Recently the “China Threat” School has focused on the South China Sea as the point of US-China’s most evident flashpoint – and a likely challenge to US influence in Asia.  As noted by Columbia’s Andrew Nathan, there have been a spate of books that have emerged since the 1990s on the China threat.  And even those not necessarily attracted to China Threat or Realist perspectives – more on them in the following post-  have identified the region as a possible site of US-China rivalry.  So for this blogger it seemed timely to examine the challenges to US-China relations posed by the South China Sea.  Andrew Nathan has just mentioned has provided a recent “Review Essay,” entitled, “What China Wants”, in Foreign Affairs. The  review tackles China’s foreign policy objectives. Nathan has used the essay to focus on two US China watchers – Henry Kissinger, who needs no introduction, and Princeton’s Aaron Friedberg. Nathan has used these two experts to uncover widely antipodal views of China’s foreign policy views in the US community of China experts.

I have reviewed earlier – in a posting at the Feature of the Week at The Munk School of Global Affairs’s Portal,  Kissinger’s views in “On China” Kissinger’s recent summation of his perspectives on China from his many years of involvement in China and his many exchanges with China’s leaders as a public and private figure.

Aaron Friedberg has a China Threat perspective but a reasonable one according to Nathan.  On Friedberg Nathan writes :

Friedberg also exaggerates Chinese power, although in pursuit of a different argument.  His is the most thoughtful and informative of a stream of China-threat books that have come out since the mid-1990s.  Within that genre, its contribution is to focus on China’s strategic intentions.  Although Friedberg agrees with the classical realist logic that a change in power relations inevitably generates rivalry, he also believes it is important to figure out what, as he puts it, China wants. … China [according to those Chinese experts Friedberg follows] should seek to “displace the United States as the dominant player in East Asia, and perhaps to extrude it from the region altogether.

David Shambaugh, an extremely well known international relations scholar and first rate China hand at George Washington University used his recent sabbatical very well and he paints in, “Coping with a Conflicted China” (The Washington Quarterly, Winter 2011) a highly differentiated view – as opposed to the China Threat School or Kissinger for that matter – of the various approaches that influence China’s foreign policy thought and behavior.

Shambaugh describes seven – yes seven – distinct tendencies in China’s international relations schools of thought.  As a result of competing identities, there are, according to Shambaugh, in China’s foreign policy several elements simultaneously in its thought and action.  While these schools of thought, or as Shambaugh prefers “tendencies of analysis,” then are distinct intellectually, they nevertheless generate competing international relations identities and China remains, “a deeply conflicted rising power with a series of competing international identities.”

Obviously if there are these competing identities it is likely to complicate dramatically how China may or may not act in a particular situation or over a particular issue or issues. But the complexity set out by Shambaugh is likely a reasonable antidote to the overly simplistic but dominant, “China Threat” and realist schools in Washington  .  So a quick review of Shambaugh’s tendencies of thought is warranted:

• Nativism (hyper-nationalistic and strongly anti-American) – “China should not be internationally active. … The group bears a strong traditional Marxist orientation” e.g., “China Can Say No” (Zhongguo Keyi Shuo Bu group);
• Realism (dominant group – found throughout the military and in some universities and think tanks) – “a very hard-headed definition (relying on power) and defense of China’s narrow national interests” e.g., Yan Xuetong – Tsinghua daxue, Zhang Ruizhang, Renmin daxue;
• Major Powers (China’s American Studies community) – focused on the major powers and major power blocs; “top priority maintaining harmonious ties with Washington”, e.g. Wang Jisi, Beida & Cui Liru, CICIR;
• Asia First – China’s focus should be on “its immediate periphery  and Asian neighborhood” – a focus on regional trends and the growing regional architecture – a multilateral regionalism balancing purely national strategies as well as bilateral relations.  Analysts urge the building of a stable neighborhood; e.g., Zhang Yunling, CASS, Qin Yaqing, China Foreign Affairs University
• Global South – main Chinese identity should be with the developing world and China should continue to see itself as a developing country and support common international positions with these countries notwithstanding China’s rising power status.  These analysts are strong supporters for the BRICS and G20 to the extent it enlarges the leadership pool and assists in the redistribution of power.  So joining the G20 leaders summit, according to this tendency of analysis, does not turn China into a status quo power;
• Selective Multilateralism – supports expanding China’s global involvement but only on issues where China has national security interests. These analysts have found global governance to be highly contentious – Is China obliged to become a “responsible international stakeholder” or does it even have the ability to take on global leadership? Those favoring this tendency of analysis, urge that “China avoid increasing China’s global involvements, but realize that China must be seen to be contributing to global governance.”  Thus these experts are not the equivalent of Liberal Internationalists “but instead are a more internationalist version of realists.”
• Globalism – these experts urge China “to shoulder the responsibility for addressing a range of global governance issues commensurate with its size, power, and influence.”  These group are close to the West’s, Liberal Institutionalism perspective.  These experts trust multilateral institutions more than the previous Selective Multilateralism.

The waters of the South China Sea have become the scene of increased tension with conflict over competing claims for islands and seabed mineral rights between China and its neighbors.  Now how does our understanding of the US China Threat School and realists and China’s seven tendencies in foreign policy thinking and behavior help us understand the China-US relations in this presumptive flashpoint?