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China's strategic shift to common
security
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG KONG - Very rarely, if ever, can two or
more great powers resolve their differences through
negotiation. The Sino-US differences are said to be
sharpest in the realm of security and arms control.
There are three reasons why security analysts believe
China cannot negotiate with the United States on these
issues.
To begin with, since China is the weaker
power, both in conventional and nuclear arms, China is
hard put to negotiate with the United States
bilaterally. Second, since reunification with Taiwan
figures predominantly in the security calculus of China,
Beijing cannot commit to any treaty obligations that may
prevent it from increasing its arms-modernization
program. Third, since China's external strategic
environment is basically ringed by allies of the United
States, it cannot genuinely enter any form of
negotiation other than those that can assure its
relative gains.
Yet there are signs that both
China and the United States, despite their differences,
have begun the tentative process of delineating common
ground in the field of arms control, albeit through
multilateral settings. China in particular has changed
its position on arms control dramatically. As of 1970,
China had signed about 10-20 percent of the multilateral
arms control agreements it was eligible to sign. By
1996, this figure had jumped to 85-90 percent.
The core of the international arms control
effort consists of several major agreements on weapons
of mass destruction (WMD) and conventional arms. These
include treaties on nuclear test bans, nuclear
proliferation, fissile materials production, chemical
and biological weapons, missile-technology exports and
the export of land mines.
In contrast to the
current situation, the Chinese approach during the
Maoist period to arms control was highly dismissive and
negative. China criticized arms-control regimes as
discriminatory, serving to limit the activities of the
have-nots while placing no requirements on the haves to
disarm.
The shift in China's security behavior
has had analysts arguing that China has adopted a
"common security" approach. Whatever security measures
China undertakes, it does so with the security of other
neighboring countries in mind. In other words, China
does not want to precipitate a security dilemma that
could lead to a costly arms race with its neighbors.
Hence the term "common security".
This is
because China is aware that as its power grows
exponentially, the differential separating China from
its neighbors will hitherto close considerably,
especially with member states of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), much of whose foreign
direct investment has already been siphoned off by
China. Therefore, if China's growth trajectory continues
unabated, the nervousness that China generates will
cause an arms spiral, not just in Southeast Asia but
Central Asia too. Precious resources would then have to
be diverted to the military sector, thereby diminishing
China's public budget for social and economic
modernization.
But how did the gentler and
kinder new security concept originate? According to Ling
Xing Guan of the Fukui Prefectural University in Japan:
"The concept originated at a five-nation summit led by
China and Russia and also attended by the leaders of the
Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and
Tajikistan. The 'Shanghai Five', inaugurated in April
1994, promoted confidence building in border areas,
anti-terror activities and economic cooperation. The
organization was then upgraded to the Shanghai
Cooperation Organization ('Shanghai Six') in June 2001
when it was joined by Uzbekistan."
It was in a
speech at the inaugural meeting of the organization that
President Jiang Zemin used the phrase "new security
concept" for the first time. He said the group was a new
model of regional cooperation based on "a new security
concept" of mutual trust, disarmament, cooperation and
security.
The question is: Has China acquired
religion? Not really. Broadly, China still retains a
hard-nosed realpolitik view when it comes to
international relations, especially in the conduct of
its relations with the United States. Be that as it may,
China is seeking to defuse tensions with the United
States, the only power capable of containing China, to
prevent any number of conflicts from being stoked into
major diplomatic firestorm. The latter would allow the
George W Bush administration and a Republican Congress
to take a confrontational stance toward China.
According to prominent Chinese academic Wang Ji
Si of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the focal
point of Chinese observations of the United States' role
in Asia "remains the US-Japan security alliance".
Indeed, at the bottom of the Chinese concern
lies the possibility of a joint US-Japanese intervention
in the Taiwan Strait should there be an armed conflict
there. In particular, the development and deployment of
the TMD (theater missile defense) system is seen in
China as serving the purpose of deterring China's
missile capabilities. Taiwan's effort to seek a TMD
umbrella is the most dangerous scenario in Chinese
military planning. The strengthening of the United
States' military and political ties with China's
neighboring countries is also perceived in more or less
in the same light.
But there is another reason
China cannot get involved in an expensive arms race. In
the early 1990s, China learned from the Soviet Union
that such wanton indulgences could literally drive China
to the ground, since China's economy is nowhere near as
efficient and well endowed as the United States'.
Therefore, China has every reason to want to deploy what
Alastair Iain Johnston of Harvard University calls an
"assurance game". Under this game, China recognizes that
its "own security rests on reassurance strategies based
on institutionalized commitments to avoid destabilizing
unilateral behavior".
In this game, China is
trying to achieve three aims. First, challenge the
validity of the view perpetrated by the United States'
national-security elites that China is necessarily a
"threat". Second, alter the causal and principled
beliefs of the leading allies of the United States that
China is a security risk in East Asia. Third, in
reaching out to member states of ASEAN, through such
attractive arrangements as the ASEAN-China Free Trade
Agreement, forge an intra-regional consensus that China
is a boon, rather than a bane, to regional security.
These three aims combined can be rendered to
explain China's Third Way - one that integrates elements
of cooperation and competition with the United States as
China seeks to consolidate its position in the region.
(©2002 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights
reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com for
information on our sales and syndication policies.)
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