Inside China's Grand Strategy: The Perspective from the People's Republic

Preface

Preface to the English Edition Late at night on September 20, 2008, my old schoolmate and friend Professor Guoli Liu called me from the United States with some good news. The translation of my book Inside China’s Grand Strategy was now complete and would soon be published by the University Press of Kentucky. After the phone call, I was very excited and could not fall asleep for a long time. I was happy as well as a bit anxious. I was happy because this edition of my book would enable more English-speaking readers to acquire a better understanding of China’s grand strategy of peaceful development. But I was anxious because the Chinese original had been completed in 2002 and published in 2003 (with a Korean edition appearing in 2005), by now a number of years had passed, and both China and the international community had undergone some significant changes. For example, when I wrote my book, the Iraq War had not yet occurred, and, by September 2008, it had been going on for more than five years. Also, when I wrote my book, China was making numerous preparations for the Olympics, and by now the Olympics had been successfully concluded. The whole world had witnessed how the new Beijing staged a magnificent ceremony. Have the contents of my book passed the test of time? Is the point of view expressed in it already passé? Might the book mislead readers? I have reviewed the main contents of my book several times. Happily, I am convinced that it is neither one of those works that is out-of-date before it is published nor one of those absolutely worthless and philistine works that should be immediately consigned to the remainder bins. Of course, some of the statistics cited in the book have changed a lot by now. For example, over the period 2000–2007, the U.S. GDP rose from $9.83 to $13.8 trillion, and U.S. military spending rose from $400 to $700 billion, and, over the period 2002–2007, China’s GDP increased from $1.02 to $3.2 trillion, its per capita GDP increased from $900 to more than $2,000, viii Preface to the English Edition and its foreign exchange reserves rose from $286.4 billion to $1.5 trillion. But the main features of China’s grand strategy set forth in the book have not changed very much, and English-speaking readers wishing to understand China’s situation should still find it worth reading. The preface provides a rough sketch of the history and culture of China ’s grand strategy. In Sun Zi’s Art of War, in the contention between the states of Wu and Yue, in the unification of the six kingdoms by the state of Qin, as well as in other works and the course of history itself, one can discern the wisdom of China’s grand strategy. The strategic goal of reviving the Chinese nation that was set by Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping has been affirmed and developed by China’s current leaders and the Chinese people. In particular, Deng’s goals of peaceful development, reform and opening, and a focus on economic development and his policies of one country two systems, establishing the rule of law, and developing the market economy remain today the core objectives of China’s grand strategy. Now we may add to these the goals of sustainable development, the building of a harmonious society and a harmonious world, peaceful relations with its neighbors, and entering into the world community. China possesses the historical, cultural, political, and economic conditions to achieve the great project of national renascence. These conditions continue to exist. My book criticized those theories that predicted the decline or collapse of China. Such viewpoints have already been discredited and will continue to be in the future. The economic priorities that my book identifies are still the strategic choices in contemporary China, and even the rapid growth in China’s military budget has not changed this reality. China must become a great democracy, but certainly not along the lines of Western democracy. My book clearly spells out the concept of Chinese-style democracy, a concept that more and more people accept. Those readers who think that China will take the path of Western-style democracy may be quite disappointed, but time will tell whether China will continue along the path of Chinesestyle democracy. Maintaining normal relations with the United States is...