{"id":3801,"date":"2015-06-11T07:06:48","date_gmt":"2015-06-11T07:06:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=3801"},"modified":"2016-08-31T20:45:18","modified_gmt":"2016-08-31T20:45:18","slug":"challenging-the-chinese-containment-myth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/challenging-the-chinese-containment-myth\/","title":{"rendered":"Challenging the Chinese ‘containment’ myth"},"content":{"rendered":"

David B Millar<\/a>, Texas A&M University <\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

The United States is not trying to contain China\u2019s rise. But you would never know it from reading Chinese domestic media, which overwhelmingly embraces this theory to explain America\u2019s resistance to China\u2019s military and territorial expansion in Asia.<\/p>\n

To regular readers of Chinese discourse, this containment narrative isn\u2019t new. What is new is that it is spilling over into the English language information space, in places such as this article<\/a> by Australia-based scholar Xu Qinduo.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a positive sign that the two sides are talking more directly about their strategic fears. But the irony is that this popular misattribution of America\u2019s motives may soon lead Washington to reconsider its engagement policy \u2013 to China\u2019s detriment.<\/p>\n

Containment everywhere<\/h2>\n

As part of an ongoing effort to understand how the Chinese frame matters of strategy, I recently analyzed over 500 translated documents reflecting Chinese internal discourse on regional conflict. The single unifying narrative across all areas was the idea that the US is working to prevent China\u2019s prosperity or \u201ccontain\u201d China\u2019s rise.<\/p>\n

Criticism of China\u2019s cyber operations<\/a>? \u201cContainment.\u201d US rebalance<\/a>? \u201cContainment.\u201d Pushback on land reclamation in the South China Sea<\/a>? \u201cContainment.\u201d<\/p>\n

But to American strategists, \u201ccontainment\u201d has a very specific meaning: a comprehensive political, economic, and military strategy to deny an enemy nation freedom of access to the international system<\/em>. Containment, when successful, leads to isolation and even political collapse. The simplest way to show that there is no US containment policy toward the People\u2019s Republic of China (PRC) is to remember when there was.<\/p>\n

When you\u2019re being contained, you know it<\/h2>\n

During the 1950s and 1960s, Washington blocked PRC access to development loans, armed and trained ethnic insurgencies to destabilize its government, conducted intelligence overflights from Taiwan, and prevented Beijing from claiming a seat at the United Nations.<\/p>\n

Its partners and allies denied the PRC diplomatic recognition and sharply limited opportunities for trade, dialogue or cultural exchange. China remained a poor, isolated country with little political significance \u2013 much like North Korea or Cuba today.<\/p>\n

Chinese commentators like to remind their readers that today\u2019s China is not the weak China of 40 years ago. Indeed it isn\u2019t \u2013 neither China\u2019s situation, nor US policy, bears any resemblance to that past.<\/p>\n

\"\"
An American Company<\/a>, CC BY-SA<\/a><\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Last year alone, the United States imported US$466 billion in Chinese goods<\/a> and welcomed more than 274,000 Chinese students<\/a> to US universities. One out of every three foreign students now holds a Chinese passport.<\/p>\n

If training an entire generation of engineers, scientists and programmers is \u201ccontainment,\u201d it\u2019s possibly the worst containment policy ever.<\/p>\n

America\u2019s true motives revealed<\/h2>\n

The containment narrative confuses a policy of preventing China\u2019s prosperity with a policy of influencing China\u2019s strategic choices. The US is not selfless, but for the past 40 years it has been pursuing a policy of enlightened self-interest.<\/p>\n

Through engagement, the US seeks to shape China\u2019s strategic culture away from conspiratorial, zero-sum thinking and toward shared responsibility. It puts constraints on the exercise of Chinese power because those constraints are the cost of admission to the system it created. It may criticize Chinese policies, but criticism is not containment.<\/p>\n

The worst that can be said is that the US has attempted to create structures (like the TransPacific Partnership<\/a>) that are difficult for China to join, or infrastructure (like military bases in the Pacific) that would constrain Chinese options in a conflict. These may complicate China\u2019s strategic calculations, but fundamentally don\u2019t prevent it from pursuing its interests or achieving prosperity.<\/p>\n

A turn away from engagement?<\/h2>\n

If the US isn\u2019t attempting to contain China, why popularize the idea that it is? One reason is that it may be useful inside China to cultivate an enduring sense of victimhood.<\/p>\n

If you promote the idea that the US is set on thwarting China\u2019s rise, then any pushback on China\u2019s actions becomes proof of a covert hostility. But accommodating China\u2019s expanding claims would hardly demonstrate US sincerity \u2013 only that it was forced recognize China\u2019s legitimate interests in the face of hard power. Inside the structure of this narrative, either confrontation or accommodation justifies further expansion and military capability.<\/p>\n

Faced with this dilemma, the danger for China is that US policymakers start to reexamine whether the logic of engagement still holds. For the first time in decades, American analysts are questioning America\u2019s basic policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWashington is giving up on Beijing becoming a stakeholder in the present global order,\u201d writes the Financial Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWashington needs a new grand strategy toward China that centers on balancing the rise of Chinese power rather than continuing to assist its ascendancy,\u201d say Robert Blackwill and Ashley J Tellis in a recent report for the Council on Foreign Relations<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even now, no one is seriously talking about containment. But a US decision to reconsider engagement as the foundation for future relations may be difficult to reverse, and could have a significant impact on China\u2019s interests down the road. Tragically, China\u2019s cultivated conspiracy could end up producing a much more hostile policy than the one that actually exists now.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

David B Millar<\/a> is Instructor of International Relations at Texas A&M University <\/a>.<\/p>\n

This article was originally published on The Conversation<\/a>.
\nRead the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

David B Millar, Texas A&M University The United States is not trying to contain China\u2019s rise. But you would never know it from reading Chinese domestic media, which overwhelmingly embraces this theory to explain America\u2019s resistance to China\u2019s military and territorial expansion in Asia. To regular readers of Chinese discourse, this containment narrative isn\u2019t new. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":40,"featured_media":7628,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/40"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3801"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7629,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3801\/revisions\/7629"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}