The Hard Logic Of Hard Power: China
Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, shakes hands with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao at the ... [+] Great Hall of the People, commemorating the 30th anniversary of the establishment of U.S.-China diplomatic relations.
I just returned to the U.S. last weekend after my first trip back to China since Covid. It was only a week, split between Shanghai and Beijing, then on to Singapore for another week, so conclusions might be a bit superficial. But from a street view, China is back in business. The cities are bustling, shops are open, restaurants are crowded, and if you don't watch the time, you might get caught up in the kind of traffic jams that hit all major cities. In short, the Covid disruption is well in the past.
Of course, this street view might miss other dislocations, such as a factory shutdowns or shaky consumer confidence. But at least on the surface there is a lot of good news in the Chinese economy. China's economy might only grow at 3% this year, but my guess is that means Beijing and Shanghai will grow at 5%, not a bad number.
Yet there is an undercurrent beneath these economic numbers. Why does ill will fester between the U.S. and China? There is likely more than one reason, but let me touch on a central contributor to the problem: the different approaches to international relations. I developed this point during a talk at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore. Simply put, the two nations have very different approaches to national security, stemming from different historical experiences.
The harsh lesson of Chinese history is that you improve security by being stronger than your neighbors. When China was not stronger, it was a subordinate power and risked being victimized. There is not much history of China achieving stability through a balance of power. Nor is there much history of China and its neighbors treating each other as equals, or building a relationship based on trust and mutual benefit. Throughout China's history, the international system did not provide security; only hard power did. An Asia security system based on inclusion and compromise has never existed, although as Professor Tommy Koh points out, there have been sub-units, such as ASEAN where such an approach has worked rather well. China has, unsurprisingly, absorbed the lessons of its history. Hard power works.
This is in contrast with U.S. history in which international management has determined security. The U.S. has only been involved in international leadership for about 80 years and the main approach has been coalition-building against global threats, the two considerable successes for U.S leadership being World War II and the Cold War. Yes, hard power delivered the outcomes in these two cases as well, but through an international coalition.
These are two alternative schools of international behavior: do you seek stability through supremacy or through a system that provides each nation with benefits and incentives to maintain stability? In game theory, we would describe this systems-based approach as N-sum. Any nation can join and benefit, and such participation does not weaken the position of any other nation. You are secure because your neighbor is also secure. In contrast, we would describe the strategy of supremacy as zero-sum. As you enhance your security through a build-up, you are necessarily weakening someone else's security.
The different approach in China is reinforced by regional asymmetry. The western powers for much of modern history were roughly the same size in terms of their economy and population. Not so for China and its neighbors. So France and Britain realized they needed to find a way to coexist. Not so self-evident when there is a considerable difference in size. China does not need to coexist with anyone in its neighborhood, at least in the ways that the European powers needed.
We can sum up several thousand years of Chinese international relations with two simple statements. The first is that China has never said to an approaching power, "We are glad you are here." The second is that neighbors of China have rarely said to an approaching China, "We are glad you are here." The same history that makes China disenchanted about approaching powers might also make neighbors disenchanted about an approaching China.
China is returning to normal social and business life after Covid, which is nice to see. Will China be able to calibrate its actions to protect its national interest, even as other nations seek to protect their interests, is history in the making.