Jamestown Foundation: China's "Extra-military" Approach

The Jamestown Foundation has a new piece out on China's drive to displace the United States as a regional and eventual world hegemon:

As the United States hedges against a potential military confrontation with the People's Republic of China (PRC), Beijing has opted to circumvent Washington's preparations by adopting a grand strategy that utilizes "extra-military instruments" to gradually diminish the preponderant influence of the United States. These instruments --economic aid, cultural contributions, legal compulsion and diplomatic coercion -- transcend, but certainly do not exclude the use of military force. Indeed, the People's Liberation Army (PLA) is, borrowing from the PLA's descriptions of itself, "prepared but preferably unused" (bei er bu yong), and serves as the backbone of China's extra-military instruments. While these instruments are primarily "soft," their effects can often be "hard," as illustrated by Beijing's aggressive international strangulation of Taiwan's "lebensraum" [1]. In constructing its new grand strategy, China appears to have infused elements of realpolitik into a number of its traditional objectives, with its priorities as follows: (1) maintain domestic stability at all cost; (2) cooperate with, rather than contradict the United States; (3) assist the growth and development of China's neighbors, assure them of their security and win their friendship (fulin mulin anlin); (4) reunify Taiwan without war, reserving the use of force as a last resort; (5) cultivate Europe and Russia to serve as counterweights to the United States; and (6) fill in the post-Cold War power vacuums in Latin America and Africa.

It's a good thing our President is focused on the really important stuff, like pointless invasions of prostrate powers....future historians will look at the Bush Presidency and wonder how any set of educated human beings could be so relentlessly stupid and destructive across such a vast array of policy issues.

[Taiwan] [US] [China]