The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (41 page)

Gradual American accommodation to the changed balance of power was reflected in American policy toward Asia in the 1990s. First, in effect conceding that it lacked the will and/or the ability to pressure Asian societies, the United States separated issue areas where it might have leverage from issue areas where it had conflicts. Although Clinton had proclaimed human rights a top priority of American foreign policy toward China, in 1994 he responded to pressure from U.S. businesses, Taiwan, and other sources, delinked human rights from economic issues, and abandoned the effort to use extension of most favored nation status as a means of influencing Chinese behavior toward its political dissidents. In a parallel move, the administration explicitly separated security policy toward Japan, where presumably it could exert leverage, from trade and other economic issues, where its relations with Japan were most conflictual. The United States thus surrendered weapons it could have used to promote human rights in China and trade concessions from Japan.

Second, the United States repeatedly pursued a course of anticipated reciprocity with the Asian nations, making concessions with the expectation they would induce comparable ones from the Asians. This course was often justified by reference to the need to maintain “constructive engagement” or “dialogue” with the Asian country. More times than not, however, the Asian country interpreted the concession as a sign of American weakness and hence that it could go still further in rejecting American demands. This pattern was particularly noticeable with respect to China, which responded to the U.S. delinkage of MFN status by a new and intensive round of human rights violations. Because of the American penchant to identify “good” relations with “friendly” relations, the United States is at a considerable disadvantage in competing with Asian societies who identify “good” relations with ones that produce victories for them. To the Asians, American concessions are not to be reciprocated, they are to be exploited.

Third, a pattern developed in the recurring U.S.-Japan conflicts over trade
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issues in which the United States would make demands on Japan and threaten sanctions if they were not met. Prolonged negotiations would ensue and then at the last moment before the sanctions were to go into effect, agreement would be announced. The agreements were generally so ambiguously phrased that the United States could claim a victory in principle, and the Japanese could implement or not implement the agreement as they wished and everything would go on as before. In similar fashion, the Chinese would reluctantly agree to statements of broad principles concerning human rights, intellectual property, or proliferation, only to interpret them very differently from the United States and continue with their previous policies.

These differences in culture and the shifting power balance between Asia and America encouraged Asian societies to support each other in their conflicts with the United States. In 1994, for instance, virtually all Asian countries “from Australia to Malaysia to South Korea,” rallied behind Japan in its resistance to the U.S. demand for numerical targets for imports. A similar rallying simultaneously took place in favor of MFN treatment for China, with Japan’s Prime Minister Hosokawa in the lead arguing that Western human rights concepts could not be “blindly applied” to Asia, and Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew warning that if it pressured China “the United States will find itself all alone in the Pacific.”
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In another show of solidarity, Asians, Africans, and others rallied behind the Japanese in backing reelection of the Japanese incumbent as head of the World Health Organization against the opposition of the West, and Japan promoted a South Korean to head the World Trade Organization against the American candidate, former president of Mexico Carlos Salinas. The record shows indisputably that by the 1990s on trans-Pacific issues each country in East Asia felt that it had much more in common with other East Asian countries than it had in common with the United States.

The end of the Cold War, the increasing interaction between Asia and America, and the relative decline in American power thus brought to the surface the clash of cultures between the United States and Japan and other Asian societies and enabled the latter to resist American pressure. The rise of China posed a more fundamental challenge to the United States. U.S. conflicts with China covered a much broader range of issues than those with Japan, including economic questions, human rights, Tibet, Taiwan, the South China Sea, and weapons proliferation. On almost no major policy issue did the United States and China share common objectives. The differences go across the board. As with Japan, these conflicts were in large part rooted in the different cultures of the two societies. The conflicts between the United States and China, however, also involved fundamental issues of power. China is unwilling to accept American leadership or hegemony in the world; the United States is unwilling to accept Chinese leadership or hegemony in Asia. For over two hundred years the United States has attempted to prevent the emergence of an overwhelmingly dominant power in Europe. For almost a hundred years,
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beginning with its “Open Door” policy toward China, it has attempted to do the same in East Asia. To achieve these goals it has fought two world wars and a cold war against Imperial Germany, Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, the Soviet Union, and Communist China. This American interest remains and was reaffirmed by Presidents Reagan and Bush. The emergence of China as the dominant regional power in East Asia, if it continues, challenges that central American interest. The underlying cause of conflict between America and China is their basic difference over what should be the future balance of power in East Asia.

With six civilizations, eighteen countries, rapidly growing economies, and major political, economic and social differences among its societies, East Asia could develop any one of several patterns of international relations in the early twenty-first century. Conceivably an extremely complex set of cooperative and conflictual relations could emerge involving most of the major and middle-level powers of the region. Or a major power, multipolar international system could take shape with China, Japan, the United States, Russia, and possibly India balancing and competing with each other. Alternatively, East Asian politics could be dominated by a sustained bipolar rivalry between China and Japan or between China and the United States, with other countries aligning themselves with one side or the other or opting for nonalignment. Or conceivably East Asian politics could return to its traditional unipolar pattern with a hierarchy of power centered on Beijing. If China sustains its high levels of economic growth into the twenty-first century, maintains its unity in the post-Deng era, and is not hamstrung by succession struggles, it is likely to attempt to realize the last of these outcomes. Whether it succeeds depends upon the reactions of the other players in the East Asian power politics game.

China’s history, culture, traditions, size, economic dynamism, and self-image all impel it to assume a hegemonic position in East Asia. This goal is a natural result of its rapid economic development. Every other major power, Britain and France, Germany and Japan, the United States and the Soviet Union, has engaged in outward expansion, assertion, and imperialism coincidental with or immediately following the years in which it went through rapid industrialization and economic growth. No reason exists to think that the acquisition of economic and military power will not have comparable effects in China. For two thousand years China was the preeminent power in East Asia. Chinese now increasingly assert their intention to resume that historic role and to bring to an end the overlong century of humiliation and subordination to the West and Japan that began with British imposition of the Treaty of Nanking in 1842.

In the late 1980s China began converting its growing economic resources into military power and political influence. If its economic development continues, this conversion process will assume major proportions. According to
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official figures, during most of the 1980s Chinese military spending declined. Between 1988 and 1993, however, military expenditures doubled in current amounts and increased by 50 percent in real terms. A 21 percent rise was planned for 1995. Estimates of Chinese military expenditures for 1993 range from roughly $22 billion to $37 billion at official exchange rates and up to $90 billion in terms of purchasing power parity. In the late 1980s China redrafted its military strategy, shifting from defense against invasion in a major war with the Soviet Union to a regional strategy emphasizing power projection. In accordance with this shift it began developing its naval capabilities, acquiring modernized, longer-range combat aircraft, developing an inflight refueling capability, and deciding to acquire an aircraft carrier. China also entered into a mutually beneficial arms purchasing relationship with Russia.

China is on its way to becoming the dominant power in East Asia. East Asian economic development is becoming more and more China-oriented, fueled by the rapid growth of the mainland and the three other Chinas plus the central role which ethnic Chinese have played in developing the economies of Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. More threateningly, China is increasingly vigorous in asserting its claim to the South China Sea: developing its base in the Paracel Islands, fighting the Vietnamese over a handful of islands in 1988, establishing a military presence on Mischief Reef off the Philippines, and laying claim to the gas fields adjoining Indonesia’s Natuna Island. China also ended its low-key support for a continued U.S. military presence in East Asia and began actively to oppose that deployment. Similarly, although during the Cold War China quietly urged Japan to strengthen its military power, in the post-Cold War years it has expressed increased concern over the Japanese military buildup. Acting in classic fashion as a regional hegemon, China is attempting to minimize obstacles to its achievement of regional military superiority.

With rare exceptions, such as possibly the South China Sea, Chinese hegemony in East Asia is unlikely to involve expansion of territorial control through the direct use of military force. It is likely to mean, however, that China will expect other East Asian countries, in varying degrees, to do some or all of the following:

 
•
  support Chinese territorial integrity, Chinese control of Tibet and Xinjiang, and the integration of Hong Kong and Taiwan into China;

 
•
  acquiesce in Chinese sovereignty over the South China Sea and possibly Mongolia;

 
•
  generally support China in conflicts with the West over economics, human rights, weapons proliferation, and other issues;

 
•
  accept Chinese military predominance in the region and refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons or conventional forces that could challenge that predominance;

 
•
  
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adopt trade and investment policies compatible with Chinese interests and conducive to Chinese economic development;

 
•
  defer to Chinese leadership in dealing with regional problems;

 
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  be generally open to immigration from China;

 
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  prohibit or suppress anti-China and anti-Chinese movements within their societies;

 
•
  respect the rights of Chinese within their societies, including their right to maintain close relations with their kin and provinces of origin in China;

 
•
  abstain from military alliances or anti-China coalitions with other powers;

 
•
  promote the use of Mandarin as a supplement to and eventually a replacement for English as the Language of Wider Communication in East Asia.

Analysts compare the emergence of China to the rise of Wilhelmine Germany as the dominant power in Europe in the late nineteenth century. The emergence of new great powers is always highly destabilizing, and if it occurs, China’s emergence as a major power will dwarf any comparable phenomena during the last half of the second millennium. “The size of China’s displacement of the world,” Lee Kuan Yew observed in 1994, “is such that the world must find a new balance in 30 or 40 years. It’s not possible to pretend that this is just another big player. This is the biggest player in the history of man.”
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If Chinese economic development continues for another decade, as seems possible, and if China maintains its unity during the succession period, as seems probable, East Asian countries and the world will have to respond to the increasingly assertive role of this biggest player in human history.

Broadly speaking, states can react in one or a combination of two ways to the rise of a new power.
Alone or in coalition with other states they can attempt to insure their security by balancing against the emerging power, containing it, and, if necessary, going to war to defeat it.
Alternatively, states can try to bandwagon with the emerging power, accommodating it, and assuming a secondary or subordinate position in relation to the emerging power with the expectation that their core interests will be protected.
Or, conceivably, states could attempt some mixture of balancing and bandwagoning, although this runs the risk of both antagonizing the rising power and having no protection against it. According to Western international relations theory, balancing is usually a more desirable option and in fact has been more frequently resorted to than bandwagoning. As Stephen Walt has argued,

In general, calculations of intent should encourage states to balance. Bandwagoning is risky because it requires trust; one assists a dominant power in the hope that it will remain benevolent. It is safer to balance, in case the dominant power turns out to be aggressive. Furthermore, alignment with the weaker side enhances one’s influence within the resulting coalition, because the weaker side has greater need of assistance.”
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