The rise of China and the logic of great power competition (2014)

Graham Allison (2017) has  observed that 11 out of 16 times since 1500 in which a rising power challenged a dominant power, the result was war. It is therefore worth casting light on China’s economic and political rise. After all, China’s re-emergence as the world’s largest economy and, potentially, the world’s most powerful state is bound to lead to significant changes in the global distribution of power. It will significantly affect the patterns of cooperation, competition and conflict in virtually all policy areas.

China has, or is about to replace, the US as the world’s largest economy this year or next – if measured in purchasing power parity terms. This will be the first time since the United States replaced Britain in the early 1870s that the baton of economic supremacy will be passed on. A shift in the distribution of global power seems all but inevitable. Whether the rise of China will only affect the distribution of power within the system, or whether it will transform the system itself remains to be seen. The nature and degree of change is bound to vary across different sub-systems and regimes. Patterns of co-operation, competition and conflict will depend on how dissatisfied with the status quo a rising China will be as well as to what extent the status quo powers are willing to co-opt China by accommodating its interests (Ikenberry 2008). Finally, Chinese interests themselves are not immutable and are bound to change over time. China’s approach to intellectual property rights and foreign investment, for instance, already seems to have shifted as a result of China’s increased innovation potential, desire to protect its own IPRs and rising outward investment.

Source: WTO

China’s economic growth underpins its increasing international power across a wide range of issue areas. At present, China is focussed on sustaining its economic growth and its foreign policy seems to have been mostly geared towards this end. The greater assertiveness that China recently demonstrated with regards to maritime claims arguably constitutes an important shift, however. China’s increasing economic wealth allows it to upgrade its military force, while its increasing economic integration increase its incentive to protect its economic interests and prosperity on which its continued rise depends. Critically, foreign trade, and especially an increasing dependence on commodity imports and the concomitant economic, political and military vulnerability, increases China’s desire to secure its sea lines of communication. China has already begun to seek to improve its military position in the seas surrounding China by expanding its naval capabilities and to change the territorial status quo. Whatever the short-term factors underpinning this development, the ultimate strategic goal is to project naval power further afield in order to secure China’s foreign trade and provide China with the tools to prevent a blockade of its sea-based trade – or at the very least raise the costs faced by potential opponents of doing so. 

Expanding naval capabilities have already led and will continue to lead to rising frictions and outright military competition with many of its maritime neighbours as well as the dominant military power in the region, the United States. More broadly, China’s rise as a regional challenger to US power in East Asia will lead to increasing political competition between China, on the one hand, and a US-led alliance of states weary of China’s increasing power. Political competition will not necessarily undercut intensifying economic interaction between the two sides. Importantly, only because China will not be able to match US military power one for one in the near future and only because an armed conflict between China and the US is not in the interest of either side, this does not mean that there is not going to be any competition, if not necessarily, conflict in maritime East Asia and a little further down the line in South-East Asia and the Indian Ocean, and eventually the Pacific. 

Chinese policies can be interpreted, perhaps even explained, as part of a broader, longer-term strategy. The term strategy is used very loosely here. Strategy is not necessarily a plan worked out in advance by a unified political leadership. Strategy may well be the outcome of bureaucratic politics or the result of competing domestic political interests. While perhaps stretching the meaning of the term, strategy can be defined as the sum of the choices made by a state in response to the varying incentives and constraints it faces in the pursuit of longer-term objectives, namely prosperity and security, regardless of how and why these policies emerge from domestic political processes and conflicts. States face external constraints and incentives. Whatever the domestic political dynamics, to the extent that China is a rising power it will seek to perpetuate its economic rise, both a pre-condition and a consequence of relative security. 

Analysts who are inclined to see China’s rise as problematic typically attribute individual policies to a broader, longer-term malevolent intent and plans (cf. Jervis 1976). This is a mistake, if only because it diminishes our understanding of China’s motives and of the logic of international competition. Only because policy-makers (and analysts) suffer from cognitive biases does not mean that any talk of intentionality is utterly misplaced. But it there is strong reason to believe that China’s rise will resemble the rise of other greater powers and this resemblance can largely be attributed to the operation of system-level logic. States pursue their interests and – in the realm of security – this translates into zero-sum games. Any rising power will want to pursue economic prosperity and physical security – one generally being the pre-condition for the other. The conditions under which China is pursuing these objectives may differ from those faced by a rising Germany in the late 19^th (e.g. absence of nuclear weapons) or a risen  USSR during the second half of the 20^th century (e.g. land vs. maritime competition). But China’s rise will lead to increased, if initially local, security competition. It already has. In short, the belief (or hope?) that China’s rise will not lead to increased competition will prove to be an illusion (Mearsheimer [2001] 2014: chapter 10). 

China is unlikely to engage in expansionary wars and a great power war is highly unlikely due to the existence of nuclear weapons. But China’s rise will lead to increased competition and rising political tensions over the medium- to long-term. It would be a mistake to blame China for this. Individual countries typically find it impossible to disregard the system-level incentives and constraints that tend to compel rising powers to expand their power and declining powers to check the rising power. 

Rising China – peaceful development vs. the logic of great power competition (2014)

Rising powers tend to challenge the status quo. This is hardly surprising. If international regimes and institutions exist, they are likely to reflect the interests of the dominant power or powers that created or modified them over time. Even if the rising power accepts the existing arrangements, it will seek to gain a greater say within them. In other words: sometimes rising powers seek overthrow the existing regime, and sometimes they will seek to modify the balance-of-power while remaining supportive of the basic function and structure of the regime. The degree to which change takes place will vary by issue area and is determined by the ability to resist change by the status quo powers as well as their willingness to accommodate the rising power. The rise of a state to economic supremacy generally proves disruptive.

China is likely to have little interest in changing the main pillars of the international trade and financial regime. After all, it has done rather nicely. But it will want to have greater say within the existing structures and institutions. In other areas, China may seek more fundamental changes (e.g. maritime claims). Many analysts have likened China’s rise to that of the German Empire after 1871 and fully expect China’s rise to be similarly destabilising (Friedberg 2011; Mearsheimer [2001] 2003: chapter 10). Others believe that China, benefitting hugely from the current global system, will become a “responsible shareholder” (Shambaugh 2005; Ikenberry 2008). 

Nonetheless, historical experience suggests that great power transitions give rise to instability, and, historically, more often than not great power war (Gilpin 1981, Kennedy 1987). Power transition theory postulates that “(a)n even distribution of political, economic, and military capabilities between contending groups of states is likely to increase the probability of war; peace is preserved best when there is an imbalance of national capabilities between disadvantaged and advantaged nations; the aggressor will come from a small group of dissatisfied strong countries; and it is the weaker, rather than the stronger; power that is most likely to be the aggressor” (Organski 1958). A weak state or coalition of states is unlikely to directly challenge the dominant power militarily. Knowing that there is little chance of success, weaker states will refrain from challenging the dominant power. Once dominant power and challenger move closer to economic-military parity and it becomes less obvious who would prevail in a direct confrontation. Moreover, the dominant power fearing to lose ground may be led to engage in prevention. 

Economic interdependence risks making military conflict more painful and nuclear weapons would make it potentially more destructive. Certainly, as WWI demonstrated, economic integration is not an absolute barrier to military conflict. It remains to be seen to what extent the existence of nuclear weapons will help prevent a great power war. Accounting for the existence of nuclear weapons, which makes a direct military confrontation unlikely, competition and confrontation does not necessarily take place in the form of military confrontation. More likely, this will play out in diplomatic, economic and political terms against the backdrop of on-going military competition, but not an outright confrontation. The Cold War did end without a clash between the US and the Soviet Union.

Washington is responding to the perceived rise in Chinese power and capabilities in the political and military sphere by strengthening relations with its regional allies (e.g. Australia, India, Japan) and potential partners/ allies (e.g. Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam) and increasing its military (naval) posture in the region, while treading cautiously in areas of more direct concern to Beijing (e.g. Taiwan). At the same time, Washington is seeking to engage Beijing in the economic sphere, albeit it with limited success thus far (e.g. currency policy). The “responsible shareholder” school foresees, not least because Beijing (in their view) will remain focused on domestic economic development (“peaceful rise”, “peaceful development”) and therefore would be foolish to challenge a political and economic set-up from which it has benefitted tremendously over the past three decades. Sure, recent diplomatic and naval clashes with its neighbours over a variety of maritime claims (Japan, the Philippines, Vietnam) as well as territorial disputes (India) is not exactly helping to mollify China’s neighbours.