Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 100

A Policy Proposal for Better
Relations with China

(Photo courtesy of Wikipedia)

Concerned that the great powers of Europe were scheming to
encircle Germany to limit its power and influence on the continent,
Kaiser Wilhelm II, emperor of Germany and king of Prussia, met
8 December 1912 with top German military advisors to discuss
courses of action including possibly declaring war. The meeting
became known as “the War Council.”

contain China. In fact, as author Biwu Zhang notes,
there is even the claim by certain Chinese scholars
that the United States is stoking disputes between
China and its neighbors as a way to increase China’s
difficulties.14 This again echoes an earlier time, when
the imperial German leaders came to believe the
Entente was encircling them and that it was necessary
to act. Misjudging German perceptions, the Entente’s
soldiers, politicians, and diplomats failed to prevent
the cataclysm of World War I in the face of a rising
Germany. Will leaders act in a different way to avert a
clash with a rising China in this century?
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The patterns of history perhaps can help us devise
ways to avoid repeated pitfalls. Chinese leaders fear
containment because they do not want China to lose
influence, to stagnate, or somehow to become subjugated to the desires and interests of other nations, as
before 1949. Such a future is unthinkable and intolerable to the Chinese.15 Therefore, how can the United
States and other nations in the Asia-Pacific region
change this perception among Chinese leaders?
Ashley J. Tellis of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace has penned an excellent study
with solid recommendations that could avoid promoting among Chinese leaders the perception that
the United States is attempting to implement a
containment policy. His approach advises promoting
balance and cooperation versus containment. His
main recommendations for U.S. policymakers to
achieve such balance are to bolster regional actors,
selectively deepen globalization, bolster U.S. military
capabilities, and reinvigorate the U.S. economy.16
Effective implementation of Tellis’s overarching policy of balance and broad growth should be supported
by four critical elements: transparency, engagement,
inclusion, and agreement.17
For centuries, a balance of power among the
world’s great powers, arrayed in blocs, was facilitated
by political leaders for the purpose of maintaining
peace. It was only after World War II that the United
States implemented a policy of containment to counter the expansion of the Soviet Union.
Containment worked in that case, but it cannot
work in reference to China. First, the Chinese and U.S.
economies are inextricably interconnected. By contrast,
during the Cold War, the U.S. and Soviet economies
were almost completely separated as trading partners
in competing ideological blocs. Second, China’s geopolitical location makes containment extremely problematic because of its centrality in the Pacific Rim. In
addition, Soviet expansion ambitions were worldwide,
whereas China does not necessarily desire expansion,
even on a regional level. In reality, what China most
likely wants is regional hegemony and recognition as the
first nation in the Pacific. Therefore, containing China
would accomplish little since its ambitions are limited to
its own region.18 Thus, balancing makes more sense than
July-August 2016  MILITARY REVIEW