Rebalancing or Containment?

Aug 04, 2013 Editorial

As Washington winds down its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and “pivots” away from the area to “rebalance” in Asia, relations between the U.S. and China have become increasingly contentious and “zero-sum”. But in Beijing’s view, the pivot to Asia is not novel. It is simply a return to the pre-9/11 global military posture of the George W. Bush administration, which redefined China from being a “strategic partner” to a “strategic competitor”.
From this perspective, deeply embedded in the rebalancing is Washington’s profound concern about China’s rise in the region and a determination to curtail its expanding influence. China sees America’s move as quite similar to the containment policy the US adopted during its Cold War with the USSR.
Under this overarching theme, Beijing sees a comprehensive policy of Washington to block China’s rise in the East through strengthened military alliances, “sabotaging” China’s ties with ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) and undercutting China’s effort to lead the region’s economic integration by pushing the U.S.-dominated Trans-Pacific Partnership that excludes China.
Since both Beijing and Washington are seeking to expand their influence in East Asia, if China continues to expand in the area, more problems, even a head-on military confrontation with the U.S., will ensue.
Matters have taken an ugly turn recently as a dispute with Japan over the uninhabited Diaoyu/Senkaku islands, escalated in recent months to the point where China and Japan scrambled fighter jets while their patrol ships shadowed each other.
The waters around the islands in the East China Sea have rich fishing grounds and potentially huge oil and gas reserves. Vietnam, Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines also have conflicting claims with China in parts of the South China Sea, including the Spratly Islands. China has laid claim to almost the whole of the sea, which is criss-crossed by crucial shipping lanes.
But while it has boosted military spending and built submarines, surface ships and anti-ship ballistic missiles as part of its naval modernisation, China has also attempted to dialogue with the US to work out a new modus vivendi on what it calls “a new pattern on great power relations”. The elements in this approach were articulated by the Vice-President Xi Jinping on a visit to Washington, just before he assumed the Chinese Presidency.
He highlighted four areas in which he said the United States and China need to make greater joint efforts to build such a relationship: “increasing mutual understanding and strategic trust; respecting each side’s “core interests and major concerns; deepening mutually beneficial cooperation; and enhancing cooperation and coordination in international affairs and on global issues.”
Taking another tack to avert possible confrontation, one Chinese strategist Wang Jisi, China’s most prominent and influential international relations scholar and a professor at Peking University has suggested a strategy, branded “March West”. In line with Mao Zedong’s famous exposition on military strategy: “Where the enemy advances, we retreat. Where the enemy retreats, we pursue”, Wang proposes that China shifts its attention from the heated competition in East Asia and rebalance its own geographical focus westwards to the vast area from Central Asia to the Middle East, where the U.S. is pivoting away from.
Strategically, Washington is retreating from the area (manifested by its withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan), leaving a potential vacuum to be filled and giving China a perfect opportunity to advance. Unlike in East Asia, the relationship between the U.S. and China would conceivably be more cooperative in the region, due to their common interests in economic investment, energy, anti-terrorism, non-proliferation and regional stability.
Furthermore, “March West” would offer Beijing additional strategic leverage against Washington since “U.S. is desperate for China’s assistance in stabilising Afghanistan and Pakistan.” In this sense, it will help build a “more balanced” U.S.-China relationship.
An old African saying proposes that whether elephants fight or make love, it’s the grass that suffers. At this time, the rest of the world hopes that the U.S. and China will tread carefully in their evolving relationship.

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