the Chinese to
cede control of Hong Kong in 1842. The 1901 crushing of the anti-imperialist,
anti-Christian and anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion which also saw the defeat of
the Imperial Army by an eight nation alliance of Austro-Hungary, Britain,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia and the United States was deeply
humiliating. The rise of Imperial Japan, the 1931 invasion of Manchuria, and
the 1937 Japanese Rape of Nanking, in which up to 300,000 Chinese may have been
murdered, are further compounded by a continuing sense of outrage over further
Japanese atrocities committed during the occupation prior to 1945. US backing for Chinese nationalists during
the Revolution, the 1949 Amethyst
Incident and China’s decisive October 1950 intervention in the Korean War
against US-led United Nations forces all help to shape the world-view of many
millions of Han Chinese.
Pay-back
That same history also informs Xi
Jingping and much of China’s contemporary civil, and in particular, powerful
military leadership, which is also Xi’s power-base within the Party. Consequently, a toxic mix of historical
nationalism and power hubris is taking hold, reinforcing the sense in Beijing
that the twenty-first century will be China’s century and pay-back time for all
the many indignations and humiliations China has suffered at the hands of
foreign powers. Critically, behind the Grand Overseas Propaganda Campaign, aggressive
espionage and massive and routine cyber-attacks China is offering an implicit
choice to the democratic world: embrace China’s rise or be crushed by it.
The paradox is that Xi is fast
turning China into a very nineteenth century, twenty-first century imperial power
in which balances of power and spheres of influence dominate policy choices and
nationalism is routinely instrumentalised as insurance against economic decline
and any domestic challenge to the Party’s untrammelled power. There is also
little reason to believe Beijing will change course for the simple reason Xi
thinks he is winning. For that reason
alone China is likely to remain inherently autocratic, periodically confrontational
and routinely coercive when it believes such action will be to its advantage.
Statecraft and the Chinese
Dual Track
What to do about Xi’s China? Statecraft
is essentially the art of making others believe one’s own interests are their
interests whilst avoiding shooting oneself in either the foot or worse the head
in the process. As such, statecraft
concerns the constant adaptation of state postures and behaviours. Given
Chinese assertiveness both before and during the COVID-19 crisis the
relationship between China and many of the world’s democracies is in need of
rebalancing, with European states to the fore.
Too many Europeans are too dependent on China for too many vital things
and Beijing will not hesitate to use such dependence as leverage as and when it
suits. However, talk of hard decoupling is also misguided because it might well
precipitate the very outcome everyone should be seeking to avoid: war. Like Imperial Japan in the face of the ruinous
pre-war US oil embargo if Beijing believes there will be no better moment to
act than now then military action might seem the only option for fear of Xi’s
historic mission being denied.
Therefore, given the stakes and
the scale of the challenge a China strategy worthy of the name would need to
involve all the world’s major democracies (the Global West?) and balance
realism, reason and resolve. Any such
strategy would also need at least ten basic tenets that equally balance defence
and dialogue:
Reason:
1.
Unless hard proof emerges of malfeasance
agreement that China will not be blamed for COVID-19 and recognition of all and
any efforts by the Chinese to assist in combatting the pandemic.
2.
Renewed efforts by European and other US
allies to convince China to use the UN to resolve all grievances and conflicts
through international law, with arbitration to deal with specific disputes in
the South China Sea. .
3.
Acknowledgement that China is a Tier One
power and will be accorded the respect that such power commands.
4.
Acceptance that globalisation will
continue and that whilst some reshoring will be needed to ensure supply chains
are not reliant on one source no purposeful effort will be undertaken to damage
the Chinese economy.
5.
Agreement to work with China on the
creation of a new arms control architecture relevant to twenty-first century
technology.
Realism and Resolve:
6.
A shared understanding of the minimum
deterrence needed to challenge the assumptions of hard-liners around President
Xi keen to seize a perceived opportunity.
7.
Systematic and aggressive countering of
Chinese digital warfare, espionage and cognitive warfare through expanded
deterrence across the conventional, digital and nuclear spectrum.
8.
Active and collective support for the US
in its efforts to ensure the UN Convention on the Law at Sea (UNCLOS) is
upheld, specifically when it concerns freedom of navigation in international waters.
9.
Determination by the US and its allies to respond
to Chinese military activity and ambitions in the air, sea, land, cyber and
space domains and actively respond to Chinese efforts to exploit new
technologies in warfare from hypersonic weaponry to artificially-intelligent
tactical and intercontinental systems.
10.
Identification of all strategic
technologies from semi-conductors to systems architectures such as 5G and its
future developments that must be fully sourced from within the community of
global democracies.
The price of failure
Statecraft at times also involves
the deliberate combining of obfuscation with consequence. The right of Taiwan
and Hong Kong to self-determination will be the most challenging issue for the
democracies. For the moment, the safest
course of action for both must be support for the status quo; autonomy short of
independence. Support for any other
outcome when it is highly unlikely democratic powers would fight for either
would be dangerous. At the same time,
Beijing must also be clear that aggressive action against either would see
China be designated an aggressor and trigger a determined reaction from the
democratic powers across the political, economic and, indeed, military
spectrum. However, clarity is also needed with regard to consequence.
Unfortunately, with hard-liners seemingly in control in Beijing it is hard to
see how a war to force Taiwan under Beijing’s yoke can be avoided unless Xi’s
China dramatically changes course. The
alternative is that Taipei accepts One China, One System, which is extremely
unlikely given that the Chinese civil war never really ended. That stark
reality begs two further enormous questions. Would the US go to war to defend
Taiwan? What would be the implications
for US power and influence across the Indo-Pacific and, indeed, the wider world
if it did not?
However, demonization of China
would also be self-defeating and thus poor statecraft. The West must neither
under-estimate the scope of China’s challenge, nor the extent to which Xi and
much of the China he leads sees itself locked in a power or perish struggle. This
is particularly the case now that COVID-19 has stripped bare the false
politesse of power.
The Great Twenty-First Century Power ‘game’ is afoot. How we play it, and how well we play it, could well
decide peace and war. If the ‘game’ is to be played at all it must be based on
respect.
Julian Lindley-French
