Why is China’s rise so contentious?
Joel R. Campbell outlines how China’s rise became contested and the implications of this for US–China relations
Nancy Pelosi surprised the world when she accepted an invitation to visit Taiwan in August 2022 in what was the highest-level visit by an American official since 1997. The trip was widely supported by both Democrats and Republicans in the US Congress, but China immediately condemned it as an infringement on its sovereignty and promised severe consequences. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy launched drills in the seas surrounding the island that lasted five days and consisted of exercises that demonstrated China’s ability to isolate Taiwan and impose a blockade, if necessary. The visit thus became another flashpoint between Beijing and Washington and illustrated China’s propensity to flex its political muscles.
As has often been the case, the most contentious Sino-American issue has once again become Taiwan. Xi Jinping’s government has pressured Taipei to toe the line on its ‘One China’ policy and other matters. When asked in a 2021 CNN town hall interview if the US would defend Taiwan, President Joe Biden answered simply ‘Yes, we have a commitment to do that.’ The White House tried to clarify the remark, but it had already generated international press reports. Biden had seemingly unintentionally abandoned the ‘strategic ambiguity’ that the US has maintained for the past 44 years. If China becomes more aggressive, America is now at least partially committed to help its Taiwanese friends.
Even more troubling for the international community were China’s e moves to stamp out the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong and suppress the Uyghur people in Xinjiang. As many as two million Uyghurs have been forced into concentration camps, which Beijing calls re-education centers. China’s National Security Law was adopted by Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing government in 2020, and the following year Hong Kong authorities began arresting and sentencing demonstration leaders, prominent members of the democratic opposition and journalists who are critical of Beijing and its hand-picked Hong Kong authorities. Now, the Hong Kong democratization process is essentially dead and Hong Kong is becoming just another Chinese city governed in an authoritarian manner. While criticisms of China’s human rights record are not new, recent developments have further exacerbated the growing rift between Beijing and Washington.
Why has China’s rise become contentious?
What is going on? Why has China’s rise to major power status become so contentious, and what does it portend for international relations? Five recent developments stand out. First, Beijing has abandoned its reform era avoidance of confrontation. Until 2012, Chinese foreign relations were governed by Deng Xiaoping’s dictum that China should hide its strength and bide its time to build up its economic strength and military might. Now, an empowered China feels that it can assert itself more clearly on the international stage.
Second, China’s rise has been on its internal international agenda for over fifteen years. Ever since former president and party leader Hu Jintao raised the topic, the notion of China as a revisionist power seeking to upend the international system has dominated geostrategic discussion in east Asia. The current leadership has gone further by forthrightly insisting on China’s great power status.
Third, the rise of Xi Jinping as party secretary and president has been accompanied by a forceful approach to domestic governance and international policy. Xi is widely considered the most powerful Chinese paramount leader since Mao Zedong. He is determined to remove any sources of opposition, whether among Chinese netizens or in far-flung Xinjiang province. Xi’s China Dream program encourages Chinese people to link their individual fates to the security of the nation. He seeks to restore China’s historic position at the center of east Asian regional relations and the most important power after the US. By the time China celebrates the 100th anniversary of Communist rule in 2049, Xi intends for China to have become the world’s most powerful state.
Fourth, Chinese public opinion has become increasingly nationalistic since the 1990s, and many Chinese broadly embrace China’s recent assertive stance. Many are understandably proud of their nation’s accomplishments since the beginning of reforms in 1978. Nationalist demonstrations are among the few exercises of public sentiment allowed by the government (the government quickly shut down anti-COVID lockdown demonstrations in over 100 cities in December 2022). Yang Jiechi, a Communist Party official who met US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken in Alaska shortly after Biden took office, criticized US actions as anti-Chinese. He insisted: ‘We believe that it is important for the United States to change its own image and to stop advancing its own democracy in the rest of the world.’ He added, in an apparent reference to the 6 January 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, that ‘many people within the United States actually have little confidence in [their] democracy’. That his words were printed on t-shirts and other items in China is a reflection of public support for a firmer stance on relations with the US.
Finally, China has been developing and testing a range of new hypersonic and cruise missiles as well as other weapons. It has also decided to triple its nuclear arsenal, to be a closer nuclear competitor to the US and Russia. China will soon have three mainline aircraft carriers that can go toe-to-toe with American or European ships, along with a range of fighters and interceptors that can take on the best Russian and American aircraft.
A new Cold War?
Are America and China destined for a new Cold War? IR maven Graham Allison suggests the repeat of Thucydides’s Trap, in which a rising power that seeks to change the international system comes into conflict with a status quo power that wants to keep system dynamics more or less as they are. China is the clearest example in the post-Cold War era of a rising state seeking to alter the great power balance. Will the two great powers inevitably conflict? In trade terms, these two giants remain interdependent, and that mutual dependence puts a check on potential conflict. China depends on America to absorb its exports, while America needs cheap Chinese goods to keep inflation low. American companies require China as a base for cheap labour manufacturing, in order to keep up with global supply chains and remain competitive. And Washington depends on Chinese purchases of US Treasury bonds to help finance its massive government debt.
Are Sino-American relations a lost cause for now? Not necessarily. An encouraging sign is that Washington and Beijing reached an agreement on climate change just before the COP-26 meeting in Glasgow in late 2021. Xi cut communication with Washington on security and climate issues due to Pelosi’s Taiwan visit but, in a bilateral meet-up on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia in November 2022, he agreed with Biden to resume discussions in both areas. Both countries at least recognize that the state of our planet presents the most important issues that humanity faces. That is at least one small area of progress between Washington and Beijing. Let us hope that this tiny zone of cooperation can expand to include the more contentious areas topics of trade, human rights and Taiwan.
Joel Campbell is an Associate Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Troy University.
His book review of ‘History, memory, and politics in postwar Japan’ edited by Iokibe Kaoru, Komiya Kazuo, Hosoya Yuichi and Miyagi Taizo was published in the September 2022 issue of International Affairs.
His most recent book ‘The Politics and International Relations of Fantasy Films and Television: To Win or Die was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2023.
All views expressed are individual not institutional.
