The conventional wisdom is that China is a rising hegemon eager to replace the United States, dominate international institutions, and re-create the liberal international order in its own image. Drawing on data from 12,000 articles and hundreds of speeches by Xi Jinping, to discern China's intentions we analyze three terms or phrases from Chinese rhetoric: “struggle” (斗争), “rise of the East, decline of the West” (东升西降), and “no intention to replace the United States” ((无意取代美国). Our findings indicate that China is a status quo power concerned with regime stability and is more inwardly focused than externally oriented. China's aims are unambiguous, enduring, and limited: It cares about its borders, sovereignty, and foreign economic relations. China's main concerns are almost all regional and related to parts of China that the rest of the region has agreed are Chinese—Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Our argument has three main implications. First, China does not pose the type of military threat that the conventional wisdom claims it does. Thus, a hostile U.S. military posture in the Pacific is unwise and may unnecessarily create tensions. Second, the two countries could cooperate on several overlooked issue areas. Third, the conventional view of China plays down the economic and diplomatic arenas that a war-fighting approach is unsuited to address.
In U.S. academic and policymaking circles, the conventional wisdom is that China wants to dominate the world and expand its territory. For example, Elbridge Colby, deputy assistant secretary of defense during Donald Trump's first term and undersecretary of defense for Trump's second term, writes: “If China could subjugate Taiwan, it could then lift its gaze to targets farther afield … a natural next target for Beijing would be the Philippines … Vietnam, although not a U.S. ally, might also make a good target.” (...) The then–U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said in 2022 that “China is the only country with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.” Trump's former U.S. trade representative, Robert Lithgizer, claims that “China to me is an existential threat to the United States…. China views itself as number one in the world and wants to be that way.”
These assessments of China's intentions lead mainstream U.S. scholars and policy analysts from both the Left and the Right to policy prescriptions that will take generations to unfold, and that are almost completely focused on war-fighting, deterrence, and decoupling from China. Those who believe in this China threat call for increasing U.S. military expenditures and showing “resolve” toward China. The conventional wisdom also advocates a regional expansion of alliances with any country, democratic or authoritarian, that could join the United States to contain China. As Colby writes, “This is a book about war.” Brands and Beckley argue that the United States should reinforce its efforts to deter China from invading Taiwan: “What is needed is a strategy to deter or perhaps win a conflict in the 2020s … the Pentagon can dramatically raise the costs of a Chinese invasion by turning the international waters of the Taiwan Strait into a death trap for attacking forces.” Doshi argues that the United States should arm countries such as “Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India” with capabilities to contain China.
This leads to a key question: What does China want? To answer this question, this article examines contemporary China's goals and fears in words and deeds. In contrast to the conventional view, the evidence provided in this article leads to one overarching conclusion and three specific observations. Overall, China is a status quo power concerned with regime stability, and it remains more inwardly focused than externally oriented. More specifically: China's aims are unambiguous; China's aims are enduring; and China's aims are limited.
First, China's aims are unambiguous: China cares about its borders, its sovereignty, and its foreign economic relations. China cares about its unresolved borders in the East and South China Seas and with India, respectively. Almost all of its concerns are regional. Second, China deeply cares about its sovereign rights over various parts of China that the rest of the region has agreed are Chinese—Hong Kong, Taiwan, Tibet, and Xinjiang. Third, China has an increasingly clear economic strategy for its relations with both East Asia and the rest of the world that aims to expand trade and economic relations, not reduce them.
It is also clear what China does not want: There is little mention in Chinese discourse of expansive goals or ambitions for global leadership and hegemony. Furthermore, China is not exporting ideology. Significantly, the CCP's emphasis on “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is not a generalized model for the world. In contrast, the United States claims to represent global values and norms. What China also does not want is to invade and conquer other countries; there is no evidence that China poses an existential threat to the countries on its borders or in its region that it does not already claim sovereignty over.
We explore how China views its own position and role in the region and globally. Recognizing that public statements vary in their level of authoritativeness, we examined three main sources: People's Daily, which represents not only the state but also the Central Committee of the CCP; Xi Jinping's and other senior officials' speeches; and Qiushi, a magazine publicizing the CCP's latest policy directions. We used computer-assisted text analysis to systematically assess China's stated goals over time. This method allowed us to more accurately track China's concerns and identify how they have changed. We also show that China's top leaders consistently reiterate that China does not seek regional hegemony or aim to compete with the United States for global supremacy. Instead, China views international relations as multilateral and cooperative.
Second, China's aims are inherited and enduring, not new. There is a “trans-dynastic” Chinese identity: Almost every major issue that the People's Republic of China (PRC) cares about today dates back to at least the nineteenth century during the Qing dynasty. These are not new goals that emerged after the Communist victory in 1949, and none of China's core interests were created by Xi. These are enduring Chinese concerns, even though the political authority governing China has changed dramatically and multiple times over the past two hundred years or more.
Third, what China wants is limited, even though its power has rapidly expanded over the past generation. China's claims and goals are either being resolved or remain static. This reality is in contrast to many of the expectations of U.S. policymakers and to the conventional wisdom of the international relations scholarly literature, which maintains that states' interests will grow as power grows. Rather, the evidence shows that the Chinese leadership is concerned about internal challenges more than external threats or expansion.
We find that China does not pose the type of military threat that the conventional wisdom claims it does. Consequently, there is no need for a hostile military posture in the Pacific, and indeed the United States may be unnecessarily creating tensions. Just as important, we suggest that there is room for the two countries to cooperate on a number of issues areas that are currently overlooked. Finally, the conventional view of China de-emphasizes the economic and diplomatic arenas that a war-fighting approach is unsuited to address. The conventional wisdom about U.S. grand strategy is problematic, and the vision of China that exists in Washington is dangerously wrong.
This article proceeds as follows. First, we discuss the conventional wisdom regarding China's goals as represented by top policymakers in the United States and in the existing scholarly literature. The second section examines Chinese rhetoric and points out nuances in how to read and interpret Chinese rhetoric. The third section uses quantitative methods to more systematically and accurately assess Chinese claims across time as reflected in the most authoritative Chinese pronouncements. The fourth section details how China's main priorities are enduring and trans-dynastic, and the fifth section shows how the most important of these claims are not expanding, even though China's power has grown rapidly over the past generation. We present the implications of our argument for the U.S.-China relationship in the conclusion.
by David C. Kang, Jackie S. H. Wong, Zenobia T. Chan, MIT Press | Read more:
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[ed. The Roman empire collapsed because it was overextended. China won't make that mistake. They'll just get stronger and more self-reliant - securing their borders, advancing technology, providing security for their citizens. Dominant simply because they have a strategy for advancing their country's long-term interests, not dominance for its own sake. Most US problems have been self-inflicted - militarily, economically, politically, techologically. We've been distracted and screwing around for decades, empire building and trying to rule the world.]
