Dr. Suisheng Zhao is executive director of the Center for U.S.-China Cooperation and the editor of the Journal of Contemporary China, as well as a professor at the Josef Korbel School of International Studies. In this piece, he reflects on how the recent financial crisis has encouraged China to adopt more proactive and aggressive policies.
For many years following the end of the Cold War, China followed a taoguang yanhgui (literally: "hide brightness, nourish obscurity") policy to downplay its capabilities and to build up its national strength, thus adjusting to U.S. dominance in the international system. China's behavior, however, has begun to change during the recent financial meltdown; it is now more forceful in defending the so-called "core interest issues" involving state sovereignty and territorial integrity with Taiwan, Tibet and the South China Sea.
Instead of keeping its head down, China warned the U.S. that "no one should expect China to swallow the bitter fruit that hurts its interests." In March 2009, Chinese boats intercepted the USNS Impeccable in the South China Sea even though the American Navy had routinely monitored China's military activities in the past. China then protested strongly over the joint U.S.-South Korean military exercise in the Yellow Sea and the deployment of the USS George Washington aircraft carrier. A foreign affairs spokesman for China's military issued six official protests, each in a progressively tougher tone, from calling to "maintain calm and constraint," to expressing "concern" and "serious concern," and then demanding "to oppose" and "strongly oppose" these actions. The U.S. Navy has long conducted naval exercises in the Yellow Sea, and the George Washington was there as recently as fall 2009 without complaint.
How should we understand China's new assertiveness? One explanation emphasizes the country's growing confidence in its ability to deal with the West during the global downturn. Seeing a relative decline of the West, China has found more leverages and rights to forcefully safeguard its core interests rather than to compromise them; it is therefore more willing to proactively shape the external environment than to passively react to it.
Another explanation stems from China's frustration over the perceived Western conspiracy to prevent China from rising to its rightful place. Many Chinese see a structural conflict between China as a rising power and the U.S. as the sole superpower; they believe the U.S. would never give up their policy of containing China. This conviction has been proved during the financial meltdown. With the Western leaders seemingly desperate for cash-rich China to come to their aid, many Chinese expected that a weakened U. S. heavily in debt to China would not continue arms sales to Taiwan, and that President Obama would have canceled his meeting with the Dalai Lama in early 2010. When these actions persisted, they felt betrayed, believing that this was part of a Western conspiracy to contain China's rise.
The third explanation looks at Chinese leaders' fear of economic and political uncertainties at home. One such doubt lies in the possible slowdown of Chinese economic growth. Attributing the financial meltdown entirely to "economic mismanagement" by the Western countries, the Chinese government was able to avoid criticism of its own failures, while also receiving praise for effectively using its enormous state capacity to pull the economy out of the downturn. The ongoing leadership transition brings another uncertainty. Political leaders understood that mishandling sensitive issues such as Taiwan and Tibet could not only lead to social instability, but also provide political competitors with an avenue to undermine their political standing. Therefore, Chinese leaders claim they had to take this assertive stance on core interests since the survival of the regime was essentially at stake.
China's new assertiveness has raised questions about what will happen if China abandons their low-profile policy and reorients its foreign policy towards a more aggressive direction. More importantly however, Chinese scholars and policy makers are still debating whether China has indeed abandoned this low-profile policy. The view that has received the most attention in the West and is also popular among the Chinese people urges the government to abandon their passive policy and to take a "great power" position to ensure a "just" world; the Chinese government, however, has not officially adopted this perspective. There is a third view, which calls for a modified and more active taoguang yanhgui policy and is the actual policy practice of China today. In light of the policy debate, one defining tension in China's foreign policy agenda is still to find a balance between taking a more assertive position as a rising power, and focusing on its narrowly defined core interests to play down its potential as a global power.
Read other Faculty Sound-Off articles from Josef Korbel School faculty.
