Policymakers in Beijing have already admitted that the U.S. is a competitor. Washington admitting this doesn’t have to lead to conflict.
Despite the trend lines over the last decade, there’s a frightening reluctance on the part of U.S. government officials to speak openly about the challenges we face from the People’s Republic of China. This needs to end. U.S. officials must come to accept that while there are plenty of opportunities for cooperation with China, there are also elements of our relationship that are and will remain competitive. Indeed, we are engaged in an extended peacetime competition with China that at its heart is a clash of visions for the international system. This isn’t to say that conflict between our countries is inevitable. But if U.S. leaders are expected to marshal the diplomatic and military resources necessary to engage in this long-term competition, they must first be willing to speak more candidly about Beijing’s growing capabilities and strategic intentions.
The reluctance of U.S. officials to discuss the ongoing strategic competition with China is hardly a new trend. During the 1990s, thoughtful observers at the Pentagon believed that if we treated China like an “enemy” we would only ensure it became one. Since that time, efforts to avoid mentioning China or its People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in military documents or adopt carefully crafted diplomatic language have ensued.
For example, the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review has frequently avoided discussing China’s military modernization or the specific capabilities required to address it. In 2007, the Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard released a maritime strategy that failed to even mention China. Over the last dozen years, the Congressionally mandated China’s Military Power Report has been slowly watered-down, including a change of the title to try and ease Beijing’s protests of the report. Even when it comes to the new AirSea Battle concept, designed to help combatant commanders defeat anti-access/area-denial capabilities, like China is developing, Pentagon officials have gone to great lengths to insist its development is not about China. In sum, while we’ve continued to avoid or dilute the increasingly obvious evidence of an extended peacetime competition in the hope that China’s protests will subside, unless we repeat what Beijing wants or decide to say nothing at all, our actions will never be deemed acceptable in Beijing.
The desire to avoid a public discussion of the strategic competition also exists in private. Beyond specific weapons programs and capabilities, defense officials are extremely reluctant to discuss the ways China is challenging our strategic interests or to discuss innovative ways to counter their advances. Two professors at the U.S. Naval War College, who are among some of the nation’s best researchers on Chinese military power, recently remarked that “China is the Voldemort of U.S. military planning. For, just as the appellation of Harry Potter’s dreaded nemesis may not be uttered aloud, American strategists dare not speak China’s name lest terrifying consequences follow.” I’ve been in closed meetings with senior defense officials who became visibly uncomfortable with answering generic questions about Chinese military developments. While the Chinese discuss competition with the United States openly, we remain disengaged from a discourse that could be critical to avoiding a future conflict.
Photo Credit: U.S. State Department
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Mike
I love this. China takes all our jobs because North American corporations want to pay super low wages and no environmental laws and then China turns are and says that were competitors. How about we(usa/canada) enpose a trade embargo… or pull back all our lost jobs to China.
Frankie Fook-lun Leung
Considering so many of China’s senior bureaucrats have immediate families living in the western countries, especially the USA, may be we are members of one big family. No need to compete. We all eat at MacDonalds.
pocorelich
I grew up in Taiwan. I don’t trust American because they are hypocrite. American is a cruel and arrogant people who only concern about their own interest. Don’t forget how they slaughtered the native American and enslaved Africans. America is often accused of interfering in the internal affairs of other countries by various excuse. Did not James Monroe and John Quincy Adams brashly tell the powers of Europe to stay out of America? Don’t do unto others what you don’t want others do unto you.
Anyway, I hope Taiwan will unite with mainland China as soon as possible.
Inspector Fu
Show me an American today that has killed a native American or enslaved a black person. You can’t. You can’t collectivize people like that. For example, remember how Mongolians killed millions of people (900 years ago) they can’t be trusted. You suck at logic.
China is a bully, it even took an entire country as its own (remember Tibet?), and doesn’t give a damn about human rights. It props up the North Korean government, which is essentially a 20 million person prison colony. It is far better to have Americans in the pacific than the Chinese, and it’ll be an ugly day when it’s Chinese boats off the coast of my country instead of the Americans.
a_obama
This probably is the worst thing you can get. We are simply unable to compete against a single-party system that enjoys the omni-power to mobilize resources, civilian and military, very efficiently. This, frankly, is an unfair competition.
We should either mimic the Chinses system, or forget the competition at all. But if we do mimic the Chinses system, what’s the point for us to compete against them? If we do not mimic them, how can you keep us from fighting each other day and night?
JohnX
Your comment is hilarious.
I hope you aren’t expecting to be taken seriously?
Its like telling a sports team, “don’t play them, they may be better than you”.
How will we ever know if we dont play the game?
Seriously, if no one stands up, then the otherside will always claim to be the winner. “China superior to the US” is just amazingly funny and the fact that you cant see that, just makes it funnier.
LOL :)
LOL, man you are funny.
Leonard R.
Representative Forbes seems to be mincing his words here.
He should admit it. The PRC is not merely a ‘competitor’. It is a hostile foreign power.
It is a rogue state – the largest one on earth.
And it poses a greater danger to US national security than any nation in our time.
Yavor
China will not rise without fight. No superpower came to rise peacefully. Simply because as Plato states in the Republic if two countries need more than necessities at the same time they will clash in a war. It is so obvious and logical that the US will have to fight with China because both need resources more and more to fuel their big ambitions to have 3 cars per family 5 houses per family and billions of small dongxi that they don’t need. The question is not “if” rather “when” there will be a war. History lessons if forgotten repeat themselves.
I am Western yet I do the effort to learn about Chinese culture, language and traditions.I live in Taiwan where true kindness of the people on daily basis makes it a wonderful place to be. It will be a shame if China takes over Taiwan and that’s why I do support the US in their quest to protect minor players like Taiwan although I know that the US is not doing it for free it still serves the purpose of peace and happiness of the people of Taiwan.
Nitin
Destiny of China depends on its behavior…If it becomes attacking & dangerous to human life then it will also crashes.
Anjaan
1. Bill Clinton, as the US President, declared China as a strategic partner, and most of the tech transfer to China in many critical areas took place during his tenure. Bush Jr. immediately reversed this idiotic blunder, when he came to power.
2. Bill Clinton is the US President, who is singularly responsible for the financial mess of today. He is the one that pushed the American financial institutions to relax criteria and provide housing loans to millions of those who would not qualify otherwise.
John Chan
@Anjaan,
Bill Clinton is the only president in decades that produced surplus and reduced national debt, all republican presidents spent money like drunken sailor, pumping up the national debt relentlessly. Bill Clinton tried to fulfill American Dream, but nobody asked the Wall St. and other unscrupulous Americans to abuse his good will and enrich themselves shamelessly at the expenses of national wellbeing.
Errol T
I like Bill Clinton but his hands-off policy for other countries’ conflicets left much to be desired. Yes, he recognized the sovereignity of other countries, but still, he could’ve taken measures to minimize the genocides in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda.
Say what you will about imperialism and being aggressive, but would you stand aside and watch civilians murdered, and all the time knowing that you could’ve prevented it?
John Chan
@Errol T,
Theoretically people should not stand aside and watch civilians murdered, but as you know it is always the devil is in the details. Who is the perpetrator? It needs a lot of impartiality and honesty to determine the truth. Taking the western powers’ words as given truth is a very dangerously slippery slope. Making the western powers the judge, the prosecutor and the executor is setting up a Kangaroo court.
As history has proven time and again that USA and its western partners are not impartial and honest, they are predatory imperialists and always carry out their insidious intent on the moral high ground, e.g. thou shalt not watch civilians murdered. WMD in Iraq, Taliban in Afghanistan, no-fly zone in Libya, … put the atrocities in Yugoslavia and Rwanda in a different light.
Western media are the maestros in fabricating narrative with convincing reality, those fabrications are always the evidence for the western powers to act on with moral authority, and the current international framework, such as the world court, always prosecute based on the western media’s narratives as given truth.
The western media is working at full tilt in the Syria case if you want to watch their performance, they are making sure nobody would ever question the integrity of those freedom fighters/rebels/proxies, and everybody always assumes it is the Syrian government’s fault and sin automatically.
Vic
We must all learn from history. In 1971, the US government defaulted on gold payment for dollar redemption by foreigners. Uncle SAM promised all central bankers that any dollar they held could be redeemed at a fixed gold conversion rate. Because of its massive military spending in the Vietnam War, foreigners demanded gold for the massive increase in dollar bills. The world demanded “IN GOLD WE TRUST”. To that legitimate cry, the US government defaulted by shutting down the “gold window”. The gold is safe in Fort Knox.
At the back of a dollar bill are the words “IN GOD WE TRUST. The dollar looks tired again from continuous US military expenditures. As the zeroes keep increasing, the reliance of US dollar as reserve currency again seems shaky. Even GOD has to worry about the word “Trust” on that dollar bill.
50 cents bridgade
It only proof how dumb are the Americans. Everyone and countries have to compete to survive. It is how nature selects the fittest. In economics, competitions weeds out the less productive people and countries. The problems is that US were never a competitive country at all. They are number one today is all thanks to the destruction of world industry after WW2. So much for US boast being the most innovative country and yet everyone knows that the Americans stole Nazi technology to propel themselves into the fore front. Now, they coined up with the term IP, to create an artificial monopoly to prevent others from reaching out. Their futile attempt to hold to the lead only makes other countries like China to innovate themselves. An example are super computers, US listed them as dual use military and now China is able to build themselves. The Chinese will win this economic war. A lot being said about the Chinese is copying and stealing from the Americans. If copying is so easy as that, then my country should also in the forefront 2. Any fools would use copy as an excuse for having lost the economic war. It is a lame excuses by self denial Americans. The Chinese best them on a level playing field.
ariel
Copying is not easy. Like stealing, it is an art, a black art which has been perfected by China. The original is durable and the ones that don’t last long enough are popularly referred to as “Chinese”. The underlying message is clear, if you get it.
John Chan
@ariel,
Even before 1980s Japanese products (东洋货) has the fame of flimsy and copycat; now the American products has the fame of expensive, unreliable, and overbuilt; Korean products still carry the scent of Pony; and India products are not even in the rank to be teased, if you get it.
Thomas
You’re dead wrong, Chan! Japan in the Cold War was a close ally of the US against the Soviet Union, thus it had all the privileges (implicitly OK-ed by the Americans) to copy and get high-tech transfer from the US to prop up its economy. The US even accepted the trade deficits with Japan & all other allies in order to strengthen the alliance against the Soviet Union. In the case of Communist China, it’s never been the US’ close ally in any sense. Its alliance with the US against the Soviet under the Nixon administration was just a marriage of convenience, no more, no less! So, China’s copying other countries’ products is just an act of stealing or IP theft. Get real! Communist China’s not only been a strategic competitor but also a strategic rival of the US. Its end goal is to displace the latter as a sole superpower in the world. Beware!
John Chan
@Thomas,
Your interpretation of stealing surely is novel, Japanese stealing (implicitly = no explicit consent) is privileges, while Chinese purchased IP and invention are stealing. Is it a new rule of American Exceptionalism?
Only authoritarian interpreters rules arbitrarily, your way of interpreting copying is behaviour of dictatorial authoritarian. Anyhow USA not only steals, it simply robs.
Japan is a land under USA’s military occupation, it is not an ally, and it is a lackey. If USA is an ally, who needs enemy?
It seems you are against free market capitalism which promotes competition and rivalry, if USA is afraid of competition, please get out of the kitchen, there is no free lunch.
VIC
Remember the saying, “don’t try to reinvent the wheel”. Why? It’s a waste of time. When you see something works, you sometimes wonder why it works the way it does. So, you pull it apart and look at it, to see the principle behind it. Sometimes you can think of an improvement. Is this “reverse engineering” ?
Isaac Newton once said, I stood on the shoulders of giants to look further ahead.
Copying, stealing, reverse engineering, you may call it anyway you like. That is how technology is refined from one generation to the next.
Cam
@Vic,
I can see you tried in vain to defend the Chinese art of IP theft? the Chinese were caught red-handed on so many things, many times but keep saying “no no no, I don’t”. Worse, they copied stuffs, then produced and exported with labeling “made in china” as case of the Russian Sukhoi 27. What a shameless mentality!