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China's grand strategy in a post-western worldWilliam A Callahan, 1 July 2010

A number of different visions of Chinas future as a leading world power arecompeting for public attention and influence. Among them are populist ideas thatchallenge Beijings official rhetoric about building a harmonious world, says William

A Callahan.

There is growing debate inside the Peoples Republic of China aboutthe countrys proper strategic goals. Many intellectuals and policy-makers are asking how China can convert its new economic power intoenduring political and cultural influence around the globe. The keyquestion they are seeking to answer is: How would China order the(post-western) world?

Beijings official view - first outlined by Hu Jintao, Chinas president, atthe United Nations in September 2005 - is that China is guided by the

notion of building a harmonious world (). But two other visionsof Chinas purpose in the global arena are growing in influencealongside this one: an unofficial view of a Chinese-style utopian worldsociety, and a quasi-official description of how China can compete tobecome the worlds number-one power.

This article examines these different visions of Chinas grand strategyin a post-western world, and suggests briefly what kind of responsewestern powers might be best advised to take to them.

Official policy: "building a harmonious world

The concept of world order embodied in the idea of harmoniousworld (hexie shijie) is an extension into the arena of foreign relationsof Hu Jintaos domestic-policy equivalent, the harmonious society".Indeed, Chinese officials and scholars regularly proclaim harmonioussociety - whose formal aim is to use state power to close the wealthdivide and ease growing social tensions - to be the model for theworld. By this logic, writers in China explain building a harmoniousworld as a new and better route to lasting peace and commonprosperity that will allow different civilisations to coexist in the globalcommunity.

In practice, the official view of hexie shijie lacks detail. The Beijinggovernment tends to describe the policy in terms of vague platitudes,making it hard (for example) to establish whether the strong statethought essential to building a harmonious society is also needed tobuild a harmonious world. Other channels are more outspoken; theHong Kong Wen Wei Po has called on Beijing to be the formulator,

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participant and defender of world order, in order to push the entireworld toward harmony.

The ambiguity underlying hexie shijie leaves ample room for variedunderstandings, where harmonious world is understood either as a

relatively benign aspiration or as a potentially more ominous ambitionof harmonising the world. This intellectual vacuum at the heart of thestrategic concept also creates space for alternative views of Chinasrole in shaping the post-western world order.

Idealistic world society: Zhao Tingyangs Tianxia System

A group of theorists has emerged in the last decade who argue thatthe Chinese century needs to be understood in terms of distinctivelyChinese concepts. Zhao Tingyangs The Tianxia System: ThePhilosophy for the World Institution (2005) follows Beijings go global

economic policy to argue that Chinese culture has to go global as well.If China is to be a world power, it must create new world concepts andnew world structures that exploit its own resources of traditionalthought.

At the core of his own proposal, Zhao - who works at Chinas largestthink-tank (CASS) - deploys the traditional concept of Tianxia, whichprescribes a form of selfless global unity that is at once geographical,psychological, and institutional. Zhao argues that China is revealed inlight of this concept as naturally peaceful, orderly and generous, andthat Chinese world order will embody the same qualities - in contrast

to western hegemony, which has led to violence, chaos and oppressionaround the world. The establishment of the unified Tianxia system willenable a global hierarchy where order is valued over freedom, ethicsover law, and elite governance over democracy and human rights.

The official Chinese view of harmonious world divides the world intocivilisations led by great powers that can have different social systems;in this sense it describes the emerging status quo of a multipolarworld. By contrast, Zhaos unified Tianxia system does not allow fordifferent points of view to coexist; it both outlines a utopia imaginedfor the long-term future and appeals to the more activist harmonising-

the-world thread of Chinese foreign policy. The Tianxia Systems mainproblem is that it doesnt explain how to get from an unstable andoften violent present to the harmonious future.

Strategic competitor: Liu Mingfus The China Dream

Liu Mingfus book The China Dream: The Great Power Thinking andStrategic Positioning of China in the Post-American Age (2010)

http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780195390650.dohttp://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Post-American-World/http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/democracy_power/china/foreign_investmenthttp://bic.cass.cn/english/infoShow/Arcitle_Show_Cass.asp?BigClassID=1&Title=CASShttp://www.unirule.org.cn/English/UniruleEA.asp?ArticleID=460http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/7/9/4/4/p179440_index.htmlhttp://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780195390650.dohttp://books.wwnorton.com/books/The-Post-American-World/http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/democracy_power/china/foreign_investmenthttp://bic.cass.cn/english/infoShow/Arcitle_Show_Cass.asp?BigClassID=1&Title=CASShttp://www.unirule.org.cn/English/UniruleEA.asp?ArticleID=460http://www.allacademic.com/meta/p_mla_apa_research_citation/1/7/9/4/4/p179440_index.html

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provides another view of future world order. Liu - who teaches atChinas National Defense University- departs from Beijings policies ofpeaceful rise and harmonious world by arguing that to support itseconomic rise, China needs to pursue a military rise that allows it torival American hegemony. A purely economic nation (like Japan) is

characterised as a plump lamb waiting in the market to be preyedupon by militarily strong countries, declares Liu; a true great powermust convert economic strength into military power in order to becomethe worlds number one.

The book presents global politics as a quasi-Olympian competitionbetween civilisations, themselves represented by great powers. Liucalls on China to take advantage of the current period of strategicopportunity to surpass American power, and thus sprint to the finishto become the global champion; that is, world number one.

The China Dream doesnt see conflict with the United States asinevitable, but it is informed by a deterrence logic: Chinas militaryrise is not to attack America, but to make sure that China is notattacked by America. Liu uses this approach to stress that China mustseek peace through strength: the peaceful rise must include a militaryrise with Chinese characteristics that is defensive, peaceful, limited,necessary, important and urgent.

The China Dreams understanding of international politics thus differsfrom both the official Beijing view ofhexie shijie and Zhao TingyangsTianxia system. Rather than build a harmonious world, Liu Mingfu

envisages a grand geopolitical struggle where competition betweennations is natural and good; rather than surpass the state-centricinternational system to build Tianxias unified world order, Liu seesinternational relations (IR) quite narrowly as US-China relations;rather than the win-win solutions suggested by both, The China Dreamsees IR as a zero-sum game where victory and defeat are total. IfChina in the 21st century cannot become world number one, cannotbecome the top power, then inevitably it will become a straggler that iscast aside.

While Zhao Tingyangs The Tianxia System does not chart a clear path

to the harmonious world he imagines, Liu Mingfus The China Dream isunclear about what China will do once it becomes the champion nation.Yet Lius book is fascinating because it reveals the tensions andcontradictions of outlook that have accompanied Chinas rise. Even asit articulates the goal of Chinas global pre-eminence, Liu veersbetween two positions: a catch-up mentality that frames Chinas risewithin the current international systems laws, norms and structures,and sees Chinas goal as to surpass America; and a new-era

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mentality that stresses Chinas uniqueness in the geopoliticalcompetition between different civilisational (and racial) models, andthus challenges existing norms.

Chinas global path

Many Chinese texts, official and unofficial, give the impression thatChinas victory in the global competition is guaranteed, if notimminent. In fact the PRC is unlikely to catch up with the United States- economically, politically, culturally or militarily - in the next fewdecades. But the disjuncture between grand intentions and middlingcapabilities could itself lead to conflict, for Beijing is effectivelypromising its citizens much more than it can deliver in terms of globalpower and influence.

This propaganda gap is likely to increase tensions between China

and the US in the next few years - not least as the approach ofBeijings transition to the fifth generation leadership that will assumepower in 2012 after the retirement of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao is likelyto be accompanied by the emergence of populist voices. Indeed, theprominent strategist Yan Xuetong recently lamented the decliningstatus of international relations in the face of popular (and populist)views from outside the security-studies establishment. Many of thesepopulist strategists in China see international politics as a hostile zero-sum game, a grand bipolar civilisational struggle, where victory anddefeat are total.

The views of Zhao Tingyang and Liu Mingfu are interesting andinfluential in part because they are relative outsiders who offer a senseof the parameters within which vague official policies (such asharmonious world) are formulated, implemented, defended andrejected.

The three approaches considered here - hexie shijie, Tianxia, andworld number one - do not exhaust all the visions on offer for Chinasgrand strategy in a post-western world. But considering them togethersuggests that the best way to address the developing debate in Chinais to with words and actions that are positive-sum and multilateral,

which engage China at various levels, and in both official and unofficialspaces. In this perspective, the main issue is not what to do aboutChinas many-dimensional rise, but how to keep the bumps alongChinas development road from provoking a hyper-nationalist backlash.

http://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=9168&edition_id=9734http://www.irchina.org/en/index.asphttp://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-china/nationalism_3456.jsphttp://www.ashgate.com/default.aspx?page=637&calcTitle=1&title_id=9168&edition_id=9734http://www.irchina.org/en/index.asphttp://www.opendemocracy.net/democracy-china/nationalism_3456.jsp