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China's recent military bravado in the Taiwan Strait represents the end state of a failed strategy
The drums of war are growing louder in the Taiwan Strait. In the last month, at least 50 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft have entered Taiwan’s airspace. The volume of threatening language directed at Taiwan from sources in China, both official and unofficial, has reached a crescendo, and the headlines in the news grow more alarmingeach month. In the United States, mainstream foreign policy voices are now openly debating whether the U.S. should abandon strategic ambiguity and openly commit to defend Taiwan in the case of an attack — an idea advocated not so long ago by only a radical fringe.
But these dire headlines are misleading: Beijing is not gearing up for an attack on Taiwan. It still has neither the capacity to launch a successful full-scale invasion, nor the motive to risk a conflict with the United States. In reality, the increasingly bellicose language coming from China is a sign of weakness, not strength, and a cover for the failure of its own Taiwan policy. Having thrown away most of its non-military leverage in a fruitless effort to compel Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to endorse its one China principle, Beijing has now been reduced to counter-productive saber-rattling to express its discontent at U.S. arms sales and high-level diplomatic visits, while Taiwan races to strengthen its own defenses and reorient its economy away from overdependence on mainland China. In short, Xi Jinping’s approach to the “Taiwan issue” has turned into a strategic fiasco — one that may take years for Beijing to recover from...
The drums of war are growing louder in the Taiwan Strait. In the last month, at least 50 People’s Liberation Army (PLA) aircraft have entered Taiwan’s airspace. The volume of threatening language directed at Taiwan from sources in China, both official and unofficial, has reached a crescendo, and the headlines in the news grow more alarmingeach month. In the United States, mainstream foreign policy voices are now openly debating whether the U.S. should abandon strategic ambiguity and openly commit to defend Taiwan in the case of an attack — an idea advocated not so long ago by only a radical fringe.
But these dire headlines are misleading: Beijing is not gearing up for an attack on Taiwan. It still has neither the capacity to launch a successful full-scale invasion, nor the motive to risk a conflict with the United States. In reality, the increasingly bellicose language coming from China is a sign of weakness, not strength, and a cover for the failure of its own Taiwan policy. Having thrown away most of its non-military leverage in a fruitless effort to compel Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen to endorse its one China principle, Beijing has now been reduced to counter-productive saber-rattling to express its discontent at U.S. arms sales and high-level diplomatic visits, while Taiwan races to strengthen its own defenses and reorient its economy away from overdependence on mainland China. In short, Xi Jinping’s approach to the “Taiwan issue” has turned into a strategic fiasco — one that may take years for Beijing to recover from...
The rest of this commentary appears at The Diplomat.
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My latest review essay, entitled "The China Model: How Successful is the Chinese Regime?" is now out at the Taiwan Journal of Democracy.
More on the themes of that piece below, but first, If you are a China-watcher, you really need to read Edward Wong's terrific new article in the New York Times, "A Chinese Empire Reborn." Wong was a China correspondent for the NYT for a decade, and he cuts through a lot of the crap about the nature of the Chinese regime. China's rise as a global power, he rightly notes, is occurring mostly through its accumulation of economic and military clout, rather than through emulation of its system and values by ordinary people and elites in other countries. That is, China's rise to date has been mostly about increasing its "hard", not "soft", power, and that order shows few signs of changing anytime soon.
There's one assumption in that essay that bothers me a bit, though. It's that the Chinese regime is inevitably going to continue its ascension in the world--that is, though it probably won't attract more admirers or imitators any time soon, China's relative hard power will continue its rapid increase. Here's the end of Wong's essay:
More on the themes of that piece below, but first, If you are a China-watcher, you really need to read Edward Wong's terrific new article in the New York Times, "A Chinese Empire Reborn." Wong was a China correspondent for the NYT for a decade, and he cuts through a lot of the crap about the nature of the Chinese regime. China's rise as a global power, he rightly notes, is occurring mostly through its accumulation of economic and military clout, rather than through emulation of its system and values by ordinary people and elites in other countries. That is, China's rise to date has been mostly about increasing its "hard", not "soft", power, and that order shows few signs of changing anytime soon.
There's one assumption in that essay that bothers me a bit, though. It's that the Chinese regime is inevitably going to continue its ascension in the world--that is, though it probably won't attract more admirers or imitators any time soon, China's relative hard power will continue its rapid increase. Here's the end of Wong's essay:
"Chinese citizens and the world would benefit if China turns out to be an empire whose power is based as much on ideas, values and culture as on military and economic might. It was more enlightened under its most glorious dynasties. But for now, the Communist Party embraces hard power and coercion, and this could well be what replaces the fading liberal hegemony of the United States on the global stage.
It will not lead to a grand vision of world order. Instead, before us looms a void."
What I question is Wong's implicit assumption that China will inevitably continue on an upward trajectory over the next several decades. It's true that the relative power of the United States is declining ("fading" is a bit strong, but we'll leave that aside for now), as it has been since its early post-Cold War peak. It's also true that the "liberal hegemony" of the current global order, and especially the capacity, and willingness, of the United States to maintain it, is under considerable short-term threat right now.
But it is not obvious to me that China is especially well-positioned to benefit from these trends, because it's not self-evident that its current economic expansion will continue much longer, or that Chinese leaders will be able to adapt very effectively to the challenges looming on the horizon. The Chinese economy has grown quickly over the last 35 years, but despite many assertions that China's growth record is unprecedented, it is not--over a similar time interval, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and before them Japan registered equally impressive growth, with a much more equal distribution of gains, to boot. And those earlier "economic miracles" followed a broadly similar pattern--a greater role for market forces, increasing connectivity to the global economy, export-oriented development, high savings rates, broad investment in education and infrastructure, but a continued privileged role for an activist state.
Here's the kicker: in all of those cases, the economy inevitably slowed down, and at the same time their "demographic dividends" also ended. The transition to a different growth model has been wrenching, and it's not clear that Japan, or South Korea, or Taiwan or Singapore has hit on the right balance of reforms--in particular, improved corporate governance, strengthened rule of law, and banking reforms--that would improve their long-term economic prospects. (Singapore has probably come the closest so far.) So why should we expect China to? On all these dimensions, China actually looks much worse than its Asian predecessors, and it has the added burden of a hugely unequal distribution of wealth and a political system that suffers from a grievous, long-term legitimacy deficit. (This leaves aside, too, the question of whether its reported GDP figures actually reflect anything close to reality.) It also is facing a dire demographic picture made worse by the One-Child Policy: its workforce-age population is already declining, and its total population is projected to begin falling in less than 20 years. That does not sound like a country destined for global hegemony to me.
For a more detailed discussion, check out my essay at the Taiwan Journal of Democracy.
But it is not obvious to me that China is especially well-positioned to benefit from these trends, because it's not self-evident that its current economic expansion will continue much longer, or that Chinese leaders will be able to adapt very effectively to the challenges looming on the horizon. The Chinese economy has grown quickly over the last 35 years, but despite many assertions that China's growth record is unprecedented, it is not--over a similar time interval, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, and before them Japan registered equally impressive growth, with a much more equal distribution of gains, to boot. And those earlier "economic miracles" followed a broadly similar pattern--a greater role for market forces, increasing connectivity to the global economy, export-oriented development, high savings rates, broad investment in education and infrastructure, but a continued privileged role for an activist state.
Here's the kicker: in all of those cases, the economy inevitably slowed down, and at the same time their "demographic dividends" also ended. The transition to a different growth model has been wrenching, and it's not clear that Japan, or South Korea, or Taiwan or Singapore has hit on the right balance of reforms--in particular, improved corporate governance, strengthened rule of law, and banking reforms--that would improve their long-term economic prospects. (Singapore has probably come the closest so far.) So why should we expect China to? On all these dimensions, China actually looks much worse than its Asian predecessors, and it has the added burden of a hugely unequal distribution of wealth and a political system that suffers from a grievous, long-term legitimacy deficit. (This leaves aside, too, the question of whether its reported GDP figures actually reflect anything close to reality.) It also is facing a dire demographic picture made worse by the One-Child Policy: its workforce-age population is already declining, and its total population is projected to begin falling in less than 20 years. That does not sound like a country destined for global hegemony to me.
For a more detailed discussion, check out my essay at the Taiwan Journal of Democracy.