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

1. China's Development as a World Power: Objective Conditions, Strategic Opportunity, and Strategic Choices

1 China’s Development as a World Power Objective Conditions, Strategic Opportunity, and Strategic Choices Following the revival of China, four kinds of objections have been raised to the idea of its becoming a world power. The elephant mentality. According to this viewpoint, it is unrealistic to believe that China can achieve its objective of becoming a world power. “It is impossible for China to catch up with the West, not to mention surpassing it, in the twenty-first century. There is no way to tell whether it will even be able to do so in the twenty-second century. Thus, we ought to jettison the unrealistic objective of overtaking the West.” Internationally , China should not pick fights with the world, and it should not try to become a superpower on a par with the United States. There is no need for it to seek to become a “tiger” like the United States; indeed, since it lacks the capability, this is impossible. Nor should it join the company of the “wolves,” namely, Russia, Japan, and India. Of course, China cannot act like a sheep that others devour. It should be like a gentle elephant that stands apart from the tigers, wolves, and sheep, having no conflict with them, and not contending with them for food.1 The theory of natural growth. This view is that it does not matter whether China wants to develop into a world power. The crucial point is that it needs to develop; its status as a world power will follow naturally. It should not struggle to achieve the status of a world power. When it devel- 14 INSIDE CHINA’S GRAND STRATEGY ops to the level of a world power, sooner or later it will achieve world power status.2 The theory that conditions are lacking. The core argument from this perspective is that China has so many domestic problems and is backward in so many aspects that it presently lacks, and will continue to lack, the qualifications to be a world power. Therefore, there is no point in it even trying. Though it has made great achievements in economic reform since the late 1970s, further reflection indicates that, in spite of its rising status, China lacks three decisive elements necessary to becoming a world power: a favorable security environment, hard military and economic power, and the soft power of politics, society, and ideology. The theory that China will collapse. In his book The China Dream, Joe Studwell, the editor-in-chief of the U.S. journal The Chinese Economy , stated that the Chinese economy is a mansion constructed on sand.3 Probably the best example of this doom-and-gloom genre is The Coming Collapse of China, by Gordon Chang, who believes that China’s entry into the WTO in 2001 was the starting point of its impending collapse. None of these viewpoints stands up to scrutiny. Rather, China possesses both the objective conditions and the historical prerequisites necessary to become a world power. The Objective Conditions and Historical Prerequisites Necessary for China to Become a World Power China Possesses the Objective Conditions to Become a World Power We may consider the attributes of a great power with respect to natural geography and economic potential under the following headings: China is the third largest country in area. Some scholars think that being a world power requires a special sort of territorial foundation; that is, countries aspiring to world power status must be continent-sized powers like Russia, the United States, and China. France, on the fringe of a continent , and island nations like the United Kingdom and Japan do not meet this criterion. This viewpoint is somewhat overstated since history has witnessed a number of world powers—including the earliest world power, the Roman Empire, and the Spanish and Ottoman empires—that were not, in fact, continent-sized land powers. Nevertheless, it remains true that an extensive territory is an important prerequisite to becoming a world power.4 Countries with territories of more than 1 million square kilometers China’s Development as a World Power 15 are the largest in the world. There are twenty-eight such countries whose total land mass of 99,680,000 square kilometers represents 74 percent of the world’s total 133,480,000 square kilometers. Among them there are twelve would-be great powers, including Russia (17,070,000), Canada (9,970,000), China (9,600...