Some Points on Understanding China's International Environment

Pang Zhongying

First of all, in assessing China's understanding of its international environment, it is necessary to draw the distinction between the concepts of "international community" versus "international society." "Community" implies that its components share many things in common, such as values, whereas "society" recognizes that, while actors may have shared interests, there is no overarching common power or universal standard. Former United Nations Secretary-General Butros Butros Ghali has been a leading proponent of the notion of "the international community." I maintain that, at present, one can use the term "international community" to describe something like the European Union, a community of nation-states sharing common values, institutions, and procedures, but I do not believe that Ghali's vision applies to the reality of world politics. Thus, in assessing China's international environment, I think that it is more useful to conceive of global affairs taking place within the parameters of an "international society" rather than an "international community."

It is also important to note that the international environment that affects a country and its foreign policy decisions not only consists of an abstract international system and its institutions, rules and practices, but is also a concrete environment in which a country exists. China functions within an international environment both at a regional level, as a major Asian-Pacific power, and at an international level, as a permanent member of the UN Security Council. In turn, China's regional position is affected by its relations with its neighbors. Its global posture is affected by the fact that, for the present and for the foreseeable future, the United States will continue to exercise a "super-primacy" both within world affairs and within East Asia (and probably Central Asia). The Sino-American relationship is therefore one of the most important factors to influence China's international environment.

For the last several decades, the guiding principle of China's foreign policy, affecting its relationship both with its immediate neighbors and with other states in the world, was enshrined in the "Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence" (FPPC). These were initially developed during the era of de-colonization in 1950s, when China and its Asian neighbors (particularly India and Indonesia) faced common challenges to maintain and consolidate their newly won independence and autonomy after World War II. Historically, although there were some troubles (including earlier the China-India and China-Vietnam border disputes as well as later disputes over the demarcation of the South China Sea), the five principles served China's relations with Asia and enhanced Asia's stability, being viewed as pragmatic rules governing interstate relations in the region.

However, the five principles were defensive in nature. They reflected China’s historic state of self-imposed isolationism and containment pressures facing from the Western countries, arising especially out of the lack of any significant economic interdependence with its surrounding countries. For the past two decades, China's market-oriented reforms and growing economic interdependence, both regionally and globally, have begun to challenge these principles. Certainly, China continues to attach great importance to the principle of non-intervention in the domestic affairs of other states, and is not prepared to abandon it. However, China is adjusting its foreign policy to take into account the changes in Asia. In recent years, China has tried to promote regionalism and encourage regional integration in both principle and practice. China's  new security concept attaches more importance to non-military means as well as security cooperation with other states  should be viewed as a shift in policy to make up for deficiencies in the FPPC.

The 1998 Asian financial crisis was an historic turning point for China's efforts to forge a new relationship with the region, based on emerging new geo-economics (a term, interestingly enough, first promoted by Edward Luttwak in the summer 1990 issue of The National Interest). As a result, China finally realized that the regional political framework might prove helpful in fundamentally improving China's international environment. The Chinese leadership began to think in regional terms. During the crisis, China tried to offer assistance to its neighbors and contributed (for the first time) to the efforts of other Asian countries to overcome the crisis by not devaluing its own currency and firmly supporting the IMF scheme for the crisis. China has continued to keep its currency stable despite a drastic slowdown in its export growth amid a worldwide economic recession. This has been a key factor in facilitating the ongoing regional economic recovery in Asia.

Increased cooperation between China and its neighbors also holds out the prospect of resolving disputes through regional arrangements. In the first years when China opened up to the world, and the specter of thorny disputes over sovereignty between China and several ASEAN members loomed, Deng Xiaoping proposed a bold idea of "shelving disputes and differences for our common developments." During the next decade, however, especially if the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area develops smoothly, I anticipate moving to the next step, of considering shared sovereignty arrangements as a way to achieve long-term solutions for existing territorial disputes.

China’s international environment is also closely related to the country's international status. We are living in a changing world. China’s dramatic change is an integral part of the world transformation. China should protect and pursue its interests through effective and peaceful means in the global system. China’s national development strategy, as defined since 1979, focused on economic modernization as its core, and should be maintained for a long term, at least until the middle of the 21st century. Such a popularly accepted strategy in China means that the country would become one of the major engines in the growth of the world economy and in turn it could lead the country to become a major factor in spurring regional stability and prosperity.

Yet China cannot see its role in world purely in economic terms. For example, China has provided quite an amount of economic aid for Afghanistan's reconstruction in 2002. However, I wonder: Why didn't China take advantage of its friendly relations with Afghanistan to dispatch some peacekeeping troops there as part of an international force? Furthermore, for example, in the peacekeeping action in East Timor we only dispatched civil police there, but Japan has officially dispatched a peacekeeping force there. Japan can do this even though it is a country subject to constitutional restrictions in military affairs. Why can't China, a rising nation, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council, do this? Is it because we have no money? We often describe China as a "firm force safeguarding world peace, not a force challenging world peace." If this is so, then the country must actively go out and do these good things.

Lastly, let me address how China can secure itself in a volatile world. What I want to stress is that no country can unilaterally guarantee its own security in a globalized world. China needs to change its outdated concept of security. We no longer view the national and the other dimensions of security in military terms, but have to understand it in all of its multidimensional aspects, including economic security and ecological security. Moreover, China must re-examine its situation vis-à-vis its security needs versus what it can provide for itself. To be honest, as China moves away from economic and political isolation, and engages in new international relationships, both at the regional and international levels, its "security deficit" increases. It is urgently necessary for China to solve this problem of its "security deficit." That is to say, who should subsidize the deficit between supply and demand in China's security?

At the domestic level, without question, China needs to modernize its national defense in order to guarantee basic homeland security. At the regional level, it needs to have a framework in place to promote cooperation with its neighbors--the ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea in East Asia and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Central Asia. At the international level, we also need to build some key cooperative frameworks. In this regard, I would like to cite Sino-American relations. A characteristic of the so-called "post-post-Cold-War" era is that the United States has emerged as the sole superpower in the world. Therefore, should China turn to the United States and seek to develop security cooperation? In turn, can the United States provide the type of security China requires in the future? This question has acquired greater urgency as China’s security deficit is expanding after China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001.

Speaking from the angle of international political economy, China needs to re-visit its security outlook (worldview) and tries to forge a new type of security relationship with the United States. The EU has "bought" security from the United States through NATO, just as Japan has purchased security from the United States through the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty (JUST). In fact, one can say with some confidence that America's greatest export industry is the "security industry" (in the form of arms sales, bases, and "umbrellas" that are deployed all around the world).

Even China, ironically, has benefited from this export. We all recall that in April 2001, an American military aircraft collided with a Chinese military aircraft over the South China Sea. Most of the Chinese public viewed this as the inevitable result of America's "hegemonic presence" in Asia. However, objectively, the United States has provided China with some degree of security arising from its "hegemonic order." China may not like it, but we cannot get away from it, because of the stability it engenders in our regional neighborhood. We can well imagine what kind of situation would occur if the United States were not present in Asia. Japanese re-armament would certainly be an outcome, leading to the possibility of a conflict breaking out between China and Japan. At minimum, both sides would certainly increase their military spending (to the detriment of both of their economies). Therefore, China needs to consider seriously the question, of what role America should play in Asian security. This leads to the next question: how might a future-oriented security cooperation between Beijing and Washington play a role in fixing China’s security deficit problem? Hopefully, these issues will be among those discussed at the upcoming summit between the presidents in Crawford.

Dr. Pang Zhongying is an Associate Professor and Director of the Globalization Studies Program at Tsinghua University's Institute of International Studies (Beijing, China) and is a Visiting Fellow at the Center for the Study of Globalization and Regionalisation at University of Warwick (UK).