Changes in capabilities on both sides have led to the altering of the regional balance of power in East Asia, and this shift requires the willingness of both sides to adopt restraint and pursue accommodation in order to maintain stability in the region.
The United States and China are locked in a long-term competition over the East Asian security order. This competition is not focused on policy differences over Taiwan and the Philippines or over the conflict over the region’s maritime legal disputes. Rather, the United States and China compete over the regional balance of power and the implications for Chinese and U.S. security.
As a rising power and now, as a peer great power in East Asia, China seeks improved security on its East Asian periphery. The United States is a declining status-quo power; it resists change and reduced security. As the U.S.-China military balance has narrowed and as Chinese international economic importance has grown, competition and tension have increased.
The changing balance of power reflects the relative change in US and Chinese capabilities. Since 2012, the size of the Chinese navy has increased from approximately 210 to nearly 400 ships. It commissions nearly three advanced diesel submarines each year and soon it will have over 80 submarines. China is also deploying significant numbers of cruisers, destroyers, and frigates and its ship-based cruise missiles challenge U.S. surface fleet operations in East Asian waters. Chinese land-based missiles now target U.S. basing facilities thorough East Asia. And China is developing advanced capabilities in electronic warfare, communications, cyber, drones and artificial intelligence.
The rise of China’s military and economic capabilities has occurred as U.S. economic growth has slowed, its federal debt continues to grow, and its military is burdened by an aging navy, an expensive volunteer force, and a diminished industrial base. Each year the U.S. navy gets smaller. As it allocates scarce funding to build the next-generation navy, it is decommissioning its older ships and its small-scale ships that had been built to lurk offshore against secondary states. The relatively small annual increases in the U.S. defense budget contribute primarily to offset inflation and to increasing wages and benefits for military personnel. Moreover, even should it have the requisite funding, the United States does not have the industrial industry to compete. China possesses nearly 50 percent of global ship building capacity; the U.S. possesses .5 percent of global ship building capacity.
In international economics, China’s market and its foreign investment and aid programs are the dominant sources of development and infrastructure modernization throughout the world, including in Europe, the Americas and Asia. Its Belt and Road Initiative and its Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank are well-funded sources of international aid. The Chinese economy is plagued by many serious problems, but even should its growth rate decline to 3-4 percent, it will grow significantly faster than the U.S. economy and it will possess a market 4 times the size of the U.S. market. China’s confidence in its economy enables it to negotiate free trade agreements with multiple countries in East Asia and throughout the world.
As in military affairs, the United States lacks the ability to compete with China in international economics. The U.S. political system and its focus on protecting its industrial base and its labor conditions has fostered protectionist policies, not only toward China, but also toward its security partners in Europe, Asia, and the western hemisphere. And as China has continued to negotiate free trade agreements, the Unites States walked away from the Trans-Pacific Partnership and cannot consider joining the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, despites the minimal effect of these agreements on U.S. trade barriers. U.S. foreign aid policy is similarly constrained by domestic politics. The U.S. aid budget cannot compete with Chinese support for international development and infrastructure projects.
The transition in the East Asian strategic order toward a bipolar balance of power has transformed China’s security policy. China’s objective is the expected result of the relative rise of its military and economic capabilities. Since 1949, China has objected to U.S. air and naval bases encircling its coastal waters from the Korean Peninsula through the Malaccan Strait. China is now determined to use its great power capabilities to erode post-World War II U.S. naval hegemony in maritime East Asia and the U.S. alliance system that challenges Chinese maritime security.
China has used its naval capabilities and its economic leverage to coerce South Korea, the Philippines, and Vietnam to constrain defense cooperation with the United States. Using the maritime disputes as opportunities for coercion, it seeks to undermine the confidence of reginal states in the U.S. commitment to their defense. It has threatened crises and hostilities with the Philippines in 2012 at Scarborough Shoal and now at Sabina Shoal and at Second Thomas Shoal. It threatened a crisis with Vietnam in 2014 over resources exploration in Chinese-claimed waters. And in 2016, it used economic sanctions and the threat of heightened conflict over Socotra Shoal in the Yellow Sea in response to South Korean missile defense cooperation with the United States.
The rise of China poses a significant challenge to U.S. security. The U.S. alliance system in East Asia has been the foundation of U.S. regional security since World War II and the United States is unwilling to concede regional hegemony to the Chinese military. This is the expected response of a great power experiencing relative decline and reduced security. Since President Barak Obama’s “pivot” to East Asia, the United States has been intent on strengthening its regional military presence and establishing its resolve to defend its security partners. It has expanded defense cooperation with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Taiwan. Its increasingly frequent naval exercises, freedom of navigation operations, and naval transits through the Taiwan Strait similarly aim to establish U.S. resolve and to encourage its security partners to resist cooperation with Chinese security policy.
But in acknowledgement of its declining military capabilities inside East Asia, the United States developed its Indo-Pacific strategy. It is focused on acquiring access to naval and facilities on the perimeter of East Asia, far from China’s naval and air bases inside East Asia. It has expanded its naval, air and maritime presence in Australia and encouraged Australian development of its airfield on Cocos Island, it has improved defense cooperation with India, including at the Andaman Islands and on the China-India border, and it has strengthened defense cooperation with Japan. It has also developed its military presence in Papua New Guinea, Palau, and Micronesia, and on Guam, Wake and Tinian islands. These initiatives contribute to U.S. encirclement of East Asian waters from the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific and to containment of Chinese military capabilities inside East Asia.
The U.S.-China power transition is approaching a critical stage. During the Biden administration, the United States has strengthened its resistance to China’s rise, not only with its military activities, but also with its effort to create a global coalition to strengthen its trade war and technology competition with China and with its diminishing support for the WTO and the liberal international trade order. In response, there is corresponding greater Chinese determination to use its improved capabilities to advance Chinese security and thus challenge U.S. security. Its heightened maritime pressure on the Philippines and Taiwan reflects its confidence in its ongoing ability to challenge U.S. presence in East Asia.
Management of the power transition and assuring regional peace and stability requires mutual U.S. and Chinese restraint and accommodation. The United States can accommodate the rise of China, while assuring regional bipolarity and thus resisting Chinese hegemony. China can achieve greater maritime security by focusing on the patient and peaceful development of its economic and defense capabilities, thus assuring greater long-term cooperation from its East Asian neighbors. In the U.S.-China power transition, strategic competition and regional stability are not incompatible, but rather require conflict and cooperation.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of IIPA and this platform.
Author
Robert S. Ross is a Professor of Political Science at Boston College and Associate at the John King Fairbank Centre for Chinese Studies, Harvard University. He has taught and researched as a Fulbright Professor at the Chinese Foreign Affairs College and held positions at Peking, Tsinghua, and Fudan Universities. He was Adjunct Professor at the Norwegian Defence University College and Visiting Scholar at the Royal Danish Defence College. His recent works include Strategic Adjustment and the Rise of China. He has testified before the US Congress and consulted for US government agencies. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.