China: The Mythification of It Being an Emergent Super Power

CHINA: THE MYTHIFICATION OF IT BEING AN EMERGENT SUPER POWER

By Dr. Subhash Kapila

Introductory Observations

China with its double-digit economic growth and double-digit growth in defense spending in the last two decades or so has undoubtedly emerged as one of the major world powers to be reckoned with. However, to maintain that China has already arrived as a superpower or will emerge shortly as a superpower is purely a mythification. It is a mythification as it does not incorporate an objective analysis of China’s major vulnerabilities and lack of national attributes that go into making a superpower.

China’s mythification as an emergent superpower has an inherent strategic danger that China starts perceiving itself as the “strategic equal” of the United States when it is not. In the process, its imperial pretensions are added to and it results in China’s strategic delinquencies around the world.

China’s mythification of it being as an emergent superpower arises from a host of multiple sources mostly American and Chinese. The rest of the world buys their line of projections.

The United States mythification of China as an emergent superpower was an endowment by late President Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger in the early 1970s. The strategic aim of Kissinger was to enlist China into a quasi-strategic alliance with the United States following China’s estrangement with the USSR.

China outlived its strategic utility to the United States by the close of the 1980s and was in the process of swinging back to Russia after Gorbachev succumbed to all Chinese demands ranging from Afghanistan to Cambodia, in his famous Vladivostok speech. However, the mythification of China as an emergent superpower by the United States continued. This time the United States Department of Defense picked up this mythification of China as an emergent superpower to justify its increasing budgetary allotments to meet the looming China threat.

China reveled in this American mythification as it helped this nation, which at best was a regional power in military terms, to play the “China Card” against the Soviet Union.

Addedly, China itself was an active proponent of furthering the mythification of its emergence as a superpower for political and nationalistic reasons. Externally, it helped China’s political bid to project itself in the imperial grandeur of the lost Chinese Empire and also in the bid to subdue by political and military coercion its neighbours whose territories Communist China grabbed.

In terms of China’s domestic politics and control this China mythification helped in arousing extreme nationalistic passions and brutal suppression of its populace.

There is yet another new category of advocates propagating the mythification of China as an emergent superpower. They admit that China can never emerge as a superpower in the strategic and military sense, but that China has emerged as the global superpower in terms of exercising “soft power” globally when seen in African and Latin American context. This is as good as the misnomer that since China has already emerged as an “economic superpower” it therefore qualifies to be the global superpower in the strategic sense too.

This Author would like to assert that the contemporary intense debates on China’s emergence as a superpower gained intensity in the last decade or so. The twin reasons prompting this debate again seem to stem from United States strategic policies. The first reaction was from a group that “hoped hopefully” that China could emerge as the second superpower to countervail United States policies of unilateralism. The second group concludes that with the United States power in decline presently as a result of Iraq and Afghanistan, it is only China that can assume the role of the next global superpower.

Both summations though erroneous fuel the current mythification of China as an emerging superpower. The summations are erroneous because the United States comprehensive global domination is not in decline and nor is China anywhere close to attain global superpower status.

To assist in the full comprehension of what constitutes for a nation to achieve the status of a superpower, and this to provide the basis for further discussion in this Paper, two definitions by distinguished American academics are reproduced below:

“A superpower must be able to conduct a global strategy including the possibility of destroying the world; to command vast economic potential and influence; and to present a universal ideology.”
“A country that has the capacity to project dominating power and influence anywhere in the world, and sometimes in more than one region in the globe at a time and so may attain the status of global hegemon.”

This Paper attempts to examine the main theme of the mythification of China as an emergent superpower not by statistical analysis but on a more broader canvass incorporating the following:

China Nowhere Near to Displace or Equal the United States as a Global Superpower
China Will Be a Minority in Any Emerging Global Powers Line-up
China’s Survival as a Political Entity
China’s Peripheries Strategically Turbulent
China’s Acceptability as a Responsible Stake-Holder in Global Affairs

China Nowhere Near to Displace or Equal the United States as a Global Superpower

The United States today is the only global superpower when measured comprehensively in terms of the two definitions quoted above. United States policy formulations are based on a global strategic blueprint and the United States commands the strategic, military and economic might to project US dominating power and influence in the world in more than one region at a time as now witnessed in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Can the above be said of China contemporaneously or even in the next four to five decades? Certainly not, if a strategic reality check is carried out on China which indicates the following:

China has no parallel web of strategic alliances or bi-lateral security relationships around the world like the United States strategic links with the Atlantic Community, NATO or its mutual security pacts in East Asia with Japan, South Korea etc.
China has not established nor will it find regional acceptances to establish its forward military presences in bases around the world like the United States
China’s global power projection capabilities in terms of aircraft carrier groups, strategic bombers, strategic airlift operations and amphibious warfare capabilities it possesses in this regard are limited regionally against Taiwan and South China Sea confrontations.
China’s strategic nuclear assets are fractionally in size to those of the United States. Credible deterrence is a debatable issue.
China has no global military intervention capabilities to enable coercive diplomacy in the absence of security alliances, agreements or military bases around the world.

China’s economic power has been touted as one of its most significant strengths contributing to its superpower emergence. However, when economically measuring China, the following limitations need to be taken into account:

In a highly globalized inter-dependent global economy, China cannot for long insulate its economic strengths from global influences.
China’s energy security on which depends its stupendous economic growth is hostage to United States control of global oil resources and sea-lanes of oil supplies.
China’s economy can also be said to be a hostage of the United States as its major export earnings are from USA. The United States can exercise debilitating leverages over the Chinese economy.
China’s industrial production advantages based on cheap labor are being eroded.

In terms of political influence, China is restricted to countries like Pakistan, North Korea and some African and Latin American countries. China’s questionable membership of the United Nations Security Council as a veto-wielding power has not endowed it with similar political influence as enjoyed by other Permanent Members. China has hesitated in using its veto powers against the United States for discernible reasons.

China when measured both in terms of ‘hard power’ and ‘soft power’ cannot be said to be in the process of equaling the United States strengths as a global superpower, leave aside displacing it. This assessment holds good for the next four decades or so.

China Will Be a Minority in Any Emerging Global Powers Line-up

In terms of emerging global power line-up, various configurations are being projected by distinguished political analysts. Many seem to agree that the future global powers line-up will comprise the United States, European Union, Russia, China, Japan and India.

A new analysis by an exuberant young analyst predicts that the new world order will be dominated by three superpowers, namely the United States, the European Union and China. While one would not disagree that feasibility exists for a united and effectively integrated European Union ready to shoulder global security responsibilities to emerge as a superpower, the same cannot be said of China. China is neither united, nor effectively integrated and it has an unenviable record of being a globally disruptive power.

Whatever be the preferred choice from the above two configurations of the emerging global power line-up, one fact that strikingly stands out is that China in both cases will be the odd-man out and in a minority.

China has no strategic convergences with the other global major powers; in fact strategic contradictions exist between China and all the other entities in the global power line-up.

In civilizational terms too, China is the odd-man out in the global power line-up.

The United States, Japan and India have already taken notice of the implications of China’s military rise as one of the major powers. They have initiated some counter-strategies. The European Union too has woken to this fact as Europe has increasingly come under China nuclear missile ranges and the threats so posed.

If this is the reaction of the major world powers to China’s not-so-benevolent military rise, then what will be their reaction as China comes close to bidding for superpower status by 2050?

The global major powers will have no option but to act in concert to prevent China’s bid for superpower status as the national security interests of each one of them will be seriously impacted by such a strategic eventuality.

An intensified strategic hemming-in of China on a global scale would not be a far-fetched idea to arrest China’s rise to superpower status.

China’s Survival as a Political Entity

China has painstakingly tried to project for the last six decades that it is a “monolithic Communist giant” which has even successfully weathered the fallout of the USSR disintegration as the foremost communist giant.

The Chinese Communist Party has perpetuated its strong-fisted control over China so far by brutally stamping out political dissent and suppression of human rights and civil liberties. It cannot be maintained that the 1.3 billion Chinese are faithfully committed to and obsessed with Communist ideology with ‘Chinese Characteristics’. The reverse may be happening now with the growing economic affluence and the power of the Internet and ‘informationalized” world.

At some stage, which may not be far-off, China’s 1.3 billion Chinese may get prompted to shake-off the Communist Party Yoke of nearly sixty years. In such an eventuality the political disorder in China unlike the disintegration of the Soviet Union would be of deluge proportions.

The internal dissensions within China amongst its provinces and cultural identity differences between the North and South could even fragment China.

National cohesion and good governance are the essential pre-requisites of ‘national power’, China does not seem to have them today and this deficiency could worsen further.

On this count, the mythification of China as an emergent superpower becomes even more questionable and shaky.

China’s Peripheries Strategically Turbulent

China’s qualifications for classification as a superpower are primarily attributed to its large geographical size besides its population. In fact vast geographical size was the prime determinant when it came to the United States and the USSR, besides other recognized power attributes.

If that be so, what should not be forgotten in the case of China is that its significant geographical size is a product of its military occupation of the non-Han vast expanses of Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia after the Communists came into power.

Without Tibet, Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia the remaining core of Han China just about qualifies to be a regional power. Without these minority regions and their vast natural resources, China’s strategic significance pales.

Tibet and Xinjiang today on China’s Western and Southern peripheries are strategically and politically turbulent. Despite years of Chinese Government noticeably sponsored sizeable Han migration into this region, the changed demographics have not been able to subdue uprisings against Chinese rule and demands for self-determination and independence.

China’s brutal suppression of uprisings in these two strategic regions is likely to generate insurgencies and other forms of asymmetric warfare against China.

These strategic peripheries with their increasing political turbulence offer tempting options for those interested in further strategic hemming-in of China.

China’s pre-occupations with such strategic distractions are significant vulnerabilities and which in any case would significantly impede her emergemce as a superpower.

China’s Acceptability as a Responsible Stake-Holder in the Global Affairs

The United States officials, think-tanks and academia have many a times been seen as propagating another myth that China should be assisted to emerge as a responsible stake-holder in global affairs. This again seems to be advocated for strategic reasons in that a China “amenable to United States only” prognostication would lessen China’s salience as a threat to US national security, even if it continues as a threat to other countries. In any case this premise has not worked as China has been right upto this minute engaged in actions globally which threaten US interests.

It would be fair to state that most of the world does not view China as a responsible stake-holder in global affairs, as its demonstrated record is to the contrary:

China’s propensity to use military force to settle disputes in its favor e.g. Korea, Vietnam, India and South China Sea.
China’s notorious record of nuclear weapons and missile proliferation in the Islamic World noticeably Pakistan and through proxies like Pakistan and North Korea
China’s support for insurgencies in South East Asia, South Asia, Africa and Latin America
China’s military supplies to the Taliban for operations against US Forces in Afghanistan
China’s creation of military client states to de-stabilize regional powers like India in South Asia and North Korea in East Asia against Japan.

China’s acceptability as a responsible stake-holder gets adversely impaired in global affairs due to the strategically disruptive policies as outlined above.

A discerning observer can make out two distinct threads in the strategic delinquencies of China outlined above:

Firstly, China’s strategic policies are designed to generate disruptive or destabilizing currents in regions perceived by the United States as critical to its interests.
Secondly, more deviously, China is attempting to further a “civilizational war” divide between the United States and the Islamic World. It is furthering the perception in the Islamic World that it is China only that is standing between the United States and the Islamic World and US attempts to dominate the Islamic World. Hence the pronounced WMD proliferation by China selectively to only Islamic countries. This is s sinister strategic policy.

China’s strategic delinquencies may find favor or acceptability with the “rogue nations” of the world but they can hardly find favor and more importantly, acceptability from nations around the globe which subscribe to an orderly, peaceful and stable global order.

It is this record which prevents China from acquiring “natural allies” in the free world and which can be considered as a significant obstacle for China’s emergence as a superpower.

Concluding Observations

The mythification of China as an emergent superpower in Western analyses must cease. The dangers of China perceiving itself as the “strategic equal” of the United States stands pointed out in the Introduction to this Paper.

So should cease, the advocacy of Western ‘China Specialists’ to preach that the world must attempt to “understand China” correctly and so also its aspirations. This Author would like to assert that there is a bigger call on China to make deliberate attempts to make itself understood correctly to the rest of world and soothe their misgivings about China.

China legitimacy to emerge as a superpower in the future would greatly depend on its proving itself by demonstrated performances that it is a responsible stake holder in global affairs. Its present record is confined to being an irresponsible stake holder in Islamic World affairs.

China has a long long way to go to achieve global superpower status. In the interim it must attempt to dispel the following prevailing picture of China, vividly captured by an astute Western academic:

“Today Chinese party-state has selected a Chinese past to suit its authoritarian purposes”
“China’s centrality and unity was at times a post-hoc rationalization for the grabbing of other people’s territory.
“But the PRC is an empire in that it appropriates an imperial idea of China, re-inventing a 2.500 year old autocracy to control its population and hector non-Chinese neighboring peoples.”
“The PRC regime, as a result, is dysfunctional in the world of nation states.”
“Still as Beijing twists history and uses false maps of China’s periphery as weapons, autocracy is reinforced, the imperial sense vindicated, and the contradiction with a loosened society and freer economy intensified.

China’s mythification as an emerging superpower would continue to remain as a myth till China on its own volition emerges as a “normal nation” in the comity of nations.

(The author is an International Relations and Strategic Affairs analyst. He is the Consultant, Strategic Affairs with South Asia Analysis Group. Email:drsubhashkapila@yahoo.com)