China's Pearls Unstrung - Part 2

China's rationale

The Chinese government is aware of the looming security dilemma and has tried to alleviate regional concerns. For one, it is against China's national interest to be in direct conflicts with other countries. China and India, for instance, recently restarted military-to-military relations, nearly a year after India froze exchanges because of a visa dispute related to territorial claims.

Similarly, China announced that it had agreed to hold talks with Vietnam on how to resolve conflicts arising from a sovereignty dispute over the South China Sea. For another, the Chinese government wants to portray itself as a global moral pole.

A 2008 Congressional Research Office Report indicates that China is trying to use soft power in Southeast Asia and boost economic ties with ASEAN. Thus, it is not in China's best interest to jeopardize relations with its neighboring countries. China's growing naval capabilities and assertiveness, however, do not halt because of these concerns.

China's pearls unstrung - for now

According to Pehrson, the Chinese political elite has three major concerns: first and foremost the survival of the regime, followed by the stability of the country and the territorial integrity of China. Susan Shirk believes that the CCP has a deep sense of domestic insecurity, because two decades of economic reform and opening to the world have transformed Chinese society radically and created latent political challenges to communist rule.

The CCP's reliance on the military has become ever stronger since the 1989 Tiananmen student movement, which the military violently suppressed. Thus, the PLA is enjoying bigger budgets in part because today's leaders are less politically secure and have a greater need to keep the military satisfied.

Robert Suettinger, former national intelligence officer for East Asia, states that this reliance creates an obligation for party leaders that makes it more difficult to resist PLA demands for more expenditures. Consequently, double-digit increases in the military budget have given the PLA the money to purchase advanced destroyers and submarines from Russia.

Navy hawks, with their newly acquired hardware, are increasingly becoming what Professor David Shambaugh calls "hard power realists", who argue that "China should use its newly built military and economic influence to coerce others toward the ends China desires".

According to the bigger picture, China's increasing naval capability derives from national security concerns, which involve energy security, maritime security, and territorial integrity. By the early 1990s, China's fast economic growth and the stagnation of domestic oil output required the import of more energy resources.

Beijing has been trying to find other sources of energy from around the world, but it remains dependent on Middle Eastern oil. These energy demands are beginning to noticeably influence strategic thinking and military planning. Beijing wants to hold sway over vital sea lanes between the Indian and Pacific oceans through a chain of naval facilities and military ties, which, again, leads to the debate of the perceived string of pearls.

The South China Sea not only has stores of oil and natural gas that could make it a second Persian Gulf. As Abraham Denmark reports for Foreign Policy, it is "also a major highway linking the oil fields of the Middle East and the factories of East Asia, with more than 80 percent of China's oil imports flowing over its waters", most of which go through the Strait of Malacca.

The Chinese Navy, however, is faced with a "Malacca dilemma" since the strait is currently beyond the navy's operational reach. Therefore, securing sea lanes for energy and raw materials supports China's energy policy and is the principal motivation for China's increasing naval capabilities and activities such as the construction of deep water ports at Gwadar. This will ease the "Malacca dilemma" and reduce the likelihood of a "distant blockade" of Chinese shipping by the US Navy.

Maritime security and territorial integrity are closely intertwined. "The safeguarding of a nation's territorial integrity must have a large and powerful armed force," states the PLA's National Defense University (NDU).

Similarly, the NDU's study of military strategy notes the growing importance of "the rights and interests of our continental shelf and maritime exclusive economic zones, especially the threats facing strategic resource development and strategic passageways".

According to the ONI report, China ratified the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to bolster its claim to sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. Article 76 states:

The continental shelf of a coastal State comprises the seabed and subsoil of the submarine areas that extend beyond its territorial sea throughout the natural prolongation of its land territory to the outer edge of the continental margin, or to a distance of 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth of the territorial sea is measured where the outer edge of the continental margin does not extend up to that distance.

The Chinese government uses this article to legitimize its naval activities in the western Pacific as protection of maritime security and territorial integrity.

Implications for the United States

China's naval expansion in the western Pacific generates differences between it and the United States. For one, China is a signatory of the UNCLOS and views the South China Sea as its own territory. The United States, on the other hand, is not a signatory, arguing that the Law of the Sea "will endanger US sovereignty, harm economic interests, and weaken national security".

Washington instead pursues an "open sea" policy in the region. For another, the United States favors a status quo that benefits it, while China seeks to become "Asia's natural leader".

These differences between the two countries are enough to raise tension in the western Pacific. On March 8, 2009, five Chinese ships shadowed and maneuvered dangerously close to a US Navy vessel in the South China Sea. Even if direct incidents are rare, China could still clash with US allies such as the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan.

Shirk fears that if there is a naval clash over oil and gas fields in the East China Sea, the United States, as Japan's military protector, could feel compelled to intervene. This scenario would constitute what Thomas Christensen calls "posing problems without catching up".

China can pose major problems for US security interests without catching up with total US military power. Again, a security dilemma, similar to the one between China and its neighbors, looms large in US-China relations.

If dealt with shrewdly, this security dilemma is not inevitable. Differences aside, the US and China share mutual security interests that provide opportunities for cooperation and strong incentives to manage and mitigate bilateral tension. These interests include meeting the challenges of globalization, transnational security concerns, "combating terrorism, protecting the environment, and public health issues".

Since the security dilemma in part derives from the inability to gauge other countries' intentions, it is crucial to improve communications between the United States and China.

The Department of Defense 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review Report suggests that the US and China should "sustain open channels of communication to discuss disagreements in order to manage and ultimately reduce the risks of conflict that are inherent in any relationship as broad and complex as that shared by these two nations".

China expert Michael Swaine further suggests that the two countries engage in strategic dialogues, sustain and strengthen military-to-military links, and expand ways of cooperating on other security issues such as disaster and humanitarian relief, counter-terrorism, and other non-traditional threats.

Indeed, despite differences, the two do engage in military dialogues. According to the Wall Street Journal, the chief of the People's Liberation Army visited the United States on a weeklong trip this summer. Later, then-US defense secretary Robert Gates met with his Chinese counterpart as the two countries sought to build upon recent exchanges and a warming military relationship.

Although China's increasing naval capability has much to do with national security rather than power projection, its navy and conservatives are gaining ground in its complicated political world.

China, however, has multiple interest groups. Besides military hawks, according to David Shambuagh, a group of globalists believe that China must shoulder the responsibility for addressing global governance issues and that sovereignty has its limits as "non-traditional" challenges must be dealt with multilaterally.

They prefer soft power to hard military power. These globalists have lost their voices since 2008, which means the US should identify the reasons why they have been silent. It then should take measures to help expand the globalism camp, which backs smoother US-China relations.

The string of pearls theory fails to accurately describe the Chinese national security reality. China has not built foreign naval bases, yet the pearls are indeed manifestations of increasing Chinese naval presence and capabilities. China's increasing naval capabilities are leading to a dangerous security dilemma. But these conflicts are not unavoidable.

The United States needs to engage with China and reach out to Chinese leaders who are less hawkish and more international. In short, the US should do whatever it can to keep the string of pearls a theory rather than provoke China into making it into a reality.