Hawks Inflate the Threat from Chinese 'Expansionism'

Whatever else one wants to say about Chinese foreign policy, calling it expansionist is simply inaccurate.

Michael Sobolik wants us to be very afraid of Chinese expansionism:

For all of Beijing’s legitimate and long-standing security concerns, however, the sheer scope of China’s expansion is undeniable. Western leaders often deny or ignore it, usually at the behest and prodding of Chinese leaders. When Nixon finally gained an audience with Mao Zedong, he reassured the chairman, “We know China doesn’t threaten the territory of the United States.” Mao quickly corrected him: “Neither do we threaten Japan or South Korea.” To which Nixon added, “Nor any country.” Within the decade, Beijing invaded Vietnam.

Sobolik’s argument relies on a lot of unsupported assertions and distortions. This anecdote about Nixon and Mao is a good example of the latter. The Sino-Vietnamese War was a punitive campaign that China launched in response to Vietnam’s intervention in Cambodia to overthrow the Khmer Rouge. It was hardly a war of expansionist conquest, and it didn’t result in any territorial gains for China. In fact, the war didn’t go well for China at all, and that was the last time that the PRC waged a major war outside its borders. It has been generations since Chinese forces have engaged in anything more than border skirmishes. Whatever else one wants to say about Chinese foreign policy, calling it expansionist is simply inaccurate.

It is true that previous Chinese dynasties have expanded their territory through conquest. It’s also true that this Chinese expansionism was a product of an earlier period and has little or nothing to do with how China operates in the world today. Sobolik refers to “the Middle Kingdom’s penchant for imperialism,” but there is almost no evidence that this is a major factor in Chinese decision-making now.

Sobolik asserts that “Beijing is approaching the world not to embrace it, but to rule it.” This is a common assumption among China hawks, but once again there is remarkably little evidence to support it. China has some well-known territorial ambitions in its immediate vicinity, and its government wants to be the preeminent power in East Asia, but it is a huge leap to go from that to assuming that their leaders have designs on global hegemony. This is a story that China hawks need to tell about China to make them into a suitable adversary for the “new cold war” that they think the U.S. is losing.

When China hawks warn about Chinese expansionism and ambitions to dominate the world, they are almost always projecting their own preferences for U.S. foreign policy onto Chinese leaders. Sobolik’s article is one example of this. It is an excerpt from his new book, Countering China’s Great Game: A Strategy for American Dominance. Hawks seek U.S. dominance, and so they assume that the Chinese government must have the same ambition. We have seen this before with H.R. McMaster’s “analysis” of Chinese foreign policy. Like McMaster, Sobolik claims that he is offering insights into how to understand China, but all that we get are predictable warnings about an expansionist menace that must be “countered.”

It should not come as a surprise that other states will resist when the U.S. pursues dominance at their expense. Given China’s past experiences with hostile foreign powers, we should expect that their government will react very badly to any attempt to keep them in a subordinate position. The idea that the U.S. should be the dominant power in East Asia is a dangerous holdover from an earlier era. Our government should abandon that pursuit. The more that the U.S. tries to reassert itself as the dominant power in this part of the world, the greater the risk there is of a direct clash with China.

China hawks want to inflate the threat about Chinese “expansionism” to scare Americans into supporting a hardline policy that makes U.S.-Chinese conflict more likely. Americans should ignore these arguments. The U.S. should reject the hawks’ fearmongering and choose a less confrontational China policy instead.