Book: Zeno Leoni. Grand Strategy and the Rise of China (2023) - Review by Zhiqun Zhu (H-Diplo)

H-Diplo: New posted content

• H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 101: Zhu on Leoni, _Grand Strategy and the Rise of China_

H-Diplo: New posted content

H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 101: Zhu on Leoni, _Grand Strategy and the Rise of China_

H-Diplo | Robert Jervis International Security Studies Forum

Review Essay 101

Zeno Leoni. Grand Strategy and the Rise of China. Newcastle: Agenda Publishing, 2023. ISBN 9781788216029 (paperback, $30.00).

Reviewed by Zhiqun Zhu, Bucknell University
 

4 June 2024 | PDF: http://issforum.org/to/RE101 | Website: rjissf.org | Twitter: @HDiplo

Editor: Diane Labrosse | Commissioning Editor: Masami Kimura | Production Editor: Christopher Ball
 

Observers can hardly reach a consensus about contemporary China. Scholars, journalists, and government officials often present totally different images of China. Some foresee China’s impending replacement of the United States as the global power; others predict China’s looming economic collapse and political breakdown.[1]Like the six blind men in an Indian parable who draw their conclusions about an elephant by only touching parts of the giant animal, many observers only see some aspects of China and rush to their conclusions about the vast country. 

In Grand Strategy and the Rise of China, Zeno Leoni asserts that it is not possible to study modern and contemporary China in isolation from its relationship with the West (vii). The aim of this book is to help Western citizens reflect critically on China with a sober, historically and theoretically informed view of the drivers and implications of its rise (2-3). Leoni rejects using the dichotomy of liberal democracy and autocracy as a superficial and very American perspective from which to analyze a highly complex phenomenon of China’s rise. Informed by his post-doctoral research on China and his teaching at the Defense Studies Department of King’s College London as well as extensive archival work, Leoni goes beyond Western-centrism and presents a diverse world order in which China and the rest of the world have co-existed.

After analyzing the successes and limits of China’s engagement with the global economy and discussing the dilemmas of the China-West engagement, Leoni offers some recommendations for western governments for developing their policies on China, taking into account China’s long interactions with the West, its relationship with the liberal international order (LIO), and its achievements and failures at home. For a brief book (only 103 pages), the author does a remarkable job in presenting and defending his main thesis. 

The author’s analysis of the tensions between sovereignty and globalization and between economic and security interests is particularly informative and insightful. Due to its humiliating history since the Opium Wars in the 1840s, China today is super-sensitive to issues concerning national sovereignty. For example, while many outsiders view developments in Hong Kong in recent years as issues of human rights and democracy, the Chinese government views them as the efforts by some locals and hostile foreign governments and individuals to erode China’s sovereignty over a former British colony that has already been returned to China.[2]

Indeed, the post-Mao China has taken full advantage of globalization and has been integrated into the LIO. China is arguably the country that has benefited the most from the current LIO and has emerged as a strong defender of globalization.[3] Yet, the friction between sovereignty and globalization is real, and it has been a challenge for China and others to reconcile the inherent contradictions. The competition between security and economic interests was on full display during the November 2023 Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in San Francisco. After US President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping spent hours discussing military dialogue, AI governance, climate change, and other security-related issues, Xi spoke at a reception and was warmly welcomed by over 300 American business executives, officials, and other individuals who favor strong commercial and cultural ties between the two countries.[4]

As the author correctly points out, such inherent tensions help us understand many of the problems between China and the Western governments. For example, when China defends its sovereignty in the controversial South China Sea, Western governments tend to accuse China of not following the rules-based international order. Ironically, China has a better record of adhering to the UN Charter than some Western countries such as the United States, Greece, and France.[5]

The fact is that China has been an essential part of the LIO. Without US President Richard Nixon’s visit to China that fundamentally changed the course of the Cold War, and without post-Mao leader Deng Xiaoping’s reforms that resulted in some 800 million Chinese being lifted out of abject poverty, the so-called LIO would not have been complete and successful. Given China’s deep interdependence with the global economy and its self-identity as a capitalist champion, for Western countries, rejecting, containing, or fighting China implies “challenging [the Western] way of life” (3), the author reasons.

Leoni urges Western countries to be “honest and pragmatic” and to “avoid picking fights over issues China does not intend to negotiate on and that are highly symbolic, such as Taiwan” (101). This is spot on and reveals a fundamental and potentially explosive problem in China’s relations with the West, especially in US-China relations today. The Taiwan issue is left over from the unfinished Chinese Civil War in the 1940s. After being defeated on the mainland and after Communist leader Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of a “new” China—the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the Nationalist Party (KMT) leader Chiang Kai-shek left the mainland and moved his Republic of China (ROC) government to Taiwan temporarily, vowing to “retake” the mainland (光复大陆) in the future. Meanwhile, Mao believed the PRC succeeded the ROC as the only legitimate government of China and was prepared to “liberate” Taiwan (解放台湾). The Korean War that broke out in June 1950 disrupted Mao’s plan and prolonged Chiang’s rule in Taiwan. Since then, Beijing and Taipei have engaged in a diplomatic battle over who is the real representative of China.[6]

France became the first Western country to recognize the PRC over the ROC in 1964. After Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, it became clear that the United States would switch diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing, which it eventually did at the end of 1978 while acknowledging that Taiwan was part of China. Since then, Taiwan has gradually democratized, and a growing number of Taiwanese today enjoy Taiwan’s status as a de factoseparate entity from mainland China. Nevertheless, the two sides of the Taiwan Strait have never become two independent states as agreed upon by themselves and accepted by the international community.[7] 

Many observers in the West view China’s long-standing policy of seeking reunification with Taiwan as an aggressive and expansionist behavior. Without providing the historical context, some scholars tend to use “invasion” to describe Beijing’s potential use of force to take Taiwan, as if China will attack and occupy a foreign country.[8] From Beijing’s perspective, this is purely a Chinese internal matter, but foreign intervention has perpetuated the separation of Taiwan and the Chinese mainland. Beijing’s preferred policy has been pursuing reunification peacefully. If unprovoked, Beijing is unlikely to use force against Taiwan.[9] One does not have to agree with Beijing’s views, but it is important to understand where Beijing comes from in order to appreciate the complexity of the Taiwan issue and develop a reasonable and balanced approach.

Taiwan is highly symbolic in Chinese politics. It brings back bitter memories of imperialism. Taiwan was ceded to Japan as a colony after the Qing dynasty lost the 1894–1895 war with Japan. It was returned to China in 1945 when Chiang was still in power on the mainland. Taiwan is closely tied to the so-called “century of humiliation” in Chinese history, therefore, no Chinese leader can afford to “lose” Taiwan permanently under his watch.[10] The current LIO includes recognition by the UN and other international organizations and vast majority of UN members that Taiwan is a part of China, not an independent state. However, some countries, especially the United States, seem to have upgraded their “unofficial” relations with Taiwan in recent years, leading Chinese leaders to question whether these countries are serious about their official “one China” policy. “If the international order cannot help protect China’s sovereignty over Taiwan, most Chinese would not find any reason for China to care about that order,” a leading international relations scholar in China recently declared.[11]

China’s rise inevitably challenges the Western-dominated LIO, although it is debatable whether China is a status quo power or a revisionist power. After becoming the second largest economy in 2010, China has proposed several initiatives in global development, such as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). Some observers cite these as evidence that China is disrupting the LIO and seeks to replace the United States as the global power.[12] However, one can argue that such initiatives are being implemented within the current global system and have been supported by many countries and the United Nations. Some countries have decided not to be part of these Chinese initiatives, yet interestingly, they have developed similar programs to counter or compete with China, such as the Biden administration’s “Build Back Better World” and the proposed India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.[13]

Going beyond the dichotomy of democracy vs. autocracy that is prevalent in some analysis of world affairs today, especially by the Biden administration and some Western scholars,[14] Leoni suggests that in fact “socio-political hybridity” has been part of the international system (12). China is such a case of hybridity. Different societal and economic models may co-exist in a country or region. China, with all its internal dynamics and regional gaps, is not a monolithic entity, even though it is controlled by the Communist Party. 

Leoni is correct in suggesting that China has been grappling with the three Cs—Confucianism, Communism, and capitalism (26). Indeed, Chinese officials have always been fascinated by capitalist successes. China has learned much from Singapore’s founding father Lee Kuan Yew’s model of paternalistic or “soft” authoritarianism. It has also imitated the “developmental state” model first practiced in Japan and then in the four Asian Tigers.[15] The term “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is a helpful interpretation of the state the Chinese government has been trying to create. Or perhaps China is moving towards building “capitalism with Chinese characteristics.” China’s development trajectory is categorically different from those of the Western models.[16]

To develop a viable China strategy, foreign governments need to have an objective and comprehensive understanding of contemporary China that is grounded in the history of China and its interactions with the West. China’s rise is concurrent with the emergence of a multipolar world, in which non-Western countries, or the Global South, are playing a more prominent role in modifying the international order that reflects the rising voices of developing countries. Like other powers, China has agency in contributing to and shaping the international system. The BRI and AIIB are examples of China’s contributions to the emerging new international order that is increasingly multipolar. If Western powers do not recognize China’s agency, they will not be able to develop a realistic and viable China strategy. 

Though Leoni points out problems in Western thinking about China, he does not indicate what exactly the West can do in dealing with the China challenge. His narrative also leaves undiscussed China’s agency to change for the better. As a stake-holder in the current LIO, China has actively pursued economic engagement in the LIO while maintaining a rigid political structure at home. Is this in China’s best interest? Can China do better?

The Chinese government argues that it does not reject democracy and human rights as universal values but emphasizes a path to human rights development that suits China’s own conditions.[17] Yet one sees no sign that China is moving in the direction of greater freedom and democracy now. While the West must be sensitive to China’s history and culture and should not provoke China on issues such as Taiwan, China also has a responsibility to reciprocate and meet the West half-way. The West must continue to apply pressure while remaining engaged with China, perhaps more diplomatically, to achieve a successful outcome for both China and the rest of the world. In other words, the West should not just develop a China strategy passively; it can seek a more proactive approach to shape the environment conducive for China’s political transformation.

In short, the West faces two challenges in developing a practical China strategy. First, it needs to acknowledge and welcome China’s contribution to global development, including its effort to introduce a more inclusive international system. Second, it must keep the pressure on without triggering strong nationalist responses from Beijing so that China can move in the direction of a more liberal society. Leoni’s book alludes to these challenges and mentions that countries should “retaliate where Beijing restricts the space for freedom and to expand (cooperation) where Beijing is willing to compromise” (102), but it is unclear where the Goldilocks point is. Essentially, how will the Western governments balance their security and economic interests? Leoni’s book does not provide clear answers but points in the right direction. Perhaps therein lies the significance of this succinct book.

 

Zhiqun Zhu, PhD, is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at Bucknell University. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on Chinese foreign policy, US-China relations, and East Asian political economy. 

 

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[1] For competing perspectives on contemporary China, see for example, Ann Lee, Will China’s Economy Collapse?(Boston and New York: Polity, 2017). Michael Pillsbury, The Hundred-Year Marathon: China's Secret Strategy to Replace America as the Global Superpower (Ashland, OR: Blackstone, 2015). Keyu Jin, The New China Playbook: Beyond Socialism and Capitalism (New York:Viking, 2023). Barry J. Naughton, The Chinese Economy, 2nd edition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2018). Justin Yifu Lin, Demystifying the Chinese Economy (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

[2] Lindsay Maizland, “Hong Kong’s Freedoms: What China Promised and How It’s Cracking Down,” Council on Foreign Relations, 31 January, 2024. https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown#:~:text=Under%20the%20Basic%20Law%2C%20Hong,and%20Political%20Rights%20(ICCPR). Vivian Wang and Tiffany May, “Hong Kong Pushes New Security Law to Root Out ‘Seeds of Unrest’,” The New York Times, 30 January, 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/30/world/asia/hong-kong-security-law-unrest.html

[3] See for example, Huiyao Wang and Alistair Michie, eds. Consensus or Conflict?: China and Globalization in the 21st Century (New York: Springer, 2021).

[4] Ana Swanson, “Pandas, Ping-Pong and Profits: Chinese Leader Woos U.S. C.E.O.s,” New York Times, 16 November, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/16/business/economy/china-us-business-xi-jinping-ceos.html.

[5] Jeffrey D. Sachs and Guillaume Lafortune, “Adhering to the UN Charter: Barbados First and the United States Last,” Common Dreams, 13 November, 2023, https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/multilateralism-index-united-nations.

[6] Zhiqun Zhu, “‘One China’ in the Beijing-Washington-Taipei Trilateral Relationship,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 20, Issue 2, Number 3 (January 15, 2022): https://apjjf.org/2022/2/Zhu.html, accessed 19 February, 2024. 

[7] Zhu, “’One China’ in the Beijing-Washington-Taipei Trilateral Relationship.” 

[8] For example, Robert Manning, “Is a Chinese Invasion of Taiwan the Most Likely Scenario?” The Stimson Center, 23 October 2023, https://www.stimson.org/2023/is-a-chinese-invasion-of-taiwan-the-most-likely-scenario/.

[9] See for example, Jessica Chen Weiss, “Don’t Panic about Taiwan: Alarm Over a Chinese Invasion Could Become a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy,” Foreign Affairs (21 March, 2023): https://www.foreignaffairs.com/china/taiwan-chinese-invasion-dont-panic, accessed 19 February, 2024.

[10] Chen Weiss, “Don’t Panic About Taiwan.”

[11] Qingguo Jia, “Reconstructing China’s Role in Regional Security,” East Asia Forum (6 November 2022): https://eastasiaforum.org/2022/11/06/reconstructing-chinas-role-in-regional-security/, accessed 19 February, 2024.

[12] See for example, Simon Curtis and Ian Klaus, The Belt and Road City: Geopolitics, Urbanization, and China’s Search for a New International Order (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2024).

[13] Keith Johnson, “Belt and Road Meets Build Back Better,” Foreign Policy, 4 October 2021. Jean-Loup Samaan, “The India-Middle East Corridor: a Biden Road Initiative?” The Atlantic Council, 6 October 2023. 

[14] Robert Manning, “Does Biden’s ‘Democracy v. Autocracy’ Framework Make Sense?” The Hill, 13 June, 2022.

[15] John B. Knight, “China as a Developmental State,” The World Economy 37:10 (October 2014): 1335-1347.

[16] Yasheng Huang, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State. Cambridge University Press, 2008.

[17] Qin Gang, “Following a Chinese Path of Human Rights Development and Contributing China’s Strength to Global Human Rights Governance,” Remarks at the High-level Segment of the 52nd Session of The United Nations Human Rights Council, 27 February 2023, https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/wjdt_665385/zyjh_665391/202302/t20230228_11032426.html. 

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From Amazon: 

During four decades of fast-paced economic growth, China’s ascent has reverberated across the full social spectrum, from international relations to technology, from trade to global health, from academia to climate change. Despite disrupting the long-established cultural and political constructs of the postwar liberal international order, Beijing’s power remains uneven and limited internationally, whereas the rise of China has been the object of much frenzied reaction within Western civil society. The hostility and new cold war with the United States is a major factor in fuelling debate and speculation.

This book explores the uncertainties and dilemmas China’s rise has fuelled for both the US-sponsored liberal order and the Chinese communist elites that are responsible. It provides the tools to understand the contemporary political and media turmoil about China, its causes and its trajectories. It interprets the rise of China through the lenses of global politics and the uneven and combined development of capitalism and its encounter with the authoritarian, one-party system of the Chinese polity.

Graham Allison on Thucydides Trap - The South China Morning Post

Graham Allison on Thucydides Trap - The South China Morning Post 

My Interview With The South China Morning Post

The South China Morning Post interviewed me a couple of weeks ago after I returned from Beijing. Overall, it reflects my current thinking about how the U.S. is meeting the China challenge. The interview captures my optimism about the remainder of 2024 based on my reading of what Biden and Xi accomplished at the summit in San Francisco last November. As that reading predicted, we are now seeing increased numbers of serious conversations between their subordinates—including this past weekend between Secretary of Defense Austin and his Chinese counterpart, Defense Minister Dong Jun. Dong’s talking points could have come directly out of the Biden administration’s desired script. For example, whereas earlier Chinese leaders were saying that as long as the U.S. insisted on competition, they would not talk to their counterparts, Dong now said: “We believe that it is precisely because the two militaries have differences that they need to communicate more.” Indeed, the two Secretaries reaffirmed their plans to reopen direct lines of communication.  They asked me whether the Biden administration has a coherent strategy for trying to meet the China challenge. I answered yes and offered my best, short description of it. It consists of three components: fierce competition, deep communication, and serious cooperation. And to what end? To the end of a long-term, peaceful competition in which over the next quarter-century or half-century we will see which of the two systems more successfully delivers what people want. On America’s strategic trilemma, I agreed that we have a fundamental problem. The U.S. certainly has the greatest military force in the world. But if our capabilities and attention must be divided into three components: China, Russia’s war against Ukraine, and the Middle East, then what?   Facing a China that is focused on just one set of scenarios, namely the Taiwan Straits and their peripheral waters, and a Russia focused on Ukraine, not to mention Iran and its proxies surrounding Israel—yikes. As I conclude: “The hardest problem American foreign policy will face over the next decade will be to try to pay less attention to some things in order to pay more attention to others.”   If you have reactions, we will be interested to receive them.   Graham Allison Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School Follow me on Twitter

Lançamento-debate com embaixador Rubens Ricupero, que recém publicou suas Memórias (Editora Unesp) - Japan House, 15/06, 10hs

Sábado, 15 de junho, às 10h

Sala de Seminários da Japan House

Av. Paulista, 52 – 1° andar – São Paulo (SP)

 

As ideias conservadoras (novamente) explicadas a revolucionários e reacionários - livro de João Pereira Coutinho - Martim Vasques da Cunha

 Edmund Burke foi o nosso Virgílio nos labirintos da ideologia política

MARTIM VASQUES DA CUNHA Não é imprensa, JUN 5, 2024

They understood that wisdom comes of beggary.

W.B.Yeats, “The seven sages”

A reedição brasileira de um livro como As ideias conservadoras (novamente) explicadas a revolucionários e reacionários (Editora Almedina), de João Pereira Coutinho, é de grande importância para o nosso mundo intelectual não porque o autor seja meu amigo (afinal, somos obrigados a fazer full disclosure de nossas relações em homenagem à honestidade intelectual que nos une), mas sim porque o seu assunto, mesmo que pareça cifrado ou distante demais do nosso cotidiano, é essencial para que se entenda as engrenagens políticas que estão em jogo, seja no aspecto nacional como internacional. 

O tópico sobre qual é o significado destas palavras repletas de insinuações maliciosas – conservadorismo, conservador, reacionário, fascista – chegou a tal ponto de incompreensão, para não dizer de estultice, que a mera leitura de algumas páginas deste pequeno e elegante volume é uma lufada de ar fresco em um debate que não existe mais – e, se alguma vez existiu, é certeza de que já começou viciado.

João Pereira Coutinho tem um estilo claro, direto que, sobretudo, não banaliza o assunto – muito pelo contrário, ele faz algo improvável para um livro de apenas 107 páginas: contribui com novas ideias, faz o leitor pensar em novas perspectivas e, mais, o retira daquela zona de conforto da qual a suposta “nova direita” tupiniquim sempre caiu, constituída no binômio maniqueísta do “nós” contra “eles” quando, na verdade, todos estão no mesmo barco e ignoram se rumam ou não rumo a um naufrágio.

Todavia, ao mesmo tempo, o livro apresenta um problema, cuja culpa não é sua ou a de seu autor, mas sim do leitor que irá encarar suas linhas. A pergunta que ficará para este sujeito será a seguinte: E o que eu tenho a ver com isso? Porque o livro não dialoga – e nem é mesmo a sua intenção primeira – com o público brasileiro, sequer o lusitano, apesar de ser escrito justamente na língua de ambos os países. O seu público é o anglo-saxão – e isto não é uma má notícia. Pelo contrário: Pereira Coutinho nos apresenta a um mundo que todos nós deveríamos ter acesso – e que foi infelizmente negado por causa de anos de lobotomia em uma cultura da estupidez institucionalizada. E quando falo de “mundo anglo-saxão”, não estou a falar de The Smiths, Echo & The Bunnymen, Lennon & McCarthy e Monty Phyton; falo do filósofo Roger Scruton, do cientista político Anthony Quinton, do grande Michael Oakeshott – e do honorável Sir Edmund Burke (1729-1797), considerado o pai do conservadorismo e, no caso de Pereira Coutinho, “o seu Virgílio nos labirintos da ideologia política”.

O honorável Edmund Burke falando ao deserto da Wasteland...

Ditaduras sempre querem reescrever a História. deformá-la ou suprimi-la: O massacre da Praça da Paz Celestial não será esquecido

 

Taiwan quer preservar memória de massacre chinês

Folha de S. Paulo | Mundo

05 de junho de 2024

TAIPÉ (TAIWAN) | AFP E REUTERS

No dia em que o Massacre na Praça da Paz Celestial completa 35 anos, nesta terça -feira (4), o novo presidente de Taiwan, Lai Ching-te, afirmou que a violenta repressão chinesa na praça Tiananmen "não desaparecerá na torrente da história", ao recordar o evento que pode ter deixado mais de mil mortos em 1989, segundo estimativas.

"Nós continuaremos trabalhando de maneira árdua para manter viva essa memória histórica e alcançar todos os que se preocupam com a democracia chinesa" afirmou Lai em publicação numa rede social.

A declaração de Lai ocorre semanas após a sua posse e depois de a China executar manobras militares ao redor de Taiwan, que Pequim considera uma parte do seu território.

Em Pequim, um porta-voz do Ministério das Relações Exteriores da China, Mao Ning, disse na terça-feira aos repórteres que "se opõe firmemente a qualquer um que difame a China e use Lasso [4 de junho] como pretexto para interferimos assuntos internos da China".

Taiwan é a única parte do mundo de língua chinesa onde a data pode ser lembrada abertamente.

Taiwan: os custos estarrecedores de uma invasão pela China - Nicholas Welch, Jared McKinney, Peter Harris (China Talk)

China Talk, June 4, 2024 

Making war is difficult, yet making peace is not easy 战难和亦不易

Nicholas Welch: Even if all the constraints and restraints have basically disappeared, what hasn’t changed is how insanely difficult it is to pull off the invasion.

Tanks don't walk on water. Boats aren’t hypersonic. The Taiwan Strait hasn’t gotten any narrower. Taiwan hasn’t built more landing beaches for the PLA.

The longer Xi stays in power, the more different Taiwan becomes and the harder it gets to swallow. Just like Mao said, Taiwan is not desirable.

Peter Harris: While it’s true that the geography has not changed, China is more capable than they were twenty years ago, and the costs of restraint have changed. The more American leaders talk about Taiwan as this democratic outpost that is essential to the defense of the Indo-Pacific, a critical node in America, the more the costs of restraint increase.

“Oh gosh, the Americans, they’ve changed the way they think about Taiwan. Even though it’s not becoming any easier to seize Taiwan by force, it’s become more important to pull the trigger ASAP — because if we don’t, we’re going to wake up in five to ten years’ time and the US will have recognized an independent Taiwan and brought it back under its security umbrella.” 

— The CCP, maybe

Jared McKinney: The truth is that an invasion would be incredibly hard — and we actually have good evidence for why.

Taiwan’s beautiful beaches are reportedly protected by undersea oil pipelines, which are rigged to explode and set the beaches ablaze in case of an amphibious landing (Easton, p. 138).

But this difficulty can be made even harder with relative ease. That’s where we would disagree with Brands and Beckley.

We’ve read articles recently saying we need to spend 5% of our GDP on defense to get ready for this challenge. We’ve read an article saying we need to threaten a preemptive nuclear war against China if they suggest they’re going to invade Taiwan.

We disagree with all of that. We think deterrence can be restored much more easily.

One of my brilliant army students [coming soon to ChinaTalk!] did a year-long investigation of America’s plan to invade Japanese-occupied Formosa in 1944. This was known as Operation Causeway. 

At the time, the US calculated that we needed 3:1 force ratios to successfully take the island. There were 98,000 Japanese soldiers on the island, which meant that we needed close to 300,000 soldiers to land on Formosa in order to defeat the Japanese.

Today, there are 169,000 soldiers in Taiwan’s military. There’s also the potential for reserves, but their quality is unknown, so we’ll stick with 169,000 as our estimate.

If you do similar force ratios today, we’re talking about half a million PLA soldiers on the island. Given the PLA’s lift capacity including civilian assets like ROROs, achieving that number of boots on the ground requires moving 50,000 troops onto the island per day. The truth is, in war, many of those are going to be killed, and you’re not going to be able to land soldiers that quickly.

We chose not to invade Formosa because the costs of such an invasion were too high. We think that objective assessment of similar variables today shouldlead to the same conclusion by the CCP. However, we’re not in the minds of Chinese decision-makers, and we don’t know how they weigh different variables.

Now, how do we make an invasion harder? We should learn the very obvious lessons of Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, and invest in twenty-first-century capabilities like drones, mobile missiles, and artillery. Older technologies like mines will need to be deployed en masse.

Taiwan has more than a million people who’ve done their conscript duty — they are in a theoretical reserve. If you can turn the theoretical reserve into a real reserve, then a successful invasion actually becomes impossible, because if you take 1.5 million reserve soldiers plus almost 200,000 active soldiers, then China would need to land 6 million people to be successful. That’s larger than the whole PLA.

Singapore's model is an excellent example of how this could be done. Shang-su Wu 吳尚蘇, a Taiwanese scholar, wrote a book on Singapore’s national service system, how it works, and how it could be applied in Taiwan.

That would achieve robust deterrence. It doesn’t require radically changing the status quo in the US-China relationship.

The most important takeaway in terms of military capabilities, is that we need to make sure we’re staggering them in phases. In other words, we just need to be very careful of our timelines so that there aren’t decade-long deterrence gaps. We should think of deterrence on a sort of year-by-year basis.

Source: McKinney and Harris, p. 101

The Peak China Hypothesis and Military Modernization

Nicholas Welch: Hal Brands and Michael Beckley argued in their book Danger Zone that China’s window of opportunity is closing because their economic trajectory doesn't look super good. Thus, it’s either now or never to invade Taiwan.

Do you agree with that argument?

Jared McKinney: Yes. But there’s an important nuance with that argument related to military modernization cycles. 

Beginning in the 1990s, the PRC began a long-term modernization project. It didn’t actually bear fruit until about 2014. This led many people to underestimate Chinese military power.

While this was happening, Taiwan was in its authoritarian-to-democratic transition and was refocusing on basically domestic politics. America was embroiled in its wars in the Middle East.

China completed this long-term program, and now we see that they are producing something like 100 J-20s (歼-20) per year, modernized support aircraft like KJ-500s (空警-500) and KJ-2000s, and they’ve built a very sophisticated navy with advanced air-defense systems and serious strike options. They’ve done things that even the US hasn’t done, like putting anti-ship ballistic missiles on to naval vessels, according to the DoD report to Congress in 2023.

Now, the United States and Taiwan are counter-modernizing against these capabilities. China’s cycle took about fifteen years. That’s probably how long our cycle is going to take.

Our counter-modernization programs include:

• The B-21, which is supposed to be able to penetrate A2AD-defended airspace;

• The Columbia-class submarine, which is going to be the greatest submarine in the world when it comes out;

• New army and Marine Corps capabilities, including modeling some of China’s new capabilities.

All of these will come online around 2030.

Meanwhile, Taiwan is modernizing its military. It’s moved from four months to one year of conscription. It’s raising its military budget, and it’s looking to acquire some new capabilities that could pose a more serious threat to the PLA. All of that is going to take time as well.

The same story is happening in Japan. The Japanese self-defense force is modernizing with the goal of becoming a master counter-strike organization by 2030. That means, if Japan is struck, they will be able to respond with equivalent weapons. This is going to pose actually a very significant deterrent long term and is going to offer much better protection to forward-deployed US forces in Japan.

Noahpinion

A pivotal moment for Japan's national defense

I’ve been writing a lot about the threat of a major war in Asia, but I haven’t written much about Japan’s role in that equation. And yet Japan would be at the very center of such a war. A Chinese seizure of Taiwan would put Japan’s security in grave danger…

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10 days ago · 98 likes · 23 comments · Noah Smith

The problem with all of the counter-modernization activities is not that they’re happening, but they’re happening on a timeline that’s pretty far in the future.

At the same time, China is at a pretty good place in its modernization program. It’s possible that Chinese decision-makers could decide that now is better than later. We saw similar logic in Germany in 1914, which was driven by the military modernization programs of Germany’s adversaries.

They saw that the Russian army was going to be a million men by 1917. Germany plugged that data into their gonkulator and decided that they couldn’t win a two-front war against both France and Russia if Russia had an army of a million men.

Jordan Schneider: We had Michael O’Hanlon on the show about a year and a half ago. He wrote this fun paper where he tried to run some gonkulator calculations on whether the US could defeat a Chinese invasion.

War in Taiwan: Who Would Win? ChinaTalk 1:09:49

My takeaway was that China would need the probability of success to be really high in order for them to act to change the status quo. Regardless of who’s got the coolest fighter jets, the biggest downside is still the multi-trillion-dollar economic losses. 

I think it would be really hard for decision-makers in Beijing to talk themselves into the “three days to take Kyiv” pitfall the way that Putin did.

My sense is that the scariest thing from the PRC perspective might actually be having the war take longer than they had hoped.

Jared McKinney: I think we agree that the best solution for the PRC is to drop the talk about reunification by 2049 and go back to Deng Xiaoping’s thousand-year timeline.

But you can read the third historical resolution, and it says that they intend to reunify Taiwan. Whether they meant it or not, I am not sure. But they did say it. My suggestion would be to stop saying it.

Maybe Xi could give a speech on strategic patience and focus on the long game, like Deng.

Know someone who is convinced that China would never pull the trigger on an invasion? Send them this post to see what they think about Xi’s new timeline.

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The Risks of Accidental Escalation

Jordan Schneider: Your book, while convincing, sort of punts the awkward political logic of entanglement, which seems pretty relevant given the new developments in the dance of death between Iran and Israel.

That hasn’t led to armageddon yet, thankfully, but there are plenty of scary historical parallels.

Another scary parallel that comes to mind is the logic of Bush #2’s invasion of Iraq. The fantastic book Japan 1941 documents how no one in Japan ever made the decision to go to war with the US, but everyone in the bureaucracy sleep-walked forward into escalation anyway.

It’s awkward to be the one to dissent in a bureaucracy. Nobody wants to be the person who walks up to the theater commander and says, “This is actually a f*cking terrible idea.”

What does the escalation ladder look like if the PLA starts with something modest like a blockade? Could it potentially spiral into a situation where Beijing decision-makers feel like they are locked in and no one has any choice but to double down?

Peter Harris: The important thing to remember is that there will be crises in the Taiwan Strait. We can be pretty confident of that due to the unpredictability of domestic politics in the US, Taiwan, and China.

The question is, “How do you get to a dynamic that disincentivizes that kind of gradual autopilot escalation?” There needs to be confidence in those moments that if the CCP does de-escalate, they’re not going to bear some terrible cost by backing down.

In crisis moments, leaders fear that if they don’t seize the present moment to do something, then they’ll lose that opportunity in the future or suffer enormous future costs.

Regarding Iran and Israel — I was really concerned at one point over the past few days that Israeli leaders would respond to Iran’s strike by striking Iran’s nuclear facilities. 

A billboard in central Tehran depicting Iranian ballistic missiles, with text in Persian reading, “Israel is weaker than a spider’s web.” (Atta Kenare / AFP)

I could imagine the conversations inside the corridors of power, where some hawk says, “This is the moment. This is our only chance to retaliate against Iran’s nuclear sites. We’ll enjoy regional support, and we’ve got a good excuse or pretext because Iran just struck us. It’s a once-in-a-generation moment.”

That didn’t happen, thank goodness — but why not? War was avoided, I assume, because inside those corridors of power in Israel, they had confidence that they didn’t need to escalate to that level. They felt confident that their post-crisis survival was already assured.

You need that kind of dynamic across the Taiwan Strait. When a crisis happens, it’s important that Chinese leaders don’t feel pressure to move due to fear of losing out on the time-sensitive opportunity to peacefully unify with Taiwan.

It’s really important that the political and diplomatic foundations are robust enough to withstand those crises. We have to make clear that peaceful unification is a theoretical possibility to the future.

You need deterrence in a situation like this — your deterrents are the cap on escalation. They are the ceiling above which escalation triggers a catastrophic event. That event doesn’t necessarily need to be WWIII or the threat of a preemptive nuclear strike by the USA.

If Taiwan itself can adopt a military posture that just makes invasion prohibitively costly for the PRC, then you can combine these two pieces to see that the costs of restraint are not too serious, but the costs of war are very serious.

Face Politics, Xi Mania, and Recommended Reading

Jordan Schneider: In the book Chiang Kai-shek’s Politics of Shame, I learned that Chiang Kai-shek kept a diary for essentially his entire life. This diary had different columns to write daily updates on things like family, country, politics, exercise, what I ate, the weather … but then there’s a column called Japan and national shame. Then after fleeing to Taiwan, he starts a column on Taiwan and national shame.

I worry about dynamics like ego, manhood, and losing face 丢脸 in the One China dynamic. Everyone knows Taiwan’s been its own thing since 1949, but that’s not a fun fact for Chinese leaders to acknowledge. 

Thus far, we’ve been talking about decision trees and game theory in a very rational way. But how can we analyze the risks of invasion if the decision to invade is going to be an irrational one? How can we make sure these military leaders can still sleep at night if they decide against going to war?

Jared McKinney: A lot of those issues were probably engaged with Nancy Pelosi’s vision to Taiwan in 2022. Pelosi’s visit was technically not a new incident because Speakers of the House had visited before. But when Speaker Newt Gingrich visited Taiwan, he did it in a way that actually gave face to China.

Gingrich visited the mainland first, and he met with important leaders there. Then he made a quick visit to Taiwan, he didn’t spend the night, and he didn’t talk about Taiwan versus China issues at all. He focused on positive aspects of the relationship.

On the other hand, Speaker Pelosi’s visit espoused democracy versus authoritarianism, freedom versus communism — it was very zero-sum. That’s just throwing fuel on the fire 推波助瀾 — and there is no need to take that approach. 

Peter Harris: There’s at least some polling evidence that ordinary Taiwanese understand this dynamic. People in Taiwan express a little frustration or anxiety when US leaders take steps that can be perceived as incendiary or unhelpful. Everyone’s security is improved when everyone is content.

Pompeo’s idea of putting China in its proper place — there’s no way that can be construed in a constructive way. It’s just not useful discourse.

But I certainly understand there’s a danger of going too far in the other direction and being too sympathetic to the Chinese position. The United States shouldn’t rhetorically capitulate and go too far. But I agree that there’s a huge risk to trying to humiliate and to force China to kowtow 磕頭 into submission. That may well backfire.

Jordan Schneider: My recommended reading on the subject — The Consequences of Humiliation: Anger and Status in World Politics, by Joslyn Barnhart [full show on this book coming soon to ChinaTalk].

Jared McKinney: I recommend Democracy in China: The Coming Crisis, by Ci Jiwei 慈继伟. He’s a professor in Hong Kong, and wrote this book in 2019 as he watched the protests in Hong Kong unfold.

This book is a letter to the Chinese Communist Party, arguing that it’s in the interest of the party to reform and introduce democratic elements. He argues that a CCP that refuses to reform is dooming itself to a future secession crisis. He doesn’t make a moralistic argument, but rather uses logic that he hoped could persuade the party. 

Nicholas Welch: Here’s a quote from that book — perhaps a one-paragraph summary of the point he’s trying to make:

[T]here is simply nowhere for the [Chinese Communist Party] to hide when the economy is not doing well or doing less well than before. This means that the Chinese party-state cannot speak of economic crises in the same way Western democratic governments can. In [the Westerners’] strict sense, economic crises are serious disturbances of a market economy conceived of as an autonomous system and, as such, presuppose a degree of separation between system integration and sociopolitical integration that is simply absent in China. For this reason, every crisis in China that otherwise resembles an economic crisis is directly a political crisis. The [Chinese Communist Party’s] role is so defined that it cannot convince anyone that “it no longer rules”— including over the economy.

Peter Harris: Individuals worry about things like shame and regret. Those emotions are part of what drives PRC leaders. They don’t want to lose a war, but they care about other things, too. They care about their political legacy. They care about national greatness. You can manipulate that or you can leverage that in service of stability and the status quo.

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Jared McKinney: The reason why this is really important is because there’s a Xi-mania when it comes to understanding China.

The problem is, nobody actually knows what Xi is actually feeling in his heart. Actually, his method of ruling China is to avoid coherent guidance, because if you avoid coherent guidance, then all the decisions have to be brought to you. That means you get to micromanage things because you actually haven’t empowered people based on principled objectives.

For example, on one hand, Xi talks about increasing self-reliance. On the other hand, he talks about increasing trade. Which one is it?

The way to avoid Xi mania is to look at factors that can actually be tested. The important thing is to construct a falsifiable argument.

We suggest nine of these factors.

One such factor — are Chinese commentators optimistic or pessimistic about peaceful unification in the long term? For comparison on this metric, we look at the essay by Jiang Shigong 强世功 back in 2005. At the time, he was an optimist about Taiwan, and he actually identifies some metrics that could be used to achieve peaceful unification. Are Chinese intellectuals still optimists today?

Another measurable variable — as Chinese economic growth slows, is Chinese military growth going to slow as well? In reality, Chinese economic growth was probably close to zero last year. But the Chinese military is still growing pretty robustly, at around 7% of GDP. So it looks like so far, military growth is probably exceeding economic growth.

But that’s something we will continue to watch in the future.

Another variable — will China actually develop the capabilities needed for an invasion? People talk about 2027 a lot, but that date is mostly just tied to Xi being irritated that the PLA doesn’t actually have the sufficient amphibious lift capability to achieve a successful invasion. It seems as though he set this deadline to light a fire under the PLA. But there are other related technologies that you would need for an invasion. Are these being prioritized?

We’ve already discussed the variable of time and relative power. If we see Chinese leaders start emphasizing the idea of strategic patience, that would be a positive sign. We should watch for signs that they are starting to loosen the 2049 timeline.

It will be important to watch the results of Taiwan’s elections in 2028. In 2024, the TPP and the KMT failed to form a coalition, and that resulted in their defeat despite winning 60% of the vote. But in China’s eyes, a 60% vote against the DPP is quite a showing.

If that is replicated in 2028, that might suggest that peaceful relations could be extended further in the future.

TL;DR — there are objective variables that aren’t just trying to get inside Xi’s head, that we can try to measure one way or another to get a sense for whether we’re wrong about the urgency of the present moment.

Jordan Schneider: But Jared — wouldn’t the optimal play for Xi be to spend three years talking about patience and 1,000-year timelines, and then launch a secret surprise strike?

Jared McKinney: I mean, yes. But that’s why we need to combine rhetorical information with information about what’s happening with China's military spending or how distracted the US is in any other theater of war.

Jordan Schneider: What are your book recommendations for our readers?

Peter Harris: My first recommendation is Power and Powerlessness: Quiescence and Rebellion in an Appalachian Valley, by political sociologist John Geventas.

This is a great book for people who want to study unobservable things — which is often what you’re doing when you study deterrence. He looks at the exercise of power over people, which is invisible, right up until the moment it bubbles up and has observable implications.

This book changed the way I think about politics and the world, and it’s not even about international relations. It's about an Appalachian coal-mining town. 

Jared McKinney: Yasheng Huang’s 黄亚生 new book, The Rise and Fall of the EAST, challenged a lot of my preconceived notions about China. He puts Keju 科舉 — China’s Imperial examination system — at the center of Chinese History.

He argues that the Keju allowed the Chinese state to promulgate uniformity and grow to an increasingly large scale. The super-scaled state was strong but anemic, because the exam system incentivized uniformity, disincentivized creativity, and it channeled lots of ambitious people in the same area to become bureaucrats for the government.

He argues that in periods when the examination system was more open to creativity, there was more innovation in China. But in periods in which the examination system became highly uniform and you had to write essays in a certain way, like in the Qing dynasty, China stopped inventing.

He explains that this legacy lives on today in China and the gaokao 高考 system.