An intensifying debate about China’s meteoric and historically-unparalleled rise is leading some to question its allegedly peaceful nature.
Apologists insist China’s rise is benevolent, but this belief isn’t one overwhelmingly shared by the international community, argues China expert Frank Ching in a recent article on China’s pursuit of regional dominance in the Asia Pacific.
Building on China’s earlier, “hide your light” (tao guang yang hui) strategy, the Chinese government announced its plans for a “peaceful rise” shortly after the turn of the century to counter “China threat” arguments.
Beijing’s concentrated efforts to dominate the Asia-Pacific region have demonstrated to the world that China’s “peaceful rise” only exists in Beijing’s possibly-overactive imagination, asserts Ching, an experienced author and journalist who spent years reporting on Asia and China.
“China has created an imagined universe where ‘they start from the position that everything China does is virtuous and correct and therefore that anyone who disagrees must be wrong.’ What China thinks is right must be the law,” Ching writes, quoting BBC specialist on the South China Sea, Bill Hayton.
“Like all great powers in history, China’s emergence is accompanied not just by military expansion but also assertion of its own law,” Ching adds.
Evidence of legal imperialism is readily observable in China’s response to the ruling recently passed down by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague which discredited the majority of Chinese claims to the South China Sea, including its nine-dashed line.
China quickly rejected the ruling, calling the tribunal a “farce.” While the tribunal used the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) as a legal foundation for the ruling against Chinese claims, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi argued that by rejecting the ruling China is “upholding international law.”
In the East and South China Sea, China is trying to secure control of “all under heaven” (tianxia), a traditional Confucian concept.
The great curtain was pulled back and the pretense of a “peaceful rise” was abandoned seven years ago, explains Ching. The global economic crisis which ravaged Western economies created a power vacuum, an opening for China to claim its rightful place.
The recent tribunal ruling will do little to deter Chinese President Xi Jinping’s desire to realize the “Chinese Dream” and put China back at the heart of global affairs, Ching asserts.
China expects to continue increasing its dominance in the Asia Pacific, according to Ching. “In the Chinese imagination, this is not subjugation of neighbors but simply a restoration of the normal order,” he writes, with the norm being a China-centric regional order like that which existed before China was brought to its knees by Western and Japanese imperialists in the late nineteenth century.
The U.S. is a villain and the greatest threat to Chinese ambitions, where China is concerned. China resents the U.S. “pivot” to Asia, which is regarded as containment. As for other regional actors, China views Singapore as an ethnic traitor to China’s cause, Japan as an old-yet-constant enemy, India as a rising challenger, and South Korea as a complacent tool for American efforts to threaten China’s rise.
Ching explains that for China, “there can be no backing down,” which indicates that a peaceful rise for China may be out of the question.
Retired Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Colonel Liu Mingfu, in his popular book, “The China Dream: Great Power Thinking and Strategic Posture in the Post-American Era,” argues that China should strive to become “the world’s helmsman” and prepare for a “contested rise.”
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