Posing Problems without Catching Up: China's Rise and Challenges for U.S. Security Policy

Since the early 1990s, American scholars and strategists have debated whether the People's Republic of China (PRC) will pose a security threat to the United States and its regional interests in East Asia in the next few decades. Although many have focused on intentions as well as capabilities, the most prevalent component of the debate is the assessment of China's overall future military power compared with that of the United States and other East Asian regional powers. So conferences have been held and papers written discussing whether China would become a "peer competitor" or "near peer competitor" of the United States in the military arena, or a "regional hegemon" towering over its cowed neighbors and threatening American interests in a region of increasing importance to the United States.¹

The debate was hottest in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War era. In the early 1990s, the American economy was suffering and the American military downsizing, while China's economy was growing quickly following the brief post-Tiananmen slump. Moreover, in those years China began increasing its military spending significantly for the first time since 1978. As a result, concerns were expressed about America's ability to maintain its global military presence and supremacy, particularly in East Asia. However, despite a turnaround in the American economy, a slowdown in defense cuts, and the clear persistence of American alliances and internationalism, the question of whether China will become a peer competitor or near peer competitor of the United States in the next few decades still motivates the thinking of many American strategists today. ²

The debate about China as a peer competitor revolves around simple realist notions of how international politics work: Power is what matters; and what matters in power is one's relative capabilities compared with those of others, especially other great powers. For the pessimists, the Chinese military of the twenty-first century is replacing the Soviet military of the pre-Gorbachev years and the Japanese economy of the 1970s as the next big purported threat to American global leadership. The optimists disagree, arguing that the United States is safe from the largely hyped "China threat." The same underlying logic of the peer competitor debate is often found in discussions of future security relations across the Taiwan Strait. These discussions frequently focus on the overall balance of power across the strait and the prospect of mainland China closing the gap with the technologically more sophisticated military of Taiwan (or Republic of China [ROC]). An oft-discussed scenario in these discussions is the mainland's future ability or inability to conquer and occupy Taiwan in a traditional D-Day style invasion. ³

There is little doubt that it is useful to determine whether China is catching up with the United States or other states in overall military power or whether the mainland will be able to invade and occupy Taiwan effectively and with ease. The world would be a fundamentally different place if the answer to either question were affirmative, just as it would if America's global lead were declining and multipolarity were just around the corner. ⁴ But although realist analysis raises important questions, the answers to those questions often have only limited utility. In this article I discuss why such debates miss many of the important questions regarding a China with increasing, but still limited, military capabilities. My thesis is that with certain new equipment and certain strategies, China can pose major problems for American security interests, and especially for Taiwan, without the slightest pretense of catching up with the United States by an overall measure of national military power or technology. I firmly agree with those who are skeptical about China's prospects in significantly closing the gap with the United States. I believe, however, that certain Chinese military capabilities combined with the political geography of...