Asia Centre

In a rather roundabout article, Wang Yizhou examines Chinese national security during the phase of peaceful development^[1] and invites us to some in-depth thinking. Peaceful development, he emphasises, must be approached through an overall and multidisciplinary grasp of a complex system in which security, while its essential objectives have not changed in any way, has in this very particular phase changed in that it now has "content and particularities it did not have previously".

And yet the priorities remain the same.

To a China whose self confidence grows as the world sends back echoes of its successes, and even of its mere size endowed with an astonishing growth ratio, the question of Taiwan is still the "most constraining factor for Chinese national security ". As for the necessity for protecting economic development by maintaining the peaceful environment, the author also hastens to cite it as the inescapable framework of any security enterprise.

But, beyond these highly familiar general ideas, Wang Yizhou succeeds in providing an interesting description of this phase of "stategic opportunity", emphasising firstly that it depends on internal construction and not on external temptations. This despite "what some people believe" who, on reading him, might favour a sort of adventurous opportunism aimed at settling some territorial disputes to China's advantage. This description hinges on a clear vision of various logical stages in the evolution of the parameters affecting China's status:

-          Progressive dynamics which will gradually bring China closer to the developing countries, while encouraging the world to show her increasing expectation and attention;

-          Predictable as it is, this economic opening out drags behind it the inertia of its own demographic mass, which will continue to affect Chinese expansion;

-          An equally predictable trend, but with a negative connotation, is that challenges in energy security and external security are likely to become more serious;

-          Following a les enegetic rate of progression, defence modernisation "will be relatively slow and will have to show determined acceleration";

-          Going through peaks and crises in what could otherwise amount to one and the same linear progression, the question of Taiwan and the Sino-Japanese territorial disputes should "for several years, become more worrying^[2]";

-          And lastly the "theory of the Chinese threat" will not fail to have noisy recurrences.

The author concludes that a "traditional analysis of national security" is impossible, and that it is necessary to think in terms of Grand Strategy (大战略), including both military factors and political, economic, social and diplomatic elements^[3]. Among the many trains of thought mentioned (including the particularities of great power relations, and the classification of dangers by urgency and degree of gravity), two elements particularly attract attention:

-          The necessary emergence of a "new spirit […] which puts man at the forefront of its concerns", in order to protect from nontraditional security dangers the community of Chinese citizens (中国公民群体), in which are included expatriate workers, tourists and students;

-          The mention made of the international duties which fall to China as a great power.

This approach makes it possible to determine five major national security objectives:

1. Maintaining "limited intensity in the frictions" (presented as as being insurmountable) between great powers and "keeping them under control".

The analysis of great power relations is not new and settles for a description of the "pyramidal structure" of a unipolar world dominated by the United States, whose presence in Asia constitutes an eventual threat, but not an immediate one, given current American concerns. The Sino-Japanese dispute can, for its part "be kept under control", and there is hardly any mention of India or Russia.

2. Settling the question of Taiwan, "the most important challenge awaiting China".

Basing himself on the disastrous Russian precedent, Wang Yizhou warns against the extreme danger of making the slightest concession to supporters of Taiwanese independence, and thus opening a real "Pandora's Box", since "Tibetan, Oighour and Mongolian independence movements" would not fail in turn to threaten China with the "syndrome of disintegration".

While recognising that Chinese forces "even when compared to the forces of the island alone do not have overwelming global superiority" he thus notes the existence of a window of greater vulnerability, during which it would be unhoped-for for that "the excesses [of the independence movement] might succeed in placing [China] in a situation of resort to force". But the necessary dissuasion by the PLA^[4] must be accompanied by real reflection about a "process of integration […] in the long term (长期的 “收编”过程), which is to be preferred to "hand to hand combat where everything would be settled at a stroke" (毕其功于一役”的短兵相接).

3.Resolving the disputes over sovereignty^[5] in order to assure the stability of the international environment. Noting that their number is a logical outcome of the China's size, the author emphasises that while most terrestrial disputes have been settled, maritime disputes are still numerous and that many of them are rather of a trilateral nature (with the United States  or ASEAN being party to them). Also "safeguarding sovereignty is not a matter that can be settled with a few slogans^[6]", and "this being the case, an appropriate reduction in land forces is inevitable", the "defence of the national territory entrusted to the armed forces must be renewed in its content and its point of view". Mention is then made of an aircraft carrier and of the "corresponding naval planning". This paragraph, which concludes with the usual calls not to reveal one's strength too early, is interesting above all for its outline of the turning towards the open sea which comes after it.

4.Guaranteeing overseas^[7] interests, in the sense of an « extension of national security  (拓展中的国家安全内涵) :

Conceived in a manner concentric to the national territory, they demand "efficient safeguarding of the security of the lives and possessions of Chinese citizens", the guaranteeing of international transport (oil and gas pipelines, cargo ships and oil tankers) and the stability of the regions of interest to China. The threats envisaged are new (shipwreck, blockade, a surprise attack on an oil-rig or a pipeline, etc.), and the West is taken as the measure of the ability to react. Possible answers include escorting Chinese ships in dangerous zones, the sending, in case of a crisis, of naval vessels "in order to urgently evacuate Chinese nationals or students during a catastrophe, or the anchoring of Chinese forces in international waters close to the State concerned in order to send a dissuasive signal", the taking of "preventive strike measures" (预防性打击措施) in case of a "sudden international crisis which strikes a serious blow at Chinese citizens". No geographical limits are set here, and on the contrary China has to "extend its field of vision to the whole world^[8] ».

5.Lastly, taking on the international responsibilities which are incumbent on it as a great power.

Conceived as an extension of the first four objectives which "represent the essential aspects of national security" these "international responsibilities which are China's as a great power" must also help to sideline the "theory of the Chinese threat" and allow the armed forces to "apprehend and adapt to all external missions in all geographical environments and climatic conditions". Wang Yizhou in fact makes a long list of (good) deeds^[9] of which, he admits, China is hardly capable at present, but which "suffice to establish long term objectives and to underline the difficulty of the task". To reinforce the boundary between this and the first four objectives, the author notes that such responsibilities can sometimes be partly contradictory to the interests and real objectives of security, without, unfortunately, providing any illustration of his remarks. The vagueness of this approach no doubt betrays the converging of several aims at stategic level: gradual integration of the notion of "responsible stakeholder" (counterbalancing the "theory of the Chinese threat"), the highly domestic armed forces' need for the feedback of experience, and the reinforcing of international status (which is more credible in that it imposes duties rather than rights).